Meeting of the Truman State University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)
February 24, 2020, 4:30-5:35 PM, BH100
Present: Marc Rice (president), Mark Hatala (vice-president), Marc Becker (secretary), Anton Daughters (treasurer), Bill Alexander, Hena Ahmad, Jay Belanger, Laura Bigger, Jack Davis, Carlo Annelli, Stacy Davis, Taner Edis, Christine Harker, Ding-hwa Hsieh, Jennifer Jesse, Andy Kauffmann, Betty McLane-Iles, Matthew Tornatore, Audrey Viguier
1. Budget cuts. Question of where cuts will come from, whether contracts will be renewed. We will have a dip of several years before it rebounds (and then it may go down again). Why did TSU lose more students than others in Missouri? Problem goes beyond demographics. One of the important pieces of information that came out of the town hall with Sue Thomas. Concern that it is more than demographics, and it is on our heads to solve the problem. Recruitment becomes yet one more thing that faculty have to do.
Next step: meet with Sue to talk these issues. We want clarification on metrics. We want focus, but what exactly are we focusing on? We need cuts, but where are those? We went to the meeting to hear about those. More transparency and clarity on where those will take place. Maybe they don’t know why people aren’t coming here anymore. Bothers us that we don’t want to talk about highly selective anymore.
April Missouri State AAUP will organize a talk on how to read a university budget. We will stream it on the university campus.
2. Pressure to increase course load. Will we move to a 4/4? How will faculty respond to that? We can either have a highly selective school with fewer students, or a less selective school with more students. What about salary disparities between administrators and faculty? How are their salaries being determined? Aren’t there other ways to increase the revenue stream other than recruit students? Why isn’t grant writing part of the discussion? This place was imploding until we became highly selective, and would that not happen again? If we lose highly selective we will just go down. Those lessons were never learned. Higher levels of administration don’t understand the liberal arts. Few schools are highly selective, and losing that status would make it even harder to recruit. Sue said we can hold ourselves to higher standards, but how is that consistent with lowering standards? A problem is that our contracts are very vague and do not stipulate load, in part because they think of FTE, course generation, and student-teacher ratio. How should those decisions be made? Could getting rid of “highly selective” tag be mechanism to create pressure to increase course load? We need to have discussions, but should be driven curricular rather financial issues?
We are told things individually, and it is only when we organize that we see things.
What about retirement bonuses? Idea that wrong people retire, and people who would retire anyway? But maye that’s the wrong narrative.
3. What can we do to unity faculty? To show the voice and power of faculty? Make a concerted presence at the SPAW, and ask questions in those settings.
If you want to join meeting with president Sue Thomas write Marc Rice <mrice@truman.edu>. Do we need a poll of faculty of what are their concerns? It’s easy to set up on survey monkey, and it would give us important feedback.
4 Other issues: increase in power of chairs in faculty handbook and change in tenure policy.
Conversation does not have to stop here. Tell and invite your friends. Query colleagues as to what your most important concerns are. Let colleagues know that we are a vibrant group that will help solve problems.