The faculty and staff at the U’s School of Music are overworked and underpaid, according to a review of the department done last year.
A graduate council review analyzed the U’s programs and made recommendations of how to make the programs better. Among other suggestions, it recommended the administration address low faculty salaries and a stellar but overworked staff.
The review, which was submitted to the U’s Board of Trustees on Oct. 13, might lead some to think these are still issues in the department8212;but Robert Walzel, the director of the school, said this is not the case.
“Most of the problems addressed were from the spring of 2008, and so we have already taken care of most of them,” Walzel said. “The full-time faculty, however, we haven’t.”
The review recommended that the School of Music increase its full-time faculty lines to alleviate the high ratio of adjunct-to-tenure line faculty. Walzel, who came to the U in 2001, said that when he came to the U, there were 20 full-time faculty members, but currently there are 35 full-time faculty members. Of those, not all are on tenure track, but the school is hoping to boost the ratio of adjunct-to-tenure faculty.
The program does need more full-time members, Walzel said.
“But for the history of the School of Music, we have always hired in part-time professors from the Utah Symphony,” Walzel said.
As for faculty members being overworked, “this is not the case because we follow an outlined faculty workload formula,” Walzel said. “The only way this would happen is if faculty members have chosen to take on other, extra things.”
Every five years, a reaccreditation review is held to renew the accreditation of the music program. Most other similarly accredited music programs have far more faculty than that at the U.
During the Trustees’ meeting, other concerns were addressed for the School of Music, but Walzel said some are outdated because the graduate school moved around and the draft for the review was lost.