Faculty advocacy group LSUnited reached out to the American Association of University Professors chapter at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette last month to promote faculty advocacy throughout the state. Although no official partnership exists yet, ULL representatives expressed interest in collaborating with LSUnited to establish a statewide network of faculty members.
Representatives from both universities met at the Alexandria Summit earlier in the academic year. One informal meeting later, LSUnited plans to meet with ULL representatives Nov. 21 to help motivate and organize the university’s efforts.
Michael Russo, LSU Libraries instruction coordinator and LSUnited member, said ULL faculty hope to mobilize faculty activism, which they see lacking on campus.
“They thought we might be able to help them get things started at ULL and get the faculty to be a little less passive,” Russo said.
LSUnited previously reached out to LSU Faculty Senate to further mutual visits, consultations and efforts to launch state activism and mailing lists.
Faculty Senate President Kevin Cope said LSUnited realized many of its causes — such as faculty prerogatives, compensation and benefits — are statewide issues rather than simply campus matters.
Cope said ULL’s physical proximity to LSU makes the prospective collaboration convenient. He also said the movement will gradually expand to other campuses, such as Southern University at Shreveport.
“We’re going one step at a time,” Cope said.
LSUnited started as a Louisiana Association of Educators-recognized faculty-teacher union. However, high membership dues deterred faculty members from joining.
To increase membership, founding members like Russo disaffiliated from LAE and rebranded the group as a faculty advocacy group, lowering dues to $10 each year.
With membership numbers now sandwiched somewhere between 100 and 150, LSUnited aims to alleviate heavy issues plaguing LSU, including low pay for instructors and decreasing contributions for the university’s retirement package.
LSUnited member and English professor Rick Moreland said the university’s Optional Retirement Plan, which most faculty members have, has the lowest employer contribution out of all Flagship 20/20 peer institutions. He said Faculty Senate formed a committee to petition the issue.
“The petition will be the first step in presenting a proposal to the administration for correcting this,” Moreland said.
Moreland said the retirement package issue is just one of many concerns LSUnited works to reform. Others include tightening job security by creating a “senior instructor” rank and raising salaries for starting instructors, he said.
Russo said LSUnited hopes to see faculty across the state become more active in dealing with the problems universities face. Though each university system faces different issues, he said there is a single uniting factor that binds them together.
“There’s one thing in common that we all have: We need to get the faculty motivated to take part in the things that affect them,” Russo said.