Good news! We had a very productive session on Friday October 2nd. We continued to hammer out the details of improving job security for non-tenure track faculty (NTTF) by providing continuous (rather than short-term) appointments. Our union and the administration reached conceptual agreement around many points, including the question of how evaluations will work for non-tenure track instructors in the years after they receive a continuous appointment.
Here’s an outline of how continuous appointments will work for NTTF instructors:
NTTF instructors will be initially hired on annual or multi-year contracts. Upon reaching seniority (see details below) and completing a successful, summative peer-review, they will be awarded a continuous appointment.
A continuous appointment means the instructor will become a permanent PSU employee and will no longer work on short-term contracts.
A NTTF instructor with a continuous appointment can only be terminated from their position under specific circumstances: if they engage in behavior that warrants termination under Article 27 (the part of our contract that lays out procedures for discipline / sanctions); if the university declares a financial emergency under Article 22; if there is no longer a curricular need for the position, in which case, the faculty member will have an opportunity to be recalled should the position reopen; or if the instructor receives an unsatisfactory evaluation and is unable to remediate his/her performance within a year.
An instructor on a continuous appointment will be evaluated once every three years. There will be no off-cycle evaluations. The evaluation process will be similar to our current peer-reviewed evaluations.
If a NTTF instructor receives an unsatisfactory evaluation, the faculty member and department chair will come up with a remediation plan that addresses the specific issues for improvement which were identified in the review. The plan will contain detailed mileposts and timelines. The faculty and chair will check in each quarter to assess progress. The plan can be ended earlier or extended if needed. If a faculty member does not make any progress on the plan by the end of Winter Term in the year following the evaluation, s/he will receive a 3-month termination notice.
The administration is open to the idea of attaching financial rewards to satisfactory evaluations. We will discuss this further when we bargain over economics.
While we have not yet agreed upon a transition plan, there seems to be general consensus around automatically converting many current NTFF instructors to continuous appointments. We have discussed automatically converting instructors who have completed 6 or more years at PSU, plus instructors who have reached seniority (4 or more years) and have been promoted during that time. NTTF who have not been able to promote (those hired at the Assistant Professor rank do not have a promotional pathway open to them) but have 4 or more years of experience can convert to a continuous appointment with departmental approval. New hires (NTTF hired after the agreement is ratified) will need to reach a 6-year seniority mark, but we are still working out these details.
We still need to outline a system of continuous appointments for NTTF researchers.
We’ve spent a significant amount of time working on these issues, and many of our previous sessions became contentious. Because this is such a monumental change, there was a lot of fear and trepidation in the room. The administration was leery of letting go of the managerial control and “flexibility” that the current system of short-term appointments provides. We felt pressure to construct a system that would adequately protect our members and that wouldn’t have negative unintended consequences. In short, we wanted to get it right. In the end, we’ve come up with a system that provides real job security for NTTF instructors, creates a stable work environment within our departments and most importantly, facilitates a high-quality learning environment for our students.
This conceptual agreement represents a major shift at PSU. One of our team members commented that “PSU will become a national leader in how we provide job security to NTTF. Other universities will look to us a model.”
Thank you to all of our members who attended the lunch and joined us at the bargaining table afterwards. Your presence kept us motivated and on track. It is the actions that you’ve taken over the years that made this agreement possible. Without your willingness to share your stories, the courage you’ve repeatedly shown, your support and unity for your colleagues, we would have never reached this point.
While last Friday’s news is good, we still have a long way to go. In our next session, we will start working on a system of continuous appointments for NTTF researchers. After that, we will begin to address academic professional issues, summer school protections, professional development and wages and benefits. Please join us for coffee on Tuesday October 6th at 9:30 am in Urban 611 before our next bargaining session. The bargaining team will be there to answer questions and listen to concerns. At 10am we’ll all proceed up to bargaining in Urban 710.