Regents President Jamie Koch said in an interview Friday that he arrived at $94,000 as the average faculty salary by factoring in retirement benefits.
Faculty members called for Koch to check his facts after he cited the figure in an open letter to the community Feb. 5.
Koch said he got his numbers from Mark Chisholm, director of Institutional Research, but in an interview with the Daily Lobo, Chisholm said the average salary for faculty - including associate, assistant and full-time professors - is $83,576.
Koch said he added the retirement plan percentage of 11.65 to the average faculty salary of $83,576.
"These are accurate numbers based on how I interpreted it, based on how I presented this for people to take a look at," he said.
Koch said he used this figure in his letter to create an open debate about fair faculty compensation.
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Koch said he is prepared to discuss this matter at Wednesday's faculty meeting, organized by the Faculty Governance Committee.
Doug Fields, Faculty Senate president-elect, said Koch should have explained in his letter what the number he used represented and how he got there.
Koch said he knew his letter was not transparent but that he intended it to be that way.
"The only thing I did - and I will admit that I wasn't clear, because I didn't want to be clear - I put $94,000," he said.
Fields said that when quoting someone's salary, benefits should not be included, because it creates a misconception.
"If you're going to use the salary, then (Koch) should use the numbers that Mark Chisholm in
Institutional Research provides him for salary, and that is the $83,000 average," he said.
Fields said it would be better to use the median faculty salary to discuss whether UNM employees are paid fairly.
"It's very important to talk about not just the average, but the median," he said. "In other words, there is some highly paid faculty that drive the average way up . and that (median) number is quite a bit less even than the $83,000."
According to data from the fall of 2007, provided by Mark Chisholm, the median faculty salary was $70,454.
Koch said he used the average faculty salary and added in the retirement plan because that percentage needs to be included in the University's budget.
Helen Gonzales, director of Human Resources, said the amount the University pays for faculty members' retirement plans will increase each year by 0.75 percent until 2012. This is in accordance with Senate Bill 181, which was passed in 2005, she said.
Fields said Koch's letter contained an underlying message that insulted faculty members.
"There was an insinuation there that was just barely veiled, and that is his perspective, his mind-set, and that mind-set is that we are a bunch of overpaid, under-worked whiners, and that is a very unfortunate
mind-set for the president of the Board of Regents of the University," he said.
Chisholm said he computed the average salary by looking at faculty members whose sole job is to teach, including associate, assistant and full-time professors.
While UNM's average faculty salary is about 10 percent behind that of peer institutions, the University is even farther behind in terms of compensation, according to an annual report by the American Association of University Professors.
Koch said he could have used faculty compensation, including salary and benefits, in his letter.
He decided to only include the retirement plan in his numbers because not all employees take advantage of all of the benefits, he said.
Gonzales said Koch's formula is much easier to use on a wider scale.
"When you're talking about an individual . we couldn't say if they had all of these things. What we can say for certain is that they have the 11.65 percent," she said.
Chisholm said UNM's average faculty compensation in 2007-08 was $98,867, while the average for peer institutions was $111,187, an 11.1 percent difference.
