The provost of North Carolina State University is defending a pay increase of nearly $80,000 awarded this week to Mary Easley, who is the wife of Gov. Michael F. Easley and has been an “executive in residence” and senior lecturer at the university for three years. The increase, which comes with new responsibilities and a five-year commitment to the institution, brings her pay to $170,000, according to The News & Observer.

“Her salary is within the range of similar management and law faculty and administrators at N.C. State and other universities,” the provost, Larry Nielsen, said in a written statement, the Raleigh newspaper reported.

Ms. Easley previously was a law professor at North Carolina Central University, in Durham. At N.C. State, she has directed the university’s principal speakers program and run a spring-semester course called “Public Law for Public Administrators,” among other duties. Her new responsibilities will include directing and expanding a Public Safety Leadership Initiative, and helping develop partnerships with legal professionals and law schools in the area.

According to the Carolina Journal, which first reported the pay raise, Ms. Easley’s new salary is substantially higher than the university’s average for full professors, and nearly $35,000 more than her husband makes as governor. She rejected the criticism of her new contract, telling the television station WRAL that “negative stories and exaggerations and partial stories go with the territory, and that’s part of public life.” —Charles Huckabee