By AP/KWMU
Columbia, MO – A University of Missouri curator will no longer pay part of the salary of the Columbia campus's athletic director.
Curator Don Walsworth had since 2003 donated $50,000 towards Mike Alden's $275,000 salary.
Spokesman Scott Charton says UM President Elson Floyd asked Columbia to make the change. Charton says Floyd established a policy a few years ago when questions were raised over whether donations should help pay chancellors' salaries, and wanted Alden's case to be consistent.
Walsworth's money now will be used elsewhere and all of Alden's salary will come from the university. Walsworth is also president and CEO of Walsworth Publishing Co. of Marceline.
"The campus should assume full responsibility from its budget revenue to cover Mike's salary in its entirety," Floyd said in a June 23 memo to UM-Columbia Chancellor Brady Deaton. Deaton told the Columbia Daily Tribune last week that he had not yet reviewed Alden's contract but changes were being made.
The $50,000 payments to Alden were made each July under a five-year pledge from Walsworth. "My understanding is that would become part of his regular salary and the funds that are donated are used in general to support the university for whatever the donor may designate," Deaton added. "That would just be in keeping with what we do with gifts generally."
Deaton said some concern had been expressed over private donations being used to supplement university officials' salaries. "This is consistent with the policy that Dr. Floyd adopted some time ago when there was considerable public discussion about the sources of payment to the chancellors," said Scott Charton, a spokesman for the university system. "Dr. Floyd believes in line with that policy that the athletic director's compensation would be provided by the campus as a budgetary matter."
Walsworth's company prints some publications for the athletic department under a contract with a private vendor.