Eastern’s faculty continue to rank salary as their most important concern, and express a negative attitude toward the administration, according to a union survey.

The survey, conducted by Eastern’s chapter of University Professionals of Illinois, shows that faculty considered salary a bigger concern than job security, working conditions, pension, insurance, professional development and merit awards combined.

“That’s been number one since I can remember,” David Radavich, president of Eastern’s UPI chapter and English professor, said Tuesday.

The university’s administration maintains that raising faculty salaries is an institutional priority. “That has been a stated goal and continues to be,” Provost Blair Lord said Tuesday.

More than 100 of the university’s approximate 600 faculty members responded to the survey, Radavich said. The survey was distributed to both tenure-track and annually-contracted faculty as well as academic support professionals such as counselors and advisors.

The survey also shows some divergent attitudes among the Eastern employees who work most closely with students. For example approximately 96 percent of respondents said their job is interesting and 91 percent said they have a feeling of achievement at work.

However, more than half of those who responded don’t have such a positive attitude toward the university’s administration. When asked if administrative polices compromise academic quality, 54 percent agreed and another 51 percent said the university administration is not willing to listen to people like them.

Radavich said those mixed statistics seem to show that the faculty members enjoy their jobs, but not their bosses.

“Well, I think what it says is people really like working with students in the classroom and with colleagues, but they have some distrust for the university,” he said. “It does suggest some distrust.”

That situation may cause some faculty to distance themselves from the university outside of the responsibilities of their job.

“Yeah, I think there are some that feel that way,” Radavich said.

Interim President Lou Hencken said Tuesday that as president he hasn’t witnessed that negative sentiment on campus.

“I feel very positive about the tone and feel of the relationship between administration and faculty this semester,” he said.

Even so, the president said that he and Lord plan to meet Thursday with Radavich and Matthew Monippallil, UPI vice president and accountancy and finance professor, to discuss the faculty’s concerns.