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The UK Chapter of the AAUP wants to know what faculty really think about the new ARs. After you respond to the Provost, please copy and past your comments into this anonymous form. No emails will be collected. Your comments will be shared anonomously with the community for the sake of transparency. Please click here to fill out the form:
https://forms.gle/kAM3Vwkf4Yd2GFnL9

And click here to see the answers that others have submitted:

University of Kentucky Chapter of the AAUP  Mission Statement

 

The mission of the UK Chapter of the American Association of University Professors is to defend and promote academic freedom at the University of Kentucky and throughout academe; to encourage faculty participation in governance at UK; and to protect and advance the professional status and interests of all faculty. The last point includes defense of the tenure system, but also advocacy for the interests of contingent faculty and graduate students.

Higher education in the United States is facing many challenges that impact the work of faculty, students, and administrators. University communities stand at the center of political struggles in a way that is reminiscent of the 1960s. Political differences are tearing at the seams of our society, and therefore of its institutions of higher education. Students (and parents) wonder if college is still worth its often astronomical cost, which raises the question of what universities are for. Is the only, or even principal, goal of higher education to prepare young people for the job market—or is there more? Administrators worry about the “demographic cliff,” that is, the prediction that within the next couple of years, incoming classes of freshmen will start a sustained decline. Non-tenured colleagues and graduate students are concerned about deteriorating conditions in the academic job market. In the end, then, a cloud is hanging over higher education in this country. In the wake of Covid-19, many colleagues are tired and have withdrawn from the campus community.

It is against this background that, in the spring of 2024, the administration of the University of Kentucky fundamentally changed the nature of faculty governance at this institution. Upper administrators created pretenses to abolish the University Senate, commissioning an expensive “study” by the consulting firm Deloitte whose outcome was predictable: the faculty has too much power at UK. Advancing the Commonwealth requires a nimbler and more efficient approach, Deloitte concluded: not decision-making by elected faculty representatives, but governance from above, by administrators. Our new Faculty Senate will henceforth play a merely advisory role.

The goal of our AAUP chapter is to keep faculty informed about the status of faculty governance at our institution. It remains to be seen what weight the new Faculty Senate’s advice is going to receive in decisions about academic matters, like admission and graduation standards, the creation and discontinuation of programs, and curricular content. The UK Chapter of the AAUP believes that, to ensure academic quality at the flagship university of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, robust structures of faculty governance are indispensable. Our goal, therefore, is to rally an informed faculty to fight for the restoration of true shared governance and to protect faculty, staff, and students from the whims of an administration out of control.

We will promote open debate about the role of the University of Kentucky in educating the students of our Commonwealth. In defending academic freedom, we are also defending the rights of our students to robust educational opportunities here in Kentucky. We fear that the destruction of faculty governance is a prelude to a narrow redefinition of public higher education in Kentucky, and we must be prepared to fight for ourselves and our students.

We ask you to join us.  Please consider joining the national AAUP.  Or sign up here  to join the “Friends of AAUP.”