UNCG’s Chapter of AAUP

AAUP is here to serve the interests of all faculty at UNCG, whether Professional Track or tenure track, and budding faculty (graduate students). AAUP is the ONLY organization that advocates for us all; it is committed to academic freedom, shared governance, and due process. Here is our mission statement. Our chapter becomes stronger, and has a more powerful voice, the more of us are joined together. We encourage you to become a member, with costs as low as $10 per year for graduate students and retired faculty and only $20 a year for tenure-track and tenured faculty. Even if you aren’t sure yet whether you want to join, you can send us a short message to UNCG.AAUP@gmail.com and we’ll add you to our list of people who get updates on our activities and plans. Most people prefer to use a private email address rather than their uncg.edu address.

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News and Updates

Statement in Response to the Chancellor’s Feb. 1 Decision to Eliminate Programs

The Chancellor’s Feb. 1 decision to eliminate 20 departments, programs, and course tracks goes against the overwhelming vote of the Faculty Senate and violates UNCG’s own governance policies as well as the UNC System Code. We are devastated by the harm inflicted on our colleagues, students, university and community. And we will continue to work to restore trust and ensure that UNCG offers students a robust education in the liberal arts and sciences. 

UNCG AAUP Statement regarding the UNCG Faculty Senate’s 1/29 vote to censure the Provost & Chancellor

On December 12, 2023, Chancellor Gilliam and Provost Storrs urged faculty who wished to voice their opinions about the academic portfolio review process to work with the faculty senate as “the elected and formal representative body of the faculty.” Faculty senators assessed the evidence before them and listened to their constituents. They identified multiple occasions where the chancellor and provost breached the UNCG constitution and policies.  The UNCG AAUP respects the care the faculty senate has taken over the past weeks to assess all the evidence, consult with their units, and represent the will of the faculty. Censure is serious business, and the senate did not propose this resolution lightly. Instead, they’ve done, and continue to do, their job with the utmost rigor and seriousness.

Statement from UNCG’s AAUP regarding the preliminary list of programs proposed for elimination

The proposed list of cuts released by the Chancellor overwhelmingly targets the College of Arts and Sciences, chipping away at UNCG’s promise of a well-rounded liberal arts education that will prepare students for our global world. Departments like Religious Studies and Anthropology teach students about global cultures and diverse ways of understanding the world around us. Our popular offerings in foreign languages such as Chinese and Russian help prepare students to build bridges across cultural divides. Public institutions must be run with transparency, yet there has been no rationale provided for why these particular cuts were recommended. In fact, the list released doesn’t correlate with the APR process that we followed. Some of the programs and departments targeted for elimination were not flagged as underperforming by the APR rubrics or even reviewed by the faculty committees charged with recommending cuts. To implement this list of cuts would be a dangerous precedent that would undermine UNCG’s administration’s commitment to shared governance and transparency. Eliminating programs and departments that are core to the university’s mission without any rationale for their termination is irresponsible. We must have a full accounting of the decision-making so that a robust campus dialogue about the implications of these proposals can take place.

UNCG Leaders Respond to Petition 

On December 4, 2023, AAUP submitted its “Petition against Program Elimination at UNCG” (see petition below) to the Chancellor, Provost, Deans and Faculty Senate with over 3912 signees, including 1639 current undergraduates, 203 current graduate students, 957 alumni and 188 faculty.  On December 11, 2023, the Chancellor and Provost responded and declined our request to end the APR process. Their full response can be read here. We are disappointed that the administration continues to ignore the widespread disapproval of this process across campus and the untrustworthiness of the data being used as justification for eliminating faculty and programs. Moreover, the rationale for eliminating programs continues to be vague and unconvincing. As we pointed out in our message to them, the central contention of the Bunsis report that UNCG is in solid financial condition and possesses considerable flexible reserves to deal with financial emergencies, should they arise, remains unrefuted by the administration. When given a chance to demonstrate the budgetary deficits or other extreme circumstances that necessitate the firing of faculty, the administration once again opted rather to obfuscate, referencing only the possibility of impending “headwinds” and the need “to put the University on solid academic and financial footing for the next 10 to 20 years,” despite the fact that APR offers nothing of the sort, since there are no informed projections about the long-term (or short-term) impact of cuts. Indeed, the evidence from other institutions that have imposed drastic cuts in the current climate is that they lead directly to enrollment loss and reputational decline that cause more instability.  We are somewhat heartened, however, that the Chancellor and Provost profess to “respect the mission of AAUP” and to respect the “authority of the Faculty Senate.” They urge AAUP members to communicate our concerns to our elected campus leaders, who will be given opportunities to voice faculty concerns as the final decisions are made. We have done just that, and we encourage all members of the faculty to speak to their campus leaders and attend Faculty forums in the Spring Semester. Moreover, we implore the administration to continue listening to Faculty leadership and to include them in the APR in the meaningful ways which our governing policies demand. 

Petition against Program Elimination at UNCG

To sign the petition, visit: https://forms.gle/9fRrQTi88gFW9fZd6

Howard Bunsis Report

On October 5, university budget expert Howard Bunsis provided his illuminating report regarding UNCG’s finances. Thanks to your donations, the AAUP hired Bunsis to provide an objective, outside analysis of UNCG’s budget. Tune-in to the video below to see the evidence that UNCG is on solid financial ground and there is no budgetary need for the cuts to the core academic mission that are being proposed by the administration. You’ll also find incredibly important information about  administrative costs, faculty salaries, student fees, enrollment trends, state appropriations, and the university’s expenditures on sports.
https://vimeo.com/871840843
Bunsis also created a 117-page report, which you can read below:
Click here to download Bunsis’ written report:Download

Please Join our AAUP Chapter

If you are not a dues-paying member already, we urge you to consider joining AAUP-UNCG. All professional track, tenure-line faculty and graduate students are eligible to join. Joining the campus chapter is a bargain. We urge you all to check out what we are doing on this website and consider donating and/or becoming dues-paying members ($20 a year for tenure-line full-time faculty, $15 for Professional Track full-time faculty, and $10 for graduate students and retired faculty).  If you are interested in also joining the national AAUP organization, which would give members voting rights on issues of state or national matters, that is a separate membership fee. You do not have to be a member of the national organization to belong to the local chapter.

We are accepting dues now for the 2023-24 academic year.  If you paid dues in the past month or so, those will count toward next year. If not, please JOIN NOW.

One thing local chapter membership will get you is a regular update email from us sharing the latest developments related to UNCG faculty and zoom links to our monthly meetings. One of the ways that faculty voices get diluted is when new initiatives are rolled out very quickly, without much time for people to respond (or, even sometimes, realize what’s going on). The AAUP’s emails (sent via personal rather than campus email accounts) and meetings have proven vital in helping us share information across schools and disciplines and formulate effective responses. Even if you don’t attend any meetings or read our updates, your membership will make a difference. A large membership will add to our clout as an advocate for faculty and membership dues will help us continue to undertake efforts to gather data and disseminate it to keep our faculty better informed about issues of the academy both on our campus and across the country.

An Op-Ed, Published in the Greensboro News and Record on 03 03 2023:

If the UNCG administration wants to restore the confidence and trust of the faculty, the first step will be to refrain from all future cuts until faculty and staff have agreed on a process through which to chart a vision for the future of the university. Greater budget transparency is desperately needed, and the administration should cooperate with independent audits paid for by the UNCG chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

You can link to the complete Op-Ed.
  • Continuing cuts, and what YOU can do to help!
       As most of you know, cuts have been made—and are being made—to the funding for our graduate programs. These funding cuts go against the UNCG AAUP’s principle of no cuts without a) a plan and b) faculty input.
       The standard that administrators are using to make these funding cuts (any “non-terminal degree program”) is arbitrary. Faculty did not participate in determining this standard or in determining the process by which programs are being eliminated.
       The result is that many of our graduate programs that serve students of color, first-gen students, immigrants, low-income, and other underrepresented people in academia will no longer be able to attract these students. These programs are being eliminated without an opportunity for robust debate and deliberation across the campus.
       If you care about this decision—or about any of the other decisions that have been made and will continue to be made without a plan and without our input—we need you to be involved.