NEIUPI

Your UPI negotiating team received the administration’s response to our proposed language on the evaluation of Instructors and Academic Resource Professionals. There was a short caucus during which the administration’s proposal was discussed and our response crafted. Following the caucus, we met with the administration and identified three dates in August to negotiate. Our next meeting is July 27.

Judy Kaplan Weinger, Professor of Linguistics and Chair of the Faculty Senate, attended the negotiations and participated in the UPI caucus. As you may recall, UPI members have been invited to shadow negotiations to learn more about the process so that future UPI teams may be drawn from an informed membership. Please let me know if you would like to shadow a session in July (27) or August (11, 17, 23).

Interesting commentary from the Chronicle about how email has changed the time frame for the academic community.

Email: The third shift

By Mary Ann Mason

Many academics have a love-hate relationship with e-mail. We know it has made communicating with colleagues in our own departments and around the world far, far easier. But we are also aware that e-mail is devouring a great deal of our time.

For faculty members, it is not just e-mail messages from professional associates, friends, family, and spammers that demand our attention. Students, sometimes by the dozens, e-mail their instructors daily, seeking an immediate response. For faculty mothers and fathers, e-mail eats up the extra hour or more a day after they have put the children to bed and prepared for the next day’s teaching—or perhaps the hour before the children or the sun rise.

Read more at the Chronicle…

Interesting article about on line courses and the growing competition for higher education market. Northeastern University identified in article is in Boston and is NOT NEIU.

Outsourced Ed: Colleges Hire Companies to Build Their Online Courses

By Marc Parry for the Chronicle

Michael Tricoli was a middle manager looking for a leg up in his career, so he got an online M.B.A. from Northeastern University.

Well, not only from Northeastern. Much of his college experience was outsourced to a private company.

The company, Embanet, put up millions to start the online business program. Its developers helped build the courses. Its staff talked Mr. Tricoli through the application. It even pays—and, in rare cases, refers for possible hiring—the assistants who help teach students.

Read more at the Chronicle…

Three questions emerged during our last membership meeting regarding the administration’s proposed economic package passed at the end of June. We asked and received the following responses from the administration’s team:

1. Was the workload incentive proposed for Instructors, Associate Professors and Professors voluntary? No, the changes in workload accompanied by a change in compensation would not be voluntary if ratified by the membership and approved by the board.

2. Does the overload pool created by an allocation of .5 cu/TP or RP apply to both instructional and non instructional overload? The overload pool would be used for non instructional overload only.

3. How will application based on exceptionality or the use of prior years of experience be implemented if tenure and promotion to associate professor become one personnel action? Both exceptionality and years of service will continue as options in the evaluation process but will apply to both tenure and promotion to associate, equally. That is, one cannot apply for promotion under exceptionality (or apply previous years of experience) and not include it as part of tenure review. The two personnel actions cannot be separated in time or process.

Your UPI team passed revised language on the status statement for Instructors, Academic Support Professionals and Academic Resource Professionals. We also passed revised language on the evaluation process for Instructors and Academic Resource Professionals and await the administration’s response at our next negotiations session scheduled on Wednesday, July 21.

Here’s a report that appeared on the CBS news on July 15.

Northeastern Administrators Get Huge Pay Raises
Meanwhile, Students Get Tuition Hike, Staff Members Get Salaries Frozen

Reporting
Dorothy Tucker
CHICAGO (CBS) ―

Some Northeastern Illinois University administrators are now making tens of thousands of dollars more each year. At the same time, some staff members are ticked off and students there are struggling to pay the hiked up tuition. CBS 2′s Dorothy Tucker reports.

Incoming freshmen at Northeastern Illinois University face a tuition hike of more than $1,000, making the cost about $20,000 a year.

Read more at CBS 2 Chicago…