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Category: Teacher

Tenure-track Professors in Decline

DSCF8914Professors retire or leave Edinboro University for a number of reasons. Filling those positions is becoming more of a challenge each year, especially with another potential budget cut looming in the near future.

“We’re a teaching institution and we take great pride in that,” said Dr. Jean Jones, president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF) at Edinboro.

“The budget crunch that the state has felt has led to a decline in the positions being filled here at the college,” said Melissa Gibson, a professor in the Communication and Media Department.  

The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between APSCUF and the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) specifies that 25 percent of the faculty at Edinboro or any of the PASSHE schools should be temporary professors.

With that in mind, the administration is focused on hiring those professors before they even consider opening more positions for tenured faculty, said David Martin, the membership committee chair for APSCUF at Edinboro.

A professor applying for tenure, according to the CBA, needs to go through five years of evaluation before they can apply and then once they have obtained that position, they are only evaluated every five years after that.

Tenure also allows a faculty member to hold their position without the fear of losing it, while a temporary faculty member is defined by the CBA as one who’s contract is up for renewal or non-renewal at the end of each year.

With the temporary faculty members, they’re hoping that they’ll get to come back the next year, Jones explained.

“If you commit to having a tenured faculty member, you can expect that they are going to be here for a while,” said Jones. “[On the other hand], temporaries are hired for one year. They know that when they come in and there is no guarantee that they’re going to be needed for the next year.”

The number of full time temporary faculty, according to the APSCUF office, has remained consistent throughout the past three years, said Martin. In 2009, we had 41 full-time temporaries, then it went up to 56 in 2010, then back down to 53 in 2011, and we are currently at 50 full-time temporary faculty members, he said.

Many of the temporary faculty members are fully qualified for a tenured position if an opportunity presented itself and they take the job because there isn’t anything else available, Jones explained.

Temporary faculty members are here to teach and aren’t expected to advise or get involved on campus, but they are working to provide excellent classes for the students, according to Jones.

“Our temporaries are great,” said Jones. “They go above and beyond what their requirements are and they contribute to the campus. They are amazing given the situation.”

Yet, with the budget cuts that we’ve had, the university is finding it harder to hire more professors, said Gibson, so the departments are forced to place more students in each class in order to provide for the need on campus.

This will lower the need to hire more temporary faculty, said Martin, but that means it’s going to affect the one-on-one contact that professors have with their students in the classroom.

Gibson agreed by saying that the fewer tenured professors you have, the harder it is for the students to form bonds with them, if they are going to be leaving the next year.

“Provost Ginnetti has made a commitment to increasing the number of faculty. He thinks it is very important to have more permanent faculty and he’s working to make that happen,” said Jones. “But again, when we’ve got the governor pulling the rug out from under us, it makes it much more difficult.” 

– Anna Tielmann (Taken from The Spectator, Vol. 3, Issue 18) 

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APSCUF Negotiates New Contract

DSCF4326Amidst Governor Tom Corbett’s proposal of cutting our funding and the possibility of tuition going up again next year, Edinboro University’s faculty unions and the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) have been working to negotiate a new faculty contract for the upcoming year.

“What’s nice about it is for all that it’s hard to sit down and work it out, once it’s worked out, we’ve got the rules,” said Dr. Jean Jones, president of Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty (APSCUF) at Edinboro.

“It makes things a little bit easier once the contract is negotiated. It’s all clear that this is what we’re going to do and how we’re going to proceed for the next couple of years,” said Jones.

There are 46 articles in the contract that deal separately with hiring and firing faculty, number of work hours, sick leaves, online courses, number of classes that an individual professor should be able to have and more, explained Jones. 

The faculty contract expired on June 30, 2011 and they have been “going to the table” and sitting down with the union leaders on one side and the PASSHE leaders on the other, trying to come to an agreement on a new contract that both groups can sign off on, said Jones.

“We have been working under the terms of the old contract since it expired,” said Kenn Marshall, the media relations manager for PASSHE. He said PASSHE is aiming to benefit both sides of the negotiation as well as the students at the campus.

According to the PASSHE website, the 14 universities in the PASSHE system pride themselves in offering the lowest costing, four-year degree programs in the state. Currently, the annual in-state tuition is $6,240.

“Nearly 120,000 students, 90 (percent) of whom are Pennsylvania residents, are enrolled at PASSHE universities,” said the PASSHE News Post.

So, as faculty, when it comes down to contractual issues, said Jones, APSCUF wants to protect as much as they can. She stressed good working conditions, how many temporary faculty are working, how often we’re putting classes online, and class size, as examples.

Another worry that has been added to the contract negotiations is Governor Corbett’s proposed state budget cuts.

Jones said she didn’t know if the potential budget cuts will affect the class sizes or the faculty members, but as a union president, she said she was worried about faculty jobs.

“If there was any fat, we’ve cut the fat. We’ve cut into the muscle and I think we’re now down to cutting the bone,” Jones said. “I don’t know where we can possibly find the money to make up for the shortfall.”

Financial costs are always an issue when it comes down to the contract, said Marshall. 

He said 75 percent of the finances are personnel-related and reduction of the funding will have an impact on our contract negotiations.

However, contractual concerns aren’t the biggest concerns right now, according to Jones.

We’ll work out our contract, said Jones. “This isn’t about money for professors. This is about us really loving this institution and us being really worried about its future.”

Anna Tielmann (Taken from The Spectator, Vol. III, Issue 17) 

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