Category Archives: EMU-AAUP

“David Mielke to relinquish role as dean of Eastern Michigan University’s College of Business”

Posted on August 6, 2011 by | 8 Comments

This from annarbor.com.  “Relinquish” is sort of an odd word choice here, isn’t it?  It’s usually a word suggesting a reluctance and force, as in “She was forced to relinquish control of the project.”  So, was this his idea?

On the other hand, the annarbor.com article says that Mielke is 65, so maybe he just wants to teach a couple years before he retires for good.

By the way, I hope the EMU-AAUP is keeping track of all the high-paid administrators who are going back to faculty because those salaries are going to skew the heck out of the average salary numbers that the administration will surly use against faculty in the upcoming contract negotiations.  A few more high paid suits and before you know it, annarbor.com will be reporting that the average salary for faculty is $125K and those professors who are threatening to go on strike are just a bunch of crybabies.

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU-AAUP, In the media...

Don Ritzenhein either resigned or “resigned”

Posted on July 25, 2011 by | 2 Comments

I’m posting this because some comments have already addressed it: EMU-AAUP President Susan Moeller sent around an email today about soon to be former Assistant VP for Academic HR Don Ritzenhein:

The EMU-AAUP has been informed that Assistant Vice President of Academic Human Resources, Don Ritzenhein, will be stepping down from his administrative position and will be returning to faculty on August 24th.

This fall he will start teaching in the Department of Communications, Media, and Theater Arts where he is a tenured full professor. Don joined EMU as the head of AHR in July 2010 and was the administration’s chief negotiator. Previously he was the Provost at Macomb Community College.

We welcome Don back to faculty and appreciate the work he did on the faculty’s behalf over the last year.

His departure from the Provost’s office means that Jim Carroll, the new interim Associate Provost, will be the only staff person left in the office at this time.  We assume he will be our EMU-AAUP and faculty contact person starting August 16th, until otherwise notified – his phone number is 487-2246 and his email address is jcarroll@emich.edu

Two thoughts for now:

  • I don’t know anything more about this than what’s in that email, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never met Don.  For all I know, he really did resign because he wants to go back into the classroom, etc.  But it seems kind of odd that someone who has been in administrative careers for most of his life would leave this one after just about a year in that job.
  • I’ll be kind of curious to find out what Ritzenhein and Kay are going to be teaching next year.  That CTA department is getting pretty crowded….

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU-AAUP

Vacay midterm: faculty vs. administrators

Posted on July 20, 2011 by | 9 Comments

Minnnesota sunset
I’m writing from an unusually warm family vacation in Minnesota– that’s a picture of a beach area that I liked. Since I’m inside and being air-conditioned for a while, I thought I’d write a brief post on the sort of contrast of opinions I’ve heard very recently about what’s wrong with universities nowadays.

Shortly after arriving for this reunion of sorts, my father, who is fairly conservative and definitely not an academic, wanted to show me this editorial in the Des Moines Register, “Gartner says Iowa’s state universities need to change quickly.”. Basically, former regent member Michael Gartner is all over the place with the problems of the universities in Iowa, blaming it mostly on lazy and shared-governance seeking faculty, the places not being run enough like businesses, and (and I swear I’m not making this up) binge drinking by the students.

At almost the same time, an alert EMUTalk reader sent me a link to this CHE piece, “The Strategic Plan: Neither Strategy Nor Plan, but a Waste of Time,” which is from a book called The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters by Benjamin Ginsberg. The headline is almost all you need to know about the Ginsberg piece, especially for those amongst us who have had to deal with some kind of program review paperwork mumbo-jumbo.

Anyway, the conservative point of view is that the problem is the faculty, and the liberal point of view is that the problem is the administration. I tend to agree with Ginseberg, though Gartner is not completely wrong, either. The troubling thing for me is that the Gartner view seems to have a lot more play with non-academic types like my family.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Board of Regents, EMU-AAUP, In the media..., Uncategorized

Thoughts as the dust settles on lay-offs

Posted on June 27, 2011 by | 39 Comments

It would appear that the administration’s/Board of Regent’s layoffs have settled out– that is, we seem to know the scope and reach of them.  A few thoughts I thought I’d share:

  • I’m surprised by the number of AP layoffs.  As far as I can tell, nine AP folks were fired, some who had been here as long as 24 years.  I’m not going to speculate too much on the thinking behind all the choices, though I heard from one soon to be former employee that the firing suit seemed to have a certain level of glee dropping the axe.
  • There have been some dean/associate dean-level positions eliminated too, including the dean and associate dean in Extended Program and Educational Outreach (aka Continuing Education).  I’m not really sure what that means; is that program going away and/or what?  That would include lots of online and alternative programs, right?
  • Susan Moeller sent around an email with a link to this all union press release. I’d include text from it here, they put it out in a PDF that can’t be easily copied for some reason.  The tally there is 30:  12 clericals, 14 PTs, and 4 physical plant folks.  I of course understand why the these folks are mad (heck, we’re all mad), though this press release seems a little all over the place and out of control to me.  Don’t write angry, folks.
  • In her email, Moeller also wrote:

    In addition President Martin was not around as the lay offs were occurring. She went out of town after announcing the layoffs at the Board of Regents Tuesday meeting. A real leader would have stayed and personally handled the layoffs to explain the decision to keeps millions in athletics and lay off 40 employees. She should be willing to explain to her employees why she did this.

    As EMU presidents come and go, Sam Kirkpatrick is remembered for the University House mess, John Fallon is remembered for lying about a student’s murder, and Sue Martin will be remembered for needlessly laying off employees and making Athletic’s First at EMU not Education.

    Time will tell how Martin’s legacy is impacted by this, of course. I blame the Board of Regents more than her and this is not the first time employees have been laid off at EMU, but I see Moeller’s point.

  • Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that the top suits (Martin, Lumm, etc.) and the Board of Regents did not have bad intentions.  Let’s assume they held tuition to a completely inadequate 3.65% increase not because they wanted to create a crisis to justify firing some people and/or to play hardball with the unions, but they really were keeping tuition as low as possible to benefit students.  Never mind that they knew they were benefiting students and the football team by firing people; I want to believe the suits and BoR aren’t doing this because they’re evil.  I really need to believe that these people aren’t evil.
  • But I do think these folks have made terribly wrong decisions, and I think the last couple of years focusing on keeping costs low low low (the press release emphasizes “fiscal stewardship,” the lowest increase for any state university three years running, etc.) demonstrate they are both not thinking of other universities around us and they are fundamentally misunderstanding the reasons why people go to a particular college.  Keeping things super cheap benefits students for the short-term at best.  Students don’t pick universities based on the cheapness thriftiness if its administrators; they pick universities based on programs of study, reputation, location, family and friends, social factors, and then costs, especially when costs are in the same basic range.

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Posted in Academics, Administrator Life, Board of Regents, Budgets, EMU President, EMU-AAUP, Faculty Life, Professional-Technical, Staff Life, Student Life

“Editorial: Keep EMU profs out of Detroit Schools”

Posted on June 23, 2011 by | 4 Comments

A couple of loyal EMUTalk.org readers sent me a link to this Detroit News editorial to post here about the whole Education Achievement System thing, “Keep EMU profs out of Detroit Schools.” In my read, it’s just kind of a foaming at the mouth “unions are destroying everything!” kind of piece, but here it is.

Frankly, I think it is just way WAY too early to tell what the EAS is even going to be, let alone what the role of EMU faculty is in relation to it. It might turn out to be the best thing since sliced bread. But I am inherently skeptical of any plan that will automatically “save” the Detroit public schools, and I am doubly skeptical about anything along those lines coming out of the Snyder administration.

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Posted in Board of Regents, EMU-AAUP, Faculty Life, In the media...

Layoffs coming, and (probably) not a suit among them

Posted on June 22, 2011 by | 113 Comments

I’ve heard from two different sources today that President Martin (and I presume some other administrators) met with leaders from the unions representing clerical workers, food service and janitorial workers, and professional-technical folks. There are going to be more meetings today and tomorrow about all this, but basically, it sounds like somewhere just shy of 40 folks will get fired tomorrow and/or Friday.

I haven’t heard anything about AP positions yet, but don’t bet on it.

Just to think about the lack of necessity in all this for a moment:  let’s say that the average pay and benefits for these positions was $80,000 a year– and I think figure is kind of high.  That’s around $3.2 million.  The general rule of thumb I have heard before is that a one percent rise in tuition is worth about a million dollars, give or take.  So had we raised tuition 6.6%….  But never mind that.

Anyway, to the future laid-off:  I think it would be useful to put some names and faces with these decisions so that folks in the administration and on the board know exactly what they’ve done and to whom.  So if any of you want to share your stories here, let me know– I’ll be sure to make it available on EMUTalk.org

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Posted in Administrator Life, Board of Regents, EMU President, EMU-AAUP

All is not necessarily well with the EAS

Posted on June 22, 2011 by | Leave a comment

And jeez, it hasn’t even started yet.

There’s this from the freep, “Eastern Michigan faculty side with teachers’ unions, says they weren’t consulted about plan.” A quote:

Eastern Michigan University faculty members are promising not to do any work that might help bust existing public school teacher contracts, possibly crimping plans to use the faculty in a new statewide school district run by the university and the Detroit Public Schools.

“We won’t have our membership involved in breaking union contracts,” said Howard Bunsis, the treasurer of the EMU faculty union.

Now, the new DPS Emergency Manager, Roy Roberts, answers these concerns in this freep article, “Roy Roberts to cut non-teaching jobs, cancel supplier contracts in effort to transform DPS.”

Responding to pronouncements from some Eastern Michigan University faculty that they would not teach in city schools in support of DPS unions, Roberts said no one has asked them to.

“Eastern was selected because of its long history of being a great teaching school,” Roberts said. “I haven’t heard one person, including the governor or anyone else suggest that Eastern Michigan would have people in Detroit. There was no expectation for them to do that.”

Well, we’ll see.  Maybe EMU faculty won’t be teaching in Detroit schools, but presumably they will be involved in some aspects that could create some potential union problems.  Besides that, Roberts sounds like quite the slash ‘n burn kinda guy.

“This is fun,” he said, adding that he doesn’t take lightly having to remove people from jobs.

“I know how to do this. I have people who know how to do this. None of us woke up this morning and said ‘I think I’ll change today. People change because there are external stimuli. I’m going to provide the stimuli. I want to change the conversation about education. I’m concerned about jobs only to the degree that they help teach kids to be successful.”

Yippee.

And it is worth keeping an eye on a completely different connection between EMU and DPS in all this.  Sure, EMU is known for its education programs, but then there might also be some other connections.  The Michigan Citizen article, “DPS CEO hides fraud secret,” more or less says that there was (is?) a sketchy relationship between BoR member James Stapleton, former DPS CEO Ken Burnley (and, interestingly enough, candidate for the EMU president job way back when), and a bunch of other Detroit movers and/or shakers. The article has a bit too much of a conspiratorial for my tastes, but hey, who knows? Stranger and sketchier things have happened.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Board of Regents, EMU-AAUP, In the media...

EMU All Union Council issues press release on cuts

Posted on June 12, 2011 by | 28 Comments

This isn’t really that new in that it came out a few days ago (it got kinda lost in my inbox) and it doesn’t report anything that hasn’t already been said, but I thought I’d share it anyway (after the continue reading part).  Someone told me that the union leaders suggested point-blank to EMU President Susan Martin some cuts to athletics, and that was shot down.  I don’t know if that’s actually right though because it’s not included in this press release.

Anyway, read on for the whole thing.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, EMU President, EMU-AAUP, Professional-Technical, Staff Life

EMU Unions reject President Martin’s call to forgo raises

Posted on June 10, 2011 by | 11 Comments

Annarbor.com is catching up to last week’s news with “Eastern Michigan University unions reject President Susan Martin’s call to forgo raises.” Literally, much of what’s there has been here for a while, but it is still perhaps reading over.  It’s late, but I think that the piece generally takes a favorable position on what the unions are saying.

There are some good comments, too.  One thing that comes up from a commentator named “Cash” is the idea that perhaps there ought to be freezes for folks making over a certain amount of money– Cash suggested $50,000, though I don’t really know what number would be fair.  But I am struck by what is an opportunity lost here by Martin et al.  If the administration had said something like “we want full professors and anyone else making more than $50K (or $60K or $70K or whatever number you want to come up with) to take a freeze so don’t have to layoff these people who are already aren’t making enough money,” it would have been a trickier argument for people like me to say “no way.”  At this stage, I think it’s too late to go down that path though.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, EMU-AAUP, In the media...

“Will state universities follow GVSU’s 2010 lead?”

Posted on June 9, 2011 by | 5 Comments

Via my feed and an alert reader comes this mlive/Grand Rapids Press article, “Will state universities follow GVSU’s 2010 lead and freeze salaries?” Here’s a quote:

All GVSU employees last year agreed to freeze wages, and some union workers agreed to pass on 2 percent raises included in an already approved contract – as well as boost contributions to health insurance premiums.

Eastern Michigan University President Susan Martin asked union employees last month if they would forfeit 2 percent pay raises to save $3.2 million – and stave off 50 layoffs. The university expects to lose about $11.4 million in state aid.

Let me repeat a critical part from that paragraph:  ”All GVSU employees last year agreed to freeze wages….”  You’ll note that paragraph doesn’t say something like “All GVSU employees agreed at the last possible moment, with no explanation or discussion about it at all to freeze wages….”  That’s a critical difference, in my view.

Incidentally, this article also features a somewhat goofy stock photo of Martin, also shot at a weird angle.

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Posted in Budgets, EMU President, EMU-AAUP, In the media...