In the face of an investigation into the university’s pay practices called for by the UC Board of Regents at a meeting last week, University of California administrators stood by their 2004 decision to award $248,000 in previously undisclosed compensation to UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, which brought her total pay last year to nearly $700,000.

The $248,000 was part of a deal between Fox and UC President Robert C. Dynes to honor sabbatical time Fox had accrued in her previous position at North Carolina State University, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported last week. Originally, Fox’s official salary was $350,000.

Although the university has been under fire in recent months after reports in the San Francisco Chronicle revealed it awarded more than $870 million last year to top executives in addition to their base pay, the university defended Fox’s sabbatical stipend.

“Consistent with practice at other universities, when UC recruits a senior academic administrator, such as a chancellor, UC honors (and thus, agrees to fund) the sabbatical leave credits he [or] she has earned elsewhere,” UC spokesman Paul Schwartz stated in an e-mail.

On Jan. 18, the regents convened at UCSD to re-examine salary policies and decided that after a university-commissioned audit is complete it could expect a major overhaul of those procedures, especially in the area of pay transparency.

While regents continue to call for full public disclosure of university pay records, Regent John J. Moores, who was the chairman of the Board of Regents at the time Fox was hired, told the Union-Tribune that he was completely unaware of Fox’s sabbatical payment.

“It’s disappointing to learn there was a package put together that I didn’t know about,” Moores told the Union-Tribune.

The university, however, emphasized that Dynes did not act outside of university-approved policy when authorizing Fox’s additional compensation.

“Some components of an appointee’s employment terms require approval by and/or reporting to the regents; others do not,” Schwartz stated. “This one did not.”

The upcoming three-phase audit and the Board of Regents’ newly created compensation committee will investigate the appropriateness of compensation for the top 32 executive positions in the university. The audit will also determine whether regents were properly informed about and approved of the salaries earned by the incumbents of those positions.

Sabbatical leave, as defined in the UC faculty handbook, is given to employees so they can have time away from teaching responsibilities, refresh themselves and focus on research. After taking the agreed amount of time off and receiving the sabbatical stipend, a professor must then return to the university to continue teaching.

Asked whether his decision to award Fox a sabbatical defied the principle behind them, Dynes told the Union-Tribune, “That was Mary Anne’s judgment.”

Although Fox had earned sabbatical leave at her previous job, she would have had to forfeit it by accepting the position of chancellor at UCSD, according to Dynes, because she would not be returning to her position at North Carolina State.

Fox did not respond to an e-mail and did not return calls requesting an interview.

However, Associate Vice Chancellor of University Communications Stacie Spector directed all questions regarding Fox’s sabbatical payment to the UC Office of the President.

Media coverage of the university’s compensation and transparency have been circulating since November, prompting state Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Merced) to introduce legislation threatening to strip the UC system of its constitutionally protected independence if it fails to change its current compensation practices. The state Legislature has also called for a separate, independent audit of the university’s pay policies.

In the past year, there was a 50-percent increase in the number of employees earning more than $300,000 annually, while mandatory UC student fees have jumped nearly 80 percent over the last four years.

“The secret and outrageous salary and benefit scam for UC executives must end,” Denham stated in a press release. “Students face fee increases every year and UC rank-and-file workers face salary freezes, but UC top administrators keep getting secret salary hikes and benefits. We need to send a message that this will no longer be tolerated.”

A.S. President Christopher Sweeten said that, although he understands that the university needs to recruit the best possible candidates, he does not like the idea that student fees are elevated even as employee salaries balloon.

“I feel that when the University of California claims that we are going to have to make cutbacks and increase the fees on students that the UC system should re-examine [its] policy and not place the burden on the backs of students,” Sweeten stated in an e-mail.

UCSD employees, on the other hand, have mixed feelings about their chancellor’s sabbatical stipend.

The compensation packages are large and unfair to university workers, according to Maria Figueroa, the UCSD representative of the Coalition of University Employees.

“There are clerical employees who work one or two extra jobs to make ends meet,” Figueroa stated in an e-mail. “Health care premiums and parking rates have increased. It’s obscene that the chancellor should be paid so much when students and staff struggle to get by.”

But Jean-Bernard Minster, a geophysics professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the chairman of UCSD’s Academic Senate, said that, although he feels that the public should have been made aware of the payment, he is not offended by Fox’s salary.

“She earned that sabbatical,” Minster said. “She deserves to be compensated, and she has gained the trust and respect of the majority of people I talk to.”

Results from the first phase of the university-led audit should be available by the end of January, and the audit should be finished within six months, according to Regent Judith Hopkinson.