Jerry Gilbert, provost and executive vice president, announced the approval of faculty and staff salary raises, discussed the construction of a new classroom building and revealed the student enrollment numbers for the fall semester at the Mississippi State University Robert Holland Faculty Senate meeting Friday.
Gilbert said MSU President Mark Keenum found about five percent of staff salaries to be below the minimum for the market. Gilbert said Keenum committed to increase all staff salaries currently below the minimum to the minimum salary. The salary change took effect on Sept. 1.
Gilbert said Keenum also committed to create a committee to develop a plan to increase professor salaries.
“Dr. Keenum and I were talking about faculty and staff salaries this summer, and we want to create this committee to address the salaries of full professors,” he said. “We hope to have a process in place by Jan. 1 of 2013.”
Also Friday, Gilbert said MSU is making progress on the construction of a 90,000 square foot classroom building.
He said the classroom building will be built north of the YMCA building and will be completed in January 2015.
Originally, MSU considered including laboratories in the new building, but Gilbert said those plans will not come to fruition.
“As we were going through the early discussions for the building, we talked about the possibility of having teaching laboratories in there, but we decided to forgo that idea,” he said. “We have a new committee working on that (building laboratories), and we hope to have recommendations from the committee soon.”
In other business, Gilbert released the enrollment numbers for the fall 2012 semester. He said the enrollment is 20,365 students, which is down by about 59 students.
“Down by 59 students means less than a one percent decrease, so we consider that relatively flat enrollment for this year,” he said.
Also Friday, Gilbert said MSU has made progress in the search for a new registrar.
Gilbert said the committee in charge of finding a new registrar now has applicants for MSU to consider. Gilbert said MSU plans to hire a registrar by the end of the semester.
In the meantime, he said Lynn Reinschmiedt and Linda Buehler are serving as interim co-registrars.
“We are still excited about the applicants we have gotten so far, and Lynn and Linda are doing a great job serving as interims while we go through the process of finding a new registrar,” he said.
In other business, Gilbert said Dean Sharon Oswald has been appointed as the head of a committee to search for a new dean for the College of Arts and Sciences. He said the goal is to hire a dean by the start of the n
ext academic year.