About the Let’s Talk Money IChange Network Cohort

Let’s Talk Money focuses on improving policy, perception, leadership skills and engagement in the faculty compensation system, drawing on learning from efforts by the Rochester Institute of Technology, Drexel University, Gallaudet University, and Villanova University. 

The Let’s Talk Money IChange Network Cohort (LTM Cohort) is designed to help public research universities examine their faculty compensation system(s) to improve external competitiveness, internal fairness, transparency, consistency, and communications. By engaging in monthly workshops, cohort members will be walked through topics key to improving the compensation system to create an action plan.  

Workshop Modules

  • Module 1:  Project Introduction, Team Building, Goal Clarification

  • Module 2: Organizational Fairness & the Compensation Philosophy

  • Module 3: Internal & Benchmarking Data for Salary Comparisons

  • Module 4:  Pay Decision Processes and Fairness

  • Module 5: Bolstering Pay Decision Processes

  • Module 6: Collaborating and Communication

  • Module 7: Revisiting Pay Decision Processes

  • Module 8:  Communicating about Salary-Related Topics

  • Module 9:  Designing a Compensation Professional Development Program for Pay Decision Makers

  • Module 10: Creating an Action & Implementation Plan

More on the Institutional Change Network

The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities’ Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES Aspire Alliance Institutional Change (IChange) Network helps public research universities create the environment and policies that attract, retain, and support a thriving faculty to advance the institution’s education, research, and engagement missions. IChange uses an institutional- and community-based approach to create a customized action plan that helps colleges and universities addressing practice and policy barriers that exist in:

  • Institutional context, including culture and climate;

  • Faculty recruitment, including outreach, building candidate pools, and candidate selection;

  • Faculty hiring, including job offers, negotiation, and onboarding; and

  • Faculty retention, including professional development, promotion and tenure, and job satisfaction and support.

IChange provides frameworks and tools to support institutions as they tackle challenges and improve their academic workplace. This is coupled with an active and managed peer-learning network where public university leaders can share their experiences with institutions facing similar challenges so they can learn and improve together and elevate promising practices for the broader community. 

Why it matters: Attracting, developing, and supporting a high-performing faculty is key to educating students and advancing world-class research and community engagement that solves some of our most vexing challenges.

Commitments: Participating institutions commit to identifying campus-based project leaders and teams who agree to create and implement an action plan to advance institutional transformation. Each summer, the IChange Network convenes in person at a member institution to share their progress throughout the year, amend or update their action plans, identify larger trends in the work of the Network, and strategize future Network priorities and endeavors. Participants also engage in network-wide meetings to share their progress, achievements, and challenges. Additionally, schools complete ongoing surveys and other evaluations with the network.