The July 11 Board of Governors meeting streamed via YouTube. APSCUF faculty members spoke during the public-comment section. Watch their remarks toward the start of the recording.
Use the links below to jump to comments as prepared:
• Dr. Kenneth M. Mash, APSCUF president
• Dr. Kara Laskowski, APSCUF vice president
• Dr. Robyn Lily Davis, Millersville APSCUF chapter president
• Dr. Jason Hilton, Slippery Rock APSCUF chapter president
• Dr. Kelly Banna, Millersville APSCUF past president
• Dr. Eric Hawrelak, Bloomsburg APSCUF chapter president
Dr. Kenneth M. Mash’s comments
Chairwoman Shapira, governors, Chancellor Greenstein, and guests,
My name is Ken Mash, and I am president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties — APSCUF — the union that represents the faculty and coaches at our System’s 14 campuses.
I want to thank my colleagues who thoughtfully spoke during the public-comment section. They are among the dozens and dozens of APSCUF leaders across the Commonwealth who not just make our association work, but who — perhaps more important — are crucial to making our universities work. They donate their time, energy, intelligence, and often their courage to both APSCUF and their universities.
Our faculty and coaches are fortunate to have a wonderful staff working for APSCUF. But, at its core, APSCUF is a membership-driven organization. It could not function without countless members doing the heavy lifting, making policy decisions, implementing those decisions, and working with their administrations.
And though it may often be uncomfortable for our university presidents, provost, deans, and other managers, it is also true that our universities would not function without these people doing the work. And when I say “do the work,” I do not just mean “do APSCUF work.” The very same people who work for APSCUF are often among the best teachers and scholars, student-oriented faculty and coaches, and hardest-working faculty and coaches at our universities. In addition to their APSCUF roles, they take on difficult roles and difficult responsibilities at their universities. They are faculty and coach leaders.
Work for APSCUF is never mutually exclusive from work with the universities. The work that is done by these leaders benefits smooth university operations, true shared governance, and the smooth functioning of our universities. It is not coincidental that our universities that have the best working relationships with APSCUF also tend to function the best.
The reason is clear. Since the inception of our System and even before, APSCUF is our faculty. APSCUF is our coaches. There is never a time that I stand before you, here or at a university, that I do not feel the presence of our thousands of members behind my back. That is why it is essential that APSCUF be not just listened to, but heard by this board, the System leadership, and our university administrations. It is a voice that should not just be recognized, but one that should be respected. And involving APSCUF in true decision-making should never just be a box that is checked by some minimalist “consultation,” it should be viewed by all as a necessity.
Thank you for your attention.
Dr. Kara Laskowski’s comments
Good morning, and thank you for having us. My name is Kara Laskowski, and I am a professor and department chair in the Department of Communication Studies at Shippensburg University.
Having recently been elected as vice president of APSCUF, I’ve had opportunity to consider and respond to questions about my motivation to serve. My reasons echo those of my colleagues who spoke before me, and may in fact be some of the same reasons that many of you are here as well.
There are personal factors — I am a lifelong Pennsylvania resident; my parents, aunts, and uncle are all Millersville grads; and I am a proud fourth-generation union member.
But more significantly, I am invested in our System’s mission and committed to our students’ success.
As my colleagues have noted, our System serves a unique and essential role in the Commonwealth. We develop the knowledge and skills students need for professional roles, meaningful contributions to our communities, and life-long personal success.
This mission is all the more critical because of who are students are: They are first generation, they are Pell eligibles, they are struggling to stay awake in class — hopefully not because I’m that boring but because they took an overnight shift at a warehouse to be able to pay to be in class that day (and we do appreciate the board’s work to keep those costs down).
As vice president of APSCUF, I am both grateful and proud to assert that it is our union that most directly, efficiently, and successfully allows us to meet our mission and serve our students.
My APSCUF colleagues are poised to offer expertise to shape better policies, leading to better outcomes for the System and our students. We work diligently and will continue to, in order to ensure that student learning conditions — which are also faculty working conditions — are optimized for our collective success.
I look forward to the ongoing work of APSCUF, and that of the board, toward these shared goals.
Thank you.
Dr. Robyn Lily Davis’ comments
Good morning. I’m Robyn Lily Davis, chapter president of APSCUF-Millersville and chair of its history department, where I teach colonial and revolutionary American history; I’m glad to address the board this morning.
Even before the Declaration of Independence was signed, the 2nd Continental Congress in 1775 established the Post Office of the United States, appointing Benjamin Franklin as our first Postmaster General — they did this because they understood that a self-governing people needed information to be able to fulfill their new civic roles as citizens, no longer subjects. At the time, most Americans got their information from newspapers, and the Congress agreed that newspapers needed to circulate freely in order that the citizenry inform itself. That postal service was for many decades the first, and most consequential, function of the new government.
The reliable flow of information is an absolutely essential first step for a stable democracy.
Today, of course, we live in an environment of information abundance, maybe even overload. It’s also an age of increasing and increasingly brazen political technology — the manipulation of information and the avalanche of misinformation we’re subjected to is overwhelming and can be destabilizing. So, while good information remains a vital component for a healthy democracy, we can’t blindly rely on its truth or utility. It’s no longer enough for information to flow freely. We, as citizens, have to be able to decode it, to make sense of it, and then to apply it.
Knowledge for its own sake can be valuable, but as a society we mostly, and rightly, expect education to serve useful purposes. But I’d argue that doesn’t mean we should look to higher ed solely with a vocational lens.
And that’s where you come in. This board makes decisions about curricular matters, writ large, and while I haven’t always agreed with them, I know they’re grounded in your best ideas about how to fulfill PASSHE’s mission to prepare our students for professional and personal success.
I come before you today to implore you to impose a United States History requirement (1 semester, 2 would be better) as a graduation requirement at all PASSHE schools. Historical thinking plays a crucial role in public life. *Everything* has a history and studying it brings context to current events; context matters but context also changes over time. History gives us the tools we need not only to know the history but to understand why it matters. And when we understand why and how things came to be, we can make better decisions about why and how to change them (if at all). More than just background, studying history gives us the habits of mind that are central to active citizenship. Please help us help our students step into their roles in our participatory democracy and make a U.S. history course a requirement for graduation.
I thank you for your attention.
Dr. Jason Hilton’s comments
Hello,
My name is Jason Hilton. I am the Slippery Rock University APSCUF chapter president and a proud alumni of Edinboro University.
I want to introduce you to Donald Campbell. Donald Campbell was a psychologist, social scientist, and founding contributor to modern research methodology.
Campbell’s Law posits, “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
In higher ed, we love data. We invented data-based decision-making, and we are often called upon to generate the data that others use to make highly consequential decisions.
But we need to be wary of single data points. We often become victims of exciting single indicators, especially if we invest too much in what we think that indicator can tell us. In education, everyone is selling a silver bullet solution based on some social indicator.
Take for example the faculty-to-student ratio. This social indicator suggests that if we reach a certain ratio, we are near peak efficiency. But what are the unintended consequences, if we put too much emphasis into this one indicator?
At many institutions, we are hesitant to hire counselors because they don’t have traditional teaching loads and thus hurt the ratio all PASSHE schools are dependent upon. But the role these faculty play in the health of our students is hard to measure, and when the ultimate tragedy strikes for a student and family on our campus, could an investment in additional counselors have made a difference? We can’t know for certain, because this is an impact you cannot measure. But additional counselors would certainly alleviate the long waiting period for counseling services. A student’s family will always ask if we did everything we could for their loved one. We should, too.
One impact you can measure is revenue versus cost. At one PASSHE institution, for instance, the ratio causes administration to assign overload to most faculty rather than hire temporary faculty. This is because the currently employed faculty member counts as just one faculty, even on overload, whereas hiring a much cheaper temporary faculty member would count as an additional faculty member for the ratio. The consequence is hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in additional costs to cover the classes that could have been covered instead with temporary faculty. But that would have hurt the ratio … the high stakes social indicator that governs many decisions in PASSHE.
Remember Campbell’s Law every time someone asks you to look at the data. The more you think one metric is a measure of any problem you are trying to solve, the more likely that measure will be distorted and corrupted and result in unintended consequences.
Faculty/student ratios are a measure of efficiency, but not the only one, and this measure leaves far more meaningful consequences completely out of the equation.
Thank you!
Dr. Kelly Banna’s comments
Good morning,
My name is Kelly Banna, and I’m an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department of Millersville University, where I teach courses in my discipline — Behavior Analysis — and in research methods, statistics, and behavioral neuroscience.
I have also had the privilege of serving on my local Meet and Discuss team for the past seven years, currently as the Immediate Past President of our APSCUF chapter and previously, as the title would suggest, as our President. I am also currently serving as the Chair our our Local Agreements Committee.
In these roles, I have worked extensively with local Management to construct new and modify existing local agreements, a collaboration which, of course, is mandated by the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Historically, local Management has often sought our input on policies that — technically — do not require faculty input. I like to think that this is because they trust and rely both on our subject matter expertise (where relevant), and generally believe in the value of true shared governance.
Approximately six months ago, I joined the State Meet and Discuss team because, apparently, I didn’t already have enough meetings on my calendar. In that time, APSCUF was asked to provide feedback on several board policies, some of which are in today’s agenda. While we appreciated the opportunity to provide input, it did come near the end of the process, and our team felt like we weren’t given enough time to provide adequate feedback and that most of the feedback we provided wasn’t fully considered and integrated into policy.
What I would like to ask is that APSCUF be brought into the policy process sooner and that our input be more fully considered and integrated, especially when they impact teaching and learning, not because the System is required to do so — we acknowledge that it is not — but because we are more than teachers.
First, we have relevant subject matter expertise in relevant disciplines — the System pays us relatively well to train future experts, so it only makes sense for them to leverage that expertise to the benefit of the System and our students.
Second, as faculty, we are responsible for implementing many of these policies on the ground, so to speak. We are uniquely positioned to offer insight into how words on paper will play out in the real world, which will help identify both strengths and weaknesses ahead of time.
[Finally], meaningful input provides a sense of ownership and investment in carrying out the mission of our Universities—providing a high-quality education at the most affordable price possible. While Faculty and Management often find ourselves at odds in how to accomplish this goal, we cannot question the fact that we are united in working towards that goal. To the extent that we can keep that shared goal front of mind and work together while acknowledging and respecting our sometimes varied interests, we will better serve our primary constituency, our students, and more broadly, the Commonwealth.
Thank you.
Dr. Eric Hawrelak’s comments
Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I am Eric Hawrelak. I am a professor of chemistry as well as the APSCUF chapter president at Commonwealth Bloomsburg.
I am here today to ask: Where is the accountability? Or, to put it in terms the faculty must deal with every semester, where is the assessment of the consolidation of Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, and Mansfield — as well as California, Edinboro, and Clarion?
I know that the chancellor likes to tell anyone that will listen that the consolidations are going great, but the truth is they are not. There are numerous issues, too many to list today, that need to be addressed. They are affecting our students and both the staffs’ and faculties’ ability to do their work.
Many of us believe that the System gave us a one-word plan — “Consolidate” — and then walked away. The System needs to seriously assess the situation and provide Commonwealth and PennWest the necessary resources to succeed.
I hope to see both PASSHE personnel and board members in our campuses to assess the situation by talking with our students, staff, and faculty, and provide the necessary resources in the near future.
Thank you.