Update from USFFA Weekly Email

Weekly Update

November 11, 2020

Conversation with the Provost

Provost Cannon will be coming to the Policy Board meeting next Wed. (11/18), 3:30-5:30. All members are welcome to attend. If there are issues you would like to have raised with the provost, we encourage you to contact your Policy Board representative--find your representative here: https://www.usffa.net/reps

Strategic Planning: we need to hear from you!

The University's Strategic Planning Process is now underway. The group, which includes two USFFA members, Richard Stackman and Jeffrey Paller, along with President Sonja Martin Poole (as an ex-officio member) spent August and September establishing procedures and timelines, and will be meeting with campus stakeholders through December.

In January, the group will begin work on drafting a plan with measurable targets and resource allocation plans, and the plan is slated to be presented to the community and the Board of Trustees in June. If you’d like to keep up on the process, you can follow it here:

https://myusf.usfca.edu/president/strategic-priorities.

Finally, the Strategic Planning team is going to be sending out a call for members of working groups on a variety of topics. Please watch for the call and consider areas where you could serve.

A petition against austerity at Jesuit colleges

The Policy Board last week agreed to sign USFFA on to this petition:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScOmwodFmfqfrP6yzIxePNafrfld5n37CoFWMBbLcTBcHmsag/viewform

It notes the drastic measures that have been taken at Jesuit schools, and calls for the following:

1. A commitment to the preservation of jobs. A moratorium on job and pay cuts (including furloughs), of all frontline staff and faculty including contract workers. Further, our commitment to cura personalis requires a protection and expansion of health benefits to help employees cope with pandemic effects. To sacrifice faculty and staff in this moment of economic crisis is to violate our Jesuit identity, and all other avenues for fiscal solvency should be pursued before resorting to layoffs. This includes, but is not limited to, use of fungible endowment money and sale of off-campus real estate assets. Should cuts and pay decreases be necessary, they should begin with the top-line administrators most able to manage the hardship.

2. A renewed commitment to shared faculty and staff governance. The retreat from the educational mission in the higher education sector is endemic, and only meaningful faculty governance will ensure that Jesuit Colleges and Universities remain focused on their raison d’etre. Maintaining such a focus requires elected bodies of faculty and staff with access to confidential information and a substantial if not equal say over budget decisions. This should include granting faculty access to all budget documents including, but not limited to, revenue models, enrollment estimates, capital projects, and salary information for top administrators.

3. A commitment to transparent budget and program evaluation processes to ensure that AJCU schools do not needlessly shed the core academic programs that make Jesuit education so uniquely nurturing and rich. There can be no meaningful shared governance where asymmetry of information prevails. A budget is a moral document and strives for justice above all, subordinating more traditional budgeting priorities. Justice requires that we attend to both a fair distribution of resources and a fair process in determining that distribution.

4. A commitment to a fair and democratic process for unionization for all academic workers and staff who wish to pursue it. As Pope Francis (SJ) recently lamented, “[T]here seems to be no place for popular movements that unite the unemployed, temporary and informal workers, and many others who do not easily find a place in existing structures.” For too long, universities and colleges have relied upon contingent faculty and graduate student workers who deserve job security and a voice in employment bargaining.

5. Faculty and staff discretion over their work environment during the COVID-19 crisis. Ignatian values require that faculty and staff should not have to endanger their health and lives and those of their families for financial considerations of the institution. All faculty and staff should have the option to work remotely until pandemic conditions cease.

Although USFFA is already a signatory, you are welcome to add your signature as an individual; just go to the link and scroll down to the bottom.