July 24, 2024

East Mississippi Community College President Dr. Scott Alsobrooks announced that the college's eligible employees received pay raises for the fourth consecutive year.

Employees who qualify received a 3.5 percent pay increase that took effect today, July 1, which is the start of the 2024-25 school year. EMCC's Board of Trustees approved the pay raises, which are being funded through increased appropriations from the Mississippi Legislature, as well as EMCC's general funds.

"We are grateful to our Board of Trustees and to our state legislators for supporting our efforts to raise the salaries of our faculty and staff not only this year but in the past three previous years as well," Alsobrooks said. "Mississippi's community college system is among the best in the nation and I believe our employees here at EMCC are among the best in the state. I am proud of the work they do and thankful we have been given the ability to reward their efforts."

Last year, eligible employees received a 3 percent across-the-board pay increase, which was part of an ongoing effort to raise employee salaries. In July of 2022, at the start of the 2022-23 school year, that effort received a major boost in the form of a pay raise of between 8 percent and 9.5 percent for faculty and an increase of about 5 percent for staff.

That wage increase was the largest in the college's recent history.

"We looked back a couple of decades and could not find any raises comparable to this amount," EMCC Chief Financial Officer Tammie Holmes said at the time.

Thanks to an enrollment boost, EMCC's state appropriation that year rose by $2.1 million, of which the Mississippi Legislature reserved $600,540 as a line item for raises. The total cost of the raises that year came to a little over $1 million. EMCC allocated about $400,000 out of general funds to pay for the remainder of the cost for the raises and fringe benefits, such as contributions to the Public Employees" Retirement System of Mississippi, or PERS.

Both faculty and staff received a base pay of 5 percent. Faculty hired before Jan. 2 that year received additional pay based on their years of service, with long-time faculty members garnering up to a total wage increase of 9.5 percent.

"That year our focus was on shoring up salaries for our faculty members," Alsobrooks said. "We not only wanted our faculty pay to be competitive with that of other community colleges in nearby states but we also wanted to reward our instructors for the tremendous job they do in their classrooms every day."

The pay increases have been offset by cost-cutting measures.

"We have looked at ways to cut expenses that will not impact the quality of education that our students receive," Alsobrooks said. "That effort has been successful thanks to the collective effort of all of our employees."

The first of the four pay increases kicked in July 1, 2021, at the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year when eligible EMCC employees received a pay increase of about 3 percent. At the time, it was the first pay increase for EMCC employees in five years.