American Association of University Professors

• NEWS UPDATE - Jan. 22, 2002
• The Akron-AAUP has a NEW Web site.  Please go to:    http://www.akronaaup.org    to read about the collective bargaining campaign.
• This is the Web site of the University of Akron Chapter of the American Association of University Professors ( http://www.aaup.org ).

• The Akron chapter is part of the Ohio Conference of the AAUP    (http://www.utaaup.com/ohioconference/).

• Chapter News

           Another campus committee is developing guidelines for the appointment of term contract faculty.  This
document will come to the Faculty Senate in its December meeting.  While the proposed policy may be
beneficial for some deserving part-time faculty (more salary, some benefits), the unchecked growth of such
positions could have serious implications for the long-term academic climate on campus (i.e., the erosion of tenure,
the undermining of academic freedom, and the separation of scholarship and teaching).  The following article
was contributed by a campus colleague and addresses many of these issues.

"Some Thoughts on the Proposed Fixed-Term College Lecturer Rank"

[An email to an APCC member in response to a general request for comment on the proposed position of  fixed-term College Lecturer]

I can see how the Final Draft of the College Lecturer policies will solve a number of problems for the administration of the University of Akron.  I also see how it mightsolve some of the problems faced by temporary/part-time faculty.  However, I have serious reservations about the policies and the position on at least two grounds.  They are both professional grounds but of quite different sorts.

First, as I read the teaching loads expected and the work expected from holders of the position of College Lecturer I think I clearly discern the intention that members of this rank will not undertake research and scholarly publication resulting from that research.  It certainly forms no part of the description of the position and some statements (e.g., “primary responsibility for teaching and secondary responsibility for academic unit participation”) seem to exclude it.  Here’s the problem.  The justification, or at least the only one I’ve ever heard, for requiring tenured and tenure-track faculty to do research and publication is that there is a direct connection between this activity and instruction.  Active publishing scholars provide better instruction to university students than do faculty who do not engage in the discovery, interpretation, and dissemination of knowledge.  If it is assumed that College Lecturers can successfully carry out university-level instruction without doing these things, if they are, in fact, discouraged from doing these things, then what argument can the administration make in denying tenure to a faculty member or giving a tenured faculty member a lower raise for failure to publish?  Either the administration is making a rod for its own back with this idea or this is a very clever plot to undermine the whole system of tenure.

Second, although the document says, and other statements have said, that the position of College Lecturer is not designed “to replace tenure-track positions” (I.A., p. 1), I can think of no guarantee that the administration can provide and which would be forever binding that the tenured faculty should believe.  When an earlier draft was circulated to part-time/temporary faculty in English  I sent  a rather long response which was perhaps forwarded to the APCC.  In case it wasn’t I append it to this message.

Let me conclude by saying that I have been (at another university) a professorial faculty member for 32 years, an Associate Dean of the Graduate School and a
Director of University Libraries, and with either my professorial spectacles or my administrative spectacles on I find the whole notion of fixed-term lecturer a very bad, potential litigious, and almost certainly morale damaging idea.  It is a wonderful model of how to take a bad system (higher education’s abuse of temporary faculty as documented by the Modern Language Association and a number of other studies) and make it much worse.

William Proctor Williams
Professor of English Emeritus, Northern Illinois University
Auxiliary  Lecturer III, English, University of Akron

[To read the AAUP's policies, guidelines and initiatives on behalf of part-time and term contract faculty, go to the AAUP web page (www.aaup.org) and click on the link for Part-Time Faculty.]

    Merit Pay

    The merit pay guidelines policy will also come to the Faculty Senate in December.  While attempting to
promote fairness in merit decisions, the guidelines are inherently compromised by a number of factors:

1. Faculty were not involved in the initial decision mandating that all raises be based 100% on merit.
2. Salary pools have remained small, forcing faculty to compete over amounts that barely keep pace with inflation.
3. Across-the-board salary components, common at collective bargaining campuses, are excluded.
4. The whole merit process is one-sided:  faculty are expected to demonstrate merit, yet the univerisity is not obliged to provide a robust salary pool.

    Merit pay on this campus will be fundamentally flawed until faculty are involved in rethinking the entire salary program and the role,
if any, that merit should play in it.  In its recent contract, Kent State faculty were able to negotiate both a significant across-the-board
salary component (8% ) and a merit component (2%) for faculty interested in that feature.  The key is that they negotiated this
to meet their varied but collective interests.

           Negotiating Salary and Benefits - Lecture and Discussion

•     The Akron chapter of the AAUP hosted a well attended lecture/discussion on Wednesday, November 7th
•  in the Martin University Center South Room.  Adrian Corbett (Wright State), Rodger Govea (Cleveland State)
• and Cheryl Casper (Kent State) spoke about how their collective bargaining units negotiated salaries and
• benefits on their campuses.
•     Adrian Corbett noted that the contract at Wright State provided for improved RTP
• processes and appeals mechanisms.  They also improved some health benefits, and did not have to pay for
• increase copays for their coverage.  Their latest salary increase was 3% across-the-board, though their first
• contract included both across-the-board and merit components.
•     Rodger Govea spoke to Cleveland State's contract and pointed out that since faculty salaries are now
• negotiated, the university cannot put it off and see how much money may be left for salaries.  Because of the
• contract, salary agreements must be met up front.  He also noted that the negotiating position of the faculty
• has improved as their AAUP membership has grown.
•     Cheryl Casper of Kent State University pointed out that they have had collective bargaining for over 20 years.
• She said there was "no question" that collective bargaining had improved salaries, benefits, AND shared
• governance.  She then addressed some of the provisions in their last contract and in their recently ratified
• contract.  The current contract includes a 10% raise over three years (with a merit component in the 3rd year),
• maintenance of current health coverage (worth 2 to 3% each year for the next two years), a retirement incentive
• program, domestic partner benefits, email confidentiality, improved life insurance coverage, and more.  In short,
• she said, there were no givebacks of either benefits or governance provisions.

            The October 17, 2001 issue of the Faculty Voice includes comparative salary and merit data on Ohio
            universities.
            Click here for the latest issue of the Akron AAUP Faculty Voice

• Chapter Officers, 2001-2002

                President -  Steve Aby     (saby@uakron.edu)
                Vice-President -  Suzanne MacDonald     (scm@uakron.edu)
                Second Vice-President - Mae Schreiber    (mschreiber@uakron.edu)
                Secretary - Cherie Madarash-Hill  (cmadarash-hill@uakron.edu)
                Treasurer - Huey-li Li    (hl1@uakron.edu)

                Thanks to all of you who participated in the election.

                Please contact any of the officers if you have questions or issues of concern.

• Policies and Guidelines

    To see these policies and guidelines online, go to: http://www.aaup.org/states.htm

Page maintained by Stephen Aby (saby@uakron.edu)

This page was last modified on Thursday, 6-September-2001  16:50:00