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Annual salary increases are included in a contract between the Pennsylvania College of Technology and members of the Penn College Education Association, which was recently ratified by the college's Board of Directors.
The new contract, which runs through the 2026-27 academic year, includes the following increases: 2022-23, 2%; 2023-24, 2.4%; 2024-25, 2.6%; 2025-26, 2.7%; and 2026-27, 3%.
Some elements of the contract take effect during the current academic year.
Salary increases affect the more than 270 members of PCEA, including full-time teaching faculty, librarians and counselors at the college.
College President Davie Jane Gilmour told the board "teaching is the heart of our mission. Faculty are in fact the driving force of that mission."
"So, faculty work experience, excellence in teaching and commitment to our students' success is really what was the foundation of our negotiation with the faculty association," she said.
Members of the faculty association and the administration had met over a period of months in negotiations, which Gilmour described as both "collegial and cordial."
"As in any collective bargaining agreement, the focus of our discussion for the most part was on compensation and benefit terms," Gilmour said.
The college bases faculty salaries on experience, education and years of service. Faculty have a teaching load of 15 credits or 20 contact hours and any time that they teach over that amount, they are paid an overload rate, Gilmour explained.
In terms of benefits, the college offers employees two options - a high deductible health care plan or a health savings account.
Gilmour also addressed the problem of attracting new faculty with the current starting salaries at the college.
"Recently I heard of a two-year graduate in the plastics and polymer field who's making $103,000 a year. If we were to try to recruit him to come back to teaching in our plastic program as a starting faculty member with two years of experience, I don't need the salary system in front of me to tell you that he would not make $103,000 a year," she shared.
"It's important to look at the entire compensation package, but it's also important to make sure that we can offer the best starting salaries possible. So, both the association and the college have agreed, starting this year, to go ahead and add an amount of money to the salary pool that will allow us to increase the base starting salaries," Gilmour said, adding the increase in base salaries applies to all faculty.
Other benefits in the contract outlined by Gilmour include allowing faculty to take attendance through the learning management system; eliminating the faculty rotation for summer school; no increases in parking fees for the next four years; and allowing faculty to perform a portion of their office hours online.