AAUP Chapter minutes
3/5/21 at 4 – 5 pm
Present: Bill Alexander, Laura Bigger, Hena Ahmad, Marc Rice, Mark Hatala, David Robinson, Kathryn Brammall, Joey Hubbard, Marc Becker, Jennifer Jesse, Stephanie Russell, Matthew Tornatore, Stacy Davis, Andrew Kauffmann, Carlo Anneli, Jay Belanger, Christine Harker
Agenda
I) Changes to the Faculty Handbook, Ch 6
Proposed changes to the TSU Handbook policies on notice of renewal continue to be debated by the Personel Policy Committee; Truman AAUP has remained concerned about these:
- The date for notice of non-renewal (formerly March 1 for the first year and December 1 for the second year) has been moved to March 10;
- The policy formerly did not distinguish between TT and NTT faculty in this policy; it now differentiates, specifying that the policy applies to TT.
Heated discussion ensued in RE both issues—both changes appear to put the university at risk of violating the national AAUP guidelines, “Standards for Notice of Nonreappointment” (cf below):
a) Date change
- the Administration contends that the date change is in order to provide at-risk NT faculty the opportunity to improve their record over the Fall semester, thereby potentially avoiding non-renewal; some suggestions included that if the Administration is genuinely concerned for such faculty, some sort of early warning system might be instituted;
- members felt that this was disingenuous, and supported by no evidence of ever having been a likely scenario;
- members feel that this move is motivated, rather, in order to give Adminstration more leeway to terminate a faculty member in response to fiscal concerns related to state budgetary constraints (which typically are not announced until May);
- this may be connected to the March 1 deadline for chairs to recommend rehires;
- consensus: this clearly disadvantages a nonreappointed faculty member in finding a new post as most positions are advertised in the fall;
- this change takes TSU put of compliance w AAUP: the national organisation would get involved if a specific faculty member with standing were to request investigation;
- general discussion ensued: that this will make Truman even less attractive for both attracting high quality new faculty (location, low pay AND reduced security) and retaining current faculty
- examples of recent failed TT searches in several disciplines were noted;
b) specifying TT
- excludes NTT from even this degree of formal protection, which was implicit in the previous handbook
- this places contingent faculty at greatest risk; the significant contribution of NTT faculty to generating credit hours was noted;
In general discussion of these changes, members speculated that the Board of Governors may be the actual driver and that Administration may be following orders; some advocated an AAUP presence at BOG meetings; members speculated that the Personnel Policy Committee may be debating a matter that has in fact already been decided by the BOG.
Status: AAUP will continue monitoring the discussion in the PP Committee
| 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure:( footnote 9)
The general principle of notice contained in this paragraph is developed with greater specificity in the “Standards for Notice of Nonreappointment,” endorsed by the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the American Association of University Professors (1964) (Policy Documents and Reports, 99). These standards are: Notice of nonreappointment, or of intention not to recommend reappointment to the governing board, should be given in writing in accordance with the following standards: 1. Not later than March 1 of the first academic year of service, if the appointment expires at the end of that year; or, if a one-year appointment terminates during an academic year, at least three months in advance of its termination. 2. Not later than December 15 of the second academic year of service, if the appointment expires at the end of that year; or, if an initial two-year appointment terminates during an academic year, at least six months in advance of its termination. 3. At least twelve months before the expiration of an appointment after two or more years in the institution. |
II) University survey
- It is now up on the website: https://aaup.truman.edu/2020-survey/
- Check it out.
III) Social media/password survey
- We are trying to get around the requirement to change our TSU password every 180 days because the data shows that people use more hackable easy passwords in this situation.
- Monitoring social media – we are collecting stories from people who have experienced this.
- Mark knows of a faculty member in his area that was contacted by the Provost’s office. It had to do with canceling a class because of the weather.
- This is embarrassing for people so we may not get a lot of feedback about it.
- We know of another recent case
- Has anyone else had this experience? Ask your colleagues.
- We should remind them that we can say that we can keep their story confidential.
- Everything we do in Zoom is saved. We should know that the private person to person chats get saved as well. Someone will go through this stuff in the right situation.
- If you have to have a confidential conversation use your own phone and your own Gmail account.
- One of the pending lawsuits has to do with this faculty member not sharing his personal phone even though he wasn’t notified what the request was about.
- The social media thing is a freedom of speech issue. Posts are not the business of TSU.
- We should perhaps just remind people that anything we do on the Truman server is Truman property.
- Mark knows of a faculty member in his area that was contacted by the Provost’s office. It had to do with canceling a class because of the weather.
- If anyone has any suggestions, just let us know. David wrote an introduction to this topic for Bill.
Guidelines for Evaluating Candidates for Tenure and Promotion at Truman
- This is problematic for scientists because the publication structure is different there.
- They don’t consider the impact rating of the publication in the journal.
- This feels like micromanaging.
IV) COVID
- Many folks have seen that our numbers went down dramatically but there is genuine concern that students aren’t getting tested because they are coming up on break but we will see what happens after break.
- The covid working group is coming up with a survey about students committing to getting vaccinated before we come back for school in the fall. If a good proportion of our students think that’s a good idea then we will probably roll with it but if not it will die.
- We can talk to our students about this.
Our next meeting is April 2nd and the state meeting is April 10th. The executive committee meets 2 weeks from today so you can bring any thoughts or issues to them.