Faculty salaries at major universities across the nation remain unaffected despite widespread budget and general economic woes.

Salaries for professors across the country rose by 3.9 percent last year, well above the inflation rate, according to the American Association of University Professors. According to USA Today, Weill Cornell Medical College Prof. Zev Rosenwaks, obstetrics and gynecology, allegedly earned a paycheck of $3.1 million last year, the fifth highest salary at any U.S. college.

The median salaries at the endowed colleges during the 2008-2009 school year were $93,500 for assistant professors, $109,800 for associate professors and $154,300 for full professors, according to data from the AAUP.

Florence Babb, an endowed professor at the University of Florida, is getting hit hard by the $69 million that was slashed from the university’s budget last year. Ignoring her contractual agreement issued when she was appointed in 2004, the university asked Babb to up her commitment to the school, teaching three courses per year as opposed to the two to which she had initially agreed, according to InsideHigherEd.com.

A statewide union now stands behind Babb in her fight against the university, which alleges that a collective bargaining agreement with the faculty union permits adjusting course loads despite prior appointment arrangements. Under the contract, UF can determine the “mix” of a faculty member’s responsibilities, which encompass teaching research and service.

In an auditorium filled to the brim with students, faculty and administrators, the Faculty Senate Committee met yesterday to discuss Cornell’s state in the recent financial downturn. After Provost Kent Fuchs discussed Cornell’s reaction to the economic crisis, Prof. Abby Cohn, linguistics, introduced a resolution to pause construction of Milstein Hall, the proposed new building for the College of Architecture, Art and Planning that has been in the works for over a decade.

“This resolution is neither for nor against Milstein Hall, but is about the process and decisions made during these difficult [financial] times,” Cohn said.

The Tisch family’s $35 million donation to enhance University faculty came at the right time for the Big Red.

Recruitment and retention of talented faculty has become an increasingly serious and immediate issue at Cornell. The school’s professors aren’t getting any younger, and the cost of hiring new faculty isn’t getting any lower.

Comforting perhaps is that this problem is nothing new. In March 2007, then-Provost Biddy Martin spent most of her first Academic State of the University address focusing on the impending retirement of University faculty and the need to up the ante in faculty recruitment. Martin projected then that fully one-third of the University’s faculty would retire by 2022, making current efforts to hire new and talented professors an absolute necessity.

Last week, five faculty members were added to the list of yearly recipients of the Provost’s Awards for Distinguished Scholarship in recognition of their outstanding research and scholarship and the hope of keeping them at the University.

The sum of $30,000 was awarded to this year’s winners: Professors Charles Brittain, classics and philosophy; Carlos Bustamante, biological statistics and computational biology; Jonathan Kirshner, government; Hod Lipson, mechanical and aerospace engineering; and Michelle Wang, physics.

According to Provost Biddy Martin, every year the deans of the academic units nominate faculty members, and the provost’s staff makes the final selections.

Normally, Earth science students and faculty gather once a week to hear the latest updates on plate tectonics and radiometric dating techniques. This week, however, they were treated to something different. Visiting Professor Victor Ramos of the University of Buenos Aires spoke on his views on the broader subject of science in South America from an Argentinian perspective. He tied together aspects of economics, politics and social history to illuminate how science in South America has changed over the last century and what its prospects are for the next.

The importance of an accessible, developed and protected education system became the theme of the lecture that most resonated with Cornell’s own mission and future.