Faculty Colleagues:
I hope your summer is going well. Before you know it, the fall
semester will be upon us. Here are some news items and notes from
around campus
and the AAUP:
- Reception for President Martin:
Faculty Council and AAUP are jointly hosting a reception for our new
President, Sue Martin. Russ Larson and I worked together on
organizing this event, and we think it will be a good chance for
faculty to
interact with our new president in an informal setting. The Corner
Brewery is at 720 Norris St, Ypsilanti, MI 48198, 734 480-2739
- How is President Martin doing?
found her to be very agreeable and receptive to suggestions and new
ideas. She is a good listener, is certainly open to using empirical
evidence to assist in decision making, and is genuinely interested in
supporting and recognizing the importance of faculty on our
campus. The initial signs are very encouraging, and we look forward toworking with our new President on a variety of issues. We understand that President Martin has also met with numerous students, and I am sure that our
student leaders are excited about the future of EMU.
- Heritage Festival
Parade on Saturday morning, August 16th, and we need your support. This is an important event for the city of Ypsilanti, and I am requesting for faculty to march with us. The other unions on campus will be marching with us as well, and this will be a good way to demonstrate our solidarity with our fellow employees. The parade starts at 10AM, and we will be meeting earlier than that to organize (stay tuned for more details on time and place). If you already have an EMU-AAUP shirt, you should wear that. If you do not have one, please contact me and we will arrange for you to get one (for free).
The AAUP will also be handing our free children's books at the
Heritage Festival, continuing an AAUP tradition. We will have a
booth directly in front of our office on Cross Street. If you have any
books you want to donate, please bring them to our office in Depot
Town.
- Billboard and Radio Spots
joint relationship between the Michigan Education Association (MEA)
and EMU. The MEA is a union that represents K-12 teachers and some
universities in Michigan. As you may recall, the MEA tried to raid and take over our faculty in 2006, but they were not successful. It is a clear contract violation for the administration to seek the support of another union that can possibly try and represent the faculty. We filed a grievance in this matter, and the administration readily admitted, without any hesitation, that this was a clear violation of our contract. The resolution will be that a billboard will be going up that jointly mentions EMU and the AAUP. We are certainly happy with the
resolution, and President Martin was instrumental in making it
happen. We definitely appreciate her support in this matter. However, what is most disturbing about this incident is that the VP of Marketing never asked the AAUP to be a partner in a venture that put EMU in a favorable light. We certainly would have shared the cost of the billboard, as the MEA did with the EMU administration. To add insult to injury, the education minutes on WWJ 950 AM radio also had some joint sponsorship between EMU and the MEA; those joint sponsorships have now ceased to exist. As we move forward, we want to work with the administration to make EMU the best it can be; we hope that we are asked to support the university in these types of endeavors.
- Cleaning Faculty Offices
cleaned. We now have a definitive commitment from the
administration to
clean all faculty offices. We are thankful for this result, and I
hope that those of you who have not had your offices cleaned in
many years will enjoy the change.
- AAUP Office Lease Renewed
years. We have been very happy in this location, and we believe
that we have served the faculty well here. It is also important for us to continue to be a part of the Ypsilanti community, so we are very
pleased with this result.
- Seminar on Copyrights
you about the following event:
Webinar: Learn all about the Annual Copyright License for Academic
Institutions. You will learn how the license benefits you, your
campus and the off-campus copy shops and course-pack providers you
work with. The seminar will be on Tuesday, August 12th, at 2PM in room 302 of
Halle Library
- Budget News
year,
there will not be any cuts to departmental budgets for travel, GA,
and
other resources (the final details are not available, though we hope
those amounts actually increased). However, there will be fewer
faculty members in fall 2008 (we will be at about 680, down from a
recent high
of just over 690). In addition, there have been some significant
reductions of full time lecturer positions, which we firmly oppose
(there are now about 100 full time lecturers, down from over 130
just a
few years ago). Our lecturers are excellent educators, and we
strongly believe that before reducing the number of teachers at
EMU, the number
of administrators should be cut. We at the AAUP have made this
position clear numerous times over the last several years, and we
have shared
this belief (supported by empirical evidence) with President Martin.
In the Ann Arbor News, some Regents are quoted as stating that
the
6.8% increase in the overall budget (all costs, including
salaries) is
fueled by salaries. Well, the Board had not produced a detailed
budget as of yet, which is very troubling. We hope that this is
rectified very
soon. However, they have revealed that all salaries and wages
(faculty and all other employees) will increase from 122 to 123
million (EMU has
total expenses of about 300 million). This increase from 122 to
123 is
less than a 1% increase. This is much less than the 6.8% cited by
the Regents. In a future message, I will describe how faculty
salaries fit into this overall budget.
- Other Universities: Kent State AAUP have a tentative agreement
The faculty at Kent State just reached a tentative agreement, and the
faculty will be receiving overall raises of 13.5% over 3 years, with
very small increases in health care premiums. The State of Ohio
is not
in much better shape than Michigan.
The article is at: http://www.ohio.com/news/top_stories/26325604.html [1]
As usual, please let me know your thoughts and comments, and let
me know if you want to march with us in the parade.
Thanks for listening
Howard