Going to lengths to keep profs at Penn

Penn is becoming an increasingly difficult place for top students to get into. But it's also getting more and more difficult to get faculty members to stay.

"The aggressiveness with which schools compete with each other has definitely increased over the years," Wharton Deputy Dean David Schmittlein said.

But with improved facilities, plans to better accommodate families, increased salaries and mentoring programs for young professors, officials are confident they will retain their top teachers.

"Last year, we had an exceptionally successful year in retaining faculty," School of Arts and Sciences Dean Rebecca Bushnell said.

On average, 22 standing faculty have left SAS in each of the past five years, school Assistant Dean Allison Rose said. This "attrition" rate includes retirement, resignation, firing or death. She said about nine faculty members retire each year. SAS has about 500 standing faculty.

"We do work very hard to make the situation here as attractive as possible," College Dean Dennis DeTurck said.

Sometimes, sustaining top facilities is key to retaining faculty in all of Penn's schools.

"Faculty of the caliber in our school are constantly being recruited by top schools, often with lucrative startup packages," Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics Department chairman Vijay Kumar said. "The main thing we have to make sure is our faculty have the required infrastructure . for research."

Only two faculty members from Kumar's department have left in recent years, both due to "personal reasons," he said.

"In both these cases, there's very little we could have done to retain them," Kumar said.

For Wharton, faculty retention is a huge challenge, Schmittlein said, because of the appeal of the Wharton brand to schools looking to poach Penn's professors.

Some schools "frankly don't care what it costs; they just want to hire someone from Wharton," he said.

A higher percentage of Wharton faculty members leave each year than do College faculty members, but Schmittlein said Wharton's rate is not unusual for a business school.

Of the 212 standing Wharton faculty, Schmittlein said, anywhere from 4 to 13 leave each year. About 1 to 3 of those leave for other universities.

He added that this number has remained relatively constant over the years despite increased competitiveness between universities.

A major element to retaining faculty is financial support from Wharton alumni.

"It is really expensive to retain faculty," Schmittlein said.

The School of Nursing - competing in a time of nursing faculty shortages - also has to work hard to retain its faculty, Dean Afaf Meleis said.

With a faculty of 53, the school has lost two professors to other schools over the past five years, she said.

Strategies to retain faculty include a mentorship program for assistant professors and benchmarking salaries against other schools.

Although Penn loses faculty like any university, the turnover rate seems comparable to other Ivy League schools.

Dartmouth's School of Arts and Sciences, for example, has about 15 faculty members each year leave for various reasons, according to spokeswoman Genevieve Haas. There are currently 537 professors in that school. She said the school does not have figures on how many of these left for other universities.

Columbia University loses about two or three a year across the entire university to other offers, spokesman Alex Lyda said. There are about 780 faculty members in Columbia University's School of Arts and Sciences.

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