Penn State president defends new VP position, executive’s pay raise during hiring freeze
Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi addressed two recent personnel decisions that have stirred questions among the university community, publicly defending her moves to add another vice president position and to raise another executive’s pay during a “strategic hiring freeze.”
The freeze — which does not apply to all positions — started Aug. 1. On Aug. 3, a Penn State board of trustees subcommittee approved Bendapudi’s request to grant a $71,000 pay raise to Sara Thorndike, treasurer and senior vice president for finance and business. And, on Aug. 8, the university announced the hiring of Matt Melvin as vice president for the newly established Enrollment Management Office.
On Tuesday, during Bendapudi’s opening remarks at the first faculty senate meeting of the fall semester, she reasoned the moves were made due to equity and then to tackle a pressing concern.
On Thorndike’s raise, which boosted her annual salary 16% to $520,008, Bendapudi explained that she found all the women on her leadership team earned “significantly below the median, and the majority of the men were significantly above the median.”
“And one thing that I want to tell you is that, as is typical, this was me correcting it for the women because I thought that equity needed to be maintained,” she said via Zoom, to both faculty online at commonwealth campuses and in Kern Building at University Park. “And, even now with the bump that Sara got, remember — she moved from 30% of the budget (responsibility) to 100% of the budget responsibility. She is still being paid less than her predecessor was paid when he left.”
That more-experienced predecessor, David Gray, who retired two years ago, earned $537,372 in 2019-2020 — about $17,000 more than Thorndike after her raise.
When it came to Melvin and the enrollment management office, Bendapudi told faculty that she made the decision only after her tour of the commonwealth campuses and after speaking with the chancellors. According to Bendapudi, the chancellors essentially all repeated the same concerns about enrollment management “and the need for more thoughtful strategic perspective on enrollment matters.”
“And so I knew that we were asking our people to do a whole lot very, very quickly,” Bendapudi said. “And the only part of our revenue that we truly control is tuition. And we were almost alone among our Big Ten counterparts in not having a separate office for enrollment management.”
Bendapudi tapped Melvin, who previously worked at the University of Kansas, and intimated she did not undergo a long search process because she’s worked closely with him in the past.
“I’ve tried to hire Matt Melvin away many times ... and, when there was an opening, I wanted to make sure I took advantage of it,” she added.
Melvin will report directly to Bendapudi. It is not yet known how much he will earn or how large the enrollment management office will be.
Bendapudi was joined Tuesday by Thorndike and interim executive vice president and provost Justin Schwartz, who all spoke and took questions from faculty for more than 90 minutes. The trio — in addition to Jennifer Wilkes, interim vice president for Human Resources — are also scheduled to address faculty and staff during a town hall at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
