The Tide: NUT begins three-day warning strike, Tuesday
• Friday, Jun 6, 2008
The Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), Western Zone, has called on primary and secondary school teachers in the area to embark on a three-day warning strike beginning from June 11 to June 13.
Comments Off on Nigeria: NUT begins three-day warning strike
Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Cyprus Observer: Strike cancelled; lessons started
30.05.2008
With the end of the strike by the Cyprus Turkish Secondary Education Teachers’ Union (CTSETU) lessons in secondary schools started after 11 school days.
Comments Off on Cyprus: Strike cancelled; lessons started
Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Teachers Give Ultimatum for National Strike
Vanguard (Lagos)
30 May 2008
President Umaru Yar’Adua’s achievement of industrial peace, seems set for disruption as the Nigeria Union of Teachers yesterday issued a 21 day ultimatum to the federal government on its failure to put in place a Teachers Salary Scale.
Comments Off on Nigeria: Teachers Give Ultimatum for National Strike
Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
ABC: Teachers to strike over pay dispute
The Education Union is seeking a 21 per cent pay rise over three years for teachers.
Public school teachers in South Australia are preparing for strike action after the Education Union yesterday voted to step up its industrial campaign.
Teachers will walk off the job on the June 17, with rolling stoppages set to follow if there is no revised pay offer.
Comments Off on Australia: Teachers to strike over pay dispute
Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
The News & Observer: NCSU defends Mary Easley’s big raise
RALEIGH – N.C. State University’s top academic officer today defended a $79,700 raise awarded to Mary Easley this week.
Easley, wife of Gov. Mike Easley, is an executive in residence and senior lecturer in the provost’s office at NCSU. Her job duties have expanded and she will get more money for it.
Effective July 1, her salary went from $90,000 to $170,000, according to personnel records from N.C. State.
Comments Off on North Carolina: NCSU defends Mary Easley’s big raise
Posted in Administration, Government
Vancouver Sun: Professor wants to observe illegal assisted suicides
Academic seeks understanding of the right-to-die movement
Canada’s university professors are preparing to defend the right of a Metro Vancouver researcher to witness illegal assisted suicides in the name of increasing understanding of the right-to-die movement.
Comments Off on Professor blocked by university from observing illegal assisted suicides
Posted in Academic freedom
Chicago Tribune: UW System to review botched UW-Parkside search
MADISON, Wis. – Insufficient reference checks and a compressed timeline may have hampered the process used to search for a new University of Wisconsin-Parkside chancellor, officials said Tuesday.
University of Louisville Dean Robert Felner was supposed to start leading UW-Parkside in Kenosha on Tuesday. He resigned the job last month after his lawyer disclosed he is at the center of a federal investigation into whether $500,000 in grant money was mishandled.
…
UW System officials said they received no information warning that Felner could be under investigation during the five weeks between when he was named a finalist in late April and was hired in early June.
Their first hint came when federal agents showed up at UW-Parkside on June 20 to review documents that Felner had shipped to the campus, Giroux said. News of that visit was not passed on to Reilly until June 23, a day after Felner informed him about the investigation. Reilly accepted Felner’s resignation on June 24.
Comments Off on Wisconsin/Kentucky: UW System to review botched UW-Parkside search
Posted in Administration, Legal issues
The New York Times: On Campus, Liberal Professors Retire
MADISON, Wis. — When Michael Olneck was standing, arms linked with other protesters, singing “We Shall Not Be Moved” in front of Columbia University’s library in 1968, Sara Goldrick-Rab had not yet been born.
Comments Off on On Campus, Liberal Professors Retire
Posted in Faculty
Herald-Leader: Faculty voted no confidence in Felner in ’06
KENOSHA, Wis. —
The educator who resigned before becoming University of Wisconsin-Parkside chancellor because of a pending criminal investigation received a “no confidence” vote from University of Louisville faculty members at a meeting in 2006, a newspaper reports.
Comments Off on Kentucky: Faculty voted no confidence in Felner in ’06
Posted in Administration, Ethics, Legal issues
The Chronicle: Gas Prices Afford Adjuncts Tough Choices
The cost of gasoline has made the art of juggling two or more teaching jobs at different institutions all the more difficult for many adjunct faculty members, as extreme price increases at the pumps cut into salaries that often don’t cover living expenses to begin with.
Comments Off on Gas Prices Afford Adjuncts Tough Choices
Posted in Contingent labor
Inside Higher Ed: Throwing a Dean Under the Bus
A recent faculty no-confidence vote at the University of Toledo was designed to oust an unpopular dean, but a subsequent student-led investigation is shifting criticism all the way to the top of the administration.
On April 15, a group representing faculty in the Toledo’s College of Arts and Sciences issued a vote of no confidence in Yueh-Ting Lee, a first-year dean who was criticized for his management style. While Lee has taken much of the heat, his bosses are now sharing the hot seat.
Comments Off on Ohio: Throwing a Dean Under the Bus
Posted in Administration
Inside Higher Ed: Political Scientists Stick With New Orleans, Face Boycott
The American Political Science Association moved its 2006 annual meeting from the original site of San Francisco, where hotels were then in the midst of protracted disagreements with unions, to Philadelphia.
Comments Off on Political Scientists Stick With New Orleans, Face Boycott
Posted in Solidarity
FACE: Syracuse Adjuncts Hit Their Stride
Health and leave benefits, professional development support, seniority, binding arbitration, a boost in pay: these are the high notes of the first contract part-time/adjunct faculty at Syracuse University ratified by a six-to-one margin in a vote counted June 23.
Adjuncts United (AU) represents more than 500 part-time faculty and some graduate students and is affiliated with New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) and nationally with the AFT and the NEA. AU has been working towards this contract with the private university since it voted for representation in December 2005. Now, 81 bargaining sessions later–eight of them with a federal mediator at hand–AU has a contract that is a model for private universities in the state and the nation. “It has been a long and arduous process, but well worth the effort,” says Jeanette Jeneault, AU president. “As a first contract both sides should be commended on the many best practices that will be memorialized here.”
Comments Off on Syracuse Adjuncts Hit Their Stride
Posted in Campaigns & Contracts
The Chronicle: Botched Chancellor Hire in Wisconsin Raises Questions About Search Process
The University of Wisconsin system proudly announced on June 5 that it had hired a new chancellor for its Parkside campus. But three weeks later, the system is back at the drawing board while its one-time appointee copes with a criminal investigation.
Comments Off on Botched Chancellor Hire in Wisconsin Raises Questions About Search Process
Posted in Administration
Hattiesburg American: Ex-USM coaches awarded damages
Three former University of Southern Mississippi soccer coaches were awarded nearly $1.2 million in damages Friday in Forrest County Circuit Court.
Advertisement
AdTech Ad
Former head coach John Vincent and two assistants, John Mollaghan and Ged O’Connor, had filed suit in November 2000, claiming sexual harassment, sexual discrimination and lack of due process.
Comments Off on Mississippi: Ex-USM coaches awarded damages
Posted in Legal issues
The Chronicle: Columbia U. Fires Teachers College Professor Accused of Rampant Plagiarism
Columbia University’s Teachers College announced today that it planned to fire Madonna G. Constantine, a tenured professor, for plagiarism. The announcement, which came in a memorandum delivered to faculty members, said Ms. Constantine would be suspended immediately and would be dismissed, subject to a review by a faculty committee.
A law firm hired by the university to conduct an investigation reported in February that Ms. Constantine, a professor of psychology and education, had committed more than two dozen instances of plagiarism. Ms. Constantine has vehemently denied the accusations and has, in turn, accused others of plagiarizing her work. She has also accused colleagues of envy and racism.
Last October, Ms. Constantine said a noose was placed outside her office door. The New York City Police Department’s hate-crime unit investigated the incident, but months later still had no suspects. —Thomas Bartlett
Comments Off on Columbia U. Fires Teachers College Professor Accused of Rampant Plagiarism
Posted in Faculty
The Brownsville Herald: UTB-TSC: DHS violated settlement
The UTB-TSC has accused the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of violating a March lawsuit settlement that gave officials permission to survey campus land.
Under the compromise, DHS was required to assess alternatives to the border fence and consider the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College’s “unique status as an institution of higher learning.”
Comments Off on Texas Universities Accuse U.S. of Violating Agreement on Border Fence
Posted in Government
Post Standard: SU pulls plug on pollster
Syracuse, NY — After 24 years of polling for political candidates, Syracuse University professor Jeff Stonecash has been asked by university officials to shut down his operation amid complaints from a Democratic congressional candidate.
Comments Off on New York: SU pulls plug on pollster
Posted in Faculty
The Chronicle: U. of Michigan Press Will Stop Distributing Titles for ‘Radical’ Publisher
The University of Michigan Press is ending its controversial relationship with Pluto Press at the end of this year. As of December 31, it will no longer distribute titles for Pluto Press, a London-based independent publisher. Pluto counts Noam Chomsky among its authors and espouses what it calls a “radical political agenda.” The Michigan press took fire last year for one of Pluto’s books, Overcoming Zionism, by Joel Kovel, a professor of social studies at Bard College. The pro-Israel lobbying group StandWithUs spearheaded a vocal protest, attacking the book as “a polemic against Israel” and a “collection of propaganda, misquotes, and discredited news stories.”
Comments Off on U. of Michigan Press Will Stop Distributing Titles for ‘Radical’ Publisher
Posted in Academics
Unions’ education racket
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Unions’ education racket
By Dimitri Vassilaros
Friday, June 6, 2008
Higher education is being dragged down by faculty unions, says George Leef. “Unions try to protect the weakest members, thereby lowering the standards for everyone.”
Comments Off on Unions’ education racket
Posted in Commentary, Unions