October 4, 2010. New leadership opens possibilities for strengthening ties between FAU faculty and administration.

The Florida Atlantic University Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida is happy to welcome Mary Jane Saunders as our new University President.  Since assuming office on June 7, President Saunders is off to a good start.  In July she raised by 3% the salaries of all university employees not represented in collective bargaining, and in bargaining with UFF, negotiators for the Board of Trustees quickly changed their salary increase offer from 0 to 3%.  The Palm Beach Post, quoting a faculty member at Cleveland State University, where Saunders has been provost since 2007, praised her “openness and engaging personality,” and she has similarly impressed many faculty who have met her.  As we would expect from a leader with a solid research background and many years of administrative experience, she has begun to redefine and clarify the university’s mission and goals.  And in her first State of the University address on September 1, she began by calling for “collaborative leadership,” and said that she wants to “hear all voices,” and “welcomes our ideas.”

This is an auspicious moment for FAU.  Despite hard economic times and mediocre state economic and political leadership, in spite of a Board of Trustees chosen more for their political connections than for any expertise in higher education, it would seem that FAU now has a leader who understands the core mission of this university, its distinctive character, and is capable of analyzing its strengths and weaknesses.  Above all, she seems to be secure enough to invite “collaborative leadership,” to engage in a constructive dialogue with faculty and others regarding our divergent perspectives on this rapidly changing institution.

We take the President at her word, and accept her invitation to “hear all voices.”  We don’t expect that the sometimes contentious relationship between faculty union and academic managers will disappear.  Faculty often have different interests and viewpoints than Trustees or career administrators; that’s why large majorities of faculty have repeatedly chosen to be represented by the United Faculty of Florida, at FAU and throughout the state.  But we hope that another relationship might develop to complement the conflictual one, a relationship based on a mutual desire to address the university’s problems and to acknowledge that someone else, whose interests aren’t identical to one’s own, might have some productive solutions.

Thus we propose to renew and improve a neglected aspect of the relationship between UFF and academic administrators at FAU:  Consultations every semester between President Saunders and her advisors, on the one hand, and UFF-FAU leaders on the other.  Since UFF began representing the FAU faculty in the seventies these Consultations, provided for in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, have served as a forum for the discussion of key issues, outside of the formal bargaining process, where the union and the administration can work together – or agree to disagree.  In these regular meetings differences have been clarified and problems solved before they become grievances, and issues addressed which have subsequently been formalized in the Agreement.  In addition, subcommittees and task forces have addressed particular problems through the Consultation process as well as in Bargaining itself.  In recent years Consultations, and communication between the union and the administration, have been in decline; we hope that a revival of these regular meetings will help to keep the lines of communication open.

We further propose to open our Consultation this fall with a large and many-faceted issue which President Saunders has emphasized in her public statements:  Access.  In her State of the University Address, she praised the state of Florida for its history of keeping higher education accessible, and prioritized “student success” and “putting a degree in the reach of every student.”  This emphasis on retention as well as access is in line with recent national trends among university administrators, and FAU’s low tuition, reputation as a place for students, especially minorities, who are the first in their family to graduate from college, and struggles with retention, especially from the first to the second year, make these significant issues which impact the working lives of FAU faculty every day.  We teach students who are not always prepared for university work, and under conditions which are often far from ideal.  For most faculty, the questions of democratic access to higher education, and retaining students to graduation who are not always well prepared, must be balanced over against questions of academic quality.  Faculty hear administrators talk a lot about access and retention, but little beyond platitudes about academic quality.  We often feel that we are the only ones in the university who are struggling to maintain and improve the quality of the education we are providing our students, and the quality of the new knowledge (and experiences) we are producing through our research and creative activities.

We look forward to exploring these issues with administrators, in the Faculty Senate and other fora as well as Consultations.