Watching Adams Staff – 10/26/15

In an October 20th email to the campus, Adams State University President Beverlee McClure made a number of claims that appear to be doubling down on increasingly untenable positions. Among them is the defense of recent CUPA (College and University Professional Association for Human Resources) compensation data that Watching Adams has posted. Many on campus have come to believe the compensation data raises concerns of inequitable pay on campus, see CUPA Data Reveals Longstanding Pay Inequities at Adams State for more on this.

Rather than commit to reviewing the issue further, President McClure maintains that everything is going according to plan and ASU Human Resources simply implemented the recommendations given to them by the 2014-2015 Compensation Committee. She explains, “As a reminder, there was a committee that reviewed all the data in order to make the recommendation to the Board of Trustees. The process was open and transparent and is fully documented. Your individual CUPA position was reviewed and approved by your supervisor. The Human Resources department did not make the decision–they only implemented it.”

However, one source familiar with this process reached out to Watching Adams to state otherwise:

“As a supervisor of multiple individuals, I was quite surprised by that statement. I was never – and have never – been consulted by anyone with respect to the appropriate CUPA position descriptions to use for salary analysis. Within an hour of President McClure’s campus-wide communication, several other supervisors reached out to me in person and via email, asking whether I thought her assertion was accurate. They too had never been contacted by Human Resources, the Compensation Review Committee, or any other group. They were not given the opportunity to review – and certainly not to approve – CUPA comparison data for those they supervise. Some of these individuals have worked at Adams State for many years and have never once been contacted by Human Resources or any other campus office with respect to salary calculations.”

So why would President McClure email the campus with statements that are provably false?  Does she believe something is true simply because the president says it is so? It is entirely likely that she is relaying the best information she believes she has available, which means that she is being misinformed by her sources. Watching Adams would encourage President McClure to more carefully review this process and re-assess how CUPA compensation adjustments are being made at Adams State.