Category Archives: What Professors Do

January 2019 WMU-AAUP leadership transition

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Photo of outgoing WMU-AAUP President Lisa Minnick


Leadership Transitions + Lame-Duck Legislation:
The More Things Change… | 

Letter to the faculty
from WMU-AAUP President Lisa Minnick (2013-18) |

December 7, 2018 |

 

Dear colleagues,

Last week when I started thinking about what I would say in this message, I was thinking about how much has changed over the last six years, particularly since December 11, 2012, when Gov. Rick Snyder signed Michigan’s so-called “right to work” (RTW) bills into law. The legislation had been introduced during the lame-duck session that year, amid massive protests outside the Capitol building in Lansing. It passed along party lines without public hearings by a majority party that knew it would not have the votes when the new legislature convened in January 2013.

What I had been thinking last week that I would write about was how far Michigan has come since that terrible, blustery day in Lansing in December 2012, when I protested alongside faculty colleagues and members of WMU’s AFSCME and AFT locals, along with thousands of other people from all across the state. It seemed surreal that this kind of legislation could even be on the table in Michigan, let alone that it could pass. But it did, and here we are.

There will be no turning the clock back on the effects of RTW in Michigan, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision earlier this year in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, which effectively nationalized RTW laws. Still, there are all kinds of other ways to improve the labor climate at the state level, provided that there is the political will to make it happen.

We have not seen much of that kind of political will in Lansing in recent years. Many of the values we share as the faculty of a public university, and as union members, have not been priorities for the majority party. Under their legislative and executive leadership, we have seen higher education funding decline and anti-labor legislation proliferate. In addition to RTW, we have witnessed the repeal of Michigan’s prevailing wage laws and ongoing attacks on the rights and benefits of K-12 educators.

But last month, Michigan voters elected an unapologetically pro-labor governor, Gretchen Whitmer. That means starting next month, while we still won’t have a labor-friendly legislature, Lansing will start to feel a little less unfriendly. In last month’s election, the labor-unfriendly folks lost five seats – and their supermajority – in the state Senate and another five seats in the state House. Should they pass anti-union legislation or bills that would harm public higher education in the next session, we can count on Gov. Whitmer to veto it.

There are still any number of challenges ahead of us, I was thinking I would write, on campus and beyond, but for the first time almost a decade, the balance of political power in Michigan feels like it may be moving in a pro-labor, pro-education direction. With significant majorities of voters saying yes last month to the ballot initiatives to end gerrymandering and make voting and registration easier and more accessible, there is good reason for even more optimism in the next few years.

That’s what I was thinking about last week. And it’s all still true. But now that the Michigan legislature’s lame-duck session is underway, things are getting a little more complicated.

As in North Carolina in 2016 and more recently in Wisconsin, Michigan is now also the scene of what appear to be anti-democratic power grabs by a party whose legislative dominance was reduced (although not reversed) and who lost control of the offices of governor, attorney general, and secretary of state when Michigan voters repudiated their candidates last month. They are now using bills introduced in the lame-duck session to try to limit the powers of those offices and also to weaken the anti-gerrymandering and voter-access initiatives, both of which voters favored overwhelmingly last month. Additionally, bills that would harm workers by cutting back planned minimum wage increases and paid sick leave protections have already passed both houses of the legislature and await the outgoing governor’s signature.

Several anti-union bills are also in the lame-duck mix, including Senate Bill 1260, which would require public-sector labor unions (like ours) to hold a recertification election every two years. It appears that the goal of SB 1260 is to try to neutralize union participation in electoral politics. The WMU-AAUP does not fund political candidates or ballot initiatives, so we are not a target for the bill’s sponsors, but that wouldn’t matter if this bill becomes law, because we would see the same increased demands on our resources as any other public-sector union, which would make it harder for us to do the work we are here to do: defend the contract and protect faculty rights.

When we came back to school after the holidays in January 2013, we had no way to know how the RTW laws would affect our chapter or our professional lives as university faculty and union members. Our contract was set to expire on September 5, 2014, after which date Western Michigan University would become a RTW campus.

We know now that we have not only survived RTW but have built significantly on the strength of our chapter and increased faculty engagement in union activities over the past six years. That doesn’t mean RTW wasn’t a serious blow to us after 40 years as an agency shop. It absolutely was. But more than anything, the continuing health and success of our chapter is a tribute to the more than 800 dues-paying members of the WMU-AAUP bargaining unit. Many of you took up the difficult but essential work of old-fashioned, on-the-ground, one-on-one union organizing and helped to plan and roll out our year-long contract campaign for the 2014 negotiation cycle. You’re the reason we’re still here, stronger than ever.

What we learned is that our model worked. Chapters in other states are following it now. They need to because the Janus v. AFSCME decision means that a lot of them are now where we were in 2013. Since RTW, we have had to direct more of our time and more of our chapter resources into organizing, outreach, and retention, no question. But we knew that was what it would take. We made a plan, we got ourselves trained, and most important, we collaborated. In small groups and large, within and across departments and colleges, on campus and in the community, the faculty showed up, had the conversations, and did the work. We did it with the understanding that in this new world of RTW, that work must be ongoing. And it has been.

After the election last month, I felt for the first time in six years a noticeable shift in the political energy in this state and the real possibility that positive change is in the offing. These lame-duck shenanigans, along with word of another anti-union case that is likely to end up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court next year, have been an unwelcome reminder of how vigilant we are still going to have to be. In a country where for most of its history, citizens have mostly been able to count on peaceful transitions of power, these egregious attempted power grabs in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and now Michigan suggest that we may no longer be able to take for granted that the will of the electorate is going to be honored. Additionally, there is still well-funded, well-organized opposition to unions in this country and no chance that they will just give up and stop trying to ban collective action in the workplace and silence the voices of working people. If anything, they are emboldened by a string of recent victories in court and in state legislatures.

So, rather than a farewell message in which I say Yes! We have done all right! We are going to be OK! Things are going to get better! – although I still think all that is true – instead I will sign off my last message to the faculty as WMU-AAUP president with, perhaps appropriately, all things considered, a call to action:

First, we are going to need to be able to count on your continuing vigilance, your help to keep building strength and solidarity, and most of all, your visible and vocal engagement in the union. That means answering the call when you are needed, showing your allegiance proudly and unapologetically, and finding ways to support the organization that fit your schedule, your interests, and your skills. The WMU-AAUP has good work for everyone, a lot of it inspiring and even fun and all of it meaningful. Please plan to do more of it in 2019. (Bonus: It counts as professional service for tenure and promotion.)

Second, and this one’s more urgent: Please call, email, tweet at, post on their Facebook pages, and/or otherwise contact your state legislators and tell them to vote NO on these union-busting, anti-worker, anti-democratic lame-duck bills. Since unfortunately all are likely to pass both houses (at this writing, some already have), please also contact Gov. Rick Snyder and urge him to do the right thing by vetoing these terrible bills. At this point, he is going to be the only one who can stop any of this.

(Scroll down or click here for links to more information about the bills and contact information for our elected officials.)

While we’re on the subject of electoral politics, I will say that while I am generally opposed on principle to term limits, I am happy to make an exception in the case of our chapter leadership. Identifying and developing emerging leaders, and then standing back so that they can lead, are essential elements for ensuring the health and evolution of an organization like ours. I am excited about the deep bench of incoming and upcoming chapter leaders and proud of the work we have been doing over the past six years to build it.

In that spirit, I am also very much looking forward to handing over the reins (to coin a phrase) to WMU-AAUP President-elect Carol Weideman when she takes office officially on January 1, 2019. Thanks to Carol, VP-elect Mark St. Martin, and contract officers Robert Trenary and Natalio Ohanna, who will both continue in their positions into the new year, the WMU-AAUP will be in excellent hands going forward. I am excited about the new directions Carol and her team will take us, and I know I can count on all of you to make sure she knows you have her back the way so many of you have always had mine.

It has been a delight to work with Carol, Robert, and Natalio, and with chapter secretary Tim Michael and treasurer Betsy Aller. It has also been a privilege to serve alongside our many other fine officers over the years, all of whom deserve to be recognized by name (and I apologize for not doing that here). The same goes for the dedicated members of the WMU-AAUP Executive Committee, our college-level reps, whose labor on the faculty’s behalf is tireless and indispensable. That is also true of the WMU-AAUP Association Council, our department reps, who are some of the savviest, most engaged union activists on our campus. What a joy it has been to work with you. And speaking of people with whom it is a joy to work, our chapter staff, Susan Esman and Lori Maguire, belong at the top of that list. Their loyalty to the faculty, institutional memory, and just straight-up awesomeness are invaluable to the success of the chapter. They have made my job unimaginably easier in more ways than I can count and probably in more ways than I even realize.

This is not the easiest job in the world and can feel damn near impossible at times. But it also comes with some incredible rewards (alas, not of the remunerative kind). What stands out the most for me is the opportunities I’ve had to meet and work with colleagues in every college and nearly every academic unit, many of whose paths I might never have crossed were it not for this job. I never stop being blown away by the innovative, important, and brilliant work you are doing as researchers, scholars, artists, and teachers; how much you give of yourselves to make sure our students thrive; how quietly, humbly, invisibly, and selflessly you do much of your work as professors; and what extraordinarily wise, thoughtful, generous, and (best of all) incredibly kind human beings you are. I am proud to work alongside you as your faculty colleague, and it has been an honor beyond anything I can express in words to have served as your WMU-AAUP president. Thank you for trusting me with this responsibility and this privilege.

Wishing everyone a joyous and restorative holiday season and a happy, healthy new year.

With gratitude and in solidarity,
Lisa

—

Lisa C. Minnick
President, WMU-AAUP

Guide to lame-duck legislation and contact info for elected officials:

  • Other worker-unfriendly bills (SB 1171 and 1175) that would significantly reduce the previously approved minimum wage increase and paid sick leave requirements:

Contact info for elected officials:

  • State house, 60th District (City of Kalamazoo, part of Kalamazoo Township and part of Portage): Rep. Jon Hoadley (517-373-1785). Rep. Hoadley has already voted against bills that would gut the previously approved minimum wage increase and paid sick-leave provisions and told me last week that his vote on SB 1260 is “definitely NO.” He has been a consistent fighter for higher education and labor rights, so please take a minute to give him a call to thank him if you are so inclined.
  • State house, 61st District (City of Portage, Townships of Oshtemo, Prairie Ronde, Schoolcraft and Texas): Rep. Brandt Iden (517-373-1774). Rep. Iden has already voted in favor of reducing the minimum wage increase and paid sick-leave requirements approved earlier this year. I don’t know that there is much hope here, but he definitely needs to hear from his constituents who are union members before SB 1260 goes to the House for a vote.
  • Gov. Rick Snyder: (517) 373-3400. When you call, please leave your name and your city, and state your request that the governor VETO Senate Bill 1260 and all lame-duck bills whose passage would harm working people, public education, and the democratic process in Michigan.

—

WMU-AAUP Chapter
814 Oakland Drive
Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008
(269) 345-0151

Web: http://wmuaaup.org

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Photo of protestors outside the Michigan state capitol building

Protestors outside Michigan state capitol on December 11, 2012. (Photo: Paul Sancya, AP)

Photo of protestors outside Michigan state Capitol, December 11, 2012.

Protestors outside Michigan state capitol on December 11, 2012. (Photo: CNN)

Carol Weideman elected WMU-AAUP president

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It’s official! Dr. Carol Weideman (Human Performance and Health Education) will be the next president of the WMU-AAUP. Carol has served as the chapter’s vice president for the past two years and will assume the office of president on January 1, 2019, for a two-year term. Dr. Mark St. Martin (Interdisciplinary Health Programs) has been elected vice president after several years as the WMU-AAUP Association Council rep for IHP. Carol and Mark bring a wealth of institutional experience, talent, and smarts to their positions and are looking forward to their new leadership roles. Congratulations to Carol and Mark!

photo of Carol Weideman holding WMU-AAUP solidarity signDr. Carol Weideman, WMU-AAUP President-elect

Congratulations are also in order for the newly elected (in some cases re-elected) members of the WMU-AAUP Executive Committee:

  • Colleges of Arts and Sciences (Humanities): Dr. Mercedes Tubino-Blanco (Spanish)
  • College of Education and Human Development: Dr. Tim Michael (HPHE)
  • College of Health and Human Services: Dr. Susan Kay Nelson (Nursing)
  • Haworth College of Business: Dr. Bruce Ferrin (Marketing)

(Executive Committee terms are staggered and representation is proportional.)

Congratulations to all the candidates and to our new chapter leaders! Thanks to all for their willingness to serve.

The proposed revisions to the WMU-AAUP Constitution and Bylaws have PASSED.

Letter to the faculty: Take your fall break October 17-19

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photo of forest with tall trees, sun peeking through, and red autumn leaves

October 16, 2018

Dear colleagues:

We’ve been receiving inquiries about whether faculty are required to report for work during the fall break, which takes place Wednesday through Friday of this week.

The answer, for both fiscal-year and academic-year faculty, is NO.

The fall calendar change this year, with the earlier academic-year start date, was negotiated in 2017 at the bargaining table and constituted a significant trade-off for us. What we got in return was (1.) a little more money than what had been on the table thus far and (2.) fall break. A deal is a deal. Faculty should absolutely take these three days off.

We encourage all faculty to take advantage of the fall break, not only because you deserve it (which of course you do), but also because the best way to protect the rights and benefits that have been negotiated and won at the bargaining table, including this one, is by using them. If some faculty show up to work during breaks, it can make it harder for us to enforce the rights of everyone else to take the time off to which all faculty are entitled.

Obviously taking a few days off is one of the easier and more fun ways to defend the contract, so this is a perfect opportunity for all of us to participate in a collective action to protect faculty rights. (And what’s not to love about a five-day weekend?)

In sum, fall break was negotiated at the bargaining table. And as you all know, we don’t get anything for free, including this. So please take it.

If you are being informed that you are obliged to report at any time during the break, please contact us immediately at 345-0151. Our office will be open until 4:30 p.m. today (Tuesday, October 16), after which we will be closed until Monday in observance of fall break. After close of business today, please email chapter officers directly with your concerns. Our contact info is linked here.

#5DayWeekend
#WeAreWorthIt
#StrengthInSolidarity

In solidarity,
Lisa

—

Lisa C. Minnick
President, WMU-AAUP
Associate Professor of English
and Gender & Women’s Studies
Western Michigan University

AC reps Wallace and Hennlich to be honored April 6

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Dr. Luchara Wallace (Special Education and Literacy Studies) and Dr. Andrew Hennlich (Frostic School of Art), will be recognized at the WMU-AAUP spring chapter meeting on April 6 as 2017-18 Outstanding Association Council Representatives.

As Association Council reps, Luchara and Andrew serve not only their department faculty but the entire WMU-AAUP bargaining unit, routinely going far beyond what is asked or expected of them in their elected roles. Their efforts strengthen the chapter and improve the quality of life on campus for all faculty.

photo of Dr. Luchara Wallace

 

Dr Luchara Wallace
Special Education and Literacy Studies

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Andrew Hennlich
Frostic School of Art

 

 

The WMU-AAUP Chapter is fortunate to have an exceptional group of faculty serving on the Association Council, with representation from every academic unit and a deep bench of seasoned and emerging union leaders, including Luchara and Andrew. They are part of a core group of our most active AC reps who can always be counted on to join us on the front lines when it comes to defending the contract, fighting to preserve and strengthen academic freedom and shared governance rights, and working to maintain and enhance the quality of our professional lives. This work takes resourcefulness, stamina, courage, and above all a calling to serve others. And they do most of it when nobody’s looking, all of it without extra compensation or release time, and usually with only a fraction of the appreciation and recognition they deserve.

Congratulations, Luchara and Andrew! Congratulations and thank you!

#StrengthInSolidarity

WMU-AAUP spring chapter meeting is Friday, April 6, at 1:30 p.m. in 157 Bernhard. 

WMU unions to face off in kickball extravaganza

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Friday, March 16 |
7-8:30 p.m. |
WMU Student Rec Center |

It is ON!

Get those knee braces on and get your ice packs ready: TAU has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged us to a kickball game, along with the Professional Instructors Organization (PIO) and AFSCME at WMU. The big event is coming up this Friday!

Those TAU whippersnappers may be younger than we are, they’re probably healthier on average, and they almost definitely have better knees, but we’ve got old age, treachery, and good insurance on our side, so let’s get out there and kick some. . . kickballs!

Admission is FREE FOR STUDENTS to what will surely be a spectacle of awesomeness that won’t soon be forgotten on this campus.

For everyone else, the price of admission is one non-perishable food item for the WMU Food Pantry or a donation to the WMU Invisible Need fund. You can donate online here. (Select ‘Invisible Need’ from the dropdown menu under the ‘Students’ tab.)

The game will be at the WMU Student Rec Center on Friday, March 16, 7-8:30 p.m. Colleagues, we will see you there in your WMU-AAUP colors: red and white!

#StrengthInSolidarity
#UnionStrong
#ThisIsAUnionCampus
#WhatCouldWePossiblyBeThinking
#OhWellAtLeastItWillBeFun

 

Letter to the faculty from WMU-AAUP President Lisa Minnick

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Letter to the faculty re. national student walkouts March 14 and April 20, 2018 |

February 26, 2018 |

Dear colleagues,|

As you are probably aware, plans are underway for several events that could impact your classes, including two planned national student walkouts responding to gun violence in schools, including the recent incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, that took the lives of 14 students and three teachers.

The first of these walkouts is scheduled for Wednesday, March 14. Its organizers, Women’s March Youth EMPOWER, are “calling for students, teachers, school administrators, parents and allies to take part in a #NationalSchoolWalkout for 17 minutes at 10 a.m. across every time zone” as a call to Congress and state legislatures to take meaningful action to prevent gun violence. (Learn more about the March 14 action here.)

A second walkout, this one organized by high school students led by Lane Murdoch, a 15-year-old sophomore in Ridgefield, Connecticut, is scheduled for Friday, April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings that killed 12 students and one teacher in 1999. The organizers write: “National Student Walkout is a nationwide protest of our leaders’ failure to pass laws that protect us from gun violence. After the horrific massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, young Americans are taking matters into their own hands. Together, we will send a message that we won’t tolerate any more inaction on this issue.” (Learn more about the April 20 action here and here.)

As many of you who are parents already know, students at several local schools have announced their plans to participate in the March 14 walkout, including students at Loy Norrix, Mattawan, and Portage Central High Schools and Milwood Middle School. Others are likely to join as well.

I am writing today because WMU students may also choose to participate in the walkouts, which could impact your classes if you teach on those days.

Faculty are fully within their rights to hold students to attendance policies set out in their course syllabi, including if the reason for the absence is to participate in constitutionally protected activity like the walkouts. Faculty members are also within their rights if they choose to waive attendance penalties to allow students to participate in these actions without consequence. Should a walkout occur at WMU, it is up to each faculty member to decide whether to penalize students for missing class if they choose to participate in a walkout. Obviously, any penalties should be consistent with the existing attendance policy.

However, students may not be disciplined or penalized, by faculty or by the institution, for expressing political views or participating in a peaceful protest. This is to say that there may be a penalty for a missed class meeting but not for any lawful political activities the student engages in while absent from class.

As always, and regardless of how you decide to proceed in the event of a student walkout, the WMU-AAUP is here to provide support and information to the faculty and to protect your rights. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with your questions.

Those are the facts. I hope you find them helpful.

But there is of course a lot more to all of this than the facts about policies governing attendance and about laws protecting students’ rights to free expression.

As an intellectually diverse faculty, we bring a variety of viewpoints and perspectives to how we conduct ourselves as professors and are not likely to be of one mind when it comes to how we choose to respond when students participate in political actions.

With that understanding, I offer my perspective on the upcoming walkouts. I am writing as a faculty member concerned about the safety of the students in our classrooms, not to mention our own safety and that of all members of our campus community. But I will note that this perspective is necessarily informed by my experience as the president of the WMU-AAUP Chapter, which is part of a national organization whose executive board and national council I sit on and which is active in the effort to keep firearms off college campuses.

I will support any and all WMU students who choose to participate in any kind of constitutionally protected action to protest the epidemic of gun violence on school campuses.

Yes, it is definitely inconvenient and frustrating when a class meeting is interrupted. It may make it difficult or impossible to cover important course material, and that affects all students, including those who choose not to walk out. I do understand that and feel it myself on occasions when I lose class time.

But we are poised at a unique cultural and historical moment, which young people around the country and in our own community have courageously seized. Some of these young leaders experienced the unimaginable horror of watching their friends, classmates, and teachers die two weeks ago. Others around the country have joined their movement. Something important is happening, something more important than what I have planned for my classes on any given day.

The students are taking the lead, but we are all in this together. In my role as chapter president, I have spoken with many of you over the years about concerns for your safety and that of your students and about the proliferation of dangerous weapons in our community and the possibility that they could one day be allowed on campus. I have listened to your stories about odd and in some cases alarming interactions you have experienced on campus and heard you talk about your fears about whether you will be able to get your students out of your classroom safely should it ever come to that.

Every one of these stories is unique, but they are all variations on a theme. And they are all heartbreaking. Heartbreaking because as we watch yet another school shooting and its aftermath unfold, we know that there is no rhyme or reason to any of it, no sense to be made, and no way to know whether and when our students might be in danger, or whether and when we might be in danger ourselves. Heartbreaking because every single colleague I have ever had a conversation like this with has made it clear that they would take a bullet for their students if they had to. Every single one of you.

In our determination to protect our students, we are no different from our colleagues across the nation, K-12 teachers and university professors, tenured faculty and part-timers alike. We share what many of us have come to understand as an almost sacred responsibility that comes with the job: to protect students, potentially even with our lives.

But we shouldn’t have to do that.

It is outrageous and unconscionable that we should be expected to die on the job and to be responsible for the literal lives of our students. It is equally unconscionable and outrageous that there are some in our communities who believe that we should also be responsible for taking the lives of students or others on campus who might pose a threat, people who believe that killing should be part of our job 

And yet here we are.

Many of us got into this line of work because we are inspired to work with young people to help them fulfill their potential and become as fully actualized as human beings as they possibly can. This is where I find the deepest satisfaction in my work as a professor, and I know a lot of you feel the same way. I love linguistics a lot, but even more I love watching students thrive and mature into their best selves. When I am able to help them with that, I feel that I am honoring one of the most important purposes of my work as a professor.

There is a lot more I could say about all this, but I think I have said enough to try to explain why I will excuse my students from their academic responsibilities on March 14 and April 20, 2018, and on any other day if they choose to participate in actions and take a stand for something they believe passionately about.

This is a pivotal moment in their lives and in our culture. We are engaged in a new civil rights movement that includes stands against racially motivated police violence, against discrimination and violence against people of color, the LGBT community, immigrants, and women, and now the #NeverAgain movement launched by a group of courageous teenagers who are inspiring other young people across the nation. If our students here at WMU feel inspired to be part of this movement, I not only want them to have that experience, but I also want them in this battle because they’re our best chance to succeed where those of us who came before them have fallen short. There is nothing I can teach them about language variation or historical linguistics or anything else I do in my classes that will matter more to their education and development as human beings than the experience of standing up for what they believe in, being part of history, and possibly even chalking up a few wins.

That means on March 14 and April 20, if some or all of my students decide that instead of coming to class or working on their data analysis projects or meeting me for office hours, they will walk out of their classes and add their voices to those of young people across the U.S. to say Never Again, they’ve got my blessing and I’ve got their backs.

While it is for each individual faculty member to decide how to handle a possible student walkout, I hope many of you will join me in standing with these brave young people.

In solidarity,
Lisa

—

Lisa C. Minnick
President, WMU-AAUP
Associate Professor of English
and Gender & Women’s Studies
Western Michigan University
814 Oakland Drive
Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008
(269) 345-0151

 

WMU-AAUP hosts WMU President Ed Montgomery today at 3:30 p.m.

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A conversation with President Montgomery
Friday, January 19, 3:305 p.m. in 157 Bernhard

The WMU-AAUP will host WMU President Ed Montgomery this afternoon (Friday, January 19), for a conversation in which all WMU-AAUP bargaining-unit faculty are invited to participate. We expect that President Montgomery will offer brief opening remarks, and then we will open the floor to questions and conversation.

Please join us today from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in 157 Bernhard for this opportunity to have our university president’s ear at an event where attendance is limited to the Board-appointed faculty.

Note to WMU-AAUP Association Council reps: This event immediately follows our AC meeting, also in 157 Bernhard. Please note the special 2 p.m. start time for the meeting.

Looking forward to seeing everyone this afternoon!

#StrengthInSolidarity
#WeAreWorthIt

WMU-AAUP resolution honors Dr. Howard Bunsis

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At the WMU-AAUP chapter meeting on November 10, 2017, the faculty voted unanimously in favor of a resolution to honor Dr. Howard Bunsis, professor of accounting at Eastern Michigan University, for his eight years of service as chair of the national AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress.

During his tenure as AAUP-CBC chair (2009-17), Howard was an active and supportive friend to the WMU-AAUP Chapter and a tireless advocate for collective bargaining rights, higher education as a public good, and the empowerment of faculty nationwide.

Full text of the resolution appears below the image.

Image of resolution document.

Resolution of Appreciation Honoring Dr. Howard Bunsis

WHEREAS Dr. Howard Bunsis has dedicated himself to serving college and university faculty, students, and the cause of higher education as a public good;

WHEREAS he has demonstrated his passion for and commitment to empowerment through education, both as a professor and in his work to educate faculty nationwide about AAUP ideals as well as training us in the practical skills of understanding university finances;

WHEREAS he has fought tirelessly and fearlessly to preserve and strengthen collective bargaining rights, academic freedom, and the faculty’s right to participate in shared governance;

WHEREAS he has stood up consistently and relentlessly to advocate for faculty, individually and collectively, inspiring many in the process to take more active roles ourselves;

WHEREAS he has been instrumental to organizing and building new chapters, strengthening existing chapters, and identifying, supporting, and mentoring emerging leaders;

WHEREAS during his eight years of service as chair of the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress, he has been an extraordinary and actively supportive friend to the WMU-AAUP Chapter, instrumental to our growth in recent years and to our strength today;

BE IT RESOLVED that the Western Michigan University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, authorized by a unanimous vote of its members:

Recognizes and honors Howard’s wisdom, generosity, and fierceness in advocating on behalf of the WMU-AAUP Chapter as well as on behalf of the profession more widely; and

Expresses its deepest appreciation, respect, and gratitude for Howard’s contributions, his tenacity, and his friendship to faculty everywhere and to our chapter in particular; and

With our congratulations on the completion of his eight years of service as chair of the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress, we offer this resolution to acknowledge at least in this small way the great debt of gratitude we owe him. And we wish for him going forward the lighter workload that he has clearly earned and deserves, the satisfaction of his positive impact on the future of the profession and on thousands of lives, and finally, more time to spend on other things that matter to him and especially with the people who matter most to him: his family.

Passed unanimously by the members of the WMU-AAUP Chapter
on November 10, 2017.

 

Remarks to the Board of Trustees, September 20, 2017

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by Lisa C. Minnick, WMU-AAUP President |

It’s been a year since the Presidential Search Advisory Committee began the work that resulted in the hiring of President Montgomery, whose inauguration we celebrated last week. President Montgomery, I am pleased to have this opportunity to welcome you officially on behalf of the WMU-AAUP, whose membership comprises the 900 members of the Board-appointed faculty in its entirety.

Last fall, the Presidential Search Advisory Committee met with faculty, staff, students, alumni, administrators, and community members to listen to their perspectives on the opportunities and challenges faced by Western Michigan University and, by extension, its next president. We asked them to describe the characteristics they thought the next president would need in order to succeed at making the most of the opportunities and addressing the challenges. We used what they told us to draft the position announcement and description of the characteristics and qualifications the university community wanted in its next president.

Despite the diverse needs and interests of these constituencies, I was surprised to hear the same themes repeatedly: WMU has the raw materials and is poised for greatness, but we need a leader who can help us get there. We need a leader who can help us make the most of our resources, the strongest and most valuable of which is of course our people. We need a leader who can help us build on our strengths, develop where we have been languishing, and realize our potential. We will all be on board for this journey, they said, but we need a leader who has the vision to help us figure out who we are, who we aspire to be, how to get there, and – critically – how to tell our story so the rest of the world will see what we see.

The repetition of these themes in conversation after conversation was striking. It made our charge simultaneously easier – because everyone wants the same thing! hooray! – and more difficult: How do we find someone with the skills, talent, experience, and energy to lead us in the colossal project we are setting out for ourselves? Is there actually a real person out there who can meet these standards? Can we find someone who can lead us effectively in the difficult work of crafting and articulating a collective vision for the university? Someone who can lead us to achieve our shared aspirations? Someone who can help us tell our story?

Obviously the ending of that particular story is already well known. We are very fortunate to have found a new president who is clearly more than prepared to do all those things. This is an exciting time for the university and for all of us who are part the enterprise.

Now that we are a few weeks into the academic year, and the inaugural festivities and the flurry and chaos of the beginning of the academic year are behind us, it seems like a good time to pause for a moment and think about the challenge of telling our story.

The phrase “tell our story” appears repeatedly in the notes I kept from the conversation sessions last fall and in my notes from meetings of the search committee itself. At the time, and again in reviewing these notes over the past few weeks, the idea of “telling our story” is one of the themes that stands out most for me.

I’m an English professor, so I could probably get away with saying that stories are my business. But I’m not a creative writer or a literature professor, so by that definition, stories are not actually my business. Still, as I was preparing Monday morning to teach my class in the history of the English language, I was reminded again not only that this course is built from a series of stories that I use to help students figure out why the language is the way it is, how it got to be that way, and what causes language to change over time, but really that all my classes are built around stories. I use stories to help make sense of things like how language variation is distributed, how and why people attach value to different ways of speaking, and what a phoneme is and why that definition can be so hard to make sense of. So, I’m going to claim it: Teaching and doing research in linguistics is storytelling. Stories are therefore my business.

But they’re everyone else’s business too. My faculty colleagues are all storytellers as well. This is true across disciplines. We all learn from the stories of the researchers, scholars, artists, and teachers who came before us. We build on these stories – and sometimes we change them: that’s discovery – and we share them with our students and colleagues. This is how knowledge is transmitted and continually generated and regenerated. It is a remarkable thing, this work we professors are engaged in.

Of course you can see where this is going. Storytelling is central not only to our academic mission but to our culture, and to every culture. Stories are how we go about figuring out the world – to the extent that any of us ever really figures it out – and telling stories is how we try to explain the world to others even as they use stories to figure it out for themselves and try to explain it to us. And when I say “we,” I don’t just mean professors. I mean human beings.

But even while my creative writing colleagues and students in the English department inspire me with their talent for creating compelling, original stories, we have to recognize that no story is made up out of whole cloth. All stories are ultimately built on and made of other stories.

This is all a long way of saying that the story of Western Michigan University belongs to all of us: students, faculty, staff, administration, alumni, members of the Board, retired faculty and staff colleagues, members of the community, and everyone else who cares about this institution. That means to tell the story of Western Michigan University is to tell our collective story. And that is something that cannot be done – at least, it can’t be done right – without a deliberate, intentional effort to listen to the stories of all us. Because that is the story.

What everyone told us last fall during the search suggests that we have been at a loss for a way to define ourselves and a way to tell the story of what makes Western Michigan University the special place we all know it is. I submit that much of this loss is a consequence of an unwillingness to listen. When the stories of people, of constituencies, and of academic disciplines are told by people who themselves have not listened to the people whose stories these rightly are, assumptions are made, people may be written off, and harmful decisions are sometimes made.

There is no possibility of a collective, collaborative enterprise achieving its full potential under those circumstances.

So I hope that with the new administration, we can start over. I hope we can do a better job of listening to one another, of respecting people enough to listen to them and to believe them when they tell their own stories.

On what may seem like but is not an unrelated note, I will add that I appreciate that the Board has ratified the new contract. I have mixed feelings about the contract although nothing but respect for my bargaining team, whose meticulous preparation and scrupulously professional conduct at the bargaining table throughout a long and grueling negotiation cycle sets an excellent example for how academic collective bargaining at Western Michigan University ought to be conducted.

I am concerned about the changes to our healthcare plan, including what are likely to be for many of my colleagues unsustainable increases to their out of pocket costs beginning in January. While I appreciate that the cost-of-living increases in the new contract are likely to keep pace with inflation, which would be better of course if we were not losing so much ground on healthcare, I am also concerned about the loss of benefits at the Sindecuse Health Center and Unified Clinics. Added to the already worrisome changes to our insurance costs, this is a substantial additional hit. As always, these changes will disproportionately affect colleagues on the lower end of the salary scale, but new this time is that those who are the sickest will pay the most. In sum, these changes are going to make people’s lives harder.

I wish that before we got to this point their stories had been sought out and listened to by the people who control the resources on this campus, and that is you all, ladies and gentlemen of the board, along with your administrative agents.

Prior to President Montgomery’s arrival, there was a tendency to dismiss or try to ignore stories that did not square with the administration’s official line. That kind of thing can damage any institution, and it has. In the spirit of a fresh start with our new president, I am asking all of you to join me in trying a different approach this time, one in which the stories of all the people who do the work of this institution are sought out, listened to, valued, and taken to heart.

Thank you for listening.

WMU-AAUP faculty approves new contract, trustees to vote Sept. 20

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Letter to the faculty from WMU-AAUP President Lisa C. Minnick |

September 19, 2017 |

Dear colleagues:

The faculty has voted in favor of ratifying the tentative agreement.

The WMU Board of Trustees will meet tomorrow (Wednesday, September 20) to hold their ratification vote. If they approve the new contract, it will go into effect immediately.

Upon ratification by the Board of Trustees, a two-percent salary increase will be retroactive to the beginning of the 2017-18 academic year for all WMU-AAUP bargaining-unit faculty on academic-year appointments and retroactive to July 1, 2017, for fiscal-year faculty. Additionally, all WMU-AAUP faculty will receive an additional salary adjustment (the research supplement) effective January 1, 2018, of an amount equivalent to one percent of the median salary at your rank.

The Board of Trustees will meet tomorrow at 11 a.m. in 157 Bernhard. As with all the board’s formal sessions, this meeting is open to the public. All faculty should consider attending. Important decisions that affect all of us will be made.

Better yet, please consider addressing the board at tomorrow’s meeting. The only way the trustees can know what faculty are thinking, feeling, and experiencing is if they hear it from us. Their interactions with faculty and staff are limited. They spend most of their time on campus with senior administrators. This obviously limits their perspective.

We can help them with that. And we should.

Your stories are powerful and deserve to be heard. The trustees will listen to what you have to say. Some of them will be moved by what they hear. All of them will learn from it.

Many of us enjoy the protection of tenure, and we all enjoy the protections that come with being union members. But these privileges come with the responsibility to use them in service to the greater good. As professors, of course, one of our foundational responsibilities is to serve others.

If faculty don’t do the work of engaging and educating the board — on our own behalf, on behalf of staff who are not protected the way we are, and ultimately on behalf of our students — things are unlikely to change in ways we would like them to.

Many thanks to everyone who participated in the ratification vote and to all who supported our team throughout the negotiation process. We appreciate you.

In solidarity,
Lisa

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Lisa C. Minnick
President, WMU-AAUP
Associate Professor of English
and Gender & Women’s Studies
Western Michigan University
814 Oakland Drive
Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008
(269) 345-0151