MSCHE/ACOE Self Study

Carnegie I institutions) are also favorable. For comparable New York City based institutions, the College provides similar compensation at the assistant and associate professor ranks and lags at the professor rank. Although comparisons of salaries for clinical faculty and optometrists in the metropolitan area are difficult because salary data for optometrists may not take into account practitioners in private practice, available data (Appendix C-3) indicate that the College meets its compensation objective for clinical faculty. Adjustments will continue to be made to the faculty pay scale to ensure that the highly qualified faculty members required by the College to fulfill its mission continue to be attracted and retained. The quantity and quality of faculty members is sufficient to allow the College to meet its educational, research and service missions. As discussed elsewhere in this report, the student to faculty teaching ratios in laboratories and clinics provide for effective learning environments. As evidenced by the growth in extramural research funding over the past decade or so, there are sufficient faculty resources to provide faculty members with research credentials adequate release from teaching and administrative responsibilities. 5.1.1 Faculty members hold an earned terminal degree or first professional degree from an institution accredited by a recognized agency or its foreign equivalent or have certification or licensure related to their primary instructional assignment. As published in the UEC Policy and Procedures Manual (Policy C-12, Appendix G-1), it is the policy of the University Eye Center to ensure that each health care provider is initially credentialed and subsequently re-credentialed on a bi-annual basis. In addition to requiring a copy of state licenses and certificates, the applicant is required to produce a copy of his/her diploma from an accredited school or college of optometry. The application is then reviewed by a credentialing specialist, and the provider’s information is entered into the credentialing database system for tracking and reporting purposes. Initial primary source verification is conducted utilizing the primary or an NCQA approved verification source. The following items are verified: a current valid license or certification to practice in New York; the status of clinical privileges at any hospitals listed by the provider; a valid Drug Enforcement Agency certificate; education and training; board certification; history of professional liability claims; and Medicare/Medicaid sanctions by querying the National Practitioner Data Bank. For faculty members in the Departments of Biological and Vision Sciences who do not have clinical privileges, curriculum vitae are maintained in the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, and for newly hired members of these departments, the highest degree is verified. Faculty members in all three departments are asked to update their credentials annually. A list of College faculty, degrees and institutions attended can be found in Appendix C-4.

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