The Radford University Board of Visitors came out of closed session Thursday morning and gave Provost Wil Stanton a 20 percent raise.

Stanton, the university's second provost, has held the post since July 2007. His salary before the vote was $208,000.

Provost is the university's second-highest ranking administrative position.

Thomas Fraim, who was elected rector of the board of visitors Thursday morning, said Stanton's pay increase came after discussions about how to attract and retain top people in the university's top positions. By that, Fraim said he meant provost, vice president and president.

"We need to compete at a higher level," Fraim said.

It's been a topic of discussion since the presidential search that brought Penelope Kyle to Radford in 2005, he said. Radford was at or near the bottom of presidential pay among Virginia universities then, according to Fraim.

Kyle demoted Ivelaw Griffith less than seven months after she had chosen him to be Radford's first provost. Griffith began the 2006-07 academic year at a salary of $190,000.

Stanton was the interim provost during the search that led to Griffith's hiring and after Griffith's demotion in February 2007.

In July 2007, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia moved Radford into a new peer group -- the group of schools Radford measures itself against -- which means faculty salaries are now compared to a higher standard.

According to a study completed in April, the salaries paid Radford's staff -- virtually every employee who doesn't teach and isn't an administrator -- are about 13 percent below market, on average.

The consultant, the Segal Group, compared 60 of the university's 318 job titles with similar jobs at eight other Virginia universities. Radford paid less in 70 percent of the cases. Nearly 27 percent of the jobs were 20 percent or more below the average.

Kyle shared the report with Radford staff in August.

"We're going to fix that," she said to a gathering of about 100 employees.

The plan is to have each of the 16 "outlier" job titles -- those farthest below the average -- examined by the human resources staff.

If there's not some rational reason for the pay gap, Kyle said, the university will find a way to fix that. All that will be done in time for the next round of pay increases scheduled in November, she said.

"I don't know how much it's going to take," Kyle said. "I don't even know how many people we're talking about."

If the statistics hold true across all the university's jobs, there are about 85 jobs among that "outlier" group. Kyle gave no time frame for dealing with that larger number, but it won't be done by November, she said.

The challenge of bringing salaries into line was made more difficult by a letter that came from the governor's office Wednesday. It told Radford to prepare plans to accommodate budget cuts of 5 percent, 10 percent and 15 percent.

"We need to do multiple reduction plans because we don't know what the reduction will turn out to be," Kyle told the board of visitors.

According to Donna VanCleave, the university's vice president of finance and administration, it's not even clear whether those plans are meant to accommodate cuts in the state-funded portion of Radford's budget or the whole budget.

Kyle pointed out that the university has suffered through 5 percent reductions for the past two years.

The board of visitors is negotiating with Kyle over a five-year extension of her contract.

Kyle makes $290,299 in salary, $13,957 in bonuses and $55,000 in deferred payment in addition to the use of a house and a car.

Little has leaked out about the negotiations, but the board is considering increasing Kyle's deferred payment to $200,000 annually.