The University of Hawaii president is seeking approval of pay raises totaling $1 million for nearly 200 of its nonunionized executives in positions the university says have not seen a salary increase in seven years.

The raises cover 182 of the 221 executive and managerial employees across the 10-campus system who collectively make up 3 percent of employees and 6 percent of the university’s payroll. The positions include system vice presidents and associate vice presidents, campus chancellors and vice chancellors, deans and program directors as well as the university librarian and director of the Waikiki Aquarium.

“The proposed increases weren’t just given carte blanche,” said UH spokesman Dan Meisenzahl. “The majority of the increases were based on performance reviews and were only given to those who received an outstanding or superior rating. … These increases are an attempt to match the pay raises and increases that the rest of university’s faculty and staff have received as the state recovered from the recession.”

The proposed increases range from less than 1 percent to slightly more than 20 percent, with a median salary increase of 3.5 percent, according to a Honolulu Star-Advertiser analysis. They include a mix of lump-sum increases, performance-based percentage raises, equity adjustments and combinations of the three.

“The last salary increase for our executive and managerial personnel was effective July 1, 2008,” UH President David Lassner wrote in a July 30 memo to the Board of Regents. “The proposed increases are necessary to retain knowledgeable and experienced executives and managers and to address steady increases in the cost of living. With the continuing increases in faculty and staff salaries, there is a challenge to maintain parity for executives and managers with salary increases being granted to university faculty and staff.”

Lassner, who is paid $375,000, recently received a positive performance evaluation from the regents but requested no salary increase, according to Meisenzahl.

The adjustments are up for consideration by the board, which has to approve university salaries of $150,000 or more. Eighty-one of the resulting salaries would exceed that threshold. If approved at the board’s monthly meeting scheduled for Thursday, the raises would be retroactive to July 1.

Some of the executives up for raises are already among the highest-paid employees at UH, including several deans of professional schools at Manoa.

Dr. Jerris Hedges, dean of the John A. Burns School of Medicine, is the second- highest-paid employee at UH, after Manoa head football Coach Norm Chow, who receives a $550,000 base salary. Hedges is up for a 3.4 percent raise that would bring his annual salary to $522,384.

Avi Soifer, dean of the William S. Richardson School of Law, would get a $3,000 boost, or a 0.7 percent increase, to $406,128. Meanwhile, V. Vance Roley, dean of the Shidler College of Business, would see his annual salary go up by 2.2 percent to $384,120.

The regents Personnel Affairs Committee vetted the proposal at a meeting earlier this month and concluded, “The committee found that the president’s proposal is in line with strategic goals for a high performance system and that this is an important opportunity to recognize the past sacrifices of our administrators and show appreciation for their high level of work through some especially challenging years,” a committee report to be presented Thursday says.

During the recession, when most state employees took pay cuts or were furloughed, the regents imposed temporary salary reductions for executives and managers that ranged from 7 to 10 percent starting in September 2009 through June 2011. The board extended the reductions for another two years before restoring the salaries to 2009 levels in July 2013.

The money for the proposed raises was previously approved by lawmakers “for salary increases and other cost adjustments” for executives and managers for the fiscal year that began July 1.

Lassner, who was appointed interim president in the fall of 2013 before being named president the following July, has assembled a management team that is paid less than the former executives in those posts. Lassner himself earns $100,000 less than his predecessor, M.R.C. Greenwood.

The salaries for Lassner, his seven system vice presidents — all of whom he’s appointed except for the vice president for community colleges — and the Manoa chancellor amount to $468,000 less a year compared with their predecessors, representing a 17 percent reduction.

“The university knows that it is under intense scrutiny. We welcome it and we want to show the state that every penny is being carefully spent,” Meisenzahl said. “The setting of salaries is a very careful and managed process that is done with great deliberation to make sure UH remains competitive in a highly competitive market. We want to continue to be a top tier 1 research institution. If you look at this from a national scale, we are getting a bargain from extremely qualified individuals. We’re talking about people who are making critically important decisions every day at the University of Hawaii.”

ENLARGE PHOTO.