By Hailey Murphy
After receiving backlash from faculty over signing an impactful, 10-year contract without faculty input, Western’s administration is working to repair bridges with faculty and resolves concerns, However, faculty members are still concerned about the agreement, particularly about several portions that they say violate the collective bargaining agreement between Western and the faculty union.
In late September, Western signed a contract with a for-profit, private corporation called Study Group to create the Global Pathways program. This contract states that Study Group will recruit international students to bring to campus and will support them throughout their college career. In return, Western pays Study Group a portion of their tuition.
While the administration is taking steps to mend the relationship with the faculty, faculty union president Steven Garfinkle said they still have a ways to go.
“They have made what I think is a genuine effort to begin repair the damage. But it’s going to take a long time,” said Garfinkle. “After that meeting with the senate, President Randhawa followed up with a letter to the faculty, offering what amounted to an apology for the breakdown in shared governance and committing his administration to shared governance… I do have some concerns that it seems to place the greater responsibility for the breakdown in shared governance in the past rather than the present, and regardless of where the actual mistake was made, I think it’s important that the current administration step up and take responsibility for that.”
On November 13, President Randhawa, Provost Brent Carbajal and Executive Director of the Institute for Global Engagement Vicki Hamblin met with the faculty senate. There, faculty expressed a number of concerns with the contract. All around, the most prevalent concern was still the lack of consultation prior to signing the contract.
“We’ve spent an enormous amount of time creating really healthy interest in shared governance, really healthy practices [of working] together at the legislature,” Garfinkle said. “Then this comes along and undermines that to a great degree because of the seriousness of the issues involved.”
After this meeting, President Randhawa sent out an email to faculty expressing his regret in the breakdown of communication.
“Being new to Western, I made assumptions about the extent to which the university community had vetted the topic. I assumed that the contract with Study Group would be the culmination of an almost 18-month process and thus moved forward last year,” the email read. “In retrospect, we should have had direct conversations with faculty over the nature of the partnership with Study Group. For not having had those conversations, I sincerely apologize.”
A number of items in the Study Group contract violate aspects of the collective bargaining agreement, according to Garfinkle.
For one, in Western’s contract with Study Group, it states that “The University shall retain all Intellectual Property Rights in any documents, information and/or materials which it provides to Study Group in connection with the operation and monitoring of the Center.”
The union says this is in direct violation of their collective bargaining agreement because it impinges on their rights to intellectual property.
“The reality is, since a lot of that material will be course material, faculty continue to own the intellectual property rights to the course materials that they create,” said Garfinkle.
In addition, the contract states that complaints in regards to the Global Pathways program will be handled by Study Group, in line with Western’s policy. However, the union believes that this statement itself isn’t in line with Western’s policy, as the current complaint procedures state that all complaints will be handled by Western personnel.
The last issue the union has with the contract is concerning ambiguity on whether or not new faculty hired for the Global Pathways program will be considered Western faculty. In the collective bargaining agreement, it says that all courses at Western must be taught by Western faculty, so the union wants clarification on this issue.
The administration is currently taking steps to address the union’s issues and make the contract in line with the collective bargaining agreement, according to Garfinkle
“I think ours– meaning the [union’s] concerns– to some extent are the easiest for the university to address because they’re backed up by other legal and contractual obligations, so it’s easy to point out to the university,” Garfinkle said. “Some of the other issues will take longer to fix.”
Some of these other issues include, largely, matters of space. The contract states that Western will have to provide space and resources for the Study Group Center, although there has been no word of where this will go.
Additionally, Western will be hiring 30 to 35 new tenure-track faculty, as well as more non-tenure track faculty, to accommodate the new influx of students, according to President Randhawa. These new faculty will need access to office space, which is already in short supply on campus.
This is another point at which the contract with Study Group could break Western’s agreement with the faculty union.
“One of the things that the collective bargaining agreement makes clear is that faculty needs to be given appropriate space to do their jobs,”Garfinkle said. “Which means having a space to meet with students, having a place to do curricular work, having access to a university work station, etc… We don’t know where the new faculty will go. Lots of departments are already stretched in terms of office space.”
That being said, Western is currently putting together a task force to address issues of office space on campus, according to Garfinkle.
Another issue with space involves the dorms. Western’s goal is to increase the international student population to 5 percent, which could mean 750 to 800 new students coming to campus in the upcoming years. It can be presumed that some, if not all, of these students will live in the dorms. Yet there’s been no indication by the administration of how they’ll accommodate the international students as well as in-state and other non-international students.
Through the Global Pathways program, the students can undergo a pathway year to improve their English skills and learn other facets of going to an American college. After the pathway year, they will enter the university as a Western student. In addition, there will be a Study Group Center in which international students can get support.
What exactly that pathway will entail is being determined by the academic working group.
The pathway year will] be a combination between IEP courses and a small set set of academic content courses that will depend on student’s IEP level, Vicki Hamblin, the Executive Director for the Institute for Global Engagement, said. –
”In fact, mostly IEP courses, because the students in the pathway will be focusing on improving their English skills so they can succeed as a normal student at Western,” Hamblin said.
Some courses that could be involved, according to Geisler, are English 100, Astronomy 103, Math 107, 108, 114 and 124 . according to Marc Geisler, associate dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
“We’re doing collegial consultation with different departments about what kinds of courses would work best,” Geisler said. “But it’s going to depend upon what those departments are scheduling that year, so we can’t tell you exact courses, but they’re 100-level, entry level courses.”
Upon finishing their plan for the pathway year, the academic working group will submit it to the Academic Coordinating Commission, a committee of the faculty senate that approves curriculum.
Concerns have been raised about how many spots are available in these entry-level courses, and if the international students will be taking spots from in-state students.
“I understand that we send out letters to close to 200 students every year… as they’re coming in to Western, recommending that they take English 100,” Allison Giffen, president of the faculty senate said in an interview last month. “We only have seats for 30 of them. So right now, we can’t meet that need. Now we’re going to bring in up to 750 students. Where are we gonna find seats for those? We’re gonna have to do some hiring, certainly.”
Since then, the administration has announced that they will be hiring more faculty. Additionally, the academic working group is taking this into account as they plan the pathway year.
“One of our principles is that what we’re doing with the pathway program will not exacerbate already existing capacity and access issues,” Geisler said. “So that’s one of our guiding principles. That will not happen. Which is not so hard, really, with 100 level, entry level courses.”
On a similar note, concerns from faculty in the STEM fields have been raised to Giffen regarding availability in prerequisite classes. During a forum regarding the Global Pathways Program on December 7, Giffen cited Computer Science 141 as a class that has waitlists with over 100 people.
“The reality is, in the initial year, [recruitment will] be responding to pressures in market forces, which means we’re expecting to get students in the STEM fields in the first few years,” Giffen said.
In response, Earl Gibbons, vice provost for Extended Education, said, “Study Group is not going to go out and create a demand for something that we feel is problematic to meet. As time goes on, it’s absolutely the expectation of this program that it’s success will give us the capacity to gain additional resources– resources that will help not only the international students but all students.”
A similar statement has been made by President Randhawa, in his Q&A with Western Today.
“It is anticipated that this revenue will complement state funding and allow us to address access issues in terms of hiring new tenure-track faculty and with respect to increasing and improving space,” he wrote. “New resources associated with it also will support student services for all students, not just international students.”
Yet, at this time, there has been no cost breakdown of how they revenue will be used, according to Garfinkle. Thus, it is still uncertain what will be improved upon with this revenue, and when these improvements will occur.
Johann Neem, History Department Chair, stated at the forum, “[It’s been said that] this is about diversity, but what it’s really about is… revenue.”
Gibbons said in response, “Western is doing this to diversify, and oh, by the way, this will provide revenue and resources… this is not desperation to fill a hole in the budget.”