by | January 23, 2013 · 1:46 pm

I don’t want to strike, but I will — a faculty perspective

Lisa2PortraitSmall Dr. Lisa Millhous is the chapter president of WCU’s faculty union (APSCUF). She is a tenured faculty member in the Communication Studies Department and has been employed at WCU since 1999. In the following blog she offers a personal explanation for why faculty care enough to strike.

I don’t want to strike. My career is in educating students, and a work stoppage does just the opposite. But I teach my students to stand up for themselves, to know their worth, and to be bold in their leadership. At some point, I have to follow my own teaching and take a stand.

As the Spring semester starts, there are still unresolved issues on the table. These issues cut at the very foundation of my job. For me, these are strikable issues.

Class size and modality(face-to-face or distance education) impact what I do every day of the semester. Students know that when class size grows their learning decreases. More students means less time for each one of them. Students know that modality matters for their learning experience.

The administration wants to increase class size or assign a modality without involvement of the faculty. Their argument is that these are financial decisions – independent of teaching or disciplinary expertise. Certainly there are budgetary implications, but faculty are highly skilled experts at what they do. We know what classes work best face-to-face (vs. distance education) and what courses are best in larger or smaller sections.  These decisions depend on the discipline and the curricular goals. Faculty need to be involved in the decision, or class sizes will continue to increase as they have every year since I started teaching.  Faculty must take a stand on class size and distance education, because that is where students would be hurt the most: in their learning.

Health care (current and retiree) is a critical part of my salary. Over the past few decades, I have watched inflation erode my salary. My union has purposely traded salary increases to preserve my medical benefits. Now the administration wants to make me pay extra for my healthcare, eating away even more of my salary.  My health is something I care about.

The administration is blaming the faculty, but we have saved the State System money, and we continue to suggest ways more savings could occur. For the 2003 contract the union hired a healthcare consultant who has saved the System thousands of dollars because the health provider was overbilling them. In 2011 the union recommended that the State System explore self-insurance, because we believe it will save thousands of dollars, but they refused to consider it.

The blame hurts most because the System has failed to negotiate healthcare and/or retirement packages for 3 other bargaining groups.  Instead those groups agreed to take whatever the faculty got – so the faculty are put in a position of negotiating healthcare for a much larger group of employees.  The System claims the faculty refused to take the healthcare package that other state employees have (the Pennsylvania Employees Benefit Trust Fund, PEBTF). The truth is they never offered the PEBTF package to the faculty nor have they made a comparable offer of self-funded insurance like PEBTF. This is not a fair way to bargain.

Further, the administration wants me to trade the healthcare of future retirees to keep my own retirement benefits. I am already the beneficiary of the faculty before me, who negotiated my retirement benefits into the faculty contract before I was hired. They could have sold me out to keep their own benefits, but they didn’t. As a faculty member, I am an architect of the future. Why would I agree to a contract that purposely creates deep inequities, degrades my profession, and damages high-quality, affordable public education?

If WCU can’t attract and retain good faculty because the salary and benefits are not competitive – and because they will be teaching large classes in modalities for which they were not trained – won’t that hurt our students?

I don’t want to strike. I want to encourage and support my students to become a bright future for Pennsylvania. But if I have to strike to protect those students’ education, then it is clear to me what I have to do.

Join with me in asking that this contract be settled before my colleagues and I must take this action:  Email Chancellor Cavanaugh (jcavanaugh@passhe.edu) and Interim Chancellor Garland (pgarland@passhe.edu).

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by | December 12, 2012 · 8:15 pm

FAQ — Tell me about a possible faculty strike at West Chester University

The following are a brief synopsis and answers to some frequently asked questions about the possible strike at WCU.  Note, APSCUF is the union that represents both faculty and coaches on our campus and is negotiating two different contracts with the Chancellor of PASSHE.  Neither is settled as of this posting, but the questions below refer to the faculty contract only.

How long has this been going on?  The faculty have have worked for 18 months since their contract expired. Part of the reason that this has taken so long is because Chancellor John Cavanaugh repeatedly sends his negotiators to the table without information.  So, although we meet to resolve our differences, the state bargaining team is typically unprepared to offer counter-proposals or even respond to proposals we have made.

What are the issues that the two sides disagree on?  Of course, both sides can change their offers at any time so the disagreement continually evolves and changes.  There has been general agreement on faculty compensation, except for the issue of pay for part-time adjunct faculty.  Faculty continue to push for conditions that will maintain quality education at the university.  Faculty are concerned that we have some say in how large our classes are; we want responsible use of distance education that gives faculty funding to develop interesting and interactive online courses; we are concerned that the Chancellor is unfairly shifting the costs of our healthcare; and we want a healthcare program that will allow us to retire (rather than work into retirement to afford healthcare).  All of these issues affect whether or not WCU can recruit and retain the best faculty for students to learn from, and whether your classroom environment will be the quality you expect from West Chester University.

What can I do?  Write to Chancellor John Cavanaugh (jcavanaugh@passhe.edu)  and let him know that it is important to you that he bargain in good faith and reach an agreement before the Spring semester begins.  Visit PAstudentsvoice.org to sign up to receive updates (there is also a Facebook page and Twitter feed).  Read the latest updates at the APSCUF blog.

What would happen if the faculty went on strike during the semester?  Classes would not meet during a strike.  All of the non-faculty employees at WCU are required to work, so buildings would be open and offices would still function.  Faculty would form picket lines to block certain campus entrances.  Once the strike was settled or called off, classes would resume and the President of the university would make a decision about whether to extend the semester or how to make up the missed days.

Would a strike prevent me from graduating?  Faculty build our careers by graduating students like you who go on to have their own careers; We are doing everything we can to avoid harming your graduation.  However, if we go on strike, we don’t entirely control the length of the strike, nor do we make the decision about how the semester will be made up.  If WCU does not honor your tuition payment by providing you with the instruction for you to earn the credits, then you would have grounds to request your tuition back (even if it is past the deadline for refunds).

But the best thing you can do is help the faculty prevent a strike by contacting the Chancellor, having your parents contact him, and asking your PA legislators to advocate on your behalf.  The faculty care about the quality of education at WCU — your education.  Will you stand with us?

PAstudentsvoice.org | APSCUF blog.

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by | October 8, 2012 · 12:35 pm

A recent post on the APSCUF-KUXchange by friend and colleague Amy Lynch-Biniek. In a nutshell, she describes how the current PASSHE proposals regarding adjunct faculty hurt our adjunct brothers and sisters, our students, our departments, and our system.

Amy LB's avatarAPSCUF-KU xchange

To borrow a turn of phrase, you can tell a lot about a college by the way it treats its adjuncts. If you read the PASSHE Negotiation Objectives recently distributed to KU faculty via email (referred to parenthetically in this post as “Letter”), you are likely angered and dismayed by most if not all of their positions. For a moment, I’d like you to consider the repercussions of one element of their attack on quality education, their proposed treatment of contingent faculty. And make no mistake: the use and treatment of these faculty does indeed affect and reflect the education the state makes available to students.

Before I came to Kutztown University, I had been an adjunct at several colleges, though “adjunct” became a ridiculous term when I was running the writing center, directing the theater production and teaching several classes at a single institution on three “part-time” contracts. One…

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Filed under APSCUF, Collective Bargaining, Contingent faculty, Contract Negotiations, Corporate University, Education reform, Kutztown University, Uncategorized

by | September 18, 2012 · 11:21 am

Our colleague Dr. Kevin Mahoney from KU says a lot here that I would also have said. He says it somewhat more savvily than I was going to, so I’m just reposting his version of it.

Kevin Mahoney's avatarAPSCUF-KU xchange

This past Saturday, APSCUF posted the following negotiations update on its blog:

APSCUF and PASSHE negotiators met Friday, September 14, at the Dixon Center in Harrisburg.  The Chancellor’s team passed a proposal on retrenchment language and made suggestions for future bargaining sessions. APSCUF caucused and responded to their proposal in writing. The two sides reconvened and failed to come to agreement on the language, but agreed to session definitions for the next two times: on Oct. 5th APSCUF will present on curriculum, class size, and distance education and on Oct. 22nd the Chancellor’s team will discuss temporary workload and concessions on retiree health care.   There was neither discussion of nor progress made on the Chancellor’s team’s demand for concessions on distance education, active and retiree health care, and temporary faculty workload.

There is so much packed into this statement, but I want to focus on one issue in…

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Filed under Advocacy, APSCUF, Benefits/Benefit Cuts, Budget, Budget Cuts, Collective Bargaining, Contingent faculty, Contract Negotiations, Office of the Chancellor, Tenure, Uncategorized

by | September 11, 2012 · 11:00 pm

Right to Know request from National Educational Services

Folks, just in case anybody wonders about the two emails from our Right to Know Compliance Office about the request for our salares, office numbers, phone numbers, and home addresses–revised today to allow us to opt into sharing that information rather than having to opt out–

The organization asking for that information is called National Educational Services, and the original request came from somebody named Janine Fye.

Following the lead of the English Department Secretary (thanks, Mary!) who had the good sense to Google the name, I did the same. NES appears to be a mixture of TIAA-CREF and AFLAC for educators; they offer insurance plans (life insurance, disability, disability supplemental, etc), retirement plans, help with fundraising campaigns on campuses, a whole swath of services. I don’t get any inkling they’re more evil or sinister than any other corporation that does what they do.

Once I learned this, I emailed VP Mixner to ask what their rationale for the RTK request is. He explained that it’s “internal research”; I’ve replied to that message asking if “internal research” means something else in legal-land than it does in research-land. They want information about people who don’t belong to their plans, which is about “external” as I can imagine. I just sent that message, but if anybody is curious about the response, ask and I’ll post it.

Anyway, the reason I’m posting this entry on the blog is so that if you’re trying to decide whether to “opt in” (re: Tuesday’s email about the revised RTK request), I figured you should have at least a dim idea of what you’d be “opting into.”

My opinion on the fact that our RTK people didn’t tell us that themselves? I’ll sit on that.

Oops, that probably gave me away, didn’t it?

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by | August 24, 2012 · 2:06 am

If this is the first you’re hearing of this, surprise!

I’m reposting an article from this morning’s (Thurs) Inside Higher Ed in full. And without further comment unless people want to discuss it. Click the link to the original if you want to follow all their internal links. Otherwise, happy reading!

Creditworthy in the Keystone State
August 23, 2012 – 3:00am

Pennsylvania’s regional public universities are gearing up to serve more adult students, and will use prior learning assessment and stackable credentials to help meet that anticipated demand.

Work force development is a priority for the 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, in part because they are often the only public game in town. Many lack nearby community colleges, especially the universities in the state’s central and northern regions,  so the four-year system sports a healthy suite of associate degrees and one-year certificates, along with the standard fare of bachelor’s degrees.

“We offer the best of both worlds,” says Christopher Reber, executive dean of Clarion University’s Venango College campus.

Those academic programs attract large numbers of nontraditional students, for whom the potential to earn credits for their learning outside of the classroom can be a big draw. The system already does prior learning assessment, but plans to expand through a new partnership with the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL). System officials expect students will seek and receive credits for learning on the job, from technical training programs, in the military or from other sources, including massive open online courses (MOOCs), according to John Cavanaugh, the system’s chancellor.

“We’re going to open it up to any kind of prior learning that people are bringing,” Cavanaugh says. However, he stresses that by working with CAEL, the system will be able to ensure that it issues credits for college-level learning that matches up with the system’s academic course offerings. “You’re still going to have to demonstrate that you’ve got the learning before that translates to credit.”

The Pennsylvania system will be perhaps the largest public university partner to sign on to Learning Counts, CAEL’s portfolio-based prior-learning service, an official at the council says. Through Learning Counts, students fork over $500 for an online course on how to put together a portfolio that collects and describes their prior learning. For an additional fee of $250, faculty experts review those submissions and can issue recommendations worth up to 12 credits.

However, not all colleges accept prior-learning recommendations, even if they come from CAEL, which is generally considered to be an industry leader. So the council has enlisted over 100 partner institutions that have agreed to defer to Learning Counts and issue full credit for successful portfolios. The Pennsylvania system is joining that group, Cavanaugh says.

Credit for MOOCs?

One reason many colleges are skittish about granting credits for prior learning is because to do so is to acknowledge that the academy doesn’t have a lock on college-level learning. Some faculty members also view the process warily, arguing that it can be an academically suspect money grab and a weak substitute for college.

Prior learning could also threaten professors’ jobs.

“It changes who generates the credits,” says Steve Hicks, an English professor at Loch Haven University and president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, the system’s primary union. “Potentially there’s a job loss there.”

Hicks says that representatives from the faculty union met with system officials about Learning Counts and prior learning. While he says they were “concerned” about the plan, they have yet to take a position on it.

Cavanaugh and other administrators defend their approach, and say chief academic officers have been busy vetting how prior-learning credits will align with curriculums. Furthermore, Cavanaugh says the system has long granted credit to students who take College Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests, which are administered by the College Board to measure college-level learning. So the portfolio approach isn’t such a stretch.

“The notion that this is credit for living is just not the case,” he says.

The system held lengthy discussions about whether it should grant credit for MOOCs, according to Cavanaugh. CAEL has predicted that many students will seek credit for MOOCs, and the council plans to include those courses in credit recommendations if students can demonstrate that they have received college-level learning. Eventually the system decided it was on board, as long as MOOC credit submissions receive the Learning Counts stamp.

“We fully expect to see people putting them in the portfolios,” says Cavanaugh.

Daniel Hurley praises the system’s plan to ramp up prior-learning assessment, and its proactive approach with new forms of online learning. Hurley, director of state relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, says the system and other regional publics can play a leading role in prior learning, in part because they enroll many students who might benefit from the process.

The system is also not alone in helping community colleges on work force development. Hurley says that 42 percent of the association’s members issue two-year degrees. “It’s really about meeting demand.”

Up the Ladder

It’s a long way from Edinboro University to the nearest community college — like two hours.

The university is close to Erie, where county leaders have pushed hard for a new two-year college. But that idea tanked last year, after a saga described in an Education Sector report. So the university decided it had to step up its technical job training options. This fall Edinboro will launch a new associate degree in applied technology.

But Edinboro’s evolving approach is more ambitious than just a few isolated academic offerings, says Julie E. Wollman, the university’s president. It is working with technical trade schools, most of them small for-profits with ties to local industries, to help students get credit for previously earned technical certificates when they enroll at Edinboro.

Sometimes students arrive at the university years after having attended a trade school.

“A lot of people get a certificate at one of those places and go right to a job,” Wollman says.

To advance in their careers, even jobs on the floor of a manufacturing plant, they often need the sort of training only a college can provide. Edinboro treats the prior learning students bring from their jobs and technical trade certificates as the core of their major, Wollman says. And they can earn up to 27 prior learning credits. Then the university offers students classes that help them bolster their communication, analytical, business and mathematics skills.

“What they’re bringing is the major,” she says. “What we’re really providing is the general education.”

An hour down the road, Clarion’s Venango campus has developed similar ways for students to enroll with credits from their work experience. And both institutions are designing their sub-baccalaureate credentials to be stackable, meaning students can complete a certificate or associate degree, leave to take a job, and then seamlessly return to continue working toward a bachelor degree.

Reber calls the approach a “ladder” of credentials. To create credit pathways at Clarion, his campus has collaborated with several technical institutions and employers, including the Precision Manufacturing Institute and FirstEnergy Corporation.

Clarion is also introducing online degree completion programs, including an associate in industrial technology and a bachelor’s in technology leadership. The online coursework is particularly handy for adult students who work full time. And it’s not surprising that students might prefer to keep their jobs and enroll online, rather than attending Clarion as traditional students. Some of the Venango campus’s employer partners pay a guaranteed $60,000 salary to associate-degree holders from the university, and will cover tuition for employees who finish their bachelor’s degree.

For Venango and Clarion, as well as for other universities in the system, one benefit of work place partnerships is a boost to enrollment. Located in Oil City, the campus is surrounded by an aging population, and adult workers are generally conscientious students.

“It’s a win-win,” Reber says.

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Filed under Access, APSCUF, Budget, Budget Cuts, Collective Bargaining, Corporate University, deliverology, Education reform, Inside Higher Education, MOOCs, on-line schools, PASSHE, Program elimination, Retrenchment, shared governance

by | July 18, 2012 · 2:08 pm

WCU-APSCUF Sponsors Community Athletes

I have the opportunity to pass along some good news on a non-political issue, so I couldn’t pass it up. As you know our union is mainly visible when we are fighting for the respect that we deserve, given the important work that we do preparing future generations. In order to demonstrate that APSCUF is also a contributing member of our community we sponsor a variety of activities to promote goodwill and positive public relations. In the past we have sponsored conferences, inter-union activities, and also local sports teams.

This year two of the teams we sponsored have been very successful and we want to encourage them, and let them know we are proud of them—not just how they play, but how hard they work and their demonstration that solidarity and teamwork can make a difference.

First, the Senior Little League softball team we sponsored through the West Bradford Youth Association won their district championship and is raising money to go to Mansfield for the State championship this weekend. The team consists of 11 girls: most will be in 9th or 10th grade next year and several are looking at WCU for post-secondary school. (This team is one of three youth teams that we sponsored this year through West Bradford, though this team is unique in that it is both the regular season team and the all-star tournament team.) https://www.wepay.com/donations/wb-seniors-going-to-states; Photo: http://www.eteamz.com/westbradfordlittleleague/

Second, we sponsored the APSCUF Rams – a team of faculty, coaches, and some others – whose success in the hard-fought regular season of the Chester County Co-ed Softball League earned them a place in the play-offs. They won the first of two post-season playoff rounds: they beat another team in a best-of-3 series, and now go on to play the #1 seed in a best-of-5 series. They won their first game on Sunday and will play the remaining games locally if you are able to go to cheer them on. (Game 2: Thurs 7/19 7:45 p.m. Westtown Complex, upper field; Game 3: TBD; Game 4: Sun 7/22 6 p.m. upper field; Game 5: Wed 7/25 6:15 p.m. lower field) http://www.cccesl.com/stats.asp

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t congratulate our APSCUF coaches, whose efforts resulted in a very strong standing among Division II schools this year. Certainly their work promoting our institution and the demonstration of solidarity and teamwork is an inspiration – in spite of working without a contract! http://www.dailylocal.com/article/20120613/SPORTS02/120619833/wcu-among-top-d-ii-programs-in-nation

I hope this finds you enjoying your summer and doing what you need to do to prepare for the Fall. We are a strong union and I am grateful to the many efforts of all of you that build our solidarity and teamwork.

In Solidarity,
Lisa Millhous

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by | June 25, 2012 · 11:45 am

REBLOG: “New Socialist Man” (Gin and Tacos)

I didn’t write this post, but I wish I had. The author of Gin and Tacos is a political science faculty member (changing jobs to somewhere in Illinois after a long stint as a visiting prof at the University of Georgia and a difficult time on the market). He does just about the most astute critique of the ousting of University of Virginia President Sullivan I’ve seen yet.

Just a taste:

She refused to acknowledge that a university is a Business and should be run as such, and she refused to eliminate the Classics department from the school founded by Thomas Jefferson. Other reported philosophical differences included resistance to expanding pedagogically useless but phenomenally profitable “online degree” programs that amount to little more than for-profit scams servicing corporate clients and adult learners who need a rubber stamp in order to advance professionally. For years the Right has decried touchy-feely Multicultural studies displacing the real canon of Western thought – Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Adam Smith, and the like. Now it appears that the Business School and the Continuing Studies Online program are reflections of the true foundation of all Western thought – the Classics be damned.

Read the rest here….

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Filed under Corporate University, Higher Ed history, liberal arts, on-line schools, Program elimination, Sullivan, University of Virginia

by | June 16, 2012 · 2:03 am

They just never get tired of it

As we all know by now, Governor Corbett’s budget-slashing attacks aren’t aimed solely at PASSHE. He seems willing to destroy any school system at any level if doing so hurts teachers’ unions and allows his private/charter school patrons to make more money.

This account of the situation in nearby Reading, PA from today’s Huffington Post is enough to infuriate even the most heartless person–except members of the Corbett administration, apparently.

As always, the Governor, in a radio interview, tries to pass off the attacks as “tough decisions”:

Representatives from Corbett’s office did not return requests for comment, but Corbett did address the budget on a recent radio program. “You have to make tough decisions, and nobody really likes them,” Corbett told Q106.9-FM.

No, it’s not a tough decision to sell off our schools, systems, students, their families, their futures, teachers, their careers, and the health of our entire Commonwealth to his friends. That’s a really easy, lazy decision, and it’s long past time for him to be at least honest about it. He should have to make clear to voters that he knows when they voted for “fiscal responsibility,” they weren’t voting for him to cut millions of dollars out of school budgets so kids in “America’s Poorest City” couldn’t go to pre-kindergarten. And we should make clear to him that’s not what we meant too.

I better stop there before I say something unprofessional (!).

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Filed under Access, Budget, Budget Cuts, Budget Deficit, charter schools, Collective Bargaining, Communities, Education reform, K-12 Education, PASSHE, Privatization, Public education, Public employee unions, public employees, Shock Doctrine, Teacher unions, Tom Corbett, Unions

by | June 12, 2012 · 12:38 pm

Contact the House Government Committee — and tell your Representative

It is critical that we contact members of the House Government Committee today (6/12/12) to stop HB 2442, 2443, 2444, and 2446.  In the coming week, we need to contact our legislators so that the bills do not continue in the process of becoming law.  Many lawmakers are trying to limit the amount of multi-recipient email messages so you will need to send some of them individual messages.  I am providing a sample letter and clickable contact names below.

Now is the time to be active!

In Solidarity,

Lisa Millhous, President of WCU APSCUF

  • House Bill 2442: Deregulates student activity fees, no longer making them mandatory for any student to pay. Students can elect not to pay by signing a form at the start of each semester.
  • House Bill 2443: Prohibits institutions from providing free or reduced tuition for spouses, children, same sex partners, or relatives of employees of the institution or any other.
  • House Bill 2444: Prohibits the System from executing any contract for construction, repair, renovation and maintenance projects, unless the System submits a written request for an exception to the Department of General Services and the department determines, in writing, that an emergency exists and failure to execute a contract would be detrimental to the health or safety of students, employees, or the public.
  • House Bill 2446: Prohibits paid sabbaticals for professors.

TO:  Members of the House Government Committee (clickable links after message)

SUBJECT:  Vote No on HB 2442, 2443, 2444, and 2446

Dear Members of the House Government Committee –

Each of these bills (HB 2442, 2443, 2444, and 2446) will independently harm the State-owned universities, whom you have been entrusted as a steward for the People of this Commonwealth.  Together with the other bills of the so-called “keep tuition affordable” legislative package they jeopardize my ability as a faculty member to help my students achieve their full potential.  Without funding and the ability to generate funding there is no way that we can maintain our quality.

These bills will have far-reaching ramifications and deserve thoughtful debate.  Please take the time to be a good steward of our public resources and consider the destructive outcome that could occur as a result of these bills.

I urge you to vote NO for HB 2442, 2443, 2444, and 2446.  These bills are not ready to leave committee.

Sincerely,
Lisa Millhous
Taxpayer in the Commonwealth of PA and Employee of West Chester University of PA

TO:  dmetcalf@pahousegop.com; eevankov@pahousegop.com; ggrell@pahousegop.com; mhahn@pahousegop.com; rkauffma@pahousegop.com; Tkrieger@pahousegop.com; mmustio@pahousegop.com; broae@pahousegop.com; jstern@pahousegop.com;

Committee Leadership:

Committee Members:

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Filed under Access, APSCUF, Benefits/Benefit Cuts, Education reform, Public education, public employees, West Chester University

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