August 2020 minutes

AAUP meeting via Zoom
8/10/20

Present (by Zoom name): Anton Daughters, Laura Bigger, Bill Alexander, Jennifer Jesse, Andy Kauffman, David Robinson, Stephanie Russell, Marc Becker, Kathryn Brammall, Daniel Mandell, Mark Hatala, Mark Rice, James D’Agostino, Joey Hubbard, Carlo Anneli, Jack Davis, John, Meg Edwards, Christine Harker, Jay Belanger, Taner Edis, Masahiro Hara, Torbjörn Wandel, Kelsey Aurand de Razo, Hena Ahmad, Ding-hwa Hsieh

Reminder: AAUP has changed its structure to become a 7-person committee that agrees by consensus. We have been calling it the “collective” or “executive counsel” or “executive committee.”

Introduction and Summer Timeline

  • June 18th – preliminary outline of TSU plan was released that seemed to have a mandate that faculty would have to teach f2f classes.
  • AAUP met shortly thereafter and put together an open letter which was contributed to by AAUP widely. This was distributed on June 29th. It called for more stringent safety measures and asked the administration to be more transparent and to work directly with faculty.
  • The open letter included a survey – 110 faculty members responded, 90% indicated support for the letter and 10% didn’t support it for various reasons including things like a concern for prioritizing enrollment.
    • Anton reviewed the survey results using screen share.
      • About 60% of faculty wanted to remain anonymous. One way that AAUP can serve the faculty is by representing and protecting faculty members. Many of the faculty members who wanted to remain anonymous were associate and full professors, which seemed concerning.
  • We had sent out the open letter and the survey results to the administration and asked for a meeting. We were denied a meeting. There was some stalling because a more detailed plan was going to come out.
  • AAUP was pleased to find that the updated plan did have more stringent safety measures. These included the mask mandate, cleaning measures in classrooms and more. But we didn’t get a response about contingency plans.
  • After initially being turned down, we did end up getting a meeting with the Administration, which we will discuss later.

University Survival Model

  • Bill: An NYU business professor made a model to try to predict how Universities would fare through the COVID-19 crisis using particular data points. Truman was not originally in the data set, so Bill added us in. It takes into account returns on investment, more subjective data like student quality of life on campus. Risks considered included endowment size per student and numbers of international students.
    • There are no regional rankings on the list, so Bill had to make some decisions in terms of inputting some of TSU’s data.
    • Truman is not in the “perish” category – instead we are in the “survive” category – we are essentially high risk but also high value.
    • We are going to have lower student enrollment. There will be issues going forward, but our students have a good return on their investment.
    • Post COVID-19 there are maybe avenues that we can take as a school to recapture our student body, such as increasing student quality of life. Having well-paid faculty correlates with a thriving school. Increasing tuition would of course be a way to benefit TSU.
    • Takeaway – the model is sunnier than many people first thought.
      • Is this a good model? – it is certainly not perfect, but it is useful in that it shows many universities relative to one another.
      • The model also shows some priorities that might help us thrive post COVID-19. Better advertising could of course benefit TSU, retaining quality faculty, etc.

Meeting between AAUP, Sue Thomas and Janet Gooch

These were the four main points addressed:

  • The TSU return to campus plan
  • The possibility of forming a faculty task force on COVID-19
  • Discussion about how much autonomy faculty have over the method of course delivery
  • Faculty contracts

The full minutes are on the AAUP page.

Faculty task force

As far as AAUP knew, deliberations at upper levels were not being informed by in-house experts. Scott Alberts has communicated that decisions have mostly been made by the president, provost, and other vice presidents throughout the summer. It has essentially been the executive leadership council meeting and making decisions. There was a town hall at the end of May, although many people missed the memo about it. AAUP felt that there was a lack of transparency and communication. We felt that there should be a central body that shouldn’t be exclusively administrative, especially with a concern for science rather than just financial matters. This upcoming task force will have a couple of members from AAUP and a couple of faculty senators plus some others. Scott Alberts is wanting early and late career people and a representative mix of faculty. Many other universities have these kinds of task forces.

Contracts

  • The question of at will language – AAUP pointed out to the admin that the letters that non-tenured faculty received broke with the AAUP 1940 Statement of Principles: https://www.aaup.org/report/1940-statement-principles-academic-freedom-and-tenure
    • Marc shared President Thomas’ letter in response to AAUP’s inquiries with the group. According to the admin the new letters have the same effect as the old ones but they are going to re-issue the letters removing the at-will language because this language is superseded by the board of governors policies. They said they will also add in the employment period to these new letters.
  • Changes to Ch. 6
    • There has been a change in timing for providing notice of positions that will not be continuing. They have changed it such that it brings us out of sync with the 1940 statement. It changes the deadline for announcing non-renewal from March 1st to March 10th and then they changed it from this date just applying to first years to the date applying to both first and second years (whereas prior second years were supposed to be notified in the fall). We are working with Scott Alberts on this language.
    • David Robinson said that it would be good to at least get one example of the new letters that were promised. Robinson is also disturbed by the change in language. To exclude the fall deadline for the second year is a huge change.
    • Laura asked about the distinction between tenure-track and term hires? Marc doesn’t think that the 1940 statement distinguishes this? David said that originally the statement did just apply to tenure-track foks but there have been updated recommendations on contingent contracts since then. Laura asked if that language could be clarified in Ch. 6?
    • The administration didn’t seem very clear on what exactly was in the letters. When we pressed about why the changes were being made now we didn’t actually get a response.
    • Some concern was expressed about the lack of terms on the contracts, which AAUP also brought up in the meeting.
      • Even the date itself is an issue. We don’t want responsibilities to slide into the summer.
      • There is also inconsistency across years in regard to the dates.
      • AAUP should ask for the dates to be explicit every year
    • AAUP will keep pressing on the at-will language and the language on Ch. 6.
      • If anyone has any concerns, information or suggestions, please bring them to AAUP.
        • David Robinson added that it is important to make sure everyone is clear on the deadline for non-renewal notification. The board of governors policies do contradict an at-will approach.
        • It is Robinson’s opinion that contingent faculty have been treated in much the same way as tenure-track faculty in regard to this notice in the past.

Future Plans

  • AAUP will send out a state of the university survey – an anonymous survey where faculty members can give feedback about the president, provost, and the general state of the university. The last time this survey was done was 2015. We will then share the results with the university.
  • We will keep working with the administration about contracts.
  • We feel AAUP has been working effectively as a voice piece for voices that are not reaching higher up via Faculty Senate.
  • Next meeting we should have a draft of the re-written bylaws for AAUP to review.
  • We’d also like to get a lot more faculty involved with AAUP – so please tell your colleagues about us!
  • Mark Rice expressed appreciation for the work the AAUP collective has done over the summer.

-minutes recorded by Laura Bigger