VI. Institutional Support and Financial Resources.

Standard VI-1. Support for faculty must be sufficient to enable the program to attract and retain high-quality faculty capable of supporting the programs objectives.

Standard VI-2.There must be sufficient support and financial resources to allow all faculty members to attend national technical meetings with sufficient frequency to maintain competence as teachers and scholars.

Standard VI-3.There must be support and recognition of scholarly activities.

A. One evidence of the long-term stability of a program is its ability to both attract and retain high quality faculty. Describe how your program does this. Some topics the description might address are sabbatical and other leave programs, salaries, benefits, teaching loads, support for and recognition of scholarly activity (including financial support for attendance at professional meetings), departmental and institutional ambiance, etc. Give counts of the total number of faculty and the number of resignations, retirements, and new hires for each of the last five years. Indicate whether there are significant problems attracting and retaining faculty, and if so, the causes.

Faculty may request a sabbatical leave after six years of continuous service. However under special circumstances faculty can apply for a sabbatical after three years of service. Teaching loads are kept to two preps or 9 credit hours per semester to allow faculty to do research or other scholarly activities. Travel to conferences is supported especially when faculty is presenting a paper. Faculty is provided with the latest equipment in their offices.

There are several major problems in attracting faculty

1. In spite of the adjustments to salaries in the CS department, average salaries are still below what similar institutions in this region are offering.
2. Since UVU does not offer graduate degrees there is no support structure for research by faculty members and therefore PhD candidates with Computer Science majors are in short supply.
3. UVU has grown, and is still growing, so rapidly much of the infrastructure has not been able to keep up. Hiring policies that place time lines on decisions by personnel in the process do not exist and many potential hires have been missed because they take positions at other institutions before decisions can be made at UVU.

An in-depth study of the current faculty members generally reveals qualified, dedicated educators who have chosen to overlook the problems stated above for various reasons. All current faculty members view the teaching part of their positions as the most important part so lack of computer science research facilities is not of paramount importance. Some faculty members have retired from industry positions and the lower salary is not as important as someone just getting started in higher education. Others have chosen to move to UVU because of the environment or the culture and are willing to make the sacrifices imposed by lower salaries. As in any work environment there are some who become dissatisfied for various reasons and move on to other locations. For the most part, those who choose to overlook the lower pay scale at UVU and become part of the CS faculty tend to be satisfied with all other conditions and stay at UVU.