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Summer Institute Gets Northwest Exposure
By Craig Flanery
AAUP leaders and emerging activists convened at Portland State University in Oregon July 27–30 for the 2006 Summer Institute, a premier training program for both advocacy and collective-bargaining chapters. Over 150 faculty activists from eighty-three universities and colleges throughout the country shared experiences, received training, and developed strategies for protecting faculty members, their academic freedom, and higher education generally.
AAUP members worked with faculty and staff presenters to learn tactics and develop plans for building sustainable chapters able to bargain effectively; bring about shared governance; and advocate forcefully in local, state, and national policy making arenas. Seminars, panels, and workshops helped chapter leaders and new activists recognize the challenges and opportunities of their chapters, identify functions and activists to expand the capacity of the chapter, and connect chapter activists across the country to empower them both locally and nationally.
The Association continually works for widespread faculty engagement in advocacy and bargaining activities, and several workshops concentrated on strategies for membership development and ways to involve faculty in lobbying, demonstrations, work actions, media campaigns, budget analysis, and grievance administration. The AAUP’s intertwined efforts to expand and to become more inclusive culminated in workshops on gender equity, building coalitions with other campus and community groups, and organizing contingent faculty. Graduate students and contingent faculty activists convened meetings separately and jointly to analyze their particular conditions, and AAUP president Cary Nelson met with graduate students organizing younger activists and the next generation of leaders. Efforts to attract newly emerging activists were very successful; seventy-two attendees were first-time attendees.
To balance the hard work of daylong trainings, the Summer Institute was supplemented by much-needed easy time. The format of the event presented an informal setting in which faculty and staff were able to build personal networks. Some members met for dawn tennis matches or scenic bike tours, while others used the evening hours to taste the local fare and attend Portland’s varied cultural events and other venues. A sizable group enjoyed a Portland Beavers baseball game, and there were sightings of a few members at the Oregon Beer Brewers Festival. Downtown Portland proved an ideal location for this combination of sunrise and sunset activists.
The Portland State University AAUP chapter was an accommodating host and did yeoman’s work in arranging local logistics. The chapter is headed into a difficult round of bargaining this year, so it also benefited from sending members of its bargaining team to the contract negotiations workshops and dispersing additional chapter activists to workshops on grievance administration, faculty handbooks, strategic communications, and higher education research.
Attendees considered the 2006 institute a major success. The AAUP anticipates the same at the 2007 Summer Institute, scheduled for July 19–22 at the University of Nevada, Reno. First-time attendees and activists and leaders who would benefit from additional training are encouraged to attend.
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