AAUP Chapter meeting
2/10/23, 3:30 pm via Zoom
Present: Yuna Ferguson, Jack Davis, Andy Kauffmann, Jennifer Jesse, Joshua Nudell, Elizabeth Wiles, Don Bindner, Emily Olson, Carlo Annelli, Annie Moots, Bob Johnson, Heidi Cook, Laura Naioti, Vickie Mayer, Mark Hatala, Stephanie Russell, Marc Becker, Amy Smith
Kraft Heinz employees to live on campus in Centennial Hall
Article from student paper: https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/news/campus/truman-enters-agreement-to-temporarily-house-kraft-heinz-employees-from-guam-hawaii/
Elizabeth talked to Student Government representatives about partnering to do a town hall about this. Student government wants us to take the lead. One idea was for some of the questions to be pre-screened and answered by President Thomas via video.
-Do we want to have a town hall about this?
-The main issues surrounding this:
– Transparency – when this was in the works and now
– Is the University even making money on this?
– Worker welfare
Conversation:
- Maybe we should just keep an eye on this for now? We run the risk of just aggravating the administration without much gain.
- We could at least reach out to the President and ask what she’s open to. Sue seemed more open to it if Kraft would show up.
- We could hold a faculty meeting about it for interested parties?
- What would we ask about? It might be hard to form questions with so little information to start with.
- Faculty have a lot of other issues right now.
- We could simply tell the administration people are talking about this and ask the them what they think we should do since more than half of the people in attendance would like more information in some capacity.
- Elizabeth will write something up and AAUP folks can edit it before it is sent off.
- Maybe we can collect questions in advance – this might help put Sue at ease.
- Elizabeth will write something up and AAUP folks can edit it before it is sent off.
- Why did the students think that faculty should take this on? It seems like the administration is more concerned about what the students and their parents think.
Firing in the History Department and issues with NTT lines and hiring:
Summary of events: NTT faculty member had a spouse with medical issues that meant she had to be away from campus in the first semester she was teaching here. She informed the admin to see if she could teach remotely or even teach the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) class as an adjunct to work something out for her second semester. She was asked to put in a request for a leave of absence and then upon receipt of it TSU immediately terminated her contract (a week before the start of the semester).
- FMLA you have to be somewhere for a year, so this does not come into play
- Not having worked at TSU for a year she also wouldn’t have been protected by any notification dates.
However, this is still a concern because:
- They keep losing the GIS course. They were really excited about the class. The university keeps saying they want to expand in this area.
- The chairs whose majors were affected by this were not consulted.
- The class was dropped a week before the semester started.
- Students are really upset about this.
- This was shortsighted on the part of the admin.
- They have been talking about a certificate in research methods and not having the GIS class undermines this.
- What is the motivation for the firing?
- There was possibly an issue with being out of the country – which tied into the benefits, which was the issue. But the faculty member gave up benefits to try to solve this.
- One of the counseling professors teaches online from Canada.
- Why don’t we know the details about which countries allow these kinds of arrangements in advance??
- Given the importance of this course, why couldn’t we let her teach it remotely?
- There was possibly an issue with being out of the country – which tied into the benefits, which was the issue. But the faculty member gave up benefits to try to solve this.
- There were about 15 students in the class.
- Part of the concern is that there was no discussion with the department or the curricular ramifications.
- This is also an issue of a lack of transparency here.
- Sociology lost a line in the last few years. Then they were supposed to replace Vickie’s line with a TT line but at the last minute it was switched to NTT, which will probably be a failed search. This would leave one tenured Sociologist, which undermines the quality of the department. The years of effort put into building that educational program will be lost and would need to be rebuilt. A concern for the quality of the program.
- Amber is out on FMLA leave, Brian was part time because he had a child, Vickie is leaving Truman. The Provost is only allowing Amber to be here half time in the spring although she is chair, advising and doing a lot of catch up from being gone. And the other anthropologist, Anton, is on sabbatical.
- Diversity and inclusion is a major aspect of what Sociology teaches and yet they have gutted the department.
- The above firing has also destabilized the History department
- Sociology isn’t the only department that has had issues with failed searches and hiring. There are concerns across campus about this.
- Even if our turnover rate is normal, this is still problematic – due to clusters of turnover in certain departments, our rural location, etc.
- Does that turnover rate include when they aren’t replacing someone or retirements?
- One way to shrink TSU’s faculty would be through intentional planning. Another way is to just not replace faculty that leave. But then there is no rhyme or reason to the areas that are suffering with too few professors to teach the classes that are supposed to be offered to fulfill a major.
- The Dean needs to be the one to understand what each department needs and advocate for those lines.
- There seems to be a misunderstanding that faculty are interchangeable but our disciplines are much more specialized than that.
- 5 year review – showed how numbers dropped when they had a lot of turnover in Sociology. Again, this is not unique.
- Issue with advising – if there are not enough tt faculty in a major
- The administration says that we aim to have one in four ntt to tt lines – so a 1:3 ratio.
- A lot of ntt faculty do formal advising or at least informal advising. This just perpetuates the problem by not revealing that it is a problem.
- Service is also really inconsistent across Schools.
- Even within Schools there is inconsistency.
- Do we want to have a town hall about this?
- We could invite the restructuring committee
- If the committee was allied with the faculty broadly then maybe the committee would have more leverage with the administration.
- We could make it more grassroots and not expressly invite the administration
- A collective conversation would be helpful – just among faculty – trying to see what we envision would be a solution to the issues we are facing.
- This is not something that we have seen in recent years.
- Maybe this would grab faculty attention.
- Admin are technically faculty and so they essentially need to be invited. We should allow the conversation to be open to them but they would be welcome but not platformed.
- Open floor or structured agenda?
- Bring a structured agenda led by AAUP
- Try to do this before midterm break
- The goal of this meeting could be to make a list of suggestions and demands.
- Open floor or structured agenda?
Action item: AAUP to organize a conversation with faculty about these issues.
Minutes taken by Laura