LSC Salaries; Points Equal Profit

John DeLeo, mountain recreation professor, was hired at Lyndon State College in 1974 with a starting salary of $9,000.

He said that this was much lower than other schools he was looking at, but that it was certainly a livable wage.

Now he is the school's highest paid professor, making a salary of $83,845.50.

"It's not anything special that anyone does," says DeLeo, who was surprised that he is the highest salaried professor. "It's all driven by the union. I don't have any say in it.

DeLeo came to teach at Lyndon after years of working in his field, teaching rock climbing, canoeing, cross country skiing, and other outdoor sports.

"I might be the highest paid faculty member, but it isn't the salary that kept me here," says DeLeo. "It's the students and it's the administration. The students challenge you more professionally than your own professional organization can."

The lowest paid professor, Brit Moore, who teaches music business and industry, is paid over $50,000 less than DeLeo. She is making $32,976 a year.

Salaries for faculty and staff are complicated, and they are decided in different ways.

Faculty salaries are decided based on a formula including a base salary that changes every year based on national averages of salaries at colleges that are similar to LSC.

The base salary for this academic year is $22,326. On top of this base salary, professors earn points. Each point is worth a dollar amount, which also changes yearly.

This year each point is valued at $963.

Professors receive points based on qualification, rank and experience. Points are given for years worked in the Vermont State Colleges (1 earned for every year), degrees earned, experience working in the field, and what rank professor they are working as.

For example, a professor with a Master's earns 3 points in the degree category, while a professor with a Doctorate earns 6 points in that area.

"It ensures that everybody across the VSC gets treated equally. A degree is a degree is a degree," says dean of academic and student affairs, Donna Dalton, who makes $118,987.08 a year. "In a lot of institutions, it's not unusual for people with the same degrees who got hired at the same time to have different pay."

DeLeo, who has been working at LSC since 1974, has accrued approximately 63.5 points.  This is equal to $61,150.50. By adding this to the base salary $22,236, his salary of $83,845.50 is obtained.

 "Now you're talking about something that actually looks like a salary," says Dalton of adding points, "opposed to something that's never going to be sufficient (the base pay)."

Faculty members are also given extra pay for certain things that add on top of their salaries."It's probably rare that someone's paycheck matches their base salary," says dean of administration, Wayne Hamilton, who makes $107,036.76.

Every credit that a professor teaches over the full time load of 12 credits per semester earns them extra money.

 For this school year, instructors and assistant professors earn $1,025 per extra credit, associate professors earn $1,075 per credit, and professors earn an extra $1,125.

DeLeo has taught ten overload credits this year by teaching 22 credits in the fall semester and 12 credits this semester. This equals out to $11,250 for the year on top of his salary bringing him to over $95,000 for this academic year.

"We have an explosion in the number of students that are coming into out department," say DeLeo of the amount of credits he has taught this year. "If I'm teaching the course to one group of students, I might as well teach it to the other group of students to provide consistency."

Faculty department heads also get compensated in addition to their salaries.

Depending on how many faculty members are in the department that they supervise, they receive a stipend of $500 to $1500 per semester.

Salaries for staff are assigned differently than those of faculty.

The lowest salaried employee at Lyndon State College, Patrick Carr, makes over a $100,000 less than LSC's interim president and highest paid employee, Steve Gold.

Gold has made $125,000 in the year he has spent at LSC, while LSC's lowest salaried employee, Carr, makes 15 percent of that at $18,825.

 "I could do with more, but I get by on it," says Carr, who works as a custodian at the college. "Definitely when you have a lower salary like mine you have to find savings on things."

In an e-mail, Gold tells of his salary at his last full time job before his retirement  four years ago saying, "I was paid slightly less but in the general ballpark of my salary here this year."

His last job was for the government as Deputy Secretary of the Agency of Human Services.

Gold, though LSC's highest paid employee, still makes significantly less than our former president, Carol Moore was. When she left, she was making $151,853.98.

The incoming president, Joe Bertolini, will be starting at $142,000. His former salary at Queens college as the vice president for enrollment management and student affairs was $175,000.

 He is taking a $33,000 pay cut to work at LSC.

The salaries for staff, aside from the administration, are chosen by Hamilton and Sandy Franz (human relations director) based on a salary range that is given for the level of the job that they are filling. They then recommend that salary for the open position to the president who approves it.

"We would look at similar positions within the VSC," says Hamilton, "and what they are being paid. We try as much as possible to correspond to the other VSC."

For staff who are paid hourly, pay is determined based on what a person would receive for doing similar job in the area.

Salaries for members of administration, such as the deans and the president are decided in a different manner as well.

The president's salary is assigned by the chancellor's office, and it is the president who decides the salaries of the deans at the point when they are offered the job.

"After eight years, I still make less than what my starting salary was at Gannon," says Dean Dalton of her salary now compared to her salary at the last college she worked at, where she held the same position. "But anyone that is in higher education is not here for the money."

She says that while her salary is less, the total package, including benefits is similar to what she would receive elsewhere.

"In terms of salary, I'm making less, but benefits among the VSC are remarkably generous," says Dalton.

These include health insurance, life insurance, tuition benefits, and retirement benefits.

"I think it's pretty close to the national average," Hamilton agrees about salaries that are received at LSC. "If you look just at the salaries it might look below, but we tend to have a pretty rich benefit package."