If instances of this surface, the University should make additional salary funds available to redress the unequal treatment. The Colleges and Departments, using guidelines established by the AVP, should examine the progress towards promotion and tenure of women Assistant Professors in tenure-track positions across the University. The examination may be as simple as a review of performance reviews and an interview, or may be more detailed as a particular situation warrants. The procedures for making and compensating administrative appointments from faculty ranks should be made more transparent and uniform across the University. Particular attention should be paid to the appointment of department chairs, and the compensation department chairs receive during their appointment and subsequent to it.
Chairs play especially important roles in recruitment and promotion.
If there has been unequal treatment of women in either area, more transparency and uniformity in the appointment of chairs can mitigate this in the future. The AVP should establish uniform guidelines that deans follow when appointing department chairs and setting their salaries during and after their periods of administrative appointment. Although some avenues for grievances and appeals by faculty already exist, an ombuds office has some advantages not shared by existing institutional mechanisms, and these advantages may serve the interests of gender equity in particular. First, an ombudsperson has the ability to span overlapping areas of governance that an appeals or grievance mechanism may not. Therefore, where an inequity in one area carries over to another, an ombudsperson has the ability to address a larger picture than might be addressed by an appeals mechanism.