|
« AAUP Homepage
|
New Officers Bring Experience to AAUP Posts
By Hans P. Johnson
Following the Association's annual meeting in June, a trio of faculty activists assumed new leadership positions, and a fourth continued in office. Jane Buck, professor of psychology emerita at Delaware State University, won the presidency in national elections held earlier in the year. Serving two-year terms alongside Buck are first vice president Janet West, a professor of economics at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and second vice president Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Kerry Grant, a professor of mathematics at Southern Connecticut State University, was elected to his sixth term as secretary-treasurer.
In her campaign for the top elected office, Buck cited her long-standing involvement in the Association, including her role as a leader in chapter-level collective bargaining. An AAUP member since 1965, Buck was president of the DSU chapter when it was certified in 1977 as the bargaining agent for faculty and some professional staff. She was on the negotiating teams that produced five contracts and was chief negotiator for four. In addition, she served three terms on the national Council.
Buck taught for twenty-nine years at DSU, a historically black institution. Now in her second term on the AAUP's Committee on Historically Black Institutions and the Status of Minorities in the Profession, she is a staunch supporter of affirmative action and outreach by the AAUP to underrepresented groups.
"It is vitally important that we bring in younger faculty and that we make the requirements for promotion and tenure attainable by junior members of the profession," she says. "We should also seek to involve more people of color in the Association and to promote the solid track record of the AAUP in pursuing gender equity in higher education."
On the technology front, Buck adds, "Distance education is not an enterprise we should jump into blindly, but neither should we blindly oppose the integration of technology into the curriculum."
Janet West also assembled an impressive track record of AAUP service prior to her election as first vice president. Most recently, she was the Association's second vice president. Hailing from a campus where the AAUP chapter serves as bargaining agent for faculty members, West has served on several negotiating teams and is the former chair of the AAUP's Collective Bargaining Congress. She recently concluded a term as president of the Nebraska state conference. "I look forward to working with the other officers to provide direct services to campuses, particularly in the geographic regions where we are based," she reports.
Cary Nelson, who has been a member of the national Council, joins Buck in viewing outreach to new, younger members as a leading priority. "Over the last decade, I have combined scholarly research on modern poetry and the Spanish Civil War with a wide range of activist commitments in the academy, from publishing books on higher education to working closely with graduate students in the Modern Language Association," says Nelson. He chairs the AAUP's new Committee on Academic Professionals, and he served on the subcommittee of the Committee on College and University Teaching, Research, and Publication that drafted the Statement on Graduate Students published in the January-February issue of Academe.
Kerry Grant begins his sixth term as secretary-treasurer. "I am honored that my colleagues across the country have once again chosen me to serve the Association and the profession," he says. Mary Burgan, the AAUP's general secretary, comments, "Kerry's terms as secretary-treasurer have assured the Association of financial stability and probity. But he has done far more than watch the books: he has advocated policies and procedures in a way that has made him one of the most respected members of the executive committee."
|