Towson AAUP - Message from the President

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President's Message

Message from the Towson AAUP / Faculty Association President

Jennifer Ballengee
English
President, TU AAUP / Faculty Association

My commitment to the AAUP and its importance as an aspect of shared governance on campus is very strong, and I want to utilize this space to explain why.

Let me speak first to the value of participating in our local chapter of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors). The AAUP is a nation-wide advocacy organization for university professors. The organization is committed to defending and preserving the ideals of tenure, academic freedom, and faculty rights, including the practice of shared governance. Shared governance is, briefly, the idea that governance of institutions of higher education should be shared among faculty, administrators, and trustees. The policy on shared governance in the USM (University System of Maryland) indicates that faculty have opportunities to participate in decisions that relate to mission and budget priorities; curriculum, course content, and instruction; research; appointment, promotion, and tenure of faculty; and selection and appointment of administrators (for more specifics, please see the Faculty Handbook, Chapter Two, section II). According to the University Senate Constitution, our local AAUP Chapter is also the Towson Faculty Association.

Your local TU-AAUP/Faculty Association functions as an advocacy group for faculty and academic issues on the Towson campus. State law prohibits unions or collective bargaining for faculty in the USM (University System of Maryland). In some ways, this limitation provides us with a unique opportunity: we can engage in meaningful dialogue with our administration, voicing disagreement or agreement, and allowing any disagreement to foster a productive tension that can lead to a positive evolution of all elements of the Towson University community. BUT, having a meaningful dialogue depends upon a significant strength of voice on the part of the faculty, and that strength is primarily derived from numbers. The ability of our TU-AAUP to defend academic freedom and the academic profession at Towson depends upon having a large and broadly representative membership of Towson faculty.

The TU-AAUP has grown over the past few years, primarily in response to issues that faculty felt needed to be addressed. Four years ago, the ad hoc Junior Faculty Committee of the AAUP was formed; this committee works, in regular meetings with the Provost, to address issues of particular concern to junior faculty at Towson. At this year’s Fall meeting, the AAUP will vote on making the JFC a regular committee of the TU-AAUP (for a list of our other regular committees, please see our website: www.towson.edu/aaup.) In the past few years, work accomplished by the AAUP and the JFC includes: negotiation with the administration over issues of workload, merit and compensation, and salary for regular faculty, and salary and benefits for contingent faculty; investigation into faculty grievances regarding tenure and promotion; defense of issues of shared governance at the college and university levels; and facilitation of annual university elections for faculty. (For an up-to-date list of university elected and appointed committees on which you may be eligible to serve, see the University Senate website: http://www.towson.edu/senate/committees.asp.) In addition, two years ago, the JFC developed a formal 3^rd year review process for junior faculty; the policy was submitted to the Senate and passed on December 4, 2006, but has yet to be officially implemented across the campus (this is one of the issues we will be addressing this year). In addition to these actions, the TU-AAUP/Faculty Association has worked to develop and maintain a strong and cohesive academic community, through events like the Crab Feast/Bull Roast and the Second Fridays series of faculty exchanges.

The TU-AAUP/Faculty Association is a resource for all faculty—and you should utilize it as such. Please keep me and our other officers and members informed of important issues that you see arising at the department, college, and/or university level.

In addition, keep in mind that shared governance is a privilege, not a given; in the increasingly corporatized environment of academia, shared governance might well come to be viewed as an expensive luxury that may be cut, in pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness. In order to maintain our presence in the shaping of our academic community, we must all participate: by joining and actively participating in your local TU-AAUP, but also by serving on committees at every level of the university.

On the national level, the national AAUP performs valuable—and often unseen—work defending academic rights in colleges and universities across the United States. You can get a clear sense of the wide scope of their work on their website: www.aaup.org. On this site, the AAUP notes and summarizes legislation that affects university faculty, such as the Higher Education Act (reauthorized by congress and signed by the president on August 15, 2008) and pending legislation such as the Academic Bill of Rights, which was defeated in 2006 but has re-emerged in similar form in a new legislative policy proposal called “Intellectual Diversity.” The AAUP also lobbies our government on issues such as foreign students’ and professors’ visa policies, student financial aid, and laptop search and privacy violations faced by returning travelers. The organization issued a formal response to the final report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education (organized by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings) and participates actively in the Free Exchange on Campus Coalition. On a more immediate level, the AAUP censures every year particular academic institutions that are in violation of certain aspects of academic freedom. As the AAUP website indicates: “Through assistance and advice to individual faculty members and administrators, state and federal lobbying, amicus briefs before the courts, support for collective bargaining, and other means, the AAUP helps shape American higher education and ensure higher education's contribution to the common good.” Amicus briefs filed in the last few years by the AAUP address issues of: Academic Freedom and Public Employee Speech; Academic Freedom and National Security; Academic Freedom and Teaching; Tenure; Discrimination; Intellectual Property; and Affirmative Action. The monthly journal Academe, which is published by the AAUP and distributed free to all national AAUP members, describes in detail the ongoing activities of the organization, along with featuring an array of articles and reviews regarding the state of the profession. The work that the AAUP accomplishes in defense of the academic profession is well worth our support. Moreover, it is important to realize that, technically, active members of the AAUP are only those who have joined at the local and national level. You can join the national organization on their website: www.aaup.org. They have even made it possible to pay the national membership fee in small increments over time.

In defense of the profession as you’d like to see it at Towson, I hope you’ll go ahead and join the local TU-AAUP/Faculty Association. To join at the local level, just write a check for your $15 membership fee, made out to TU-AAUP, and send it to our Treasurer, Isabel Castro-Vazquez, in the Foreign Languages Department. In addition, I hope you’ll consider joining the national AAUP organization, as well.