Welcome Regent Parker, Regent Hawks, Regent Ahmed, and Regent Stapleton. Regents Clack, Incarnatti, Sidlik, and Wilbanks, welcome back, and Happy New Year. And it is a new year, and hopefully a new beginning for Eastern Michigan University.

It is invigorating and exciting that you are here today. We are fortunate that you are willing to lend your experience and expertise to partake in one of the most important endeavors within our society: educating our citizens.

As you begin your journey, we at the AAUP invite you to meet with us, so that you can get a sense of who the faculty are, and get a sense of the level of dedication the faculty have for the students and the institution. We as faculty all chose to teach here at astern Michigan because of one overriding reason; EMU is a place that values teaching and learning.

In addition to meeting with us, we also invite you to visit our classes, so that you can see and feel the energy and enthusiasm that occurs in our classrooms. Nothing is more important at EMU than what occurs in these classrooms, and I hope you get a chance to experience this. We also invite you to our student organization meetings, where faculty and students interact, plan community service activities, and hold seminars with professionals in their disciplines.

As you well know, the faculty has been without a new contract (we are working without a raise under the terms of the old contract) since the start of the academic year. That is 141 days and counting. You may not be aware that the second largest union on campus, the hard working and dedicated members of the Professional and Technical Workers Union, represented by the UAW, are also working under the terms of an expired contract. Therefore, over 1,000 employees at EMU do not have labor peace, and these employees represent more than half of the total employees at this institution. Lastly, the Clerical and Secretarial Union (also represented by the UAW) and our Physical Plant workers have begun negotiations on contracts that expire in the next few months.

Related to negotiations, faculty members often ask: Why would the administration spend so much money on outside attorneys, outside consultants, and outside PR firms, all with the goal of making the faculty look bad? What is that about? What is the motivation there? We hope that the new regents can shed some light on this phenomenon.

To get a further sense of who we are, consider that 99% of the faculty at EMU belongs to the EMU-AAUP. And above all, please visit our website at www.emuprofessors.org.

The contract negotiations are in a fact finding process, and we will demonstrate in fact finding that what we are requesting (in terms of compensation and health care) is on average what other comparable institutions have received. And you may not know this, but it is very clear: We have made significant health care concessions. Our positions are reasonable and are justified by the facts and empirical evidence, and we are pleased that a neutral third party will be examining these issues.

However, there is one aspect of fact finding that we would like for you to discuss. We at the AAUP have pledged that we will accept ALL the recommendations of the neutral fact finder, if the administration will do the same. The administration invited us to fact finding, but they have refused to join us in this pledge. We ask you, the new Regents, to press the administration to accept the results of this deliberative and empirically-based process. This one step would do more to help the atmosphere on this campus than anything else that could occur.

One of the first issues you will be addressing is the development of Pray Harrold and Mark Jefferson. Any honest review of this situation will indicate that faculty has not been sufficiently involved in the planning and development of these building. We certainly share the goals of improving classroom facilities. In fact, we have been pushing for these reforms loudly and clearly for years. All we want is a voice in what our new classrooms, offices, and labs will look like, so that these facilities will be successful in educating our students. We are not asking for, nor should we have, veto power. All we want is a voice in the process.

Let me conclude by letting you know what faculty are thinking these days. It is end of the 2^nd week of the new term. We are so excited to be back in the classroom. By this time, we are learning our students’ names, working with them on their first assignments and projects, and we are simply thrilled to be doing what we love to do; teaching the great students here at EMU. We look forward to working with you as we move forward. Thank you.