Some Ohio University faculty members are raising awareness and trying to recruit professors to form a local union chapter.
In November, a group called OU Faculty Voice led a meeting to discuss the creation of an active chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) at OU.
There is a need for faculty to come together and be a strong voice for faculty interests
said OU Journalism Professor Joseph Bernt.
Some of the issues that AAUP commonly deals with are tenure, promotion and the hiring and firing of faculty. According to the AAUPWeb site, http://www.aaup.com, its mission is to advance academic freedom and shared governance to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education and to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good.
Kevin Mattson, OU history professor, said he would like a local chapter of the AAUP to provide a more public voice for the faculty than that of the faculty senate. We would like a voice for faculty on the campus that says we are concerned with the decisions the administration has been making in certain cases
he said.
There are currently 30-40 OU faculty members that are dues-paying members of the national chapter of AAUP, Bernt said.
There is membership here
but there are no officers
and there are no meetings
Mattson said. (We are trying) to recruit new members
especially some younger faculty and resuscitate an actually active chapter. We want to have a chapter that has a formal structure to it. A place where people can turn to if they have problems regarding tenure and things like those things.
OU Political Science Professor John Gilliom has recently become a member of the AAUP. He said he decided to join because he feels the faculty at OU is going to continue to face struggles concerning issues of class size, salary, benefits and university governance.
There is going to be increasing conflict with the administration and with the state legislature
and I came to the decision that faculty members need to get themselves in a more organized position in order to face those struggles
Gilliom said.
It's clear that when faculty get together
as we've demonstrated in OU Faculty Voice
