When Dr. Lupe Arenillas accepted a position at NMU in 2010 she found that Marquette wasn’t quite what she was expecting. Arenillas grew up in a big family and lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina until she was eight years old. As a university student she received her Bachelor’s degree from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in a city with a population over three million. Prior to her arrival at NMU Arenillas also spent a year in California. Marquette stood in stark contrast to her time in big cities.

“For me it was like a big leap of faith because I was expecting to live in a big city, in a bigger place or in a more diverse place,” Arenillas said. “I didn’t want to be in the Midwest,” she laughed.

Despite her reservations Arenillas accepted a position in the Department of Languages, Literatures and International Studies, because it was the first position offered to her. She understood the value of a tenure-track position and didn’t want to let that opportunity slip away. Once she arrived, she was pleasantly surprised, and she is now a tenured associate professor. 

“I really liked my colleagues immediately,” Arenillas said. “I really liked them, and it felt like a warm place in the sense of the people, and that for me is super important.”

As a professor at NMU Arenillas has taught a variety of upper and lower level courses including some classes in the Honors program.

“I teach many different classes,” Arenillas said. “Mostly the advanced Spanish courses in Latin American film, culture and literature but I also occasionally teach the elementary and intermediate levels for the Spanish language.”

In addition to teaching at NMU, Arenillas’s research has been published in multiple journals. Her research focuses on Latin American documentary film and literature. In 2016 she co-edited a book titled Latin American Documentary Film in the New Millenium. She studies documentary film from Argentina and Chile in order to explore questions related to memory, materiality, temporality and justice. She also studies how film can be used to tell stories in ways that are unlike other media.

“I like to see traces, you know,” Arenillas said. “Traces of the past in the present, the traces of memory from one generation to another. I wrote about, for example, a documentary that focused on buildings and how buildings change with time, and then I traced the history but also how the documentary can tell the story in a different way than a novel, for example.”

Arenillas loves to travel and says studying documentary film can sometimes be like travelling through time. Of course, she can’t really take a trip to the past but she has done plenty of exploring in the present. She shared some examples of places she has visited.

“I travelled quite a lot in Europe,” Arenillas said. “I spent some time in Portugal doing research on Mozambiquan poets, and I’ve been in Switzerland and many, many places in Latin America. I like to go to Puerto Rico.”

Arenillas doesn’t only travel for her own benefit. She is involved in the NMU in Salamanca program started by Dr. Michael Joy. The program sends a group of students to spend a month in Salamanca each May, although this year’s trip was cancelled due to the pandemic.

“The program is wonderful because it has an academic, a cultural and a social focus,” Arenillas said. 

Students take classes from professors at the University of Salamanca, as well as from the NMU professors who join them on the trip. Arenillas has participated in the program three times, and says Salamanca is a lively town that provides plenty of opportunities for students to explore. She enjoys spending time in Salamanca just as much as the students do.

“I feel like I have a little life there because I went three times, so I spent three months there,” Arenillas said.

As much as she loves travelling, Arenillas finds joy in returning home as well.

“I like the feeling of returning because that gives me a sense of also, ‘I have a home,’” Arenillas said. “I like to move with a base.”

Although she was nervous about coming to the Upper Peninsula for the first time, Marquette has since become that base for her. She loves her friends and colleagues and she says she has received much support for her research which makes her very happy. She is glad she accepted the position at NMU and plans to settle down here for a while.

“The U.P. grew on me,” she said. “It really grew.”

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.