Upcoming Meeting: Thursday, February 1, 2018, 3:30-4:30
Room: Tribble A108
Next meetings: February 22 (Faculty Salary Study) and April 5, same time and place.
Agenda:
- Approval of minutes of last meeting (see attachment).
- Discussion of the Financial Priorities of the University and Faculty Participation in Budgeting. Please plan to share your concerns and ask questions.
- New Business.
Food for thought…
Our mission is to promote and uphold AAUP principles on faculty rights and responsibilities, particularly the principles of shared governance and academic freedom.
We are committed to assisting pre-tenure, untenured and non-permanent faculty with problems or questions you may encounter related to your appointment.
You can ask that an AAUP representative (or other colleague) be present and take notes in any meeting you have with an administrator.
Announcements:
The Association of Governing Boards, of which WFU is a member, recently issued a statement highly supportive of shared governance. It highlights the 1966 AAUP Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, which recognizes the faculty’s primacy in certain areas: “curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction, research, faculty status, and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process.” In addition, “the faculty should actively participate in the determination of policies and procedures governing salary increases.”
The next Faculty Senate meeting is January 24, 2018, 4:00-5:30, in DeTamble Auditorium. Did you know you are welcome to attend Senate meetings?
News from the National AAUP (excerpts from email communication of 1/13/2018 regarding the filing of an amicus brief in NLRB case):
Universities have become increasingly corporatized, and the significant expansion of university administration has seriously eroded faculty authority to control or make effective recommendations about university policy.
Institutional changes over the past few decades have led to increased top-down management of the university by the growing ranks of administrators, as well as the rapid expansion of non-tenure track faculty positions. The result has been a system wherein rather than relying on faculty expertise, growing ranks of administrators increasingly make unilateral decisions on university policies and programs, often influenced by considerations of external market forces and revenue generation.
Some stunning stats from the brief:
- Between 1976 and 2015, the number of full-time executives and managers in higher education grew by 140 percent.
- Conversely, the number of full-time and tenure-track positions has plummeted, with lower-wage non-tenure track faculty making up 70 percent of all faculty positions. This is nearly the reverse of the proportions in 1969, when 78 percent of faculty positions were tenured and tenure-track.
- From 1976 to 2011, the number of full-time non-faculty professional positions increased by 366 percent overall, with growth of 558 percent in that category at private institutions.
Join the National AAUP
The national office has a long history of assisting the WFU-AAUP, especially on matters of tenure and promotion. Please support the work of the AAUP by joining now at: https://www.aaup.org/membership/join