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

Michael Minch forwarded this link from Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy: http://www.krisis.eu/content/2015-2/Krisis-2015-2-complete-issue.pdf and this introduction: The new issue of  Krisis, Journal for Contemporary Philosophy  deals with the future of the university. The desire for a special issue on this topic was provoked by the  Maagdenhuis  protest at the University of Amsterdam in the early spring of 2015. The energy of surprise and enthusiasm released by the protests, the fact that direct and confrontational action “worked”, that it was even taken seriously and responded to, seemed to open up new horizons. We strove to capture some of the imaginative energy that was released by these events. The issue is organized along three points of focus: struggles, diagnoses and futures. Under the heading of struggles, the reader will find contributions that not only describe specific fights taking place but also be able to sense the passion and engage...

Labor-Day Statement on UVU’s Exploitation of Adjunct Faculty        Many of the classes at Utah Valley University, especially General Education classes, are taught by adjunct faculty members. They are, in most cases, experienced and professional teachers who work under the following exploitative conditions: The positions are contingent, meaning there is no commitment for ongoing employment. Classes can cancelled and/or added on the spur of the moment. The semester salary for a 3-hour class is $2,725. There are no medical or retirement benefits. The number of courses adjunct faculty may teach is severely limited. (If it were not, the University would have to include adjunct faculty in its medical insurance plan.) In order to earn a living and to sidestep institutional limits on numbers of classes, many adjunct faculty teach at several different institutions (2 classes at UVU, perhaps, and 2 at SLCC, and 2 at Westminster or BYU). A set ...

On the first of May of this year over one hundred current and former members of the UVU faculty and Staff (several us members of the UVU Chapter of the AAUP) published this letter in the Salt Lake Tribune. George Pyle wrote Sunday in the Salt Lake Tribune that Gene Schaerr, the lawyer hired by the State of Utah to argue against marriage equality in the 10 th Circuit Court of Appeals, has filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case and has done so for “100 Scholars of Marriage.” Pyle noted that among the 100 are 13 with connections to Utah, including, “most notably, Matthew Holland, the president of Utah Valley University.” All of us, including our university president Matthew Holland, have the right to speak publicly as private citizens on controversial issues. However, as the public face of UVU to the larger community, Holland has a special responsibility to avoid public pronouncements that would harm his ability to carry out his duties as president of a state university ...

Response to the talk by Clayton Christensen, sponsored by the UVU Faculty Senate (and, given those in attendance, by President Holland and by all the UVU Vice Presidents and Deans and by the UVU School of Business and by the BYU School of Business and by the BYU School of Law, etc.) As befits a professor at the Harvard Business School, Christensen’s basic question was how universities can teach their students more cheaply and thus make more money and avoid being “disrupted” or “killed” by private universities like the University of Phoenix. The short answer, according to him, is online and hybrid courses. MOOCs, for example. It would be much more efficient, he said, for a single MIT physics professor to tape a set of physics 101 lectures that all universities could use for their physics 101 course. Ditto economics 101, and so on. (No thought of the advantage of local professors in first-year classes to inspire and mentor and lead students to majors that match their interests...