Investing in our people

Dear Texas Woman’s Colleagues,

At the August meeting of our Board of Regents, I shared some encouraging news—and a promise. We were seeing stronger enrollment and greater operational efficiencies. I said that if those projections held, we planned to turn that progress into merit-based raises effective January 1, 2027.

I am delighted to tell you: they held.

Reflecting disciplined work across Texas Woman’s, we continue to improve our financial position, particularly in two areas.

First, Project Thrive, led by Provost Bauer with colleagues from across the system, has helped us better align our practices with our policies, our resources with our priorities, and our decisions with data. It has helped us become more intentional about investing our resources where they best advance our mission and position Texas Woman’s to thrive for the long term.

Second, our enrollment has grown, reflecting work at every point in the student journey—from recruiting more students who can benefit from a Texas Woman’s education to helping more of the students already here persist and succeed. Enrollment is not the work of one division. Retention is not the work of one office. Both are the result of thousands of interactions with students, prospective students, and families every day.

Together, that discipline and growth have produced the financial capacity we hoped they would. As promised, we are directing 100% of these available resources to employee compensation.

We will do that in two ways.

First, we will begin addressing the staff compensation findings from the Huron study. The study identified staff positions where current salaries fall below the established minimum of the competitive salary range. Before allocating merit, we will bring employees in those positions up to the appropriate minimum. This is an important next step in implementing the compensation structure and in making sure our practices better reflect the competitive marketplace in which we recruit and retain talented people.

Second, we will establish a 2% merit pool for base-salary increases for eligible faculty and staff, effective January 1, 2027.

I want to emphasize the word pool. This is not an across-the-board 2% raise in which every employee receives exactly the same percentage. Rather, we are setting aside funding equal to 2% of eligible salaries to reward performance. Individual increases will vary based on performance and the merit process.

Human Resources and Academic Affairs will share the detailed eligibility requirements, timelines, and allocation process as we move toward the end of this calendar year.

There is also some history that I think is worth revisiting for context. Over the past several years, we have used different approaches depending on what our financial position could responsibly sustain. In 2023, eligible employees received a $2,000 one-time payment. That same year, we were also able to use $800,000 in new state funding associated with the Hazlewood Act to address faculty salary compression and inversion. We followed those efforts with a much larger investment in permanent compensation: a 5% merit pool for base-salary increases effective January 2024. In January 2025, we provided a targeted 3% merit pool for colleagues who had not been eligible for the previous cycle, and later in 2025, eligible faculty and staff received a $1,250 one-time payment.

I have long preferred investing in base salary when our finances allow us to do so. A one-time payment is meaningful, but a base-pay increase stays with you. It compounds over time, contributes to retirement benefits, and improves the competitiveness of our salaries into the future.

That is why I am particularly pleased that this year we can return to an investment in base pay.

Project Thrive and our enrollment work may look like very different efforts, but to me they are connected. One asks us to be more thoughtful about how we use the resources entrusted to us. The other asks us to bring students to Texas Woman’s and then do all we can to help them stay, succeed, and graduate. When we do both well, we advance our mission and improve our financial position.

That gives us choices. This year, we are choosing to put the benefit back into the people whose work helped create it. When our students succeed, when we use our resources wisely, and when those efforts create greater financial capacity, I believe the people doing the work should share in that success.

Thank you for the hundreds of ways, large and small, that you have helped Texas Woman’s arrive at this moment. We have more work ahead, but we are entering it with real momentum. I hope this investment helps you feel some of the momentum you have helped create—and, more importantly, how deeply your work matters to Texas Woman’s.

With a pioneering spirit,

Carine M. Feyten, Ph.D.
Chancellor and President

Page last updated 9:31 AM, October 8, 2026