For the Joint Committee on the Arts, Education and Humanities
March 13 2001
Jean Stonehouse

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee.

I'm Jean Stonehouse. As MSCA Chapter President at Bridgewater State College, I represent the college's 255 faculty and professional librarians. On their behalf, thank you for the opportunity to testify this afternoon and to ask for your support of Senator Moore's Resolution, Senate 299.

BSC is one of our small, under-appreciated treasures. Its campus is beautiful and growing. Its significant investment in technology resources make it well suited to serve the needs of both its students and its region. It gives its 9000 students rich undergraduate and graduate curricula preparing them for professional careers, responsible citizenship, and fulfilling personal lives. The great majority of those students will continue to live and work in southeastern Massachusetts where their professional skills are essential to that region's economic well-being.

You need to know, however, that the depressed state of faculty and librarian compensation demonstrated by the Council of Presidents' salary study is having a very serious impact at Bridgewater in faculty librarian recruitment, retention and morale.

The faculty is the heart and soul of any college. We understand that at Bridgewater, and we work very hard to recruit to recruit the very best teacher - scholars. We search nationwide, world-wide actually, and screen applicants very carefully testing them not only for teaching ability and scholarly promise but also for commitment to public higher education, for readiness to serve our students, our region and this commonwealth. How disappointing it is to identify promising individuals only to lose them when the process reaches the point at which our college officials discuss salary. New Ph. D.s burdened with higher education loans and, often, anxious to make-up for the sacrifices their loved-ones made to support their education or to provide for their own children's futures, turn us down for the richer financial packages offered by institutions similar to ours but located in other states. In some disciplines, computer science and business management for example, what we can offer is so far removed from market rates, that recruitment is near impossible. Faculty positions that we need to fill if we are to maintain our curricula remain unfilled.

Retention is also difficult for us. Time after time, new colleagues tell us that they love working at Bridgewater, but they just can't afford to stay. At Bridgewater in the past few years we have lost many very promising new colleagues and will soon lose more. Let me give you two examples:

The college recruited a professor expecting that she would supply new leadership in one of our departments. Its expectations were rewarded. In her second year, she became department chairperson, and in the next year the college rewarded her success in leading that department with tenure and promotion. She left shortly after because her salary couldn't keep pace with her rent increases and because she couldn't afford to provide her young daughter with the experiences essential to a child's intellectual and cultural development.

We also just lost a very talented individual who was Chairperson of our Department of Secondary Education and a recognized leader in the field that provides professional training for librarians. She came to Bridgewater mid-career; established roots in the area; had every intention of remaining, but was enticed off our campus by a $36,000 raise in pay. She now works for the public schools system of the city of Newton. Our salaries generally compare unfavorably not only to those of professors in peer institutions of public higher education but to those of K-12 teachers as well.

These stories have parallels in several other departments. More chilling to us, however, is the sure knowledge that many of our newest colleagues are on the job market and will leave the college unless it can offer competitive salaries and support. We need these people, and we want them to stay.

We believe that your support of Senate 299 is an important means of demonstrating your support for our college and our work and that it will help us meet the challenge of faculty/librarian recruitment and retention. Meeting that challenge is essential if we are to maintain the Commonwealth's need to prepare its citizens for the modern, technologically sophisticated, globally connected environment in which they will live and work.

3/14/01