A strong and well-respected faculty results in a competitive and well-regarded university.
We believe the ideal circumstance for the faculty is to have a strong voice in bargaining for legally binding provisons for competitive pay, attractive benefits, traditional and necessary rights and responsibilities of tenure, academic freedom, and participatory governance. Our negotiators have secured and protected these essentials. Faculty life at UA will be best served however, by collective bargaining coupled with a vigorous and energized faculty senate. Many of our colleagues continue to try to serve the faculty, our students and the university itself by participating in that traditional, and once respected, assembly. It is also true that many, perhaps most, faculty avoid and regard such service as effectively meaningless.
Our administration presents grand, and at times inspiring, visions of what the future could be like for The University of Akron. We contend that the best way, in fact the only way, to accomplish any part of these grand designs is with the cooperation and enthusiastic support and service of a faculty empowered with real decision-making authority and a vested interest in sharing the governance of the university. To that end, faculty senate should be re-invested with its oversight of budgetary matters, academic and athletic affairs, etc. It should be given a real voice and authority in shaping university policy. To achieve its lofty goals the University of Akron needs, and cannot succeed without, a well-regarded, fairly compensated, and deeply respected faculty.
A respected and empowered faculty is the essential ingredient for rendering the University of Akron a first class institution of research, discovery and teaching. Without such, it cannot become more than an administratively top-heavy, corporate diploma mill. And all of us, our students, and even the administration, deserve far better than that.
The faculty of the University of Akron deserve nothing less from the administration than the collegial and professional respect granted to equals.
The faculty of the University of Akron will settle for nothing less.
We encourage all of our colleagues, dues-paying union members or not, to take an active role in demanding and securing the voice, the administrative authority, and the leadership roles which are the traditonal, legitimate and unquestionable rights of faculty in higher education.