With Iowa State ranking last among its peer group for faculty and salary increases, the need for a multiyear plan to attain competitive salaries has become urgent, said ISU President Gregory Geoffroy.

This is why Geoffroy said he hopes good recommendations and discussion for solving this problem will come Tuesday following a meeting of the Board of Regents Human Resource Committee, where information submitted by the regent universities regarding faculty and staff salary comparisons will be analyzed.

The committee will meet at 2:45 p.m. in Iowa City.

“Bringing faculty and staff salaries to competitive levels is a key priority for Iowa State,” Geoffroy said. “No. 1 is ensuring the salaries of faculty are competitive nationwide, and second, improve the educational quality of the university through increased faculty.”

For this reason, the regents have considered requesting $672 million in state appropriations for the 2006 fiscal year. The recommendation requests an increase in $40 million for the regent universities from 2005 fiscal year’s $518.6 million appropriations, totaling $558.6 million.

Iowa State is expected to receive $15.4 million of the $40 million, based on its portion of the regent university budgets, with most expected to go to salaries.

According to the proposal, increased funding would help the universities to reach nationally competitive salaries and allow them to recruit and retain faculty members who are among the best in their fields.

The money would also establish new positions in critical areas, increasing class offerings in areas of high student demand and strengthening areas affected by budget cuts during the past five years and develop new research programs vital to the economic needs and growth of Iowa.

“If there were appropriation requests of this amount over that four-year period, Iowa State would be able to bring the average faculty and staff salary above the median point of average salaries among it’s peer institutions,” said Mark Chidister, assistant to the president for budget planning and analysis.

With no state appropriations for salary increases this year, Iowa State was forced to reallocate $8.5 million to cover the lack in state funding, which resulted in cutting 568 class sections, resulting in 12,895 fewer seats.

Geoffroy said this was primarily in reaction to inflation and that if it hadn’t been done, it would have sunk salaries even further.

“The reductions of relatively low adjustment in salaries have made it continually difficult to be competitive,” said Warren Madden, vice president for business and finance. “The quality of the university is really contingent upon keeping high-quality faculty and staff.”

Despite increased tuition by the board to compensate for declining state funding and budget cuts, it has not covered the state cuts and shortages in funding for state-mandated salary increases, according to regent documents.

“This is very critical for Iowa State. Those numbers clearly indicate we have fallen dramatically among our peers,” said Sanjeev Agarwal, Faculty Senate president.

“My observations with the faculty is a number of them are looking at more lucrative offers from other universities. If this is not dealt with properly, we will definitely see an erosion of faculty from Iowa State.”

Full state funding for salaries of Iowa’s three regent universities has not happened since 1999.

— Daily staff reports contributed to this article.