UFF-FAU Consultation with President Kelly, June 19, 2020

Friday, June 19, 2020 2:00 PM

Admin in attendance:
President Kelly, Provost Danilowicz, Vice Provost Hawkins, CFO Jeff Atwater, VP Stacey Volnick, and University Counsel Tori Winfield.

Union leadership in attendance:
President Deandre Poole, 1st Vice President Meredith Mountford, 2nd Vice President Andrew Gothard, Treasurer Shane Eason, Secretary Kathleen Moorhead, Contract Enforcement Chair Bob Zoeller. 

Opening Statement: Deandre Poole

1. As president of the chapter, one of my biggest concerns is the safety of our faculty, students, and staff. I know collectively this is all our concern. UFF statewide tasked all chapters to work cooperatively with our university leaders, but to also be a voice and advocate for faculty and our members.
   1. UFF’s statewide goal was to prepare a reopening plan that would help address areas that lacked other community and stakeholder voices. A copy of the plan was sent to the president and the provost.  
   2.  UFF leaders wanted to make sure the BOG and our respective university leaders had relevant and timely information to address areas of concern with reopening.  
   3. These concerns are ongoing. Also, we thank you for responding to our concern about the lack of faculty representation on the EMT.  Bob Zoeller is serving on the EMT representing faculty. This has been invaluable to our chapter and the faculty community. We also want to thank Vice President Stacy Volnick and so many others for their work.  It is a very tense and stressful time, we realize that, but we want to acknowledge the work that we are all doing to keep our campus safe.
   4. We understand that the university administration desires to reopen the university in the fall.  It is the position of UFF-FAU that we should be fully remote during the fall term and return to campus in the spring of 2021. We did not reach this decision lightly, but by considering recent COVID-19 spikes across Florida, which has led to an increase in hospitalizations, and community spread, meaning Broward and Palm Beach could probably experience another shelter in place. Just yesterday, the Gov of NY said we need to be worried about people traveling from Florida now. The tension is growing, and folks are hesitant to return to campus. We understand that there are complex, multiple issues; politics is at play here in some many ways from Tallahassee, local governments, and the economic concerns for the university and surrounding communities. Are we making the right decision to open back up at the expense of the health and safety of our FAU family, faculty, students, and staff? For these reasons, we should continue to be remote in the fall.  
   5. Can you explain to us where the decision to reopen is coming from?  
      1. VP Volnick stated that re-opening decisions are made by the BOG.

Agenda Notes:

1. Faculty Privacy and AWA Forms
   1. UFF requested that FAU administration revise the current Alternative Work Arrangement form to be less invasive by including only a range of the CDC identified criteria for higher susceptibility to COVID-19. Currently, this form requires that faculty identify the specific illness that they or their family have, which is then confirmed by a physician.
      1. University Counsel Winfield stated she was open to discussing this issue further and working with UFF in the coming week to resolve this issue.
      2. University Counsel Winfield clarified that there are two AWA forms:
         1. Alternative Work Agreement Request Form – this form must be filled out by all faculty who need to teach online-only due to an underlying medical condition. 
         2. Alternative Work Agreement Form – once scheduling has been finalized, all faculty must then sign an AWA Agreement form, which acknowledges that your health status has been effectively accommodated in your department’s scheduling decisions.
   2. UFF requested that FAU administration reach out to incoming faculty and GTAs and provide them access to AWAs, so that their medical requirements would be considered in scheduling decisions for Fall 2020.
      1. Provost Danilowicz and Vice Provost Hawkins responded that they had already begun work on this issue, and that Deans and department schedulers would soon receive a request to provide lists of incoming faculty and GTAs. These new arrivals will  soon receive a request to fill out their own AWA forms.
2. PPE and Student Behavior
   1. UFF requested clarification concerning University policy and resources for faculty who encounter a student who (a) refuses to wear a required face-covering in class or (b) refuses to abide by PPE guidelines. In previous meetings, faculty had been told to call the FAU police on such students, but, due to ongoing protests against the country, many faculty have expressed a desire not to call police on students, particularly students of color.
      1. Vice President Volnick clarified that FAU police should only be called if a student escalates and becomes dangerous to the faculty member, other students, or themselves. Vice Provost Hawkins agreed that this was a difficult issue and invited UFF to meet and further discuss solutions.
      2. Vice President Volnick stated the Student of Concern reporting system will be used for reporting non-compliance.
      3. The University hopes to create a culture of compliance.
3. Equity in Teaching Assignments
   1. UFF requested that admin adopt a policy requiring that scheduling of face-to-face teaching assignments be balanced equally between tenure line, non-tenure line, and GTA instruction, in order to avoid placing only contingent faculty at undue risk of contracting COVID-19.
      1. Provost Danilowicz agreed that this is an issue and stated that this issue is one that affects all universities. He made no commitment to address this problem now, but he did commit to seeing how teaching assignments were given after the semester has begun. He also indicated this problem may be best addressed on the department level. 
4. Faculty Load
   1. Fall Onboarding: We discussed the administration’s plans for onboarding faculty this fall. Admin said they were moving the process online for this fall. We asked if UFF-FAU could still be put on the agenda so that we would be able to reach out to new faculty who might be interested in joining the union. They agreed to keep us on the agenda and will let us know what that looks like as we get closer. 
   2. AWA form question: Going back to the AWA form, a question was raised regarding the necessity of faculty with underlying conditions filling out the AWA form and reporting their underlying condition. We were told that faculty are not mandated to report their underlying conditions on the AWA form. . 
   3. Faculty Load: We expressed to the administration that moving face to face courses online requires an inordinate amount of preparation and increased work and grading for most faculty. During the spring 2020 semester, faculty at FAU responded to the administration’s call for us to quickly move all of our classes online. Faculty were only given four days (the remainder of spring break) to complete that task. We told them at all other universities in the state were given a week and in some cases, two weeks to move their courses online. For summer classes and now fall, many faculty are frantically trying to change their existing face to face courses to online or remote formats. This takes time and energy away from faculty and we would argue made it very difficult to find the time needed to do research or service. Therefore, we ask that until this crisis is over, faculty who are responsible for moving face to face courses online have their load decreased by one course for the year. This would give them the necessary time to conduct research and meet their service responsibilities.. We argued that for assignments in fall and potentially beyond,, faculty effort for each course should not be less than 25 percent per course for tenured/tenured earning faculty and for instructors, not less than 33.3 percent effort per course..In other words, we asked that instructors who normally teach four courses a semester, instead teach only three. 

Administration did not respond to these requests but were willing to open discussion on the issues.

Course Caps:. We also expressed concern that the caps for courses have been raised from 22 to 24 and in some cases, 27. We asked the administration to bring course caps back down to 11 for graduate courses and 22 for undergraduates which is the current policy. Administration did not respond at all to these requests during the meeting but we will continue to press them for these changes to fall and spring 20/21. 

1. Budget:
   1. No one we have talked with at FAU, including Deans, has indicated they’ve seen a detailed operating budget for the university. UFF-FAU’s position is that budget “workshops” must be made available to the university community, allowing faculty and staff to see the inner workings of the budget and ask questions.
   2. Faculty are now being required to justify overloads. Are FAU administrators who are on overloads or their equivalent (i.e., those who are receiving income under multiple job codes) also being required to justify their additional income? What criteria, if any, are being applied?
   3. Summer FTE is up over 16% from last year yet colleges are experiencing drastic budget cuts. Where does the money from Summer go? How is the additional 16% going to be spent?
   4.  Colleges (Academic Affairs) are being told to prepare for up to 10 percent budget cuts for the Fall. How much of a cut are the other Vice Presidents being told to prepare for?
   5. FAU received an additional $9.3 million from the state last year. Where did that money go?
   6.   In 2018-19, ~$203 million dollars were apparently removed from Academic Affairs and shifted to Student Affairs and Enrollment Management (SAEM). It also appears that the SAEM budget was increased $13 million on top of that. The following year, the SAEM budget was apparently increased another $12 million. What was the rationale for these changes? Where did the $25 million come from?  
   7.  Over the past 5 years, the budget for the Division of Research more than doubled to over $75 million. Where did that money ($40 million) come from?
   8. Based on VP Flynn’s presentation last semester, the apparent return on this significant investment has been modest, especially in looking at the net dollars.  How is return on investment evaluated at FAU? 
      1. President Kelly and CFO Atwater acknowledged that UFF were owed answers to these questions, but they made no concrete commitment to how and when answers would be provided.