THE DAVID R. KELLER CHAPTER OF THE AAUP / AFT AT UVU

Colleagues, At the request of various people I have looked at the draft of Policy 601 that is being considered by the Faculty Senate and wrote the following.  I will appreciate your comments. Proposed Policy 601 .  Colleagues,  As it stands, the draft of Policy 601 creates an unwieldy structure to meet good, ethical ends that also violates academic freedom.  As a result, the policy should be rejected and thoroughly re-conceived before continuing forward.   The valuable ends of this policy include establishing expectations of professional conduct and of recognizing the legitimacy of some pedagogical ends, such as course accommodations based on disability and religion.  Nevertheless how it does so makes of those ends a problem such that in many cases it puts excessive detail as a proxy which then either does not meet the requirement or changes the nature of the classroom in ways that remove the freedom of the professor to make appropriat...

Professors blast UVU re-application as ‘purging policy’ Higher ed • Administrators defend requiring adjuncts to re-apply for their posts each spring. By Brian Maffly The Salt Lake Tribune Published: May 14, 2012 09:14AM Updated: May 13, 2012 11:41PM Utah Valley University adjunct professors are pushing back against a requirement that they re-apply for their posts each spring, saying it disrespects the part-timers who do most of the teaching at the Orem campus. UVU officials have billed the requirement as a housekeeping measure that has little bearing on actual hiring decisions, which remain with department heads. But some professors — tenured and adjunct alike — are making no secret of their displeasure of what they call a “purging policy,” devised without faculty input. “Instead of recognizing our essential contribution, the university not only discriminates against us, it humiliates us,” wrote adjunct Edwin Firmage in a recent opinion piece published by UVU’s student newspaper. ...

An interesting article about the use of contingent faculty: http://www.salon.com/2012/04/04/the_disposable_professor_crisis/

The business of education and other lies I t’s axiomatic today that organizations are best run like a business. In reality, however, it’s because we’ve been running everything like a business that our civilization now faces a multitude of systemic, possibly fatal problems. Among these is the decline in the quality of education. Last week, I wrote about the compensation gap that separates full-time from adjunct faculty at UVU. The gap is a manifestation of what writer Wendell Berry calls the “divide and conquer strategy of industry,” which destroys natural communities such as a faculty for the sake of short-term efficiency and profit. This compensation gap is the result of the university’s borrowing its operating paradigm from business. Full-time faculty salaries, especially in science and technology, are thus directly linked to those in industry. The trouble with this practice is that unlike industry, universities are not, and should not be, profit centers, the so-called “...

From the UVU Review, March 26, 2012 Wage slaves in the ivory tower The glass ceiling for UVU’s adjunct faculty has been questioned. Illustration by John-Ross Boyce. S ome weeks ago, the UVU Review ran a story about the gap in pay for faculty men and women. According to the story, the average annual salary for male faculty at UVU is $73,000, while that for female faculty is $71,000. Clearly, despite official policy, sexual discrimination is alive at UVU. But women faculty have this consolation: sexual discrimination is not policy. There is a faculty group, however, that have no such consolation: UVU’s dedicated, talented and essential adjunct instructors, who constitute two-thirds of UVU’s teachers. In the case of adjuncts, the discrimination is on a scale that makes the school’s gender bias pale in comparison. And, it is deliberate and systematic. Let’s take my own case. I presently teach two classes totaling seven credit hours. For this, I receive a monthly check ...

The following from Alex Simon, who has rejoined our faculty after several years in Alaska.    Thanks for the invitation to blog. I will definitely join the local AAUP chapter.  Here is the original article which resulted in me having a very public confrontation with Chancellor Pugh over academic freedom. I am convinced that without a union I would have been fired. http://juneauempire.com/stories/020509/loc_385027568.shtml Here is an editorial that AAUP Secretary Gary Rhoades wrote in response to the legislator’s threats to cut university funding: http://juneauempire.com/stories/020809/opi_385924086.shtml And here is an article which appeared in Inside Higher Education regarding the confrontation I had with Pugh regarding academic freedom. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/10/sex

18 October 2011 An Open Letter to Ian Wilson, Vice President for Academic Affairs, UVU Dear Ian,             I’ve been thinking a lot about our meeting last week. In several ways it was an important event, certainly for those of us in the AAUP, perhaps for you as well and for the University in general. In two decades of work with the AAUP, first at BYU and then at UVSC/UVU, I have often spoken with administrators about matters of concern, but only when we pushed a specific issue and then in an adversarial role.             Your invitation, then, with no current issue at stake, was unprecedented and even generous. It extends a pattern you have set over the years and especially since becoming VPAA, a pattern of openness to competing ideas and of concern for the opinions of all of us who work together at the University. Your speech in August to the CHSS faculty in which...