Administrators have provided few details about the recently introduced retirement incentives for faculty, and it remains unclear how the incentives are being discussed with professors and how much money may be offered.
In an e-mail obtained by The Chronicle, Srinivas Aravamudan, dean of humanities and professor of English, gave some department chairs guidance about the faculty retirement incentives.
“Please make sure that your faculty is aware of this program,” Aravamudan wrote. “While there is no faculty retirement target list and theoretically any faculty member who fits the Rule of 75 is eligible, chairs should not approach anyone.”
In order to be eligible for the University to supplement their retirement packages, faculty have 79 days left to decide whether to commit to retire by June 30, 2011. The value of the incentives is unknown. They can be offered to professors in every school, except the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, who meet the Rule of 75.
To fund the offers, schools will borrow money from the University’s central fund and then pay it back over five years, Provost Peter Lange said.
Lange said he has not budgeted the money yet because he cannot predict what offers will be made during individual faculty negotiations with deans. He declined to say whether schools will have to repay the loans with interest.
The decision to create the incentive stemmed from discussions with deans that suggested some faculty had been planning to retire before the recession decreased the value of their investments, Lange said.
He noted that he hopes this offer could allow those faculty members to retire, adding that “some deans have had some conversations that may be fruitful” with professors.
The retirement incentives are “not fundamentally a budgetary move,” Lange said.
George McLendon, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences, said he does not expect a large number of his faculty members to accept the incentive. Still, he noted that some Arts & Sciences faculty members are currently in discussion with their department chairs about retiring. He said he will meet with a few department chairs throughout the week who wish to talk about packages for their faculty.
But there has been some confusion about how faculty members are being made aware of the offer. The incentive was first announced by Lange in the sixth paragraph of an Oct. 23 Duke News release. Some department chairs said they had received e-mails about the offer from administrators.
Lange said each dean will publicize the offers to their faculty members individually.
Tom Katsouleas, dean of the Pratt School of Engineering, and Bruce Kuniholm, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy, said Nov. 2 that they had not initiated conversations with faculty about retiring, but would do so in the upcoming weeks. Kuniholm wrote in an e-mail Thursday that nothing has changed since Nov. 2, and declined to comment further. Katsouleas was traveling and could not be reached for comment.
Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment, and David Levi, dean of the School of Law, declined to comment. Blair Sheppard, dean of the Fuqua School of Business, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Some Arts & Sciences chairs said administrators want interested professors to drive discussions about the retirement incentive.
Orin Starn, chair of the cultural anthropology department, said he was advised not to approach specific eligible faculty members “because it can be insulting.” Rather officials thought eligible professors would learn about the incentive through circulating e-mails and the Duke News release.
“I certainly didn’t go to any faculty member and say, ‘Hey, how about retiring early?’” Starn said.
Several other department chairs said they had not heard from interested faculty.
Chairs and deans now have more time for faculty members to come forward and talk with them about a package. Lange announced Monday that, after discussions with the deans, the deadline would be extended from Dec. 14 to Jan. 30. He said he and the deans agreed it would be beneficial to let professors consider the incentive over Winter Break.
“If somebody’s been a substantial contributor to the learning and intellectual life at Duke for many years, you’d like them to feel good about whatever transition they’re making,” McLendon said. “It’s not a given that all retirements will improve the college, there are some cases in which the holes are never filled. Nevertheless, the individual has the right to choose the path that is best for them.”
Helping faculty retire could allow the University to hire new professors, Lange said in the Duke News release. He added in an interview that he anticipates the initiative will save Duke “maybe a little, but not a lot” of money because the University is still hiring.
McLendon said there is “not much” room for recruitment in the Arts & Sciences budget. He said Arts & Sciences’ growth over the last five years means there is not a great need for recruitment.
“Here’s the reality—this year we will probably recruit half as many faculty as we would in an average year,” McLendon said. “Some of that is because of reduced turnover.”
Because fewer universities are hiring professors this year, Duke is more appealing, McLendon said. Currently, about 300 candidates are competing for one tenure track assistant professor position in Duke’s sociology department, said Kenneth Spenner, chair of the sociology department.
Stephen Jaffe, chair of the department of music, said faculty searches are targeting young professors.
“It used to be that when you were granted a search, it was granted at open rank—you could get a full professor or an associate professor or an assistant professor,” Jaffe said.
Jaffe added that he does not think the economic incentive will convince professors to retire unless they were already considering leaving Duke.
“No one would retire in a faculty rank, I don’t think, just because there is some economic incentive that arises in two weeks,” he said. “It’s something that you would have planned to do.”
Zachary Tracer contributed reporting.