Trust

February 2000

Garry,

I appreciate your willingness to discuss this matter. To be frank, what caught me and other members of AAUP off guard was that, when you requested additional information from AAUP on its attrition survey, you said that you wanted the information because you would be contacting other institutions on this matter. You did not say that the Administration wanted to make its own report for the Board of Governors. Moreover, after the Administration made its own report, you did not share the Administration's report until after I saw that it had been done and asked for a copy.

It seems that you wanted this information from AAUP in order to write a rebuttal to the AAUP report. For instance, the Administration's report reads, "The AAUP obtained the addresses of 50 faculty members who departed Truman during this period, of which 24 responded to their survey. Thus, the results of the survey are based on 25 of 180 people (13.9%)." Frankly, after seeing your report, it unnerved me to learn that you had solicited these numbers in order to refute the AAUP Report and had not informed me your intention. While I recognize your right and need to make a reply on this important matter, you left me uninformed until the day before the Board of Governors Meeting.

I feel that I was manipulated by a pretense. This makes me distrustful. If we are going to have serious conversations on important matters, there needs to be a sense of trust and good will that the other will respect you enough to be forthright. I feel hurt that you did not show me such good will. Below is a copy of your earlier request. To repeat, it is important that we are able to trust that we are "straight" with each other. Trickiness leaves people alienated and demoralized If you wish and have the time, we can meet and talk about this in person.

Best,

Keith

copy: AAUP members
Ralph Cupelli
Teresa Heckert

I have been making contact with other institutions, at present only within Missouri, to get information about the state of faculty attrition/retention. Some have expressed interest in gathering more data. With this in mind, I have several questions regarding the AAUP survey:

  1. What was the sample size of your survey (the questions asked of faculty who had left)?
  2. How many faculty responded?
  3. From the listed responses, what were the frequency rates for each of the responses?

I'd appreciate any help you might provide here. I will let you know what I discover from my inquiries.