From Dr. Lucinda Cole, Visiting Associate Professor/Research Associate Professor/Director of Specialized Faculty – English.

Given current bargaining efforts on professional development funds, the Communications Chair has asked me to share my experience advocating for NTT professional development funds at the University of Illinois.

What prompts this letter is what I now understand as the vigor with which NTTs are excluded from research and scholarship opportunities in this university. As many of you in the Humanities know, IPRH (Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities) uses university and donated funds to promote “interdisciplinary study in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.” Yet—with one exception– its fellowships are open only to graduate students and tenure-track or tenured faculty. The exception is a single fellowship in the Digital Humanities.  

Taking seriously the stated goals of IPRH, I tried to apply for a fellowship, or, more precisely, to inquire about the possibility of application. Antoinette Burton, Director of IPRH, responded that I was eligible only for the digital humanities competition. Given that my last book won a highly-competitive national award, that I have another book under contract with a respected academic press, and that I’m regularly invited to be a plenary speaker at national and international conferences, I really could not imagine by what logic I could be excluded from the simple process of application. 

Since then, I have asked several tenured faculty about opening up fellowship eligibility, and have been met with a contradictory series of explanations as to why this solution is impossible. The first objection is always this: “Research isn’t in the job description of NTTs.” That position makes no sense to me. “Research” is in my job description: two out of my three designated titles (Visiting Associate Professor and Research Associate professor) require a research profile. When I point this out, other excuses follow, some more honest than others: “The budget is driven by the college”; “I don’t understand how the budget works”; “The college doesn’t want to invest in NTTs”; “IPRH doesn’t have enough money”; “There would be too much competition, were NTTs allowed to apply.” I offered to work with IPRH-associated faculty to develop fellowships designated for specialized faculty. No interest.

This unpleasant experience with IPRH and IPRH-associated faculty made me recognize, yet again, how important it is to seek collective remedies for what many of us experience daily: a demoralizing and deprofessionalizing workplace governed by outmoded assumptions about the scholarly lives of specialized faculty. 

It’s heartbreaking to see how people of good conscience—both administrators and TT faculty—are resource guarding, policing the borders of rank in ways that make no sense, except as protectionist policy. I hate to admit that, as a former administrator and tenured faculty member, I probably did the same thing. I wish I hadn’t. There are better ways. Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania, I discovered, offer a number of fellowships designed for specialized faculty. Other universities have effectively internalized what it means to have people in Teaching and Research Professional ranks. 

In any case, I have learned a lesson: the notion that specialized faculty and tenure-track faculty are two different species may help justify the status quo, but it actively undermines effective teaching, collegial relations, and the stated purposes of the IPRH. I have not been successful in passing this knowledge on to administrators here, but remain hopeful we can work together in imagining myriad creative solutions to our—NTTs—being cast out of the university’s scholarly life.

Image Credit: Getty Images

From Dorothee Schneider, Teaching Associate Professor– History.

After teaching American history for more than three decades, a lot of what I teach in the classroom refers to events I actually experienced:  Watergate, Ronald Reagan’s “It’s Morning in America,” and Bill Clinton’s “I Feel Your Pain.”  I watched the towers of the World Trade Center fall with my students while teaching about immigration.  But, like students at that moment, I felt that I was a witness, an onlooker of events over which I had no control.  I could live through history, I could understand history, but it never occurred to me that I could make history.

In the early months of 2014, a small group of colleagues and I began to work with union organizers from the American Federation of Teachers to find out if our campus was ready for a union of lecturers, instructors, and other faculty not on the tenure track. Our salaries were nearly frozen or even cut. Employment security did not exist. Most of us had no opportunity for advancement.   As it turned out, hundreds of colleagues were ready to sign up for the cause.  But we also encountered much anxiety: What if the supervisor found out? Could you be fired? Deported?  What if the promised pay increase did not materialize? It was hard work to move our colleagues beyond fear and insecurity.

On May 15, 2014 we filed for union recognition with the Illinois State Labor Education Board. After a year-long lawsuit by the University administration contesting the legitimacy of our union (the case went all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court), we won recognition. Nearly two years and two strikes later, we ratified our first contract in May of 2016.  The rest is, well, history.  

This time I wasn’t a witness. I actually helped to make it happen.
My colleagues and I made this history ourselves.  

Our historic win did not eliminate all the work-related problems among our ranks, but we made a serious dent and continue to push for a better future for ourselves in contract negotiations and organizing.  

If we don’t just want to be bystanders, we have to continue making history.  It is hard work. But so very much worth it. 

Happy May Day!
Dorothee Schneider

From Shawn Gilmore, Senior Lecturer – English

I’ve been with NTFC since before our current name, since before we had officers, since before we were a certified bargaining unit (in 2014). I was lucky enough to serve as our first President, and to do my small part to help shepherd through our first collective bargaining agreement, which we bargained from 2014-16 and which we had to go on strike to settle.

Along the way, I’ve come to understand that being a union member is not as obvious a decision for everyone. There’s skepticism about what a union can actually achieve, about the perceived problems it can cause, and about how it might change the relationship between worker and the employer. For me, those are all positives, and union membership has always seemed a natural choice. But if it doesn’t for you, let me ask: If we don’t provide the incentive for changes that protect us, from what incentives will the employer work?

 I don’t presume that administrators at the University of Illinois are malicious or even anti-union, but I can say from experience that they need to be reminded, and often, to act on the rhetoric they use about what they value and who they reward.

However, I’m writing today as an optimist. In our last contract campaign, there were clear disconnects between the University’s Bargaining Team and the Administration, who are the ones that actually approve any real changes in a contract. I take it as a positive sign that the University’s team now includes a representative from the Provost’s office and that our Chancellor was able to summarize the state of bargaining in-depth and correctly at the Academic Senate meeting on April 1. These are great signs, but we will need to reinforce them as we go, holding the administration to account.

We’ve done a lot in the last five years, including setting base-line salaries for the full-time non-tenure-track faculty we represent, establishing better long-term contract protection for those that work here more than five years, and more generally improving the recognition and standing of NTTs on campus.

I am proud of what we’ve achieved in the past and look forward to where this bargaining cycle will lead us. 

Solidarity forever,

Shawn Gilmore

From Heather McLeer, Lecturer – English.

The title of Specialized Faculty suggests that we specialize in teaching; for those of us on 100% teaching appointments, our teaching labor is certainly our most visible labor, particularly in the humanities. While most of us trained in scholarly or creative fields while training as university instructors, this side of our professional identities tends to be overlooked. 

I became a Lecturer in the Department of English after graduating from the same department with my Ph.D. in 2017. In the time since completing my degree, I’ve noticed subtle changes in how the scholarly side of my work is (or is not) perceived. I’m more frequently introduced by my NTT status than by my area of study, as graduate students and tenured faculty tend to be identified. In a recent conversation with someone who works outside of academia, I mentioned my plans to spend the upcoming summer preparing to submit an article to a journal. When they asked if I was doing so “just for fun,” I was at a loss for how to (politely) respond to the implication that my scholarship and writing are essentially a hobby.

While it’s undoubtedly true that a full writing-intensive teaching load leaves little time for much else during the semester, I didn’t stop writing, conducting research, or attending conferences when I became Specialized Faculty. As someone who taught a 2-2 load for the majority of my Ph.D., I see my scholarship and my teaching as fundamentally linked parts of my professional identity. 

This is why I’m happy to see that professional development funds are one of the items NTFC’s bargaining team is negotiating for in our next contract. Such funds could support a range of activities, from teaching workshops to attending conferences to archival research. 

I didn’t stop writing, conducting research, attending conferences, and being otherwise engaged in my field when I became an NTT. Such funding would be a concrete way to acknowledge the full range of my professional activities.

From Amanda Bales, Lecturer- English

My family has lived in Oklahoma longer than it has been a state. My parents, ever the rebels, moved to the Western part where I was raised, but most of my kin still resides in the East, where, you might not realize, coal mines have played a significant role in the economy. 

Most of my mother’s family dug coal. We still have the carbide lamps and newspaper clippings and stories passed down. Most of my family was actively involved in the coal unions. Stories have it that they once struck for seven years, partially in an attempt to get the Black Lung Benefit. For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, the Black Lung Benefit is a stipend and medical coverage given to those incapacitated by pneumoconiosis after working in and around coal mines. The Black Lung Benefit says: We’ll give the company our lungs, but they have to help when we can no longer breathe.  

I tell you this to acknowledge that as long as I have had a memory, I have believed in the importance of organized labor. As such, I have been a union member since I began teaching full time. But until now, they were always the state-wide unions paired with the national. I gave my dues and trusted that the unions made my life better from afar. When I came to UIUC, I finally got to see a labor union up-close.  

This is the first time I have observed the incredible amount of energy and effort and skill and time that goes into preparing to bargain a union contract. Months of energizing and growing the membership, months of collecting member input and narratives, months of crafting and revising the contract language. It is inspiring. It is invigorating. 

We at the NTFC have just begun bargaining a new contract. It has already been a long process. Some of the most difficult parts are yet to come. I think of my relatives, striking so that companies would pay for the lungs they took for profit. * 

We are asking for several things in this new contract. A few of them are a salary floor* that keeps pace with inflation, multiple-year contracts so that we can invest in our community, and access to university research and development funds. 

Sounds reasonable, right? It usually is. Most workers aren’t trying to launch cars into space. Most of us want only to provide a stable and solid life for ourselves and our families. 

The NTFC might not be asking the administration to pay for our lungs, but we are asking them to help us breathe a little easier. 

In Solidarity,

Amanda Bales, NTFC Communications Chair

You can follow our bargaining progress on this site as well as on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.  

End Notes:

*The Black Lung Benefit became a federal law in 1973. The 7-year strike of my family history did not succeed in gaining this benefit in the contract. My great-grandfather, who began working the mines when he was 12, never lived to see it. He died in May of 1969. 

*A salary floor is just that—a floor. Members can negotiate their own salaries into the stratosphere. We only ask that full-time faculty members at this university make at least a certain amount. Right now, that amount is $45,000. Before the union organized, there were full-time faculty members making as little as $33,000. Alongside graduate students, these are the people teaching a hefty percentage of first and second year courses. 

If I had a child headed for college, I wouldn’t ask about faculty to student ratios and dorm size and whether the gym has a climbing wall, I’d ask about the percentage of adjunct labor and how those adjuncts are treated. If parents looked beyond the brochures at most American universities, I’m pretty sure they’d rise-up with us. If universities were really invested in “the first-year experience” of your kids, they would take care of the people providing it.