LU Faculty Senate re-sends faculty definition to curators

Lincoln University faculty gather for a Faculty Senate meeting on campus in September 2016.
Lincoln University faculty gather for a Faculty Senate meeting on campus in September 2016.

Lincoln University's faculty and its Board of Curators have different definitions of "faculty."

With 69 yes votes Thursday, the Faculty Senate endorsed a definition that says its membership includes "all permanent and temporary, full-time members of the faculty," including those whose appointment is .75 of full-time equivalency (FTE) or higher and "whose primary duties are at Lincoln University's campus in Jefferson City."

The Faculty Senate's definition includes those who are tenured or on a tenure track, as well as those who are non-tenure track faculty, research and extension faculty, (and) library faculty.

The resolution carries a note the definition makes no reference, direct or implied, to "teaching."

The Faculty Senate's vote came after it approved slight modifications to a similar resolution the Senate approved almost a year ago but which never was presented to LU's Curators.

However, Thursday's vote also followed the curators' Feb. 9 vote defining "academic faculty" as those employees whose primary duty is teaching.

The curators' definition reads: "'Academic faculty' are those members of the faculty whose academic appointment is .75 FTE or higher, who is a member of a department in which a degree program is housed and whose condition of employment is a probationary, tenured or tenured-track appointment."

Many faculty members believe the curators' February vote was an effort to shrink the number of LU employees who can be covered by any collective bargaining negotiations with the Missouri National Education Association (MNEA), after faculty members asked the organization to represent them in talks with Lincoln administrators.

Faculty Senate Chair Bryan Salmons told the News Tribune after Thursday's Senate meeting: "It is something I wish the curators would think more seriously about, instead of playing more reactionary with the union.

"I think, in some respects, it seems like they've gotten so focused in on combating the union effort that they've lost sight of the fact that 'faculty' has a real meaning on the ground for those of us who are (faculty)."

He added: "You can categorize us in some pretty strange ways, if it suits your purposes, but that doesn't mean we're going to see ourselves that way."

In the fall 2015 semester, while faculty were arguing the Senate should vote "no confidence" in Said Sewell's work as Lincoln's provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, the Senate held a closed meeting, and there were arguments about which faculty members could or could not take part in the meeting.

"I was most proud that we resolved for our own purposes, within the context of the faculty, what had been a very contentious issue," Salmons explained Thursday. "I felt that we came up with a very equitable solution that everybody liked.

"And I was frustrated that that was never submitted to the board."

Even before many of its members began thinking about asking the MNEA to join the fray, the faculty's original resolution was a request for the curators to adopt a new definition of who qualified to be on the "faculty."

However, the faculty itself can't submit its proposal directly to the curators.

Instead, such a proposal goes from the Faculty Senate to the Academic Affairs vice president, and according to Salmons, Sewell declined to submit it to the curators. "I felt like that was an important principle to reaffirm, 'This is the way we define ourselves'" - so the resolution was passed a second time.

The curators meet again April 20.

Salmons also reported to Thursday's Senate meeting that Curators President Marvin Teer asked for the faculty to nominate three people - two members and an alternate - to represent the faculty on the search committee for a new LU president, after Kevin Rome announced last week he's going to Fisk University, Nashville, on July 1.

Those nominations are due by April 17, three days before the next curators meeting.

The faculty also nominated several people to be the Senate's officers in the 2017-18 school year.

Salmons could serve another one-year term as chairman but announced he wasn't going to run again - reporting his wife is pregnant with twins.

"I took that as God's way of saying, 'Bryan, do something else,'" he quipped.