Akron-AAUP Membership Elects New President and Vice President:

In the month of April, the Akron-AAUP conducted chapter elections for the positions of President and Vice-President.  These are two-year terms of office.  Votes were counted on Monday, April 23^rd, and Jennifer Holz was elected President, while Pat Parr was elected Vice-President.  Jennifer Holz teaches Sociology at the Wayne campus, and served as a member of our first negotiating team.  She also has spent the past year as an elected liaison to the Executive Committee.  Pat Parr is a faculty member in the Counseling department in the College of Education , and is the current liaison for the Counseling department.
 

Next time you see them, please thank Jennifer, Pat, and our third candidate, Doug Woods (Business Management Technology - Wayne), for their willingness to run for these important offices.  Our contract is a key mechanism now in the faculty’s role in shared governance, and the Akron-AAUP is responsible for the day-to-day monitoring and implementation of it.  The Akron-AAUP has no staff; our work is carried out by the voluntary efforts of your faculty colleagues who have offered to serve.   Please extend your congratulations, and your thanks, to these colleagues. 

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Update on Merit Guidelines and Arbitration: 

As of May 4, 2007, eleven departments/units have yet to receive approval of their merit guidelines. All others have finally received full approval.   The Administration and Akron-AAUP will be working with these last eleven groups to facilitate approval of their guidelines.   On May 4, Akron-AAUP and the Administration met with an arbitrator, Rob Stein, regarding the Merit Guidelines grievance.  Mr.Stein is the same person who served as fact-finder in the last stages of contract negotiation in 2005. Arbitrator Stein met with each  side separately for  most of the day Friday, May 4th.  No resolution was reached, but discussions will continue in another session scheduled for May 25.

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Faculty are reminded that by the end of this semester, they will have to submit merit documents for the pay period just passed

(Summer 2006, Fall 2006, Spring 2007). Faculty in departments with approved merit guidelines should receive payment on time in the first paycheck of the Fall 2007 semester. The raises available for this review period include 1.25% across the board, 1.25% merit, and 0.5% market/compression adjustment.

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No Real News on the Parking Grievance:

In light of the administration's denial of our grievance on parking, the Executive Committee is weighing the options of continuing with the grievance.  Our representative on the Parking Task Force continues to be involved in the debate as well.

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Progress on Market/Compression Raises:

Contract Article 16, Section 9 specifies the procedure for determining how the administration shall distribute money for compression/market adjustment (the procedure is very similar to that used by Cleveland State University ). Bargaining unit faculty at the rank of Associate and Full Professors are eligible for this salary increase, and the pool to be distributed is ½% of the total salary pool for 2006-2007 (and for the next two years as well).

The Deans have chosen the benchmark institutions, which are drawn from the institutions for which CUPA (College and University Personnel Association) collects salary data. Each department will be compared with all the schools in this list that have comparable departments.  The CUPA schools chosen for comparison are:  Ball State University, Bowling Green State University, Cleveland State University, Georgia State University, Kent State University, Ohio State University, University of Cincinnati, University of Delaware, University of Toledo, Wayne State University, Western Michigan University, and Wright State University.

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What has AAUP done for faculty lately? - An end-of-semester recap:

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Summer Activities Include AAUP Annual Conference and the AAUP Summer Institute:

The national AAUP will be holding the 93rd Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. June 7-10. The theme of this year's program is Telling the Truth in Difficult Times.  In addition to nationally known speakers, there will be meetings of various committees, and the assembly of state conferences. Akron-AAUP will be well represented.
 

Every July, the national AAUP conducts a four-day Summer Institute at a host university around the country.  This July the Summer Institute is at the University of Nevada-Reno.  Typically, about 150 or more AAUP faculty members from collective bargaining and non-collective bargaining chapters around the country attend to take workshops on such topics as contract negotiations, grievances and arbitration, conducting collective bargaining campaigns, healthcare benefits, academic freedom issues, chapter building, shared governance, strategic communications, and much more.  This July, the Akron-AAUP is sending four chapter members to the Institute to take classes, and another two will be attending at National’s expense.  By all accounts, the Summer Institute is one of the jewels of the AAUP’s annual list of events.  For chapters, the Summer Institute provides the opportunity to develop leaders for the future.  If you are an Akron-AAUP member, and might like to get more involved in the chapter, consider attending a future Summer Institute.

Akron-AAUP
Communications Committee

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See the new and improved National AAUP website at http://www.aaup.org.
 

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