Recruitment and Retention
By Cary Nelson
The AAUP has always prided itself on serving all faculty nationwide. We do so because we believe academic freedom, shared governance, and job security together help give us a higher education system admired throughout the world. When faculty call us to report violations of the principles we have articulated for over ninety years, we come to their aid without asking whether they are members.
Yet we are also very much a membership organization. Members and staff together do the committee work that produces the fundamental statements published in Academe and AAUP Policy Documents and Reports (the “Redbook”). Members monitor academic freedom and shared governance on their own campuses and collaborate with the national office in necessary enforcement efforts. Members run for national office, set policy, and provide financial and programmatic oversight. And members pay the dues that make all this possible. While we supplement dues with grants and publication income, our budget is overwhelmingly driven and supported by dues.
What do we owe the 47,300 people whose dues sustain the values we treasure? Of course we owe them first of all our vigilance and our ability to adapt to new political and technological conditions. We owe them high-quality intellectual work. The policy statements and reports we produce prove that we have fulfilled that obligation. We also owe them high-quality record keeping; there we are rebuilding our competence after a substantial hiatus in 2005–06. This year we have been able to issue accurate chapter rosters, and eventually members will resume believing that is routine.
We also owe our members more regular and full communication. I directed that the national office acquire all member e-mail addresses in 2006, and a year later we had most of them and began communicating every month for the first time in recent history. But we must do still more.
A year ago the AAUP’s executive committee made recommendations on priorities at the national office. We specified that member recruitment and retention be office-wide priorities, that all staff members— whatever their areas of responsibility —ask themselves regularly what effect their existing duties would have on both recruitment and retention. How might existing duties be modified or better publicized to increase current member satisfaction, attract new members, and make sure that we retain both longterm supporters and new recruits? We have made some progress on both these fronts, but not nearly enough. It will take leadership from a general secretary to reorient the culture of the national office around recruitment and retention as universal priorities.
In a meeting with members of the senior staff I suggested that each of them take an afternoon once a year to write a short essay describing a service they offered to faculty, either members or nonmembers. Our members do not, for example, realize how much splendid advice our staff gives to faculty in need. Distribution of such accounts by email could do a great deal to inform our members about the work our staff does, alert faculty to the help they could get, and build a sense of solidarity with the national staff. All that, in turn, would promote member retention.
I wrote such a story about the assistance given our chapter at Eastern Michigan University. AAUP first vice president Larry Gerber wrote one about the advice Auburn University received when its faculty handbook was being revised. Council member Sheila Teahan wrote another about critical help the Michigan State University faculty received. Our elected leaders are thus already contributing to this effort.
As those staff members who most regularly advise AAUP chapters get involved in the project, member retention rates should increase. In partnership with a resourceful and inventive staff, the leadership launched a large new recruitment drive this year. But we need to do more before a combined commitment to recruitment and retention assures us we will have sufficient membership to sustain the strong AAUP we will need in the future.
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