It was a strong show of solidarity carrying the message that continued wage freezes are intolerable. At 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 15, Northern Michigan University faculty gathered to bring attention to the present state of negotiations. The contingent of well over one hundred NMU faculty and members from other unions chanted “Frozen Pay is Not O.K.” as they marched from Jamrich Hall to the Cohodas Building. The rally continued with several trips around Cohodas and Speeches featuring Chief Negotiator Lesley Putman, Contract Officer Gabe Logan, and Upper Peninsula Regional Labor Federation Representative Cajsa Maki.
In recent bargaining negotiations, the faculty team has proposed creative and reasonable solutions to the compensation problem, yet the administration’s negotiating team has made only one offer in over a month calling for a pay freeze during the next two years. In a truly unfortunate move, the administrative team said they would not continue talking about the financial aspects of the contract until after the spring Board of Trustees meeting. This is was perceived by the AAUP Executive Committee as a strategic move to stall negotiations until summer when students and many faculty members are away from campus.
Members of the Board of Trustees and the administration have consistently sung our praises this past year. Unfortunately, words only go so far. Bold changes are needed to address the uncompetitive compensation shown in the following graphic.
Compared to the eleven Michigan public universities that report salary data to the AAUP-NMU faculty are next to last in terms of total compensation and nearly 10% below the median. While the Board of Trustees may congratulate the administration for keeping expenditures low, this rate of pay will erode the quality of instruction at this institution.
The administrative negotiating team needs to return to the table with a bold compensation proposal aimed at fixing this trend. There are numerous financial indicators suggesting now is the time! The expected executive order reducing state appropriations for last year ended up not being as severe as anticipated. Recent university investment returns have been higher than expected. There have been higher than anticipated energy savings from facility closures. Supplies, materials, and services expenditures due to facility closures and remote operations have resulted in savings. There are approximately $5 million in unspent discretionary CARES Act funds, $8.6 million in anticipated discretionary American Rescue Plan Act funds, over $4 million in healthcare savings the past 2 years, and over $3 million in early retirement buyout savings in 2 years. Early admissions and enrollment data also point to a rebound in fall 2021.
The NMU-AAUP feels future uncertainty is not an acceptable reason for failing to address the compensation inequity problems. Failure to do so puts NMU at a competitive disadvantage when trying to attract and retain the best talent for our students.
The pristine yet rugged shoreline of Lake Superior may seem invincible, but climate change and over-development could radically alter its present state. Preparing for these forces of nature and human activity is the main thrust of a project headed up by three NMU professors.
Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, Jes Thompson (College of Business), Scott Jordan (Outdoor Recreation) and Sarah Mittlefehldt (EEGS) have launched a program to help members of the coastal community offer input and plan for equity and adaptability while maintaining a sustainable and resilient shoreline along Lake Superior.
Part of this project involved three workshops about past sustainability issues, current concerns and ideas for the future. Seventy stakeholders from the community participated in the workshops and represented various interests and concerns about lakeshore sustainability. “We had a lot of diverse perspectives,” Thompson said. “We had people who were really conservative and we had people who were really liberal, and it really didn’t matter because we all know that we have to work together to live alongside this common resource.”
Ultimately, Thompson hopes these forums will lead coastal communities in the U.P. to define their own identity and develop planning codes that will ensure sustainability and resiliency in the face of climate change and migration to the north.
Dr. Jes Thompson leads a workshop at NMU
The workshops took an interdisciplinary approach to lakeshore sustainability. Specifically, they explored the connection among the ecosystem’s health and the community’s well being in terms of commerce and development. At the end of the workshop series, the team put together a digital magazine that documented the results of the session and highlighted the interdisciplinary research from each professor. Thompson focused on business development. Mittlefehldt focused on environmental sustainability, and Jordan’s primary concern was tourism.
Mittlefehldt contributed historical research to the project. She looked at local responses to sustainability issues over the years. “I spent some time in some of the regional archives looking at different planning efforts in the past to see how people have been planning for coastal development before people started talking about climate change,” Mittlefehldt said.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Upper Peninsula saw a movement toward industrialization. People made use of resources in and around Lake Superior and its shoreline as they traveled, transported goods and built towns and cities. The local industrialization efforts were a form of coastal development, and undoubtedly required communication and planning from everyone involved.
“Although many of our goals and concerns may have changed over the years, communication, planning and building a healthy local economy are still important parts of the sustainability conversation,” said Dr. Mittlefehldt.
After establishing what can be learned from the past, CoPe (Coastlines and People) shifted its focus to the present. Jordan was interested in the current relationship among the lakeshore, tourism and outdoor recreation. “The lakeshore is creating outdoor recreation,” Jordan said. “Climate change is kind of part of that.”
Jordan explained that as the northern climate warms, people are less inclined to move south for outdoor activities. Instead, there is increasing use of Lake Superior’s shoreline for recreation. “That creates some sense of place issues,” Jordan said. “It creates some economic issues, good and bad.”
An example of tourism’s impact can be seen from the 1.2 million people who visited Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore during a global pandemic in 2020. This shattered the previous record of 858,000 set in 2019. Workshop participants from Munising and Grand Marais felt tourism could overwhelm their current infrastructure.
When talking about the present, the CoPe team learned which sustainability issues concerned stakeholders most. “We would get that information and then find experts associated with those topics and try to address those questions,” Dr. Jordan said.
The cover page of the digital magazine produced from the research and workshops
Many stakeholders expressed concern over increased erosion and flooding, but they also wanted the shoreline to remain accessible to the public. After this discussion, the workshops considered how to protect the environment while also allowing future generations to enjoy it.
Several local organizations contributed to the project, including the architecture firm Studio RAD. “They were critical because they brought a skillset that we don’t have, which is designing and creating pictures to help people visualize different futures for the shore,” Thompson said.
The workshops discussed multiple potential solutions, each accompanied by an illustration from Studio RAD. Participants discussed the pros and cons of every option. Some of their quotes were printed in the magazine alongside Studio RAD’s images and written descriptions of each idea.
In addition to teaching and interacting with community members, the professors found the workshops to be educational experiences for themselves. “The effects of climate change on Lake Superior and the south shore were much greater than I had known,” Jordan said.
According to the Environmental Law and Policy Center, daily temperatures in the Great Leakes Region increased 1.4 degrees between 1985 and 2016. The report also projects an increase of 5.7 – 9.8 degrees by the end of the 21st Century.
Mittlefehldt enjoyed working with a variety of people to address widespread sustainability issues. She says people often become isolated within their fields of expertise, so the workshops provided a valuable opportunity to break those barriers.
“Probably the best thing that came out of this was the collaboration between all the different entities, different levels of government, private sector, public sector,” Mittlefehldt said. “It was just a really great mix of people that kind of was what made the project successful.”
Thompson agrees. In retrospect, she sees more value in the experience. Due to the pandemic, she fears this opportunity may not arise again for quite some time.
“Having a workshop with 70 people with different perspectives, representing different stakeholders, that was such a gift,” Thompson said. “That was such a treat, and I now know we can’t do that on Zoom.”
Thompson says strong communities are those that can come together despite their differences to work towards a common goal. The importance of working together can be seen throughout the CoPe project. Jordan emphasizes this point as well.
“Involving local people in local decision making is important, and that takes this community ownership,” Jordan said. “So it’s not fair when just a few people from a community make decisions about their shoreline.”
The professors all hope that these workshops helped encourage discussions about sustainability. Mittlefehldt would like to establish a sustainability hub at NMU which would facilitate similar interdisciplinary work among faculty, staff, and community members.
“I always enjoy working with people outside of my own disciplinary expertise, because I think that’s where we find real solutions to environmental challenges that we’re facing,” Mittlefehldt said.
Thompson wants to see the conversation about sustainability continue to grow and expand beyond the academic world. Ideally, she would like to see planning codes line up with the identity of these coastal communities.
She says the key to avoiding this is to be pracademic. The word is a portmanteau of ‘practitioner’ and ‘academic.’ It implies academic expertise and active participation in a field. In the case of sustainability, a pracademic would not only discuss problems and potential solutions, but also implement those solutions.
“I think sometimes people assume research can’t be local, can’t be real,” Thompson said. Thompson hopes that CoPe will help prove those doubters wrong.
To view more images and read more information about the workshops and those involved, click here. A digital publication of the project’s findings can be found here. To learn more about the National Science Foundation, visit their website.
Two NMU professors have teamed up to create a course exploring the connection between the arts and sciences. Taimur Cleary is an associate professor of drawing and painting, and Jill Leonard is a professor of biology. On the surface, those two disciplines may seem wholly unrelated, but Leonard and Cleary have discovered a strong overlap between their respective fields.
Their work together began almost by accident. Leonard was contacted by The Grand Rapids Art Museum, who had commissioned artist Alexis Rockman to create some art based on the Great Lakes. Rockman was traveling to speak with knowledgeable scientists and learn more about the lakes.
Image courtesy of Alexis Rockman
“The origins of this class are, I don’t know, four or five years in the making from Jill asking me if I knew who Alexis Rockman was, and I did,” Cleary said. “He’s a really cool, very famous painter.”
Cleary and Leonard collaborated to host an event at which Rockman spoke to NMU students. The professors also contributed to A Dive Into the Great Lakes Cycle, a series of modules and interactive text that explores Rockman’s work from both scientific and artistic perspectives. This prompted the professors to discuss the overlap between arts and sciences, which sparked the idea for the class they are developing now. The course is an asynchronous, online general education class. The class will not only highlight the connections between art and science but also encourage students to apply what they learn about art and science to other fields.
“It’s really designed for any student,” Leonard said. “So you can be a science student, you can be an art student or you can be any other major on campus.” On the most basic level art and science are united by two concepts: Creativity and problem-solving. Leonard used herself and Cleary as an example.
“Whether he’s trying to paint something and figure out the best way to approach it and express what he wants, or I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with the ecology of my fish, in both cases we have to be creative and come up with new ideas and be open to new approaches,” Leonard said.
For Cleary, research is an important part of art, both in teaching and in his own work. “If you’re a professional and you care about what you do, you have a research practice,” Cleary said.
Leonard is quick to point out what may seem like a subversion of expectations.“If you didn’t notice, the artist just told you to do research and the scientist told you to be creative,” Leonard said.
Biology professor Jill Leonard and associate professor in Art Design Taimur Cleary in front of one of Alexis Rockman’s works of art
Of course, the two professors see this as yet another example of how their respective disciplines intertwine. The course is the first of its kind to be offered at NMU. The title will be “INTT 222: Art Meets Science.” The asynchronous online format of the course works well for both professors.
“We did an online teaching fellowship over the summer to support making it an online class, so we got some good support there,” Cleary said. “The class doesn’t exist yet with students in it, but it’s coming into existence as an Educat shell.”
Once the course is underway in the summer, the professors are eager to see how students react and interact with the class. The class will place an emphasis on discussion, which is especially important given the course’s online format. Unlike classes that were forced to move online due to the pandemic, INTT 222 has the benefit of being built as an online course from the very beginning.
“It’s different than what we’re doing online now,” Leonard said. “It’s a designed online course, always intended to be that way.”
Without the pressure of suddenly adapting to the Internet, the course material can make use of the less time sensitive nature of online learning. “It’s the kind of thing where students can move at a little bit of a different pace and interact with each other in very different ways,” Leonard said.
In fact, the greatest challenge Leonard and Cleary faced when creating their class was finding the time to do it. Both professors have busy schedules. Teaching the course online is the most convenient option for both of them.
That said, Leonard and Cleary aren’t opposed to teaching the class in person. “Every once in a while I allow myself to daydream and believe that we’re teaching it in person because it would be even cooler to be able to teach it in person at some point,” Cleary said.
If and when that day will arrive remains to be seen. For now, Leonard and Cleary are looking forward to teaching the class together for the first time in the summer semester. There is some anticipation as they navigate uncharted waters. “The way students will interact, that’s the joy of it,” Cleary said. “That’s the experiment and the variable that I can never fully understand and just research and prepare for.” Leonard agrees. She is excited to see how students react to the course and interact with one another. “This is an experiment for me,” Leonard said. “I just want to see what happens with it and I hope it will be well received.”
More information about INTT 222: Art Meets Science can be found on Leonard’s website.
The NMU-AAUP Summer Teaching Survey indicates 53 AAUP faculty (36% of survey respondents) have declined summer teaching assignments due to the dramatic decrease in summer teaching pay, 56 AAUP faculty members (37.8% of survey respondents) have agreed to teach summer courses despite the pay cut.
Responses to several follow-up questions reveal deep concerns about the quality of the courses, students’ ability to make good academic progress, equal pay for equal work, the morale of NMU faculty members, and ultimately student retention.
Although faculty members are not “required by contract” to teach summer classes, most who have agreed to teach at the reduced pay feel obligated to do so, and they are upset about the situation. Categorical coding of statements explaining this feeling of obligation demonstrates how committed NMU faculty are to their students. The most common reason for feeling obligated to teach the summer courses was students’ ability to make satisfactory academic progress. Many students rely on certain courses to be offered in the summer, they design their plan of study to include these courses, and they need them to complete prerequisites for the fall classes in order to stay on track for graduation. In some cases, the degree program requires students to take certain courses during the summer, and certification/accreditation standards, often require instructors to have specific credentials. This leaves little room for choice when the program requires these courses to be taught.
Some department heads are making special deals with their faculty to bridge the gap; however, the survey shows that most are not. Adjustments include reducing the number of students allowed in courses or increasing faculty compensation in some way to match or bring pay closer to the previous rate.
Comments from multiple respondents show the reduction of pay for summer teaching has caused significant problems with staffing courses. The fear is that reduced or improperly staffed course offerings will lead to frustration for students and eventual reductions in enrollment.
Finally, the open-ended comments from the survey send a clear message that our faculty are feeling angry and underappreciated. Despite the noble efforts of many in our ranks to soldier on for the sake of the students and their programs, we know from multiple studies that disgruntled employees do sub-par work (Oswald, et al. 2015; and Peiró, et al. 2019). Our administration should not be satisfied with anything less than our best.
Peiró, J. M., Kozusznik, M. W., Rodríguez-Molina, I., & Tordera, N. (2019). The Happy-Productive Worker Model and Beyond: Patterns of Wellbeing and Performance at Work. International journal of environmental research and public health, 16(3), 479. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16030479
Dr. Linda Lawton has been a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science since 2011, but her love of math goes back to her childhood. She grew up in the Texas Panhandle. Her family often took trips around the country when her father traveled for work. Lawton’s spot behind the driver’s seat meant she had a good view of the speedometer.
“I was fascinated by the numbers and I was fascinated by the mile markers,” Lawton said. “I had a watch with a second hand and I would do all sorts of mental calculations about how fast we were going, how many seconds it took between mile markers.”
Linda getting ready to hit the road on a family trip
Lawton fostered her love of numbers throughout her years in school. Now, her ability to perform quick calculations in her head is a great resource for her as a professor. It is a skill that impresses students, and can also help break the ice with a new class.
Conversation is another great way for students and faculty to connect, as Lawton discovered during her time teaching at the University of Illinois. She recalls a class in which her students knew each other and enjoyed learning together. The atmosphere in the classroom was fun for everyone, herself included. Lawton carried an appreciation for a relaxed teaching environment with her to NMU.
“I can get material across in class if I’m allowed to be informal, if I’m allowed to joke around,” Lawton said. “That works for me.”
In addition to math skills, Lawton wants students to leave her classroom having gained two other qualities. The first of these is a sense of humor. Lawton’s laugh is contagious.
“I’d rather laugh than cry, so I’ll try to find something funny,” Lawton said. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I usually just tell them, ‘Hey, you know, laugh. You’re a captive audience, sorry,’” she laughed.
She also wants her students to develop what she calls a non-hatred for math. Sometimes students come into her class with one question on their minds: Why am I here? In response, Lawton incorporates math problems that will be useful to her students in the future.
When she was a graduate student at the University of Illinois, Lawton taught quantitative literacy classes. She understands the importance of finding practical and enjoyable ways to apply mathematical concepts to her students’ lives.
Dr. Lawton teaching online this semester
“If math isn’t your thing or it’s not going to be in your field, let’s find some things where it’s going to be useful for you, or let’s find something very interesting,” Lawton said.
For Lawton, this is one of the most rewarding parts of teaching.
“I like talking to students,” she said. “I like seeing those light bulbs come on and working with them.”
Throughout her years teaching math classes, she has found ways to encourage those lightbulb moments.
“It’s very common in a math class for a student to come up with a paper and say, ‘What did I do wrong here,’ and point,” Lawton said. “Which then becomes a dance between trying to get them to understand what should have been done versus what they did. And if you can get them to phrase the question rather than point, then often they will answer it for themselves.”
Helping students help themselves has a couple of benefits. First, if students can explain their mistakes, those mistakes are more easily understood and less likely to occur in the future. Second, having students articulate their problems aloud is beneficial for Lawton, who is blind.
She describes her blindness as having pixels missing from her field of vision. Her condition, which is unnamed, developed in adulthood and has presented some challenges in the classroom.
“I can’t wander around and peek over shoulders and go, ‘Oh, wait, you dropped a three,’” Lawton said.
With limited visual input, communication becomes much more important.
“I have to make sure my class is kind of trained to talk to me,” Lawton said. “I tend to be rather interactive anyway. I usually walk in the first day with my white cane.”
Lawton seeks to be approachable for students and colleagues alike. To that end, she utilizes her sense of humor.
“It makes them more comfortable with me,” Lawton said. “And that’s also why you’ll see me in tie dye a lot, and I’ll make the joke that it’s just so I can see myself walking down the hallway.”
She enjoys teaching at NMU and living in the Upper Peninsula. However, she did not always plan to live here. While she was teaching in Illinois, she began working in the actuarial field. She was teaching classes to help students enter that field, so she figured she would benefit from firsthand experience. Lawton worked as an actuary for 4 ½ years before deciding that she wanted to teach again. As she searched for teaching positions, she discovered the UP. When she learned about the job opportunity at NMU, she mentioned it to her husband, who became very excited.
“I showed it to him and he just started jumping up and down,” Lawton said. “He said, ‘Do you know where that is?’”
Her husband was familiar with the area, having hiked across Pictured Rocks as a teenager. He was happy to go back to the UP, and she was happy to go back to teaching.
“I like my students up here,” she said. “I think they’re great.”
Lawton has established a strong rapport with many of her students. Ryan Meister is a senior and an economics major. He has had several classes with Lawton. Especially during the pandemic, Meister appreciates Lawton’s enthusiasm for teaching both in the classroom and during office hours.
“I can tell that Professor Lawton sincerely cares not only about her students’ success, but about communicating abstract concepts in a lucid manner,” Meister said.
Lawton is currently teaching several classes, including calculus 1 and 3 and statistics 1.
According to NMU’s Office for Institutional Research and Analysis, enrollment at NMU for W21 is down 495 or 7.3% compared to last year at this time. This drop clearly indicates the impact of Covid-19 on enrollment. The decline is 301 or 4.5 percent when compared to enrollment for December of 2019.
However, admissions data for F21 indicates the potential for a more positive long-term scenario. Applications and freshman admits are up from last year and freshman orientation is up significantly from previous years. “I think it’s a good sign that the percentage of admits registered for orientation this year is higher,” says Gerri Daniels, Director of Admissions at NMU. According to Daniels, 32 percent of freshman admits typically enroll at NMU, so her current estimate on freshman enrollment for F21 is 1,475. If this holds, freshman enrollment would be up around eight percent from F20 but down about three percent from the average freshman enrollment between F16 and F19. Daniels added that about three percent of freshman admits are not current high school seniors. This indicates some of these students may have decided to take a “gap year” between high school and college due to Covid-19.
On November 15, Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced an executive order requiring Michigan high schools and colleges to switch to online learning by November 18. The announcement comes two days after the NMU administration agreed to the NMU-AAUP’s request to allow faculty to decide how to best deliver course content for the remainder of the semester. This agreement still allows faculty to move courses online prior to the Governor’s November 18 deadline without getting approval from department heads or accommodation from Human Resources.
As with the NMU-AAUP’s request, the governor’s action was based on data showing rapidly rising COVID infection rates across the state of Michigan and the entire mid-west.
Members of the NMU-Executive Committee held a workshop on September 24th to help those who are going up for promotion and/or tenure a chance to tighten down their application. The workshop also provided new faculty with guidance on how to prepare for this process. A video of the workshop can be viewed here.
After months of negotiations, leaders of the NMU Chapter of the American Association of University Professors agreed to a one-year contract on June 25th. If approved by the membership, the contract will freeze salaries and give university administration an option to impose one furlough day each month. It also calls for deep cuts to overload pay and compensation for teaching summer courses. According to NMU-AAUP President Dwight Brady, the cuts amount to over 1.5 million dollars. “Our compensation consistently ranks near or at the bottom among public universities in the state of Michigan. We began negotiations back in January hoping to change that with a new five-year contract. Of course, the COVID-19 crisis came along and created an extraordinarily difficult climate for negotiations,” said Brady.
The administration had originally asked faculty to take a potential 9.6 percent reduction in pay along with a 20 percent cut to retirement contributions and additional cuts to compensation for faculty earning promotions. “The NMU faculty believe in shared sacrifice to get through this challenging year, but we were not going to allow long-term cuts that would have lasting impacts through someone’s entire career,” said Brady.
NMU-AAUP Vice-President, Wendy Farkas
Since the COVID-19 crisis hit the U.S. in February, NMU-AAUP Vice-President Wendy Farkas says faculty members made substantial financial contributions to local health campaigns, foodbanks, NMU career closet, student financial relief funds and much more. “Our faculty believe strongly in helping NMU, the Marquette community, the U.P. and beyond. In service to the University, members have volunteered countless hours of time toward course adjustments and emergency planning committees for fall 2020 preparation,” said Farkas. She added that these efforts have placed NMU as the only U.P. school in Michigan’s top “Tier 1,” according to an Educate to Career (ETC) ranking adapted for the COVID-19 climate. In service beyond the University, Farkas says faculty members collaborated to develop and produce acrylic hoods that cover patients to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. They also donated to the Makerspace Fund to help produce shields at local high schools and sent funds to a cooperative of 16 schools making shields in Lower Michigan.
A ratification meeting is set for June 30, at 11:00 am., and union president Dwight Brady will encourage the membership to vote yes. “This contract isn’t pretty, but we can live with it. It meets our primary objective of shared sacrifice in short-term concessions, while minimizing long-term harm to our members.” The NMU-AAUP looks forward to continued solidarity with all NMU unions and labor unions across the U.P. as they look to next year’s contract talks.
