Newsletter | October 2019

Wake Forest University AAUP

Please reserve the fourth Monday of the month for this year’s meetings (Oct 28, Nov 25, Jan 27, Feb 24, Mar 23, Apr 27). You do not have to be an AAUP member to attend. 

NEXT MEETING: October 28, 3:30-4:30, Tribble Hall A108

Agenda:

1. Approval of minutes from the September meeting (on flip side of the distributed agenda) 

2. Memberships, Buttons – dues $10

3. http://wfuaaup.org/ is our Website. A member of the Exec Comm will be liaison to the site.

  • “Get in touch” function corrected
  • Faculty Handbook and Senate bylaws to be added 
  • Add a Flow Chart on Faculty Governance? 

4. Salaries Update 

  • A new peer group was adopted in the April 24, 2019 Senate meeting. What happened to it? Is it being used? 
  • College Senators – proposing a new standing College Exec Com on Work-life and Compensation

5. ATP, Visiting Faculty and Adjunct issues (ongoing), report

  • Are there departments/programs flouting AAUP hiring rules for Visitors?
  • Teaching Professor Task Force 
  • Adjunct issues 

6. Crisis on role of Faculty Senate in shared governance

     The Faculty Senate: 

AAUP request or resolution to the Senate ExCom about whether the administration is complying with Senate resolutions. Ask Senate to do an audit on administration compliance with Senate resolutions.

  • Has the Senate followed up on recommendations from the two previous Senate reports on Institutes (ad hoc and CAFR)? 
  • Peer group list (as above) 

Why is there no faculty director of the Pro Humanitate Institute?

7. Ideas for educating colleagues about faculty governance? 

8. Possible AAUP motion for a new College Committee on Workload and Compensation?  

9. Wake Listens survey

10. Plans for an AAUP Happy Hour or Open House. 

11. New issues?  

Mission and Goals: 

WFU AAUP embraces the mission of the national American Association of University Professors (AAUP) which advances academic freedom and shared governance; defines fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; promotes the economic security of faculty, academic professionals, graduate students, post‐doctoral fellows, and all those engaged in teaching and research in higher education,  helps the higher-education community organize to make our goals a reality; and, advocates for higher education’s contribution to the common good.

Gender-Based Pay Disparity Case

The AAUP has filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Professor Jennifer Freyd, who sued the University of Oregon (UO) for pay discrimination based on significant pay disparities with male faculty members. 

The amicus brief notes that “the wage disparity in Freyd’s case is an example of the ongoing gender-based salary inequalities in the academic profession, generally, and for women full professors in doctoral institutions, in particular.” 

Professor Freyd is paid substantially less than her male colleagues in the psychology department who hold the same positions as full professors. A 2016 department study found a “significant equity problem with respect to salaries at the full professor level.” The UO psychology department also underwent an external review, which found gender disparity in faculty salaries at the full professor level. It recommended that the department “continue pressing for gender equity in terms of pay at the senior levels of the faculty.” Both reviews traced the disparity back to retention raises given to male professors who pursued outside offers of employment. 

While UO policy provides for gender equity adjustments, administrators failed to adjust Professor Freyd’s salary. The AAUP’s brief argues that the UO retention raise practice was not a valid defense to the discrimination claims, since UO policy provides for gender-equity adjustments but didn’t make any after boosting the pay of male faculty. 

AAUP’s Position on Non-Tenure Track Faculty and Governance

The AAUP’s 1994 statement on faculty governance and academic freedom articulates the necessary reciprocal relationship between academic freedom and academic governance and urges faculty to participate in governance to prevent the loss of those powers of governance to the administration. The 2003 statement on contingent appointments recommends that such appointments include service as well as teaching and research. The statement also advocates the extension of shared governance responsibilities and opportunities to “all faculty,” including part- time faculty.

Many postdocs thus meet the criteria for being defined as “faculty.” These would include the relatively small number of postdocs outside of the sciences, where “postdoctoral fellow” is often another euphemism for “non-tenure- track, short- term faculty member.”

Classification is also difficult when administrative and teaching or research duties overlap in the same individual. In these instances we believe that those individuals who hold such appointments should be defined as “faculty” if their primary responsibility is teaching or research, rather than administration.

An institution or a department, if it wishes, should establish a time- in- service threshold for certain governance activities— for example, one year of service before a new faculty member is eligible to run for the faculty senate. This concern, however, applies equally to all faculty— full and part time, tenure track and contingent— and thus any restriction should apply equally to all faculty as well. If such a requirement for full- time faculty were expressed in calendar time (for instance, a year), it would have to be translated into terms (for instance, two semesters) for part- time faculty, in order to avoid excluding those who teach intermittently. It should also be noted that many contingent faculty have more multi- institutional experience than their tenure- track colleagues and that this experience is valuable in all governance functions as well as in other roles, such as teaching and research.

Eligibility for voting and holding office in institutional governance bodies should be the same for all faculty regardless of full- or part- time status. Institutions may wish to establish time- in- service eligibility requirements; if the eligibility requirement for full- time faculty is expressed in calendar time (for instance, a year), it would have to be translated into terms (for instance, two semesters) applicable to part- time faculty in order to accommodate those who teach intermittently.

Extracted with slight modifications from: https://www.aaup.org/report/inclusion-governance-faculty-members-holding-contingent-appointments