I ask for your vote as you decide who should serve as Vice President for Academics for the Fredonia Chapter of United University Professions from 2017 to 2019.

 

Throughout my activist career--which began in the mid-1990s as a graduate student at Princeton University, expanded with my contributions as Co-General Editor for Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor from 1999 to 2002, and has continued to develop within UUP since Mac Nelson recruited me in the summer of 1998--I have been committed to social movement unionism and problem-solving unionism.

 

I have been an elected delegate and member of our chapter’s Executive Board for 15 of my 19 years at Fredonia.  During that time, I have served in a variety of local leadership roles:

• English Department Representative (1998-2001)

• Membership Development Officer (2001-2003)

• Vice President for Academics (2001-2006) [stepped down due to sabbatical leave]

• Part-Time Concerns Officer (2011-2013)

• Officer for Contingents (2013-present)

 

I have also been active on multiple state-wide UUP Committees:

• Legislation Committee (2001-2005)

• Globalization and Corporatization Committee (2004-2009, 2010-2016)

• Outreach Committee (2013-2015)

• Contingent Employment Committee, United University Professions (2012-present)

• Future of Public Higher Education Committee, United University Professions (2016-present)

 

My goal in taking on these positions has always been to make a difference:

• I edited special issues for Workplace: “Striking Back” (1999) and “The Prison Issue” (2000).

• I played a supporting role in organizing UUP’s first conference on the corporatization of the university; see the book that the main conference organizers eventually published, Transforming Higher Education: Education, Democracy, and the University (2012).

• As Co-Coordinator of Western Region Outreach for UUP from 2013 to 2015,

  • I helped organize a joint statement from Fredonia’s major organizations (administration, UUP, CSEA, SA, and University Senate) during the 2014 NYS budget process;

  • I was a key part of a team that brought Senator Catharine Young and Assemblymen Sean Ryan, Andrew Goodell, and Joseph Giglio to Fredonia in December 2014 to discuss public higher education’s place in the 2015 NYS budget process.

• I organized a team of contingent and tenure-stream faculty who developed the Fredonia Chapter’s initial negotiating positions in the lead-up to and eventual agreement on revisions to Fredonia’s Handbook on Appointment, Reappointment, and Promotion (the contingent faculty portion of which I helped negotiate).

• I helped organize teams that developed events for multiple Campus Equity Weeks, as well as for National Adjunct Awareness/Action Week in 2015.

• I have been a key part of a team that developed UUP’s first-ever SUNY-wide survey of contingent faculty, which will be released shortly.

 

Now more than ever, UUP needs to be in perpetual organizing mode.  I hope you will give me the opportunity to expand my ongoing efforts to engage and activate new members and new leaders within the Fredonia chapter as your Vice President for Academics.

 

To find out more about my ideas and share your own ideas on what we can accomplish together in the next two years, check out my academic blog Citizen of Somewhere Else and my twitter feed @CitizenSE.

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Bruce