The APSU chapter of AAUP received two inquiries from chapter members concerning related issues over recent changes in faculty status and function for librarians and DSP professors. The chapter in its Fall meeting authorized Dick Gildrie to prepare responses. As per our practice, this response is public and may be used as the inquirers and individual members of the chapter may wish. We have not received a formal complaint on these matters. If there are disagreements or suggestions, the members of the chapter are invited to use this listserv to further discussion on this or other matters of interest to AAUP.

 

The fundamental question is, “What are the conditions under which faculty status can be removed?”

 

According to AAUP standards as found in AAUP Policy Documents & Reports (10^th edition, 2006), faculty status can be removed:

1.       by discontinuing a program or department (pp. 24-25, 84n)

2.       by a voluntary decision of a faculty member (p. 23)

3.       through a publicly declared financial exigency (pp. 4, 24-25, 147-48)

4.       through physical or mental disability (pp. 25-26)

5.       by redefinitions of workload or role in the educational process (p. 6, 155-56).

 

Obviously, only the first and last have potential relevance in this case. For DSP, it may be both while for the library only the last may be applicable. These possibilities are explored below.

 

Taking the library first, the AAUP, since the 1973 “Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians” have insisted that “The function of the librarian as participant in the processes of teaching and research is the essential criterion of faculty status” (p. 155). Only if librarians are no longer expected to contribute to teaching and research does loss of faculty status seem justifiable. A proportional loss of faculty status, to half faculty and half staff, would require a significant redefinition of the actual work and function of librarians which would be impractical in the daily routine of the library.

 

Most importantly, all such changes “will be based primarily upon educational considerations, as determined primarily by the faculty as a whole or an appropriate committee thereof” (p. 25). Such decisions made by administrative fiat or for primarily economic reasons are violations of AAUP standards.

 

As for DSP faculty, the same standards apply in defining faculty status. It is their role in the educational process, as determined primarily by the faculty at large, that should determine the outcome. The nature and content of instruction is a faculty responsibility and not an administrative one (pp. 136-37, 139).

 

The formal discontinuance of DSP is a complication. First and again, such a decision, if not dictated by financial exigency publicly acknowledged is mainly a faculty responsibility bearing on educational policy. Also, once the action is taken, the institution “should plan to bear the costs of relocating, training, or otherwise compensating faculty members adversely affected” (p. 25). Reassignment, which was done in this case, is one form of compensation. Salary, however, should be “equitably adjusted to the faculty member’s length of past and potential services” (p. 25). Also, in such cases, “AAUP policy calls for the preservation of the protections of tenure and for continuance of salary on a pro-rata basis” (p. 84n), according to the workload and role in the educational process.  “Unilateral administrative abrogation of that salary may reasonably be interpreted not as a fiduciary responsibility but as an attack on the principle of tenure” (p. 123: the subject here is salary in medical schools but the principle seems applicable).

 

In conclusion, it is crucial for shared governance and the protection of academic freedom and tenure that changes in academic programs, instructional processes, and status of faculty be determined primarily in the Faculty Senate or Academic Council, which are elected by faculty, and not by administrative fiat or ad hoc committees selected by administrators.

 

Richard P. Gildrie