Invitation from Guilford’s AAUP chapter

[From Richie Zweigenhaft, Gail Webster, and Maria Rosales]

The three of us have been active for a number of years now in the Guilford chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). We met recently to talk about our plans for the coming year. Among the things we talked about was posting a message on The Moon Room about the AAUP so that newer arrivals to Guilford will be aware that we have a chapter, and so that older-timers will be reminded that we are around. This is that message.

As you can see on the link below, the AAUP is a national organization that has fought to defend faculty governance and the tenure system since early in the twentieth century. There was an AAUP group that met sporadically at Guilford in the 1970s, but it was only in 2007 that the current chapter was established as the result of discussions that grew out of a faculty reading group. Over the past eight years, we have done various reports (e.g., on the experiences of contingent faculty at Guilford College), we have stimulated others to do reports (e.g., a report by the Budget Committee on matters related to faculty and administrative compensation), we have brought speakers to the campus, and we have sponsored forums (e.g., to discuss the qualities we hoped that the College would seek in a President when it did a search a few years ago).

https://intranet.guilford.edu/?page_id=6929

Most years we have picked a single issue to focus on primarily, but some years we have simply met periodically to talk and we have waited to see what issues were emerging that we thought we should address. We have not yet formulated a plan for this year, but we invite you to suggest topics, and we would be glad to talk individually with you about the AAUP at Guilford.

Richie Zweigenhaft
Gail Webster
Maria Rosales