Dear Faculty,

My office recently commissioned a rigorous examination of tenure track faculty salaries at Carnegie Mellon University to determine if our compensation is equitable with respect to gender and race or ethnicity.

In order to execute a thorough study, we called on the expertise of Reed Smith LLP, which has completed its analysis. I also enlisted the help of several CMU statisticians, including Vice Provost for Faculty Kathryn Roeder, to provide a summary report on these findings.

You will see that the study revealed no statistically significant disparity between the salaries of men, women and underrepresented minorities. While these results are encouraging, this study is also a striking reminder that we need to do more to recruit women and underrepresented minorities to our faculty. As you may know, last fall I charged a Committee on Faculty Diversity, Inclusion and Development to help us address this need and they are taking important steps to promote a more inclusive faculty search process across campus. I will be updating you on their activities in the coming weeks.

I want to ensure faculty that these findings do not relieve our academic leaders from their responsibility to consider individual cases of merit. Our deans will continue to address potential equity issues within their schools or colleges.

This particular report evaluates tenure-stream faculty salaries only; however, Reed Smith has already agreed to examine the salaries of our teaching track faculty next. While the small number of research track faculty does not allow for meaningful statistical analysis, we remain interested in studying the equity of salaries in this category and are investigating options to do so.

I would like to thank Vice Provost Roeder for her diligence and leadership in this critical area, as well as Joel Greenhouse, Professor of Statistics, and Brian Junker, Professor of Statistics and Associate Dean of the Dietrich College, for their service and good counsel.

A diverse faculty provides a powerful and indispensable foundation for this institution. It is our hope that this study underscores Carnegie Mellon’s commitment to strengthening this bedrock.

Sincerely,

Farnam Jahanian
Provost and Chief Academic Officer