Category Archives: 2014-17 Contract

Uncompensated Summer Work and Faculty Rights Under Article 38

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Many people outside the university community (and even quite a few within it) are often surprised to learn that WMU faculty on academic-year (AY) appointments who are not assigned to summer teaching are not compensated by Western Michigan University for work performed in the months of May, June, July, and August.

Yet many AY faculty are called upon during the summer to perform a variety of work assignments on behalf of the university for which they will not be paid. Some examples include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • work on strategic planning at the department, college, or university level;
  • administration of academic programs within departments;
  • department meetings and retreats;
  • independent studies, including those for which students pay tuition and receive credit;
  • lab and research supervision of graduate and undergraduate students;
  • graduate and undergraduate advising;
  • participating in doctoral exams and dissertation defenses;
  • supervision of student internships;
  • training and supervision of graduate teaching and research assistants;
  • student recruitment activities;
  • a multitude of other service, administrative, or quasi-administrative activities.

The majority of Board-appointed faculty members at WMU have academic-year appointments, although there are also a number of fiscal-year (FY) faculty with 12-month appointments and some with 10-month appointments.

While most AY faculty are eligible to participate in a deferred-compensation pay structure, in which a portion of each paycheck throughout the academic year is withheld for disbursement over the summer, resulting in equal installments throughout the calendar year, their “summer pay” was actually earned during the academic year. This structure is often misunderstood as AY faculty’s being paid for summer work, but that is not the case.

It can be beneficial for AY faculty to receive their pay in equal disbursements throughout the calendar year rather than going 14 weeks in the summer without a paycheck. It can also benefit the university’s cash flow to withhold approximately a quarter of the pay earned by the hundreds of participating AY faculty during the academic year and disburse it in the summer after the AY concludes. It is a symbiotic arrangement.

Other AY faculty are paid their full earnings during the academic year, with their last paycheck until September 5 to be disbursed on May 19.

Article 38 of the Agreement articulates the terms under which AY faculty are employed in relation to the academic calendar: “Bargaining unit faculty on academic year appointments shall not be required to work . . . during periods between semesters and sessions when classes are not scheduled to meet” (38.§4.1).

It expressly defines “outside the calendar” as “before the Fall semester begins, between the Fall and Spring semesters, and after the Spring semester ends” (38.§2).

Exceptions are permissible only in “limited circumstances,” which must be “legitimate responsibilities of academic-year faculty (e.g., registration, department orientation/organization meetings, retreats, committee assignments, and grading situations).” Additionally, the contract requires that “Western will follow present procedures to cover these assignments. If Western is unable to ensure faculty coverage for such legitimate responsibilities, Western will notify the Chapter before assigning faculty to such tasks” (38.§2).

In recent years, however, many AY faculty have been experiencing significant increases in uncompensated summer work assignments, as well as increases to their regular workloads that make it difficult to complete within the academic year all the work for which they are responsible. They report increasing pressure – to which pre-tenure faculty are especially vulnerable –  to work in the summer without compensation in ways that appear to extend the definition of “limited circumstances” well beyond the spirit of the Agreement.

The institution is becoming increasingly dependent on free faculty labor, and it is time to break this exploitative cycle.

The “legitimate” work of faculty on academic-year appointments can and should be performed during the academic year, within the bounds of reasonable faculty workloads. If there is work that is sufficiently critical to the functioning of the institution that cannot be done during the academic year but must be performed in the summer, that work must be compensated.

Faculty members themselves are best situated to determine whether assignments they are asked (or expected) to perform outside the calendar constitutes legitimate use of their time during parts of the year when they are not being paid for their work.

Therefore, it is the Chapter’s position that all assignments of work “outside the calendar” must be compensated, offered without coercion, and accepted or declined without penalty at the discretion of each individual faculty member.

Additionally, fiscal-year faculty rights to a reasonable workload must not be infringed. FY faculty must not be burdened with additional assignments, including work that would be “outside the calendar” for AY faculty, without overload pay. Such assignments must be compensated, offered without coercion, and accepted or declined without penalty at the discretion of each individual faculty member.

If the administration believes that any particular task or initiative is sufficiently urgent to require “outside the calendar” faculty attention, their proposals should be brought to the Chapter, pursuant to Article 38.§2, for consideration on a case-by-case basis. In principle, however, the WMU-AAUP cannot support practices that do not compensate faculty members appropriately for their work.

We ask that chairs, directors, deans, the provost, and all other administrators, especially those who are compensated for their work all year round, follow the Golden Rule as their guiding principle: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The academic calendar must be respected, and the academic-year appointments of faculty members who hold them must be honored. It is not appropriate to expect, require, or attempt to compel uncompensated “outside the calendar” work to be performed by AY faculty or expect, require, or attempt to compel any uncompensated overload work to be performed by any faculty member, regardless of appointment type.

Please also note that AY faculty members who accept summer teaching assignments are compensated for teaching only. Summer teaching stipends do not entitle chairs or other administrators to additional faculty service beyond the teaching of summer courses and the responsibilities associated with this work.

Faculty members who feel that they are being expected or required to perform uncompensated summer work or uncompensated overload assignments (and especially those who feel they are being pressured into doing so) are urged to contact the WMU-AAUP office by calling 345-0151 or emailing staff@wmuaaup.net.

A culture in which people are expected to work without pay is unacceptable. And we believe that it should be a high priority for all parties to the Agreement to work together to honor and defend it.

No HMO to be offered to WMU-AAUP faculty this year

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In July, President Dunn announced that BCBSM’s Healthy Blue Living HMO might be offered to WMU employees during open enrollment this fall, explaining that each employee group on campus would have the option to allow (or not allow) the administration to offer the new plan to its members.

In early September, the WMU-AAUP published an analysis in advance of the Association Council meeting scheduled for September 16, to help the faculty in our bargaining unit make an informed decision about whether to allow the HMO to be offered for 2017 alongside our existing plan. At the meeting, the Association Council decided that this question should be taken up by the full faculty at our fall chapter meeting, scheduled for October 14.

But a strong consensus also emerged among the Association Council reps on September 16 that by trying to oblige the faculty to participate in conversations and make decisions about our health benefits outside of scheduled bargaining, the administration was essentially attempting to engage the chapter in negotiations, in contravention of Article 45 of the Agreement, which the chapter had already invoked in April 2016. Article 45 is the agreement between the administration and the WMU-AAUP in which “each waives the right, and each agrees that the other shall not be obligated to bargain collectively with respect to any subject or matter referred to or covered by this Agreement.”

When we notified Dr. Warren Hills, WMU Chief Human Resources Officer, of these developments after the Association Council meeting, he responded that the administration would be “going forward with open enrollment for the bargaining units that have agreed and our benefits-eligible staff.”

We interpret this to mean that the administration has decided not to offer the HMO to WMU-AAUP faculty.

As WMU-AAUP President Lisa Minnick wrote on the chapter blog in July 2016:

The idea of adding a second plan, specifically one that lowers premium costs for employees, was proposed by another employee group on campus, the WMU chapter of AFSCME, whose bargaining unit includes maintenance, landscape, dining, custodial, and other service staff. The health insurance premiums assessed to individuals vary by employee group at WMU. As most faculty are aware, our group, the board-appointed faculty, pays the highest premiums, but what maybe a lot of faculty don’t know is that employees in groups whose median pay is lower than that of the faculty still face costs that are unacceptably high, especially for the two-person and family plans.

So I can understand why our AFSCME colleagues are fighting for more affordable health insurance for their membership. We join them in their ongoing attempts to reduce healthcare costs for all WMU employees, especially the lowest paid among us, as these costs have become increasingly burdensome in recent years.

But I am not as optimistic as President Dunn seems to be that this new plan is the answer.

As I have noted, board-appointed faculty already pay the highest insurance premiums of any employee group at WMU, a rate that is the same as what senior administrative officers pay, even though the median and mean salaries of that employee group are of course significantly greater than ours. One way to cut costs for lower-paid employees, then, might be to ask senior administrators to bear more of their share of the burden.

And it is probably worth noting that not all senior administrators are even paying the same premiums as faculty. For example, President Dunn’s premium is $0 for his two-person plan, compared to $3933 per year for faculty. Additionally, his retirement agreement guarantees continuing free coverage for himself and for Mrs. Dunn for the rest of their lives. (Faculty and staff retirees, by contrast, have seen their share of healthcare premiums spike in recent years.)

As we noted in our September analysis, we have serious reservations about the Healthy Blue Living HMO. While the premium equivalents for the HMO are lower than those for our current plan, the HMO has “wellness program” participation conditions attached to it that some faculty might find intrusive and/or burdensome. If these conditions are not met, deductibles are increased and coverage is decreased. Additionally, the full deductible must be met before HMO enrollees are eligible for coverage of office visits and nearly all other non-preventive medical and clinical care, meaning that you would pay 100% of the bill for non-preventive services and office visits until your deductible is met, potentially negating any savings from lower premiums. (See Table 1.)

Conversely, our current plan includes many services to which the deductible does not apply, and the deductible need not be met before we can access coverage for most office visits and services after copay. Our current plan also includes access to medical and clinical services at the Sindecuse Health Center on campus with zero out-of-pocket costs and a prescription drug discount at Sindecuse. These benefits would not be available to HMO enrollees, who would be responsible for all charges for medical and clinical services at Sindecuse and would pay retail prices for prescription drugs at the Sindecuse pharmacy. (See Table 2.)

Please refer to the full analysis for more information.

The chapter leadership and members of our 2014 bargaining team believe that there are better ways to reduce costs for faculty that do not involve the intrusive “wellness” requirements that are integral to the Healthy Blue Living HMO. We also question the ethics of an option that requires faculty to take chances with the health and wellbeing of their families by gambling on a plan that may include some savings in the short run but is not likely to be a good investment for anyone who might actually have to use their insurance.

These are among the reasons why the faculty expressed its nearly unanimous dissatisfaction at the chapter meeting in April 2016 with the prospect of major decisions about our healthcare being made outside of contract negotiations. The product of this dissatisfaction was passage of a resolution invoking the chapter’s rights under Article 45 of the Agreement, a position that the Association Council reaffirmed last month.

ARTICLE 45
WAIVER CLAUSE

45.§1 AGREE AND ACKNOWLEDGE. The parties acknowledge that during the negotiations which resulted in this Agreement each had the unlimited right and opportunity to make demands and proposals with respect to any subject or matter not removed by law from the area of collective bargaining and that the understandings and agreements arrived at by the parties after  the exercise of that right and opportunity are set forth in this Agreement. Therefore, Western and the Chapter, for the life of this Agreement, each waives the right, and each agrees that the other shall not be obligated to bargain collectively with respect to any subject or matter referred to or covered by this Agreement and with respect to any non-mandatory subject of bargaining not specifically referred to or covered in this Agreement, even though such subject may not have been within the knowledge and contemplation of either or both of the parties at the time that they negotiated or signed this Agreement.

We are looking forward to contract negotiations in 2017, at which time we will explore a variety of approaches to getting costs down for members of the WMU-AAUP bargaining unit.

President Dunn’s email: “A new health plan option for 2017”

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On the New Health Plan Option
By Lisa Minnick, WMU-AAUP President

By now faculty and other WMU employees will have seen the email from President Dunn, dated July 22, 2016, announcing the addition of a second health insurance option to be offered to WMU employees beginning in January 2017. As he wrote in his email, each employee group on campus will have the option to allow (or not allow) the administration to offer the new plan to its members.

If WMU-AAUP faculty members choose to allow the new plan to be offered to our bargaining unit, our existing plan, the BCBSM PPO that we have negotiated with the administration, would continue to be offered alongside the new plan.

We will provide an analysis of the BCBSM Healthy Blue Living HMO plan to the faculty in the next few weeks so that each faculty member will be well equipped to make an informed decision about whether the WMU-AAUP should agree to allow the plan to be offered to the faculty. We will be seeking your input as we go forward.

What follows is my perspective on this development as the WMU-AAUP representative on the alternative healthcare committee.

The idea of adding a second plan, specifically one that lowers premium costs for employees, was proposed by another employee group on campus, the WMU chapter of AFSCME, whose bargaining unit includes maintenance, landscape, dining, custodial, and other service staff. The health insurance premiums assessed to individuals vary by employee group at WMU. As most faculty are aware, our group, the board-appointed faculty, pays the highest premiums, but what maybe a lot of faculty don’t know is that employees in groups whose median pay is lower than that of the faculty still face costs that are unacceptably high, especially for the two-person and family plans.

So I can understand why our AFSCME colleagues are fighting for more affordable health insurance for their membership. We join them in their ongoing attempts to reduce healthcare costs for all WMU employees, especially the lowest paid among us, as these costs have become increasingly burdensome in recent years.

But I am not as optimistic as President Dunn seems to be that this new plan is the answer.

As I have noted, board-appointed faculty already pay the highest insurance premiums of any employee group at WMU, a rate that is the same as what senior administrative officers pay, even though the median and mean salaries of that employee group are of course significantly greater than ours. One way to cut costs for lower-paid employees, then, might be to ask senior administrators to bear more of their share of the burden.

And it is probably worth noting that not all senior administrators are even paying the same premiums as faculty. For example, President Dunn’s premium is $0 for his two-person plan, compared to $3933 per year for faculty. Additionally, his retirement agreement guarantees continuing free coverage for himself and for Mrs. Dunn for the rest of their lives. (Faculty and staff retirees, by contrast, have seen their share of healthcare premiums spike in recent years.)

In his email, President Dunn wrote:

A committee comprised of representatives from all the benefits-eligible campus employee groups has been working since September to identify a less expensive health care plan option. They have thoroughly assessed one Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan health care plan and have come to the conclusion that it should be added as an option—an alternative to the BCBSM PPO that WMU already offers to employees.

I represented the faculty on this committee, so I can say that this conclusion was not unanimous and that in fact I remain skeptical about the cost savings that individuals who choose the new option, BCBSM Healthy Blue Living HMO, will actually see over time. Additionally, I am concerned about the potentially burdensome conditions that the insured person (and spouse, for those on the two-person plan) must meet in order to qualify for this plan. If these conditions are not met, the insured will face reduced coverage and higher out-of-pocket costs.

Along with members of our 2014 bargaining team, I believe that there are better ways to reduce costs for faculty that do not involve intrusive “wellness” requirements or taking chances with the health and wellbeing of our families by gambling on a plan that may include some savings in the short run but that may not be the best investment over time.

Additionally, when this topic was discussed at the WMU-AAUP chapter meeting on April 8, 2016, the faculty expressed its dissatisfaction with the prospect of major decisions about our healthcare being made outside of contract negotiations and passed a resolution invoking the chapter’s rights under Article 45 of the Agreement:

ARTICLE 45
WAIVER CLAUSE

45.§1 AGREE AND ACKNOWLEDGE. The parties acknowledge that during the negotiations which resulted in this Agreement each had the unlimited right and opportunity to make demands and proposals with respect to any subject or matter not removed by law from the area of collective bargaining and that the understandings and agreements arrived at by the parties after  the exercise of that right and opportunity are set forth in this Agreement. Therefore, Western and the Chapter, for the life of this Agreement, each waives the right, and each agrees that the other shall not be obligated to bargain collectively with respect to any subject or matter referred to or covered by this Agreement and with respect to any non-mandatory subject of bargaining not specifically referred to or covered in this Agreement, even though such subject may not have been within the knowledge and contemplation of either or both of the parties at the time that they negotiated or signed this Agreement.

Our contract is not binding on other employee groups, of course, some of whose members are facing serious financial challenges as a result of increasing healthcare costs in recent years. And the administration has the legal right to offer an additional health insurance plan without negotiating it with us, as long as they continue to offer the existing plan as negotiated, which they will do.

As I have said, I think there are better ways to get costs down, including innovative approaches that have not been considered before, and our 2017 negotiation team will be exploring that. But I think we can all understand why many of our staff colleagues are anxious for relief sooner rather than later, as we also respect their right to make decisions that are best for themselves and their families.

A question that I raised during the committee’s deliberations over the past year was whether adding a second plan would create an “adverse selection” situation, in which healthier people might leave the existing BCBSM PPO for a plan that is less expensive up front and ultimately raise costs for those who choose to remain with the PPO. In his recommendation (linked here) to VP for Business and Finance Jan Van Der Kley on behalf of the committee, VP for Human Resources Warren Hills included the following request:

“With the success of this plan option, we also ask that for subsequent years costing of both plans would share the pooled experience of their combined participation and that the pricing differential would continue to be based upon the difference in plan definitions, not specific to the experience of participants in either group.”

VP Van Der Kley agreed. (Her response is linked here.)

For me, one of the positive things that came out of my service on this committee over the past academic year was getting to work closely with colleagues from AFSCME, the Professional Support Staff Organization, the Administrative Professionals Association, and the Michigan State Employees Association (WMU’s power plant workers), along with members of the human resources team at WMU. While the outcome of our work is not what I had hoped for, it was a great experience to have the opportunity to work closely on a long-term project with these intelligent, thoughtful people. While attending a two-hour meeting every two weeks for a year to talk about health insurance may not sound like the most exciting way to spend time, I always looked forward to seeing these terrific colleagues. Working together in this way also offered us the opportunity to build solidarity based on our shared commitment to Western Michigan University, our students, our community, and our members. I appreciate the wisdom and dedication they brought to this project, and I respect their perspectives and their decisions.

Faculty can expect to receive more information soon from the WMU-AAUP about the proposed new health plan, and we will also be seeking your input as we go forward. If you have questions, by all means send them along. Please email staff@wmuaaup.net. I might not be able to answer all of your questions right away, but if I don’t know the answer, I will find out for you.

Course evaluations and the contract in Spring and Summer 1

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As we wrote in March 2016, the administration collected student rating data for all sections of every course taught in Spring 2016, an action that was not in compliance with Article 16 of the Agreement:

Article 16§4: Student ratings shall be conducted in each class taught by a bargaining unit faculty member in at least one semester of each academic year (to be determined by the faculty member).

In other words, Article 16§4 ensures the faculty’s contractual right to decide which class sections are evaluated in a given semester as well as the semester in which a course is evaluated. Faculty who teach multiple sections of the same course need only collect rating data for one section per academic year, although individual faculty members are of course free to choose to collect rating data for as many sections as they wish.

Why are we still talking about this?

In response to the administration’s actions, the WMU-AAUP Association Council voted at their March 25 meeting to file a chapter grievance alleging administrative violation of Article 16. The chapter grievance, filed in April, was denied by the administration and at the request of the WMU-AAUP Executive Committee has recently moved into mediation.

But wait, there’s more.

There is a new development to report: Faculty who taught in Summer 1 2016 and logged onto GoWMU with the intention of opting out of participation in rating data collection, as is their right under Article 16§4, were unpleasantly surprised to learn that they could not do so and that rating data would again be collected for every section of every course.

On June 6, 2016, WMU-AAUP Chapter President Lisa Minnick contacted Dr. Nancy Mansberger, the administration’s Director of Academic Labor Relations, to inform her that faculty members teaching Summer 1 2016 were finding that they were not able to opt out of evaluating their courses if they so chose but — as in Spring 2016 — were only offered the option to ‘opt out’ of having ratings data sent to chairs and deans after it is collected, in contravention of Article 16.§4. Dr. Mansberger responded in an email, dated June 9, that rating data would be collected for all courses taught at WMU in Summer 1 2016. In her email message, Dr. Mansberger claimed that

The [letter of agreement] authorizing the pilot study detailed that a pilot study be run during the 2015-2016 Academic Year, which concludes at the end of the Summer I session. I have been informed by the Office of Assessment that the pilot study conditions will be lifted and the original ICES programming conditions will be reinstituted in time for the Summer II session evaluation process.

However, on May 9, 2016, faculty teaching in Summer 1 had received an email from Dr. David Reinhold that included the following statement, indicating that Article 16.§4 would be honored during Summer 1 2016:

If you are a full-time bargaining-unit faculty member you have the option whether or not to evaluate your course(s) this semester. If you choose to not evaluate this semester/session you must access ICES Online and indicate, section by section, whether you are evaluating that course.

This information turned out to be inaccurate, as was the case in Spring 2016, after faculty had received an email containing the same language on January 11. Faculty members who intended to exercise their rights under 16.§4 found when they accessed ICES in Summer 1 that they were preventing from doing so, just as they had been in Spring 2016.

In June, the WMU-AAUP Executive Committee authorized the filing of a second chapter grievance alleging violation of Article 16 in Summer 1.

The Summer 1 chapter grievance also alleges a violation of Article 2. In her June 9 email, asserting the administration’s right to conduct its ‘pilot study’ during Summer 1, Dr. Mansberger claimed that “the 2015-2016 Academic Year. . . concludes at the end of the Summer I session.” However, according to Article 2 (Definitions) of the Agreement:

(a.) ‘Academic year’ means the fall and spring semesters.

Is there is a solution?

The June 2016 chapter grievance proposed the following remedies:

  1. Any bargaining-unit faculty member who so chooses shall be able to access the “Course/Instructor Evaluation System (ICES Online)” though the “My Work” channel in GoWMU and, by June 28, 2016, exercise the option not to collect student ratings for their courses in Summer I 2016. [Unfortunately, the clock has since run out on this proposed remedy.]
  2. By April 2017, the administration shall receive an evidenced-based report prepared and presented by representatives of the board-appointed faculty on best practices for collecting ratings data that is “valid and reliable” (as required by Article 16) and for the use of ratings data. Further, the administration shall engage in a good-faith dialogue with the faculty on this topic in response to the report, with the mutual goal of improving the quality and value of student ratings data.
  3. The faculty’s report and consequent dialogue shall address documented problems with the reliability of student ratings, as indicated by the growing body of research indicating significant biases against women faculty and faculty members of color. The WMU-AAUP Chapter has previously cited a key study released earlier this year (see Boring, Ottoboni, and Stark 2016), one of many that have found that student ratings may be “better at gauging students’ gender bias and grade expectations than they are at measuring teaching effectiveness” and “are biased against female instructors in particular in so many ways that adjusting them for that bias is impossible.” The authors conclude that for these reasons, student ratings “should not be used for personnel decisions.” The administration shall collaborate with the faculty in a good-faith effort to address the racial and gender biases endemic to student evaluations of teaching and work with faculty to develop an unbiased, equitable system for collecting and using student ratings.

UPDATED 4 P.M. ON JULY 12: The grievance hearing was held today and the grievance has subsequently been denied by the administration. On July 8, the WMU-AAUP Executive Committee authorized a request for mediation in the event of denial of this grievance. 

Why does this matter?

Language regarding the frequency of evaluation data collection has been in the contract for 35 years, and for the past 14 years, the faculty’s contractual right to make these decisions has been stated explicitly. (We published a timeline in March 2016 for how this language came to be in the contract and how it has evolved over the years, available here.)

It is the union’s job to defend the contract and protect faculty rights. Every single right and benefit in our contract is in there because faculty who came before us fought for it, won it, and had to give up something to get it. That is the nature of negotiation. Therefore, the WMU-AAUP Executive Committee, in consultation with the WMU-AAUP Association Council, voted to reject the proposal to conduct evaluations in all sections of all courses in Spring 2016 when it was presented to us. We could not in good conscience agree to make a concession regarding language that has been in our contract since 1981. When the administration chose to go ahead with the plan regardless of the contract language precluding it, and despite our repeated warnings that their plan would violate the contract, we filed the first chapter grievance, which is still active and pending mediation.

Similarly, when it came to our attention in Summer 1 that faculty rights articulated in Article 16 were once again being denied, we filed the second chapter grievance and expect the hearing to be scheduled soon.

Do faculty want student feedback? YES.

WMU faculty are rightly proud of the top-quality instruction we provide to our students and deeply invested in receiving substantive feedback from them. The WMU-AAUP is equally invested in helping our faculty colleagues access reliable, useful feedback that is free of the kinds of racial, gender, and other bias that unfortunately many colleagues have experienced firsthand in their ratings and that has been well documented in the scholarly literature on student ratings.

These are problems that our 2011 and 2014 negotiation teams raised at the bargaining table. Both times, the administration refused to engage in conversation to try to solve them. Both times, the faculty had to settle for letters of agreement establishing joint committees of faculty and administration to address the problem of low response rates that resulted from the switch in 2010 from paper to online evaluations. The problem of low response rates was the only issue the administration would consider with regard to course evaluations. While it is a significant issue, it is far from the only or most pressing problem associated with the collection and use of course evaluation data.

We value the time and energy that the members of the joint committee brought to this project, and we share their disappointment in the outcome. In collaboration with the Executive Committee, our 2014 bargaining team envisioned a process of brainstorming to generate creative solutions to improve course evaluation response rates and develop evaluation instruments that minimize potential bias, and we are still optimistic that this can be achieved without faculty conceding any contractual rights.

Given the growing body of research into bias in student ratings, it would have been irresponsible for the WMU-AAUP Executive Committee to agree to the expanded use of a flawed rating instrument or to allow a negotiated contractual right to be circumvented in the process.

What happens next?

The WMU-AAUP officers and Executive Committee will keep the faculty informed as the two chapter grievances discussed here move forward. As always, faculty input and feedback are invited.

 

Developing an online course with EUP? Don’t sign your rights away!

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It recently came to the attention of the WMU-AAUP officers and Executive Committee that the EUP course development agreement that faculty are required to sign when they develop an online course does not comply with Article 30 of the Agreement. Faculty members who signed these course development agreements with EUP were (inappropriately) required to choose between compensation for their course development work and retention of their intellectual property rights. However, Article 30.§5 of the Agreement guarantees faculty intellectual property rights for online course materials without regard to payment of the course development stipend.

The EUP course development agreement form, in use from May 2013 to May 2016, provided three options, two of which directed the faculty to “specify limited rights usage agreement,” with a third option to waive the $3,000 course development stipend in return for “retain[ing] exclusive intellectual and usage rights to the course content which they have solely developed for the purposes of facilitating this course.”

However, Article 30.§5 already explicitly assigns ownership to the faculty member who develops the online course (emphasis is added):

30.§5 Intellectual Property. Copyright of  recordings of courses, course presentations, computer-assisted instructional content, course content developed, or other digital materials created by the faculty member(s), shall be owned by the faculty member(s), as in the case of traditional course material.

Further:

30.§5.1 The faculty member (or an appropriate faculty body) who develops course content for use in eLearning shall exercise control over the future use, modification, and distribution of instructional material, and shall determine whether the material should be revised or withdrawn from use.

These contractual ownership rights are unqualified and should not be represented as contingent on faculty members waiving their rights to compensation for course development. This contract language was hard-won by the faculty over the years, and the WMU-AAUP intends for it to be honored.

Accordingly, in April 2016, the WMU-AAUP filed a chapter grievance on behalf of the faculty, requesting that EUP and the administration work with the WMU-AAUP to revise the EUP’s online course development agreement to comply fully with Article 30.§5 and that all ambiguous, misleading, or noncontractual language be removed.

The chapter grievance also called for EUP and the administration to compensate any faculty members who were found to have waived the stipend or relinquished ownership rights because they were misled by the language of the EUP course development agreement form to believe that waiving one was a legitimate condition of accepting the other. We also called for the administration to take all other appropriate remedial actions to prevent future violations of Article 30.

Dr. Nancy Mansberger, the administration’s Director of Academic Labor Relations (the title of her position was formerly Director of Academic Collective Bargaining), declined to hear the grievance, claiming that there was no evidence of harm to faculty members, but she agreed to work with WMU-AAUP grievance officer John Saillant to revise the letter.

In May, the WMU-AAUP requested mediation of the grievance, under the terms outlined in Article 12, and the administration agreed.

In early June 2016, a mediation team was appointed, composed of one faculty member appointed by the WMU-AAUP and one representative appointed by the administration, again according to procedures set out in Article 12. After reviewing the case, the mediation team proposed that the chapter and the administration collaborate on revising the EUP course development agreement form, with a deadline of August 1, 2016.

Also in early June, the WMU-AAUP submitted a request to the administration under the Freedom of Information Act for copies of all EUP online course development agreements entered into by bargaining-unit faculty since September 6, 2014 (the start date of our current contract). We have recently received these documents and are reviewing them to determine whether any faculty members were denied contractual rights as a consequence of entering into course development agreements with EUP.

On June 24, the WMU-AAUP Executive Committee voted to accept the mediation team’s proposed resolution, leaving open the option to file additional grievances if necessary once the FOIA request was fulfilled (it had not yet been on June 24) and once the signed EUP course development agreement letters had been reviewed. As of today (July 11), the administration has not yet informed the chapter as to whether they will accept the proposal submitted by the mediation team.

A new concern has also arisen: One of the signed EUP course development agreements we received in the FOIA package was a revised version of the form, with the revision date given as May 2016. It had been signed and dated by EUP on May 31 and by the faculty member on June 1. The revised version also fails to comply with Article 30 and does so no less egregiously than the previous version. It is troubling that a new but still noncontractual version of the letter was introduced in May 2016 and used as recently as June 1, 2016, well after the chapter grievance calling this issue to the attention of EUP and the administration was filed in April.

This is an ongoing matter of concern for the chapter. The officers and Executive Committee of the WMU-AAUP will continue to investigate the extent to which faculty members may have been misled into relinquishing their rights or their rightful compensation and will work to make sure that these errors be corrected and that these colleagues be made whole.

Have you signed an EUP course development agreement and had to choose between being compensated for your work and retaining your intellectual property rights? Are you thinking about developing an online course sometime in the future and want to make sure your contractual rights are honored? If you answered yes to either of these questions, please contact us. We can help. Call us at 345-0151 or email staff@wmuaaup.net.

WMU-AAUP Remarks to the Board of Trustees (June 29, 2016)

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Remarks by WMU-AAUP President Lisa Minnick
June 29, 2016

First, congratulations to our PIO and MSEA colleagues on the ratification of their new contracts. We are proud to work alongside these dedicated women and men and appreciate their important contributions to the smooth operation and academic mission of Western Michigan University.

This is a day of celebration, as we honor and recognize the 45 faculty members whose tenure and promotions are finally official. The Board’s approval today caps a grueling review process that spans nearly an entire academic year. Tenure and promotion in higher education take years to achieve, and it is wonderful to see these outstanding colleagues recognized for the many accomplishments that have led them to this moment.

In his remarks at last year’s tenure and promotion luncheon, Provost Greene praised the review procedures here at Western as more straightforward and clearly articulated than at other institutions where he has worked. I have waited a year to second his observation and to add an explanation, because that kind of thing doesn’t just happen. It is the result of deliberate effort. For 40 years, WMU faculty and administration have collaborated on establishing, refining, and most important, codifying these procedures in the Agreement between the WMU-AAUP and the WMU Board of Trustees, our union contract.

We and the colleagues who came before us haven’t achieved perfection, of course, but the collective wisdom of our faculty and administrators alike over four decades has given rise to agreed-upon guidelines for tenure and promotion with clear and specific timelines, criteria, and procedures.

Each academic unit also has its own Department Policy Statement (DPS), many of which set out tenure and promotion guidelines specific to each department, according to the standards in their respective disciplines and in adherence to the contract. A DPS is a governance document, as established in Article 23 of the Agreement, developed by the faculty with the input and feedback of their chair or director. Once approved by the faculty, DPS drafts are submitted to the administration’s Director of Academic Labor Relations and to the contract administrator for the WMU-AAUP, who evaluate them for compliance with the Agreement.

The DPS, which covers many facets of department-level governance, is analogous to the Agreement in the sense that both are examples of good-faith shared governance at its best. By that I mean they represent the kind of collaboration between faculty and administration in which faculty participation in decision-making has a real impact on the way we do things here, a genuine collaboration to create policies and procedures and ensure transparency, accountability, fairness, and equity.

To function effectively, the work of a university is necessarily collaborative. Many outside the academy do not understand the role of the faculty in this enterprise and imagine faculty simply as employees who are expected to follow the directives of administrators. But as we all know, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the faculty. Since the intellectual character and identity of any university is determined above all by its faculty, participation in shared governance, from the department level to the university level, is central to our work as faculty members.

Boards and administrators might sometimes forget or want to disregard that, especially when political or financial pressures tempt them to act unilaterally or with only the thinnest veneer of shared governance. But a university leadership distracted from the mission by crisis management and attempting to limit the role of the faculty in institutional governance risks doing the dirty work of those who want to weaken or even dismantle public higher education. If you are employed by a public college or university as an administrator or in any capacity, or if you serve on a board of trustees, it is your responsibility along with the faculty to stand up against those who would devalue or disparage the work we do, which disadvantages our students and the communities we serve.

Tenure is often misunderstood or misrepresented by people who favor disinvestment in public higher education and are eager to try to turn the public against its best defenders: professors. Despite the mythology, tenure is not a guarantee of lifetime employment. It is simply the right to due process in the workplace. This is something that everyone who has to work for a living should have. That tenure even has to exist to assure the right to due process absolutely should raise questions for the public. Unfortunately, the meaning of tenure is often manipulated in cynical attempts to raise the wrong questions. For example, I would like for a public discussion of tenure to consider the question of why people can be fired from their jobs for being gay, lesbian, or transgender. We are fortunate that WMU has taken a stand against that kind of discrimination, but many workplaces and even many states have not.

More specific to higher education is the question of what happens to local economies when institutions who are large employers reduce hiring and shift to an increasingly contingent workforce. This creates economic insecurity for the workers themselves, but it also adversely affects the local economy, including small businesses and the real estate market. It also threatens academic freedom on campus. Students are not well served when their instructors are reluctant to take intellectual risks out of fear for their jobs or when programs or course offerings are reduced or eliminated because of cutbacks. It’s all connected. We are all connected.

As with tenure and promotion, our union contract sets out clear and reasonable processes to follow if there is cause to consider the removal of a tenured faculty member. That termination cannot be threatened or carried out capriciously, in retaliation for speaking out, for political reasons, or as a way to try to silence controversial ideas in the classroom or in faculty research, is what tenure is for and why every worker in the academy should have the right to similar protections.

As I congratulate my PIO colleagues on their new contract, I also wish for them the academic freedom that ought to be their right. These are credentialed experts in their respective fields who deserve respect, fair compensation, and the same protections that tenure provides to members of my bargaining unit, including academic freedom and the rights to due process and participation in shared governance. They are members of our community and indispensible to our mission.

Finally, even on this day of celebration, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on two tremendous losses that our Western Michigan University family has recently endured. On behalf of the WMU-AAUP, I extend our deepest condolences to the families of Trustee Ron Hall and emeritus faculty colleague Dr. Charles Warfield, two highly accomplished men, respected colleagues, and inspiring leaders. Both will be missed terribly.

 

2017 Starts Now: Contract Review Workshop on May 16 with Dr. Jamie Daniel

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Monday, May 16, 2016
10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (lunch provided)

at Montague House
814 Oakland Drive

Photo of Dr. Jamie DanielDr. Jamie Daniel

On Monday, May 16, 2016, Dr. Jamie Daniel, national AAUP Field Service Representative, will lead a review of our 2014-17 Agreement as we kick off preparations for contract negotiations next year.

All dues-paying members of the WMU-AAUP bargaining unit are invited to participate or just to listen and learn. Colleagues who are considering applying for the 2017 bargaining team or serving in other WMU-AAUP leadership positions are especially encouraged to attend, as are all faculty who want to know more about the contract.

The national AAUP’s workshop description:

What’s meaningful in a particular collective bargaining agreement is greatly shaped by local conditions: the nature of the institution and its resources, and the needs of the faculty in the bargaining unit as it is constituted. But what has transpired at other bargaining tables can spark new directions on your campus. And sometimes a fresh, “outsiders’ view” of a contract can be a useful source of ideas on how to shape your bargaining agenda.

As you begin the process of preparing to go to the table, the national office staff can review your current contract, and present thoughts on changes that you might wish to bargain for. Alternatively, we can prepare an analysis of specific provisions of your contract that you may be interested in modifying in bargaining. In either case, we can offer examples of language in other current agreements, to help flesh out what the possibilities are, and to serve as ammunition at your table.

Join us!

Statement on administration’s Spring 2016 course evaluation plan

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On March 18, teaching and clinical supervisory faculty received an email from the registrar about Spring 2016 course evaluations, announcing that “course evaluation forms will be available for students to complete for all courses with more than 3 enrolled students.”

This means that student rating data will be collected for every section of every course taught this semester. This constitutes an administrative violation of Article 16 of the Agreement:

Article 16§4: “Student ratings shall be conducted in each class taught by a bargaining unit faculty member in at least one semester of each academic year (to be determined by the faculty member).”

In other words, Article 16§4 ensures that you decide which class section is evaluated in a given semester and that you decide the semester in which each class is evaluated, period. If you teach multiple sections of the same course, you need only have one section evaluated per academic year. According to the contract, if you already taught a course and had it evaluated in the fall, you are not required to have the same course evaluated again in the spring. Unfortunately, the administration is choosing not to honor the contract language this semester.

Language regarding the frequency of evaluation data collection has been in the contract for 35 years, and for the past 14 years, the faculty’s contractual right to make these decisions has been stated explicitly. (A timeline for how this language came to be in the contract and how it has evolved over the years is available here.)

It is the union’s job to defend the contract and protect faculty rights. Every single right and benefit in our contract is in there because faculty who came before us fought for it, won it, and had to give up something to get it. That is the nature of negotiation. Therefore, the WMU-AAUP Executive Committee, in consultation with the WMU-AAUP Association Council, voted to reject the proposal to conduct evaluations in all sections of all courses this semester when it was presented to us. We could not in good conscience agree to make a concession regarding language that has been in our contract since 1981.

WMU faculty are rightly proud of the top-quality instruction we provide to our students and deeply invested in receiving substantive feedback from them. The WMU-AAUP is equally invested in helping our faculty colleagues access reliable, useful feedback that is free of the kinds of racial, gender, and other bias that unfortunately many colleagues have experienced firsthand in their ratings and that has been well documented in the scholarly literature on student ratings.

These are problems that our 2011 and 2014 negotiation teams raised at the bargaining table. Both times, the administration refused to engage in conversation to try to solve them.

We value the time and energy that the members of the joint committee brought to this project, and we share their disappointment in the outcome. In collaboration with the Executive Committee, our 2014 bargaining team envisioned a process of brainstorming to generate creative solutions to improve course evaluation response rates and develop evaluation instruments that minimize potential bias, and we are still optimistic that this can be achieved without faculty conceding any contractual rights.

But given the growing body of research into bias in student ratings, it would have been irresponsible for the WMU-AAUP Executive Committee to agree to the expanded use of a flawed rating instrument or to allow a negotiated contractual right to be circumvented in the process.

In order to preserve as many of your rights under Article 16 as possible, you may choose not to release your Spring 2016 ratings data to your chair and dean. In this way, you will at least have the right to decide which data from Spring 2016, if any, are used in tenure and promotion decisions.

However, this does not mean that the administration’s plan to require evaluation of all sections of all classes taught in Spring 2016 does not violate the contract. It does.

The WMU-AAUP Association Council will discuss the faculty’s options for responding to this contract violation at the Council meeting scheduled for Friday, March 25, at 1:30 p.m., in room 210 of the Bernhard Center. All bargaining-unit faculty are invited to attend this meeting. (All Association Council meetings are open to all members of the bargaining unit.)

Timeline: Contract language on course evaluations 1976-present

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Image of cover of 2014-17 Agreement

WMU faculty are rightly proud of the top-quality instruction we provide to our students and deeply invested in receiving substantive feedback from them. The WMU-AAUP is equally invested in helping our faculty colleagues access reliable, useful feedback that is free of the kinds of racial, gender, and other bias that unfortunately many of our colleagues have experienced firsthand in their ratings and that by now have been well documented as endemic to student evaluations of teaching. These are issues that our 2011 and 2014 negotiation teams raised at the bargaining table. Both times, the administration refused to engage in this conversation. Still, we remain hopeful that creative solutions can be found through open collaboration between faculty, administration, and students.

The first WMU-AAUP Agreement (1976-77):

The authority for determining how teaching effectiveness would be measured and reported belonged to the faculty: It was “the responsibility of the faculty in each department” to determine “the evaluation methods to be used” and “the procedures to be followed.”

A department’s procedures “may provide for” student ratings. Peer evaluation was required, while “external evaluation” was “encouraged in appropriate circumstances,” and “self-evaluation” was “strongly recommended.”

1977-78:

The role of the faculty is reaffirmed. New language appears, emphasizing that “student evaluations are primarily intended for use in faculty self-improvement.” Similar language is retained in every subsequent contract and still appears in Article 16 of the 2014-17 Agreement.

1978-81:

The original 1976-77 language along with the language added in 1977-78 is retained. The authority for determining how evaluation of teaching will be conducted and procedures for how evaluative data is reported remains with the faculty.

1981-84:

Student ratings are required for the first time “in at least one semester of each academic year.” Similar language governing the frequency of data collection appears in every subsequent contract, although it was strengthened in 2002 and the stronger version has been retained since then.

1984-87:

First contractual mention of a “nationally normed” rating instrument to be used across all departments at WMU, although it goes only as far as establishing a committee to consider such an instrument. No faculty rights from previous contracts are relinquished.

1987-90 and 1990-93:

Nothing here to indicate that a “nationally normed” instrument has been adopted at WMU, despite the 1984-87 directive. No mention again of a uniform instrument to be used across the university until 1993-96. No faculty rights from previous contracts are yielded in 1987-90 or 1990-93.

1993-96:

First contract language to require one university-wide instrument. Also notable because it appears to shift responsibility and authority for determining evaluation procedures away from department faculty. However, the instrument and guidelines for use are not specified, and the language of the next two contracts indicates that the university-wide instrument and guidelines envisioned in 1993 did not actually come to pass while the 1993-96 contract was in effect.

1996-99 and 1999-2002:

First to state that “Departmental faculty shall use a uniform student rating form” for all faculty in the department. No reference to a university-wide instrument, despite language included in the 1993-96 contract on that topic. Specifies that “Each department may maintain in use its own established rating form, or may generate its own form, or may select a rating form from a file of such instruments housed in the Office of Faculty Development.” The same language is used in the 1999-2002 Agreement.

2002-05:

Language governing the frequency for collecting student rating data in every contract since 1981-84 is revised and expanded. Original language directed that “Student evaluations shall be conducted in every class taught by unit faculty members in at least one semester of each academic year.” The 2002-05 version adds “(to be determined by the faculty member)” at the end of the sentence. This strengthened language from the 2002-05 Agreement has appeared in every subsequent contract and still stands in the 2014-17 Agreement.

Parties also “agreed to move, on a trial basis, over the course of this Agreement, toward the use of one valid and reliable student rating instrument by all members of the bargaining unit.” To that end, a new committee is established, along with a timeline for finding and adopting an instrument.

2005-08 and 2008-11:

Both preserve all faculty rights regarding the collection and use of rating data. 2005-08 adds new language regarding the use of a university-wide student rating instrument for use across all departments and establishes the ICES Steering Committee.

The parties “agree to the use of one valid and reliable student rating instrument by all members of the bargaining unit,” namely the one “recommended by the Evaluation Study Committee in its report of February 14, 2003,” a/k/a ICES (paper version). The same language appears in the 2008-11 contract, which also retains all faculty rights regarding the collection and use of rating data.

2011-14:

Language codifying the use of ICES online is added. All language articulating faculty rights regarding the collection and use of rating data is retained.

Context: Student participation rates in the online version of ICES introduced in 2010 were so low as to render the data practically meaningless. At the table in 2011, the administration’s team wanted an all-classes, every-semester model for evaluation as a fix. It appeared to be an attempt to get the WMU-AAUP team to give up a faculty right that has been in every contract since 1981 but would not solve the problems at hand. The WMU-AAUP team said no and challenged the general reliability of student ratings, citing research demonstrating that bias is endemic to student evaluations. The administration’s team was not interested in talking about that.

The two sides negotiated a Letter of Agreement (LOA) to establish a joint committee to work on ideas for improving student participation rates before the next negotiation (2014).

2014-17

The joint committee established by the 2011 LOA was not successful. The WMU-AAUP appointees resigned when administrators on the committee tried to expand the committee’s charge and reconsider how faculty teaching is evaluated more widely, a contractual matter that was therefore better suited for the bargaining table. The committee was disbanded shortly thereafter.

At the table in 2014, the two sides again discussed the low student participation rates. Once again, the administration’s team suggested moving to an every-class, every-semester model, and once again they did not offer any evidence that this would improve per-class participation rates. The WMU-AAUP team said no and once again brought evidence of bias in course evaluations. And once again, the administration would not discuss this.

Another LOA establishing another joint committee was signed. This time, a timeline for the committee’s work was included. The committee’s recommendation in 2015 was to conduct a pilot study in which all sections of all courses would be evaluated, a model that the 2011 and 2014 WMU-AAUP negotiation teams had already rejected at the bargaining table.

The WMU-AAUP Executive Committee, in consultation with the 2014 team, voted against the proposal on grounds that it would violate the longstanding language in Article 16§4: “Student ratings shall be conducted in each class taught by a bargaining unit faculty member in at least one semester of each academic year (to be determined by the faculty member).”

All language articulating faculty rights regarding the collection and use of rating data is retained in the 2014-17 Agreement.

 

Some recent studies and reports on bias in course evaluations:

“An evaluation of course evaluations,” Stark and Freishtat, Science Open, September 26, 2014.

“Bias against female instructors,” Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, January 11, 2016.

“Do the best professors get the worst ratings?” Nate Kornell, Psychology Today, May 31, 2013.

“Evaluating students’ evaluations of professors,” Bragaa, Paccagnellab, and Pellizzari, Economics of Education Review 41, August 2014.

“Flawed evaluations,” Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, June 10, 2015.

“Needs improvement: Student evaluations of professors aren’t just biased and absurd—they don’t even work,” Rebecca Schuman, Slate, April 24, 2014.

“Online students give instructors higher marks if they think instructors are men, North Carolina State University News, December 9, 2014.

“Student evaluations of teaching (mostly) do not measure teaching effectiveness,” Boring, Ottoboni, and Stark, Science Open Research, January 7, 2016.

“Student course evaluations get an F,” Anya Kamenetz, NPR.org, September 26, 2014.

“Student evaluations offer bad data that leads to the wrong answer,” Stuart Rojstaczer, New York Times, September 18, 2012.

“Student evaluations of teaching are probably biased. Does it matter?” Erik Voten, Washington Post, October 10, 2013.

“Students praise male professors,” Kaitlin Mulhere, Inside Higher Ed, December 10, 2014.

 

University of Wisconsin System Regents Approve New Policies Weakening Tenure

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In the Spring 2016 issue of the WMU-AAUP Advocate newsletter, we reported on developments in Wisconsin regarding actions taken by the state legislature and Gov. Scott Walker to cut public higher education funding in that state by $250 million and significantly weaken tenure, due process, and shared governance rights for faculty at public universities in the state. (“Walker erodes college professor tenure,” Politico, July 12, 2015.)

We also reported that a task force had been appointed to write new policy language for tenure in the University of Wisconsin System and that the draft policy produced by the task force in December 2015 had raised serious questions and concerns for professors in Wisconsin.

(Click here to read the Advocate article.)

In early February, the language went before a committee of the UWS Board of Regents, whose members endorsed it without discussion and sent it on to the full board for review. On March 10, 2016, the board voted to approve statewide rules that will significantly weaken tenure and due process protections for faculty at all UW campuses.

As the Wisconsin State Journal reported on March 11:

Under the new rules, UW officials will have the authority to discontinue academic programs and lay off tenured faculty for educational or financial reasons — such as if administrators decide other “higher priority” programs need funding. Professors could also face discipline, including firing, if they are found to be falling short of expectations under a new policy for post-tenure review.

(“Regents approve new policies for UW tenure over professors’ objections,” Wisconsin State Journal, March 11, 2016.)

According to an article in Inside Higher Ed, “regents cited the need, in an era of tight budgets, for ‘flexibility’ to close programs — and eliminate faculty jobs in the process.” Several amendments to the new policy language were proposed by faculty and by dissenting members of the board that would have strengthened tenure and due-process protections. Two of the amendments were voted down by the board 11-5. Another failed in an 8-8 deadlock. (“‘Fake’ Tenure?” Inside Higher Ed, March 11, 2016.)

As the Wisconsin State Journal reports,

Under the new rules, UW officials will have the authority to discontinue academic programs and lay off tenured faculty for educational or financial reasons — such as if administrators decide other “higher priority” programs need funding.

Professors could also face discipline, including firing, if they are found to be falling short of expectations under a new policy for post-tenure review.

One member of the UWS Board of Regents, José Vásquez, spoke out against the new policies at the meeting last Thursday where the new language was ultimately approved. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Mr. Vásquez “drew applause from the audience at the board meeting by protesting that the financial pressures on the system were not its own doing but the result of a lack of adequate financial support from the state”:

“It was not tenure that caused the fiscal crisis. It was not faculty who were entrenched and did not want to terminate programs,” Mr. Vásquez said. “The fiscal crisis that we have has been imposed on us.”

(“Wisconsin Regents Approve New Layoff and Tenure Policies Over Faculty Objections,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10, 2016.)

Julie Schmid, executive director of the national AAUP, told the Wisconsin State Journal that the new rules “could set a precedent for weakening tenure protections across the country.” According to Dr. Schmid,

“The Board of Regents today voted to diminish tenure and academic freedom in the UW System, and with it to diminish the reputation of the system, and to undermine the Wisconsin Idea.”

The national AAUP issued a statement on March 10 in response to these developments:

Tenure in Wisconsin

It is now clear that the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents has adopted a policy that provides weaker protections of tenure, and thus of academic freedom, than what has long been the norm in Wisconsin and than what is called for under the standards approved by the American Association of University Professors. What is not clear is why the regents have adopted such a policy. The policy appears to be only the latest step in an ongoing attack on the University of Wisconsin as a public good that exists for the benefit of all citizens of the state. It jeopardizes the working conditions of faculty and academic staff as well as the learning conditions of students in the university. Weakening tenure at the University of Wisconsin weakens the University of Wisconsin.

The regents had an opportunity to affirm the University of Wisconsin System’s commitment to academic freedom and to the university’s continued contribution to the common good, as enshrined in the Wisconsin Idea. They failed to do so. The reason for the adoption of the present policy will likely become apparent when it is put into practice. The American Association of University Professors and its chapters in the state will pay close attention to how these policies are going to be deployed.

Why this matters in Michigan:

WMU faculty, along with professors at all public universities in the state, should note that in Michigan, the authority to govern public universities rests with each institution’s Board of Trustees rather than in Lansing. This means that no act of the state legislature, like the bill passed in Wisconsin and signed by the governor last July, would be required to shift this authority to institutional governance boards because they already have it.

But we are fortunate that WMU is a union campus. This means that despite the constitutional autonomy that vests our Board of Trustees with considerable power, our WMU-AAUP contract is a legally binding barrier to instituting similarly draconian policies on our own campus.

But make no mistake: We are going to have to be vigilant.

As we wrote in the spring Advocate, we all need to pay close attention to the developments in Wisconsin. The political realities that have led to this point — where tenure protections, academic freedom, and faculty rights to due process in one of the most highly regarded state university systems in the United States are being systematically dismantled before our eyes — are not contained by state borders.

There are powerful people and organizations in this state and beyond who are watching what is unfolding in Wisconsin right now with gleeful anticipation. There is no question but that they would like to try to impose similar policies on state universities here in Michigan. And we are already seeing resource-shifting on our own campus that is cause for concern.

At WMU, the only thing standing in the way of the kind of abridgment of faculty rights that we are seeing in Wisconsin is our union contract. We are fortunate to have a strong union and powerful contract language. But the state legislature has shown no sign that they plan to back off on trying to pass more anti-union legislation, which is part of what made what is now happening in Wisconsin possible. Additionally, the misplaced priorities of the Republican-controlled legislature in Michigan and their ongoing disinvestment in public higher education indicate that tough times on our own campus are very likely here to stay for the foreseeable future.

That means if we intend to preserve our rights as faculty, we are going to have to fight for them. Complacency is not an option.

Please plan to attend the WMU-AAUP chapter meeting scheduled for Friday, April 8, at 1:30pm, in 105 Bernhard Center. We will discuss the situation in Wisconsin, how we can stand with our colleagues there, and how we can stand up against encroachments on tenure, academic freedom, and due-process rights here on our own campus. All members of the WMU-AAUP bargaining unit are encouraged to attend this important meeting.

Read more about developments in Wisconsin:

“Attack on college tenure threatens our humanities,” Hartford Courant, March 13, 2016.

“Attack on tenure harms academic freedom,” LaCrosse Tribune, Mar 7, 2016.

“‘Fake’ Tenure?” Inside Higher Ed, March 11, 2016.

“Regents approve new policies for UW tenure over professors’ objections,” Wisconsin State Journal, March 11, 2016.

“Wisconsin: Now the real battle begins,” Academe Blog, March 11, 2016.

“Wisconsin regents approve new layoff and tenure policies over faculty objections,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10, 2016.

 

National AAUP Issues Statement on Developments in Wisconsin
(As reported in the Spring 2016 issue of the WMU-AAUP Advocate newsletter)

At a time when faculty rights to tenure and due process are being challenged by administrators and lawmakers nationwide, as well as misrepresented to the public, the national AAUP’s Statement on Developments in the University of Wisconsin System, issued on November 5, 2015, is an important reminder of some of the foundational principles of our profession.

After the Wisconsin legislature removed tenure and shared governance protections for UWS faculty, the AAUP and AFT-Wisconsin called on the UWS Board of Regents to enact policies consistent with AAUP principles through a process involving faculty and staff governance bodies. The Regents temporarily enshrined prior statutory language regarding tenure and shared governance and created a system-wide task force to craft new policy. In an initial conversation with the AAUP’s Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance, the UWS administration pledged that the new policies would follow AAUP standards.

However, early draft recommendations from the task force were fraught with conflicts with AAUP policies and standards. But in December 2015, the task force finalized an improved set of draft policies, although some faculty members who served on the task force questioned draft language related to post-tenure review and language regarding layoffs added by the UW System general counsel. Faculty members worried that “allowing for layoffs to accommodate program changes short of discontinuation raises the risk that faculty will be targeted for engaging in unpopular speech or controversial lines of research.” (“UW tenure task force wraps up on a note of uncertainty,” Capital Times, December 24, 2015.)

Vice President of the UWS Board of Regents John Behling, who chairs the task force, wrote in an op-ed that UWS “must be able to operate more like modern private and nonprofit sector organizations that, in challenging and often unpredictable times, respond to changing market forces, demographics, trends and demands.” On layoffs, Behling wrote: “Our new policy proposal empowers chancellors to discontinue programs as necessary for educational or financial reasons, and, if absolutely necessary, it allows for faculty in those programs to be laid off.” (“Opinion: UW tenure reforms provide flexibility, accountability,” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, December 22, 2015.)

While Behling maintains that “Tenure is a critical bedrock of higher education,” critics point out that the Regents “can’t have it both ways.” In a letter to the editor responding to Behling’s op-ed, Chad Alan Goldberg, Professor of Sociology at UW-Madison, wrote that the Regents “can either uphold a strong tenure policy or it can give administrators more flexibility to fire faculty.” He added that “The purpose of a strong tenure policy is precisely to limit administrators’ flexibility to reallocate resources and staff so that such decisions do not infringe on academic freedom and are based on educational considerations as determined primarily by the people most qualified to do so, namely, the faculty.” Finally, he reminded the Regents and the public that tenure is “not a ‘job for life’; it’s a right to due process.” (“Letter to the Editor: Regents can’t have it both ways,” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, December 29, 2015.)

The draft policy will go to the UWS Board of Regents in February. Behling said that their staff “will refine the drafts” of the policies on tenure and on post-tenure review and that “the language could change further at the hand of regents.” (“UW tenure task force wraps up on a note of uncertainty,” Capital Times, December 24, 2015.)

The AAUP national staff and leadership, along with AAUP faculty and their chapters in Wisconsin, remain vigilant in working to ensure that UWS policies comport with AAUP standards, but current developments are not promising.

In Michigan, the authority to govern public universities already rests with each institution’s Board of Trustees. We need to watch the developments in Wisconsin because the political realities behind them are not bound by state borders. At WMU, the only protection for faculty rights is our union contract. Fortunately, we have a strong union and powerful contract language. But it will take our ongoing vigilance to preserve our rights as faculty.

Follow this link to read the full AAUP statement.