By Sydney Umstead, News Editor
with Ava C. Green and Jon P. Dusza, Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor
The tension between faculty members and senior administration over salaries and working conditions has burst out into the open in the form of a letter that has been printed out and placed around campus.
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This is an ongoing story as we continue to discover more information.
The Faculty Senate – which is elected and serves as a governing body for the Canisius faculty, as explained by Audrey Browka, Canisius director of public relations — passed a resolution on Sept. 26. It states that filings for courses will only be made once a discussion regarding the budget and the increased workload is communicated to them by President Steve Stoute.
The new 4/4 system, which spurred a Faculty Senate resolution, means that professors would teach four courses a semester instead of three. The issue that people have with this policy is that it would mean a greater than 30% increase in work which will “hurt both students and faculty because it will be difficult for overloaded faculty to deliver the same quality of education,” according to Dr. Girish Shambu, secretary of the Canisius AAUP-AFT chapter. Furthermore, “faculty cannot be good researchers in their fields with this excessive workload.”
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The AAUP-AFT is the combination of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The merger occurred two years ago and allows for “a bigger, more powerful and inclusive labor organization that could work towards strengthening the education sector,” according to Shambu. The AAUP is a “nonprofit membership organization of faculty and other academic professionals,” according to their website. The organization, in its own words, “has helped to shape American higher education by developing the standards and procedures that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in this country's colleges and universities.”
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The faculty senate resolution reads: “On behalf of our students as well as our Faculty colleagues, the Faculty Senate demands an immediate communication from the President regarding (a) the process by which the change to a 4/4 load was decided and implemented.” Moreover, the Senate is seeking “(b) the details of the policy, (c) the base of the President’s authority to change [their] working conditions unilaterally, (d) a budgetary justification (including the adjunct budgets for each school) for the move for faculty to take on a 4/4 load,” and finally, the need for “(e) a discussion of how this would affect faculty scholarship and the feasibility and standards of their attaining tenure and promotion.”
Dr. Tanya Loughead, president of the Canisius AAUP-AFT, Local 6741, also said that on the eve of Wednesday, Oct. 2, someone in administration submitted the faculty spring schedules without the faculty’s knowledge or consent, which she said would violate academic freedom and shared governance. Stoute has not engaged in a dialogue with faculty about the issue as of writing this article.
At the time of writing, The Griffin reached out to the Office of The President for a comment on this subject and was given the opportunity to ask questions on Oct. 10 during a lunch The Griffin was invited to by President Stoute.
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The AAUP-AFT’s letter was anonymously posted around campus on Monday, September 30, when the Board of Trustees was on campus for a meeting, and has allegedly been removed from some of its previous locations. Currently, there are 13 fliers around campus.
The reason faculty claims that the AAUP-AFT letter was created for the Board of Trustees is because they hope to begin to establish “stronger channels of communication with faculty, engage faculty in dialogue, and hold senior administration accountable for its performance,” according to Dr. Shambu.
The Board of Trustees intends to represent part of the “governing body of the university.” Members of the board meet “four times per year and oversees, formulates, and recommends policy to the Canisius University president to ensure that the university fulfills its mission and purpose,” according to the Canisius website. These members are, in part, “accountable for the academic quality, strategic planning, and fiscal well-being of the college.”
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Loughead told The Griffin that the Dean of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Thomas Chambers, was the only dean to hold an open meeting telling faculty that a 4-4- schedule would be imposed upon them. According to Loughead, deans in the schools of business and education have apparently not told their faculty that they would have 30% increase in workload. Loughead stated that “Apparently, the policy will not affect all professors equally – if a professor is not in Arts & Sciences, or teaches graduate courses, they will have a lower workload,” which in turn “creates inequality – an inequality not supported by our Faculty Handbook.”
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Faculty research is a core component of professors’ work at Canisius. According to Loughead, “Many faculty are discussing leaving Canisius to work elsewhere, citing general disrespect from senior administration and the fact that under a 4/4 teaching schedule, their research would suffer, along with the quality of education that they could provide to students.”
Loughead went on to say that “this will create an inequality in the amount of research that a faculty member can be expected to do – since some faculty will be expected to teach more classes, it would be unfair to have equal research expectations for all.”
Loughead explained to The Griffin that this workload (of 24 credit hours per year, per professor) is in the Faculty Handbook. Loughead added, however, that other conditions in the Handbook are not being followed by the administration. Loughead stated, “The senior administration has and is violating the Handbook in at least three places: our healthcare benefits, our retirement benefits, and our pay for independent studies and theses,” continuing, “It is disingenuous for senior administration to claim that they will pick and choose which parts of the contract they will follow and which parts they will violate,” lastly expressing that “The Handbook is our contract and must be agreed upon by Faculty, Administration and Trustees.”
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Loughead recalled that Canisius faculty have gone more than ten years without a cost-of-living adjustment to their pay while the inflation rate has increased as the years went by. This means that as inflation has increased over the decade, their pay has remained the same.
The AAUP-AFT letter reads that “a faculty member who might have earned, for example, $65K in 2012 should be making $90K now, adjusted for inflation, yet would still be barely above $65K,” at Canisius.
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The AAUP-AFT letter reads, “In the last year alone, at least 11 faculty (eight in Arts & Sciences, and three in Business) have chosen to leave for other employment.” It also states that, “Six vice presidents and a dean have left Canisius within the past two years.” Furthermore, “this past spring the president dismissed two faculty members without providing any substantive reasoning,” again, all according to the letter posted.
The summer before the 2024 fall semester saw multiple faculty dismissals, and as of just last week the Vice President of Academic Affairs, Joe Delap, was fired effective immediately.
The AAUP-AFT letter discusses a faculty morale survey taken in Spring 2024, which states that 78.8% of faculty have “low levels of trust in the senior administration.” To that point, the faculty senate resolution seeks an explanation for these changes, as they cite the lack of transparency as a reason why they are fighting to achieve shared governance at Canisius.
Shared governance in higher education is defined as “the joint responsibility of faculty, administrations and governing boards to govern colleges and universities,” per the AAUP’s website. The role of shared governance is to allow faculty to be a part of decision-making “outside of their immediate areas of primary responsibility, including long-term planning, budgeting and the selection, evaluation and retention of administrators.”
Loughead claims that these changes are estimated to only save Canisius a total of around $200,000, a point that has been mentioned as a part of the reason behind why faculty would like to discuss this matter with senior administration. According to principles of shared governance, faculty are supposed to be part of university decision-making, as stated by the AAUP.
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Students and alumni took to social media to advocate for faculty at Canisius, creating a change.org petition to express support for professors. There are currently 114 signatures on the petition, and some former students have left comments on the petition website explaining their reasons for signing it.
One alumna, Hawa Saleh, wrote, “I wouldn’t be who I am today if it wasn’t for the professors I had at Canisius.”
Loughead said, “often students come to Canisius for the small class sizes and personalized education of the ‘whole person,’ however, under this increased workload, Canisius will lose this crucial feature.”Another point made in the letter discusses the student experience. They wrote that in some cases these experiences are being “eliminated.”
On the theme of communication, their letter claims that there is seemingly a “lack of transparency with regards to donations” which has “many faculty worried about our relationship with donors, and also about New York State Law.”
If improvements are not made, then, “all options are on the table,” according to Dr. Loughead.