Hi All,

I would like to recognize you and your work for today’s Wednesday Win by discussing this graduation week and updating you on non-classroom faculty issues in contract negotiations. This is my favorite time of year, graduation. This will be the first graduation I have missed (my son is graduating at the same time). It is the culmination of our student’s hard work and our investment in our students and communities. We work hard to ensure our student’s success. We put countless hours into lesson plans, presentations, updating our books, attending conferences and teaching seminars, office hours, counseling, aiding our students in the library, encouraging our students to keep going, and so much more. It can be exhausting but rewarding on a week like this, where we see so many of our students filled with gratitude cross the stage, their families gleaming with pride. We did this. I am so grateful to work with so many faculty that love and care about their students. Thank you for being my colleagues.

If you have been watching contract negotiations, one of the issues you have seen us fighting for is equal respect for non-classroom faculty as high-trust employees. If a non-classroom faculty is scheduled entirely online for their workday, they should not be required to come to the campus for fully remote work. It is the same expectation of classroom faculty. When it comes to scheduling, we expect the administration to allow our chairs to schedule nonclassroom faculty with the needs of the students in mind. Thus if there is more of a need for online than on-ground, schedule accordingly. We all want to ensure that student needs are being met and that all our faculty are respected. This is a major principle of AFT 1521. We are in an ongoing discussion with the administration to respect the current MOU and the bargaining process as we negotiate. We will have more details as the process moves further.

Once again, thank you to all our faculty who have helped our students graduate, transfer, receive their certificates, and continue their lifelong learning.

I hope you get some well-earned rest and can practice self-care. You are all heroes to our communities.

In Unity,

A. James McKeever PhD

AFT 1521 Faculty Guild President