Dear Colleagues,

According to Article 21.12.3 of the contract, NTTs who intend to apply for promotion to Senior Lecturer, Senior Lecturer II or Senior Lecturer III must notify their department of their intent to apply in the semester prior to the year in which the application is due (the exact timeline is outlined in the Master Academic Calendar).

This means that if you intend to go up for promotion to Senior Lecturer, Senior Lecturer II  or Senior Lecturer III next year, you must notify your department chair of your intent to apply for promotion by WEDNESDAY, May 13th, 2026 (note that the May 13th timeline applies to promotions for Clinical Professors, all ranks, as well).

This deadline is only to signal intent to apply–you do not have to have your application completed until the first day of the Spring 27 semester (once the actual due date is known we will inform you) should you be deemed eligible to apply. We strongly recommend that you review Article 21.12 for further information on promotional eligibility criteria so you can better determine if you will be eligible.

It is important to note that you will not be notified by the Administration of your eligibility to apply- you will have to determine that yourself. If you think you might be eligible but are not sure we encourage you to notify your department chair anyway of your intent to apply. If it turns out you are not yet eligible, you will be notified accordingly and can apply when you are next deemed eligible. There is no penalty in regards to future eligibility if you signal intent to apply now but are deemed ineligible at this time.

Please contact the FSU office if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Caroline Coscia                             Jason Rodriquez

Senior Lecturer II                         Professor

Political Science Department     Sociology Department

President                                        Vice President

 

This week’s point was written by Nick Juravich, Associate Professor of History and Labor Studies. As always, The Point represents the views of its author and is not the official position of the FSU. 

When the news broke earlier this month that Hampshire College would be closing, few people expressed surprise. The college nearly closed in 2019, and while it staved off that initial crises, the threat of closure led to a vicious cycle of falling application numbers and financial hardship. The college will run one final semester in Fall 2026 before shuttering its Amherst campus for good.

Hampshire’s end is, of course, not unique. The Hechinger Report counted nearly 300 college closures between 2008 and 2024, and just this year, two other Massachusetts colleges, Anna Maria College and Labouré College of Healthcare, have also announced their demise. Many reports on Hampshire’s closure cited deleterious long-term trends, including a decline in the overall college-age population (though not nearly to the extent that the language of a “demographic cliff” would have us believe) and a decline in the percentage of those students attending college. These trends – and panicked coverage of them, which impact everything from student choices to bond ratings – have put enormous pressure on schools that depend on tuition dollars to keep the doors open (and the current administration’s chaotic directives on student aid haven’t helped).

Still, Hampshire’s loss hit me hard; I grew up in Amherst, where Hampshire has been a beloved part of the local community for over half a century. Friends’ parents worked there and let us run around the grounds as kids, to the amusement of the students. As we got older, we raced cross country at the annual high school invitational (a great use of a beautiful campus), attended talks, exhibitions, and performances put on by Hampshire’s brilliant, idiosyncratic students – who, famously, all designed their own programs of study – and watched some of our friends become students there themselves. One of my high school teammates has coached the cross country and track and field programs at Hampshire since 2016; they just competed in their last-ever track season.

The nostalgia many of us feel at Hampshire’s closing is undeniable, but it can also be paralyzing. “In an era when students increasingly expect colleges to offer a career-focused education that funnels them toward the work force,” wrote the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Hampshire swam against the tide.” An op-ed in Inside Higher Ed mused that Hampshire’s model, while still “academically sound” would not “save a beloved, quirky institution from the dustbin of history” on account of the changed political economy of higher education. These are not hostile pieces, but they, like many, treat the Hampshire model and experience as a relic of bygone years of plenty, when countercultural institutions thrived and the hard edges of today’s economy had not yet grown so sharp.

Hampshire is, indeed, a unique institution, but the ideas that animated its creation were not. The college emerged following the publication, in 1958, of a “New College Plan” created jointly by the three small colleges in the area – Amherst, Smith, and Mount Holyoke – and the University of Massachusetts, itself all of eleven years old at the time. Demand for higher education was soaring, and educators believed that new pedagogies, curricula, and organization could better serve some of those in this widening undergraduate population.

UMass’s involvement in Hampshire’s creation is particularly relevant on our campus, because system administrators had Hampshire in mind when they created UMass Boston’s College of Public and Community Service (CPCS) at UMass Boston in 1972. Some personnel even overlapped; Hampshire’s first president, Franklin Patterson, joined UMB as a political science professor in 1971, and later served as interim president of UMass. The contrast between a commuter school for working-class Bostonians and a leafy, hippie Western Mass campus might seem high, but both institutions were animated by the idea that students deserved, and would respond to, educational models that met them where they were and took seriously their ability to direct their own learning. The idea that “experimental” higher education could deliver both knowledge and opportunities to a very wide range of students flourished in these years, from the Antioch network to the new “career ladder” programs created at the City University of New York after student and community organizing won open enrollment policies and a dramatic expansion of CUNY.

My first year at UMass Boston coincided with the last official year of CPCS, and there are many on our campus who can speak to its virtues and legacy far better than I can. My knowledge of CPCS comes, primarily, from teaching in our Labor Studies program, which was created within in CPCS in 1979. Alumni of our program took me aside, as a new faculty member, to share how transformative the CPCS model was for them. The competency-based credit system allowed workers with experience as shop stewards or bargaining team members to direct, and demonstrate, their own learning without taking a course in something they already understood better than any professor. Night classes at the Park Square campus incubated a new generation of progressive labor leaders; labor studies founder Jim Green described one, in his book Taking History to Heart, that contained four future local presidents (and one future Labor Resource Center administrator, Wally Soper). Susan Moir, who earned her BA in labor studies at UMB and later returned to the labor studies program, made sure I understood that CPCS “welcomed people on welfare,” including her, in the 1970s, a decade when attacks on social welfare programs and those who needed them were reaching a fever pitch (one from which our meager social safety net has never recovered).

It would be reasonable, at this point, to note that CPCS predeceased Hampshire by seven years, a victim of many of the same pressures in higher education. Our colleagues at Lesley University are on a two-day strike as I write this (you can support them here), fighting for a contract in the face of uncertainty at their institution, which has long prioritized hands-on learning and creative pedagogies for future educators. As our retired colleague Maurice Cunningham wrote earlier this year, the UMass System is now considering three-year degrees as a way to fast-track students into the workforce, a vision that seems oceans away from the New College Plan or the founding of CPCS.

In spite of these depressing trends, I would argue, there is real value in keeping the lessons of Hampshire, CPCS, and other such experiments out of the dustbin of history. We hear regularly of the “loss of trust” in higher education, which, however manufactured such narratives may be, seems to have contributed at least somewhat to the declining enrollment of college-age students (the far larger factor, of course, is the cost of higher education, exacerbated by uncertainty about access to loans and grants). Promises of three-year degrees are framed as a way to lure uncertain students to college, but they only go so far when the job market into which students are being rushed is deeply unstable.

Moreover, as critics of the “demographic cliff” narrative have noted, it relies on data about traditional college-age students (18-22 year olds). Worse, one of its leading progenitors assumes racial disparities in educational attainment to be constant demographic factors, not dynamic problems to be addressed by, or in, higher educational institutions.

During a period of economic and social upheaval half a century ago, Hampshire, CPCS, and other “experiments” believed that making students agents of their own education offered a way forward. They intentionally welcomed non-traditional students: older people who went straight to work, or into military service, or raised a family (or all three) out of high school, students who had been denied educational opportunities earlier in life on account of segregation, racism, patriarchy, and class expectations about their future (one colleague in history, a UMB alum herself, still recalls the student who showed her the slip on which his high school guidance counselor had written, years earlier, “you are not college material”). Experimental education was not envisioned to compete for traditional students in a marketplace, but to reach not served by such competition.

Hampshire may be closing, but the generations of students it trained still put its ethos to work in their own teaching, as Jason Read and Touré Reed discussed on the Breaking Culture podcast earlier this week. CPCS may be gone, but many of us at UMass Boston still believe in meeting students where they are and allowing them to direct their own learning. In my short time here, I have watched countless colleagues design assignments, independent studies, and capstone projects that allow students to put their particular skills and unique knowledge to work in service of credit. That, far more than a headlong dash to a degree, seems like a compelling way to make a case for public higher education.

The committee for this year’s The Point currently includes Jessica Holden, Healey Library; Nick Juravich, History; Jeff Melnick, American Studies; and Steve Striffler, Labor Studies. If you want to write an edition of The Point, or if you just have an idea, please write us at fsu@umb.edu.

 

 

 

 

Dear FSU Member,

Voting for the Vice President special election closed this morning at 9AM, and the election results are in.

Congratulations to your newly elected FSU Vice President:

Vice President: Jessica Holden, Librarian IV, Healey Library

(please contact the FSU Elections Committee if you would like details on the final vote tallies).

Thank you to all who voted.

FSU Elections Committee:

Lynne Byall Benson, Senior Lecturer, Women’s Gender And Sexuality Studies

Andrew Elder, Librarian V, Healey Library

Travis Johnston, Associate Professor, Political Science

Rania Said, Assistant Professor, Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

 

Dear Member,

The Parking & Transportation Petition Deadline is Wednesday, April 29.  The Petition Delivery Rally is Thursday, April 30th. 

Click here to sign the petition

The UMB administration plans to RAISE YOUR PARKING FEES to $18 per day! They continue to resist a multi-use parking pass plan and adequate MBTA subsidies.

What we’re fighting for:

• No fee increases! Parking fees are ALREADY too high!
• A 50% MBTA subsidy! Let’s make this UMB a real “green” campus!
• Bring back the multi-use pass! Stop making people buy passes that don’t fit their work and class schedules!
• Cap debt burden! Ensure that parkers are not unfairly charged for campus debt

Read more about how our student and multi-union coalition are fighting back in this week’s Mass Media.

To make parking and transportation more affordable at our commuter campus, we need YOUR help on April 30 when we deliver our petition to the Chancellor and UMass Boston administration. Sign up to join us on Thursday April 30 from 12-1pm in Campus Center 03 Ballroom C.

Only by acting together can we win the parking and transit structure that our faculty, librarians, staff and students need and deserve.

DON’T BE LEFT OUT—ONLY 3 DAYS LEFT!  Sign here today.

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Faculty and Librarians,

The FSU is you the members, and we need you to inform us when a policy change occurs. To those who reached out about your on-line summer teaching, we thank you.  Please read the Digital Content Accessibility section as it impacts all of us. We will remain diligent specifically about what is required to meet federal regulations and its impact on our working conditions.

Digital Content Accessibility Regulations and You

Background

In April 2024, the US Department of Justice updated regulations to the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) requiring by April 26, 2026, that all web content and mobile apps provided by state (i.e., public higher education) and local government are accessible to those with disabilities.  The regulations set specific technical standards that must be met. What does this mean to you?  All content placed on Canvas must meet accessibility standards.

As you can imagine, the process to implement the new regulation is large and complex. Each of us will need to review all our class materials and learn how to make them accessible.  Fully meeting the deadline for UMB and other government entities was not going to happen.  As a result, last week the Department of Justice extended the deadline to April 2027.

What does this mean for us?  We have a reprieve until Spring 2027 materials.  Yet, ensuring accessibly is still required and something that will take place over the next few months.   The FSU’s monthly Labor Management meeting with Provost Berger is April 28 and this is our first agenda item.  We will provide you with an update on our discussion.

Yes, we have heard from you about certification

Some of you have contacted us about being told you need to be ‘certified’ to teach your summer class, even if you have taught on-line for many semesters.   After some digging, we realized what you were being told is due to the regulation change and what was the April 26th implementation date.

There is no certification process required to convert your materials to teach this summer.

Anti-Racism Grant Recipient Activities (information submitted by grant recipients)

The U, Me, Books Event is Monday, April 27th from 12-2 on the first floor of the campus center!  

This event will feature a free book giveaway for UMB community members with kids in their lives. I’ll be giving away diverse books for readers ages 0-12+, along with book activity ideas, diverse reading lists, and other treats.  The giveaway is open to all students and UMB staff and faculty and hopes to recognize and support all our UMB students who are caregivers or have kids in their lives!    See the attached flyer for more details.

Non-Tenure Track Promotion: Notification Deadline

Promotion to Senior Lecturer and ranks above requires you to inform your chair of your intent to apply for promotion.  The date to submit an email to your chair is Wednesday, May 13th.   Although you indicate your intention to apply for promotion in May 2026, your promotion materials are not submitted until January 2027.

A more detailed email will be sent to non-tenure track faculty including eligibility criteria.

Group Insurance Commission (GIC): Action needed to get GLP-1 medications covered

State Representative Marjorie Decker is sponsoring an amendment to the proposed state budget which would maintain GLP-1 medication coverage for weight management. The GIC Commission voted to eliminate coverage for weight management.

Please tell your state legislator to support the Decker amendment along with other budget amendments aimed at funding public education.  Click on this link https://actionnetwork.org/letters/write-to-your-representative-about-the-fy2027-house-budget/

May Day: International Workers Day is Friday, May 1st.  Join Rallies at Kendall Square and Boston Common

Educators over Billionaires! Join labor and MTA members as we gather at 4PM in Kendall Square and then march to Boston Common.  The Boston Common rally begins at 5PM.  For more information and a list of activities go to https://www.mass50501.org/events/2026-mayday  To learn more about May Day and MTA, go to https://www.massteacher.org/resource-library/may-day

MTA Benefits: Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl, June 1st and 2nd

At some point the weather will get warm and when that happens, what is better than ice cream. Even better is unlimited ice cream and raising money for Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s Jimmy Fund.  MTA members receive a $3 ticket discount.  Log into MTA Benefits and click on Giveaways & Tickets.

Sincerely,

Caroline Coscia

FSU President

Senior Lecturer II

Political Science Department

 

Dear Member,

As you may recall, during the negotiations for the 24-27 collective bargaining agreement, the FSU Core Bargaining Team (CBT) proposed language that would have created a fund to pay for immigration costs for our international members and their families. The CBT was unable to reach agreement with the Administration on that proposal. We did reach agreement on language to create a labor-management committee that would further examine the issues surrounding immigration costs for international faculty (see contract language below). This committee would have the authority to reach a formal memorandum of agreement.

We, the FSU members of the visa committee, write to provide you with the results of our work (contact the FSU office for a copy of the report). We start by noting that we are disappointed in this result. Our work on the committee began with a continuation of the CBT’s goals of memorializing a fund to cover immigration costs. We held our first meeting with the Administration in early Fall 25 and met multiple times between then and the release of the final memorandum of agreement. Initially, the Administration seemed supportive of this effort. But over the last few months of meetings with the Administration, it became clear that they were not willing to commit to enshrining in the contract any language regarding a fund to cover immigration costs for international faculty. During the course of our discussions with the Administration, we provided multiple alternatives to our initial proposal and expressed a willingness to compromise to reach an agreement. It wasn’t until the committee’s final meeting that the Administration provided us with a suggestion, not in writing. It was made clear that the most they were willing to do was to amend their guidelines to college administrators that would make it clear that transition funds for new hires could be used to cover immigration costs (that language can be seen in the report).

The FSU members of the committee debated whether or not to even co-sign a memorandum of agreement with the Administration. But after some consideration, and after conversations with members of the FSU international faculty caucus, we decided that some small movement in the right direction was better than nothing. That said, we remain committed to the principles that the CBT brought forward via their initial proposal in bargaining and that the FSU members of this committee brought to our work with the Administration. We urge the members of the next CBT to continue to put forward proposals in line with these principles in the next round of contract negotiations, and we urge FSU members concerned about these issues to stay involved and continue to press the Administration to do what’s right for our international faculty members and librarians.

Sincerely,

The Members of the FSU Visa Committee:

Maria Carvajal Regidor, Assistant Professor, English

Miguel Montalva Barba, Assistant Professor, Sociology

Wei Zhang, Professor, Management Sciences and Information Systems

26.6.3 The parties agree to establish a labor management committee for the purpose of researching costs related to visa reimbursements for bargaining unit members. The committee shall be composed of 3 members from the Union and 3 members from the University. The committee shall meet no later than 90 days after the execution of the agreement and shall submit any joint recommendations to their respective bargaining teams by December 15, 2025, at which time the committee shall disband. The parties shall attempt to negotiate a memorandum of agreement as an extension of this collective bargaining agreement

 

 

This week’s Point was written by Jessica Holden, Associate University Archivist for Research Services. As always, The Point represents the views of the authors and is not the official position of the FSU.

As an archivist, I often discover uplifting, moving, and exciting pieces of UMass Boston’s history. Moments in our university’s past that are truly inspiring (such as the story of the FSU’s early organizing efforts in the mid-1970s). At other times, I uncover stories that are deeply disturbing, although no less important (if not more so). Today I am sharing one such story: that of Dr. Walter E. Massey, UMass Boston, and what could have been.

In The African-American Experience at the University of Massachusetts Boston: Challenges and Future Directions, published by the Trotter Institute in 1999, Professor of Sociology James Blackwell described the history of the Black Faculty and Staff Caucus (which he founded in the early 1970s, and which is now the Black Faculty and Staff Association) and their efforts to increase racial diversity on our campus. In Dr. Blackwell’s words:

“I organized the Black Faculty and Staff Caucus for the following reasons: My colleagues and I wanted to develop a sense of community among Black professionals in a predominantly white institution. We wanted to institutionalize a mechanism through which persons of color would have a voice in university affairs. We wanted to provide a mentoring vehicle for new faculty, staff and students. We wanted to serve as a force for the continuing recruitment of faculty and staff of color. And, we wanted to be able to attack discrimination and unfair treatment whenever and wherever it occurred.”

As I read through Dr. Blackwell’s lecture, one story in particular left me stunned. He recounted that in the late 1970s UMass Boston launched a search for a Vice President for Academic Affairs. The Black Faculty and Staff Caucus identified a pool of qualified candidates that were people of color, one of whom was a molecular physicist. That candidate said that he would want a faculty appointment along with the Vice President position. According to Blackwell:

“Ultimately, the selection committee decided against offering this position to an African American physicist who was a person of impeccable credentials and high standards! Now, I would like to tell you who he is. Instead of coming here, he went on to become the Director of the famous Argonne Laboratory at the University of Chicago where the atomic bomb was made. Later, he became the Director of the National Science Foundation. Today, he is president of Morehouse College: Dr. Walter E. Massey. UMass Boston once had a chance to get him! But small-minded people decided that they did not want this person of color in that high level administrative position on this campus.”

Dr. Massey meets with President Carter at the White House in 1980.
Image courtesy of the Argonne National Laboratory.

What has Dr. Massey done since this lecture was published in 1999? To name just a few of his many academic and professional highlights: he holds dozens of honorary degrees, including from Harvard, Yale, and Brown; he has served on the boards of many prestigious organizations, including the Mellon Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, and MacArthur Foundation; he is President Emeritus of both Morehouse College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; he chaired the board of Bank of America after the 2008 financial crisis (about which he published a memoir); and he is the only person to have chaired both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. Currently, he is leading the construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope, a mind-blowingly strong telescope that will be “up to 200 times more powerful than existing research telescopes.” It is difficult to imagine a person with a more illustrious career (beautifully laid out in this timeline from the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization)—and Dr. Massey accomplished all of this after growing up in Mississippi during Jim Crow.

The damage caused by institutional racism is multifold—its systemic nature means that the damage it causes is both immediate and long-lasting: we trace the reverberating effects through the generations. How many UMass Boston students over the past several decades could have learned from Dr. Massey but were denied the opportunity to do so? How many UMB colleagues who would have worked with Dr. Massey never had that chance? In fact, early in his career as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Dr. Massey served as advisor to the Black Students Association and as the first chair of the Black Faculty and Staff Association, demonstrating his commitment to his students and colleagues and to racial justice. In a time of widespread attacks on DEI programs in the United States, and as a self-proclaimed anti-racist university, it is important for us to look at the painful parts of our past so that we do not make the same mistakes in our present or future.

The committee for this year’s The Point currently includes Jessica Holden, Healey Library; Nick Juravich, History; Jeff Melnick, American Studies; and Steve Striffler, Labor Studies. If you want to write an edition of The Point, or if you just have an idea, please write us at fsu@umb.edu.

 

 

 

This week’s Point was written by Jeff Melnick, Professor of American Studies and former FSU VP.  As always, The Point represents the views of the authors and is not the official position of the FSU.

I was lucky enough to spend a bunch of time in Central Park last weekend and each day I was there I got out for a run around the reservoir.  In the days I was there, the trees ringing the water went from more or less bare to full bloom. The seemingly sudden riot of color was at once its own reward—how many shades of pink are there anyway?—and a timely invitation to think about how much hidden and underground work goes into a “spontaneous” flowering like this.  So in the spirit of the trees, I thought it might be a good moment to offer up a summary of some recent victories in the arena of higher ed labor politics and more general activism. I do not intend to brightside anyone—the daunting realities of war and genocide and the dismantling of our most crucial institutions (including higher ed ones—sad news just breaking at Hampshire College) shadow all our steps.  But times like these demand a purposeful recommitment to optimism of the will.  So, a few inspiring developments to keep you engaged and energized—since I opened with Central Park, I’ll get this started with two New York stories.

***Just over a month ago, contract faculty at New York University voted overwhelmingly to form a union.  This historic vote means that the new local (affiliated with the UAW) is now the largest union of non-tenure track faculty at any private university in the United States.  It took years to get to a vote and the tireless work by organizers at NYU reminds us that it is the daily stuff—the hallway conversations with colleagues, the caucus meetings, the direct action events—that helps us build to the big moments of victory like this.

*** In the category of “thank goodness we have a union,” faculty colleagues at the University of Illinois-Springfield went one step further by going on strike – now for two weeks – because the university administration was not bargaining with the union in good faith and had to the gall to offer raises of only 1%, in effect delivering faculty a pay cut.  Fortunately, public employees in Illinois have the legal right to strike, something the MTA has been trying to win for us in Massachusetts.  The FSU stands with our colleagues in UPI Local 4100! You can send a letter of support for Local 4100 to UIS Chancellor Janet Gooch here, and donate to their strike fund here.

***Our own Steve Striffler has written about the many tentacles of the “Palestine Exception” to free speech and campus organizing around the country—and even here on our own campus.  So it was gratifying recently to see that a New York State Supreme Court justice reversed the “expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations” of students involved in pro-Palestine campus activism at Columbia University.  In the Columbia case it was especially noteworthy that the president of Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers (the graduate student/worker union) was one of those targeted by the administration and expelled for his political activity.  While there is still plenty of clampdown to fight against, for now it seems possible that we are at an important moment of redress and rebalancing after a long season of authoritarian suppression of campus speech.

***Just last week, non-tenure track faculty teaching in Maryland’s four-year public universities finally won the right to bargain collectively.  After years of lobbying and grassroots organizing, these faculty members saw passage of passage of Senate Bill 6/House Bill 106 which grants them the right to bargain.  In a moment when contingent faculty across the country have become increasingly vulnerable, this is a truly historic expansion of collective bargaining rights to thousands of employees and a major victory that will likely lead to better pay, greater job security, and many other workplace improvements.   It took years and it was worth it.

***Turning back to New York, we are also very excited to report that three of the four fired at CUNY’s Brooklyn College—all punished for campus activism related to Palestine—have been reinstated.  The PSC-CUNY is a remarkably progressive, activist union and has done stalwart work on behalf of its targeted vulnerable members.  The union has vowed to keep fighting on behalf of the final one of the four, and we urge you to have a look at the union’s website for ideas of how we can all support the effort.

***And speaking of reinstatement.  It was deeply heartening to see our students take the initiative and commit to direct and collective action in response to the shameful administrative firing of our wonderful colleague Professor Keith Jones.  The news story here captures only a sliver of the work they have done in support of Keith, and this flowering of student activism on our campus is testament both to that commitment and to the deep connection Keith has forged with his students.

The committee for this year’s The Point currently includes Jessica Holden, Healey Library; Nick Juravich, History; Jeff Melnick, American Studies; and Steve Striffler, Labor Studies. If you want to write an edition of The Point, or if you just have an idea, please write us at fsu@umb.edu

 

 

As you may be aware, the FSU has an ongoing campaign to overturn the Provost’s decision not to grant Keith Jones, a professor in Africana Studies, continuing appointment. This means his employment ends this semester.

Keith is a fantastic professor who has had stellar annual reviews and is an inspiration to his students. You can learn more about this case here and here. The FSU has filed an unfair labor practice charge on his behalf, but we need to act now to get Keith continuing appointment so he can keep his job here at UMB.

A few weeks ago, the FSU began a petition drive that including posting flyers with the petition link around campus. Maybe you have seen them. The petition got over 1,500 signatures and was delivered to the Provost on April 2. A week later, on April 9th, the Provost informed FSU that his decision stands and that Keith Jones will be terminated after this semester. The petition now has 1800+ signatures. Please consider adding yours!

The FSU needs you to engage in an act of solidarity for Keith, by participating in a collective phone banking and email campaign to let the Provost, Chancellor, and system President know how important Keith is to the UMB community and that he deserves continuing appointment.

Please join on Zoom in one of these dates/times to phone bank (contact FSU or Caroline Coscia for Zoom information).

• Tuesday April 14, 11 am – 12 pm
• Wednesday April 15, 10 – 11 am
• Thursday April 16, 9 – 10 am

Scripts can be seen here and here If you cannot join during those times, you can still call during other work hours, and/or send emails.

From the FSU Organizing Committee to Reinstate Keith Jones

 

April 13th to 17th  

Thursday, April 16th, 11AM-1PM FSU Annual Meeting 

Open to dues paying members.

Dear Faculty and Librarians,

This week is our annual meeting. A time to gather with colleagues, meet new colleagues, hear what your union is doing, adopt our operating budget, and provide us with your input. This year we are meeting on Thursday, April 16th from 11:00AM to 1:00PM.  Our annual meeting is only open to dues paying members.  Meeting details and meeting materials were sent to dues paying members on April 9th.

Sick Leave Bank

The other day a member said they heard we no longer have a sick leave bank.  That is false. We have a sick leave bank.  The bank is overseen by a committee- two FSU members and two from administration.

Our contract states: After the exhaustion of personal sick leave accumulation, any member of the Sick Leave Bank shall be entitled to use the Sick Leave Bank for any bona fide illness or disability, effective upon notice to the campus Personnel Office. The granting of such sick leave shall be subject to the same criteria as personal sick leave days and shall be consistent with university policy. (Article 27.3.3. 1.3)

Sick Leave Bank Donations

At any time, a member may donate some of their accrued sick time to the sick leave bank (Article 27.3.3.1.1).  To do so you need to complete a form. To obtain the form, contact Human Resources.

Sick Leave Bank Donations: Retiring Members

To our retiring members, if you wish to donate your unused sick hours, please begin the process around June 1st as the donation paperwork must be completed prior to the end of your employment (August 31st).

Parking Rally, April 15th at 1:45 ISC Atrium

Show administration that a proposed $18 daily rate is unacceptable! Join us in demanding a no daily rate increase, allow for a 30-use pass, and a larger transit subsidy.

Anti-Racism Grant Recipient Activities (information supplied by recipient)

Stolen School: What Desegregation took and one Black Community’s 60-year fight to get it back.

April 29th from 4 to 6PM

We are inviting you to attend a documentary screening and panel event exploring desegregation and its impacts, funded by a UMB FSU anti-racism grant. Please RSVP using the QR code on the attached flyer.

Set in Evanston, IL, a Chicago suburb, Stolen School, confronts the reality that desegregation wasn’t good for everyone. In 1967, Evanston “desegregated” its schools by closing Foster School, the all-Black neighborhood school in the historically Black 5th ward. Since there was not a single school in the 5th ward, children who lived there were bused to at least seven different schools. For nearly 60 years, there’s been no district school in the 5th ward, where the largest population of Black families reside. Stolen School features the voices and stories of Foster School students, 5th Ward residents, educators, civil servants, and activists who describe their devastating losses and chronicle their ongoing fight to get their school back.

Along with documentary Executive Producer Dr. Shannon Clark, UMB faculty and affiliates will explore the film and connect its themes to Boston’s past and present. Ultimately, our hope for this event is that it will strengthen our collective UMB community knowledge and expertise around school closures to be both informed and responsive to larger community needs in our research and service work.

May Day: May 1st Rallies

Join MTA members and labor organizations to rally in support of International Workers’ Day and our fight for full funding of public higher education, a reformed healthcare system, protections for immigrant students, and fair contracts for all.  The rally begins at 5PM on Boston Common.

Recently, GIC removed coverage of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.  Why? The high cost of coverage. Yet, the makers of these medications have seen skyrocketing profits.  Eli Lilly, the maker of Mounjaro and Zepbound, saw their net income rise to $6 billion. Tell Eli Lilly that profit over people is wrong.  Meet at 4PM on May 1st at Eli Lilly’s office in Cambridge for a rally and then walk to Boston Common.

MTA Benefits: $100 Lowe’s Gift Card

MTA Benefits is giving away three $100 Lowe gift cards.  To enter go to https://www.mtabenefits.com/giveaways-tickets/giveaways

Nuts & Bolts will return on April 27th.  Monday, April 20th is Patriots’ Day, a university holiday.

Sincerely,

Caroline Coscia

FSU President

Senior Lecturer II

Political Science Department