UF postdoctoral students will have extra pocket change next month.
Joe Glover, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, announced that UF increased the minimum salary for postdoctoral associates for the 2014-2015 year.
Full-time postdoc students spending nine months at UF will make $26,000 this year compared to the $22,000 they made in 2013-2014. The adjusted salary will be reflected in Oct. 31 paychecks.
Kim M. Kitagawa Pace, an assistant provost and director of the office of postdoctoral affairs, said this is the second year the university set a minimum wage for postdocs.
Pace said the university established a minimum salary for all postdoc associates to be no less than the minimum salary established for graduate students.
“Postdocs are a very unique category of folks on campus that have their Ph.D.,” she said.
The university has about 550 postdoc employees on campus, Pace said.
Michael McCourt has enjoyed working as a research assistant for the past year because he can continue to work on the same research he worked on as a grad student.
“I think in general they are slightly underpaid for their skill set, and the raise is appropriate,” the 30-year-old UF mechanical aerospace engineering assistant said.
[A version of this story ran on page 3 on 10/7/2014]
