Category: EMU

There’s been an exchange of all-campus emails lately between the administration, faculty council, and the union. Long-story short: the faculty and the union are not happy with the way that the interim provost (who everyone likes, by the way) was made into a permanent provost, and the administration and the union are beginning to build their cases for contract negotiations. What case is that? Basically, the administration is saying a) we have no money, and b) we have plenty of faculty; predictably, the union is saying “do not!” to both of these things.

Ah yes, contract negotiation season….

My guess is that EMU really doesn’t have as much money to work with as the union wants to claim, but there’s no getting around the argument about the number of faculty. Simply put, EMU has fewer faculty now than it did 10 years ago, and the number of administrators on campus has risen in almost direct proportion to the losses in faculty. Even an English professor can do that math; all I’ve got to do is look around the halls and see the rising number of part-timers and of suits.

But my sense is that the biggest issues in this coming contract are going to be money (that’s always an issue) and health care. I don’t know enough to know how either of these things are going to play out, but there is plenty of opportunity for drama over the summer. This is simply speculation on my part, but I think that if the administration tries to offer the faculty a contract where we have to pay such a significant portion of our medical insurance out of pocket that we end up taking a pay cut (and, in the nutshell, this is the contract that the lecturers signed last year), then we will certainly strike. But I also think (again, just speculation) that both the union and the administration know this, so I think (hope, really) we will avoid this.

Of course, this faculty versus administration posturing will get much more hot ‘n heavy in August, which is when I (happily) will be out of the country.

Anyway, while I have my issues with the negotiating process and some of the positions both the union and the administration take on some of these matters, a big “thumbs up” to the EMU-AAUP and its president Howard Bunsis for his recent presentation before the Board of Regents on Continuing Education (warning– this is a PowerPoint presentation turned into a PDF).

Continuing Education at EMU exists in this sort of “in-between world,” more or less outside of the faculty contract for reasons I don’t entirely understand. Anyway, CE is charged with all instruction that takes place in non-traditional settings– weekends, off-campus, online, etc.– and, largely because of online classes, it’s been making money hand over fist. And they are really making money because CE teaches almost all of its classes with non-tenure-track faculty or tenure-track faculty teaching some sort of overload for extra money.

In the interest of full disclosure here: I’ve been working with CE more closely since I started teaching online in Fall 2005, and I have been quite happy with the sort of support I’ve gotten from them. This term, I’m teaching an online class as an overload for reasons that are complicated and only partly about extra money. (And for what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ll ever teach an overload like this again.) In Fall 2005, I taught online “in load”– that is, part of my regular teaching. This spring and summer, I’m also teaching online (again, through CE) and I guess it’s “extra,” but all spring and summer teaching at EMU is something faculty do voluntarily for extra money. It’s also worth mentioning– and you’ll see why in a moment– that I don’t take overloads into my online class, mostly for ethical reasons but also because teaching an advanced writing course online with more than 20 students would be way WAY too much work.

Part of what Howard is talking about in this presentation isn’t (IMO) that big of a deal, at least to me. For example, departments do have control over what courses can be offered through CE– at least in theory– right now. But there is one recommendation that the EMU-AAUP is making that is enormously significant: the elimination of the “grading stipend.”

Basically, if there are more than 25 students in a CE course, the instructor is paid $150 per student. So let’s say you’re teaching an online course and, instead of capping the course at 20 or 25 (my online course is capped at 20), you let in a total of 50 students. If you did that, then you would make $3750 above and beyond the pay for the course. Or let’s say you let in a total of 100 students; that’s 75 X 150, or $11,250.

The administration is happy about this situation because it allows them to maximize the student to instructor ratio. The instructors who engage in this process are happy about this because they make a lot of money. And obviously, this practice is a disservice to students. I suppose it depends on the particular course, and I think there is some truth to the argument that some of my colleagues make who engage in this practice: if we’re going to teach lecture hall classes of 200+ students, then there shouldn’t be anything wrong with teaching online classes with 50 or 75 or 100 students. But, as my momma taught me, two wrongs don’t make a right.

I think the majority of faculty at EMU would support a change where faculty get paid more than they do currently to teach overload courses through CE and the elimination of the grading stipend, which is what the union is proposing. But there will be a vocal minority of faculty (the ones who are making the money, of course) who will oppose this, and I think it’s hard to say what the administration is going to say. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

As I discovered today via this comment left on my blog by the president of EMU’s student government (Bobby– just send me an email!), student government has put together a web site called “Pray-Harrold Needs YOU!”

If you’re an EMU/Michigan local, it’s worth checking out because it more or less sums up the long and on-going saga of EMU getting the money for this project. I appreciate the effort, though to be honest, this is the sort of thing that should have been done (maybe by student government, certainly by the EMU-AAUP and/or just the EMU administration) a couple of years ago. After all, it is beginning to look now like we might actually get some of the funds in this year’s budget cycle.

It does remind me though of the importance of being careful what you ask for. Pray-Harrold construction is going to be, ah, “disruptive,” to say the least. And when all is said and done, they’re really only talking about significant remodeling of the first four floors, which means the extent to which this is going to impact my department (our offices are on the sixth floor, and we teach lots of classes up there too) is debatable.

In the meantime, check out the web site.

The EMU faculty union is actually a chapter of the American Association of University Professors. We’ve been associated with the AAUP since the union was organized in 1974. But apparently, there is a movement to get out of the AAUP and associate ourselves with the Michigan Education Association. And the AAUP local is obviously concerned. Today, I received a packet of materials in the snail mail from the union about why we should stay with the AAUP and why we shouldn’t get ourselves messed up in the raiding MEA union.

I realize that this stuff is probably not that interesting to people who are not at EMU, but since there are enough EMU folks who stumble across this blog once in a while, I thought I’d post a few thoughts (while I’m watching the Iowa/Wisconsin basketball game):

• I really don’t have any idea what the EMU-AAUP people are talking about. I either haven’t received anything from the MEA or I thought it was junk mail and I threw it away. I haven’t talked to any other faculty (other than my wife) about this yet; did anybody who teaches at EMU get this stuff?
• I think the AAUP makes a reasonably compelling case about why we don’t want to be affiliated with the MEA, which is really more of a union for K-12 teachers. But beyond that…
• … the absolute last thing we ought to do is take a vote for something like this while we’re in the midst of contract negotiations. That’s just dumb.
• One of the things that’s interesting here is that way WAY back, a couple years ago when I was involved more directly with the EMU-AAUP, there were rumors/off-the-record talk about moving over to the MEA. I don’t know exactly what that was all about, but the people who ended up getting thrown out of office (see this post and this post if you’re interested in a version of a recap) were pretty P.O.-ed at the AAUP national for a variety of different reasons. Anyway, I have to wonder if some of these past union folks are behind this MEA deal now.
• Now, having said all that, I’m not entirely sure what we at EMU get by being associated with the AAUP. That’s not a call for dumping the AAUP, certainly not to join the MEA. It’s just an honest question. When I was at Southern Oregon University, there was a faculty union, but it was a self-sustaining thing. The SOU faculty weren’t assoicated with any national or state organization; they were totally local.

  I wasn’t paying much attention to these issues when I was at SOU, but the faculty union there seemed to handle things well. Why couldn’t we do that at EMU? Instead of sending our dues off to some national or state organization, why not keep it all local?

• And of course, I once again must wonder about the faculty union in general. The leftist in me is all for the EMU-AAUP and unions in general. But when you sit in on these meetings (as I did for a few months in 2003), well, it makes you think. They say that making laws is like making sausage, an ugly and grisly process that might make you into a vegetarian, and I think that union politicing is about the same.

  Of course, I do kinda like a good bratwurst….

Here’s a typical elevator scenario in the building I work in at EMU, Pray-Harrold Hall, one I just experienced a few minutes ago:

• I arrive and enter the building on the second floor, which I realize is confusing because the basement is actually the first floor. No one is really around, I’m with my wife (who is carrying a bunch of school stuff), I’m not in a hurry, and I’m feeling lazy, so we go to the elevators. Despite the fact that my office is on the sixth floor, I often take the stairs. A perfectly able-bodied person is also waiting in the lobby area for the elevator.
• The elevators are very slow and often barely functioning, so after an inevitable wait, one arrives. We get on and select floors. I select 6, another person selects 7 (the top floor), another 5. Able-bodied person selects 3.
• People who actually have a reason to use the elevator look at each other and then at able-bodied person, who has inexplicably waited several minutes for an elevator to go up one flight of stairs and subsequently slowed the rest of us down. Able-bodied person disembarks on the third floor. We discuss able-bodied person on our ride to the higher floors.

I don’t know what the deal is here, but this happens all the time. What is all the more amazing is that there are many times– between classes, for example- when the elevators are very busy and crowded and able-bodied peoples will still wait around for ten minutes or longer and then cram themselves into an already crowded elevator to go up (or even down!) a single floor.

I’m not in charge here (and I think all of us, including myself, are thankful about that), but if I were in charge, I would make a rule. Unless you are pushing around something on a cart, have an enourmous amount of stuff that would be difficult to carry up a flight of stairs, you have a valid medical excuse and/or disability:

• You are not allowed to take the elevator up a single floor, particularly the second to the third floor.
• You are not allowed to take the elevator down a single floor, again, particularly from the third to the second floor.
• There are four stairwells in the building, and while it is kind of confusing that only two of these sets of stairs actually goes to the seventh floor, you should use them.

There– that is my effort this week at public service announcement and education all in one post.