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UFF Biweekly United Faculty of Florida -- USF System Chapter 21 September 2017 Email not displaying properly? View it in your browser

Chapter Meeting Tomorrow in Tampa

The Chapter will meet tomorrow Friday at 12 noon on USF Tampa in EDU 161. There will be sandwiches, snacks, pop, and cookies. All USF employees are invited, especially UFF members and employees thinking of becoming UFF members. On the agenda: Hurricane Irma's aftermath, including ***. Come and check us out.

The remaining UFF Chapter Meetings this semester will be on September 22, October 6 & 20, November 3 & 17, and December 1. The meetings are on USF Tampa in EDU 161, except for the two October meetings: the October 6 meeting is on USF St. Petersburg in USC in the Palm Room while the October 20 meeting is on USF Sarasota / Manatee in a room TBD. Come and join the movement.

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Download, fill in, and mail the membership form. Benefits of membership include the right to run and vote in UFF chapter and statewide elections; representation in grievances (UFF cannot represent a non-member in a grievance or litigation); special deals in insurance, travel, legal advice, and other packages provided by our affiliates; free insurance coverage for job-related liability; and the knowledge you are supporting education in Florida. Come and join the movement.

Grievances

If you have been the victim of a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, you have thirty days from the time you knew or should have known of the violation to file a grievance. If you are, and at the time of the violation were, a dues-paying member of the United Faculty of Florida, you have the right to union representation. To contact the UFF USF Grievance Committee, go to the online contact form. For more information, see our web-page on grievances; see also the main article (left).

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Visit the United Faculty of Florida at USF Facebook page. This page is a place where UFF members can exchange thoughts and ideas. The page is "public", but only dues-paying UFF members are eligible to post items on the page. If you are a UFF member, ask to join on the page, or contact the Communications Committee. The Committee will invite every UFF member that asks to join. So check us out. UFF members are welcome to join, and non-members are welcome to look.

IN THIS ISSUE

Rank and Diversity in the Bargaining Unit

Over the past few decades, the gender and ethnic composition of academia has become an issue. At USF, the makeup of students and faculty is reported in the Campus Diversity Site, although more detailed information is available from the USF InfoCenter. Meanwhile, there has been a lot of discussion about hiring instructors versus assistant professors. In this issue, we look at two snapshots to compare how the UFF USF Bargaining Unit has changed - and how it has remained the same - over the past six years.

The Unit. The unit was and remains rather white, but nearly equally divided between men and women - although there are differences between ranks. But the most striking change during the last six years is the proportion of employees in the four major positions. For more, see below or click here.

Meanwhile...

What's On Your Plate? Another UFF member has used a travel scholarship to go to a conference. For an account by Elizabeth Metzger, see below or click here.

And we are all recovering from Hurricane Irma. The U.S. death toll appears to be over 50, over a million households and businesses were without power as of September 16, and cost estimates are rising towards $ 100 billion, some of which will impact next year's budget. The UFF Senate had been scheduled to meet during the Sept. 16 - 17 weekend, but the meeting has been postponed to Oct. 21 - 22. Meanwhile, the state affiliate - the Florida Education Association - has been encouraging UFF members to support each other and has posted a list of contacts for people who need help as well as a link for people who want to volunteer to help.

The Unit

The gender and ethnic makeup of faculty became an issue for several reasons:

America being the land of opportunity, if comparable opportunities existed for all classes of people, we would expect that faculty would reflect the community at large.

Where you stand depends on where you sit, according to Rufus Miles, and gender and ethnicity is part of where you sit - and, consequently, what you teach and do research in.
Faculty can serve as role models, and students often more readily identify with faculty of the same gender and ethnicity.

We glance at two snapshots from GEMS, the program that handles USF personnel: what did the Bargaining Unit look like on 24 February 2011 and what did it look like on 8 September 2017?

In 2011, there were 1,641 employees in the Bargaining Unit, which was 55 % male and thus 45 % female. In 2017, there are 1,653 employees in the Bargaining Unit (September 8 being effectively right now), which is 54 % male. These numbers belie a lot of change in the Bargaining Unit:

Only 926 employees on the 2011 list are on the 2017 list, which means that 44 % of those in the unit in 2011 left for out-of-unit lines or left USF altogether. That turnover is not a surprise in light of USF's attrition during the past few years.
The most common positions are Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor.
- From 2011 to 2017, the number of instructors went from 289 to 417, an increase of 44 %.
- From 2011 to 2017, the number of assistant professors went from 389 to 272, a decrease of 30 %.
- From 2011 to 2017, the number of associate professors went from 366 to 435, an increase of 19 %.
- From 2011 to 2017, the number of professors went from 313 to 355, an increase of 13 %.

So what do the employees in these different positions look like? To look at gender, we look at the proportion of men in each of these four positions in 2011 and 2017.

	% male in 2011	% male in 2017
Instructor	39 %	41 %
Assistant Professor	51 %	48 %
Associate Professor	56 %	54 %
Professor	77 %	72 %

Despite the high turnover, and major shifts in the number of employees in each position, there was not much change in gender representation.

GEMS classifies employees as "American Indian / Alaska Native", "Asian / Pacific Islander", "Black / African American", "Hispanic / Latino", and "White". Ethnicity remains predominantly white non-hispanic, but there were some shifts between 2011...

	Amer.	Asian	Black	Hisp.	White
Instructor	1 %	4 %	5 %	7 %	83 %
Assistant Professor	0 %	18 %	8 %	7 %	67 %
Associate Professor	0 %	9 %	8 %	6 %	77 %
Professor	0 %	11 %	4 %	4 %	81 %

... and 2017 ...

	Amer.	Asian	Black	Hisp.	White
Instructor	0 %	8 %	5 %	6 %	80 %
Assistant Professor	0 %	19 %	9 %	9 %	63 %
Associate Professor	0 %	16 %	7 %	7 %	70 %
Professor	1 %	12 %	2 %	6 %	80 %

("0 %" means less than one-half of 1 %, and we are not counting the employees of unreported ethnicity. Numbers may not add up to 100 % because of roundoff.)

What does this tell us about USF? We have all heard the very good news that USF now meets the state's criteria for pre-eminent status, so in some ways, USF is heading in the right direction. But we should watch the evolution of the bargaining unit as well.

What's On Your Plate?

Last spring, the USF Chapter of UFF offered six travel scholarships to members for professional travel. English Professor Elizabeth Metzger describes what she did with her scholarship.

The purpose of this August 2017 experience was to attend and participate in the international What's On Your Plate? Barbados Food, Law and Industry Conference with students from California State University at Long Beach enrolled in a three-week study abroad course (FCS 490 Distilling and Brewing Technology of Barbados) connected to aspects of Barbados. Along with the students and an instructor/ colleague, I toured distilleries and other sites complementing the course content and the conference theme. In addition, I was an invited to:

Judge food science student competitors' Product Development Research Proposals. These were fifteen-minute Oral Presentations, Poster Boards with flowcharts illustrating the development of the product (along with safety, legal, and marketing concerns), and original Food Product Prototypes - using detailed science rubrics for each component of the competition and
Consult with students for "Writing, Revising, and Orally Presenting a Research Proposal." Food science team competitors enrolled at California State University, the University of West Indies, and the University of Southern Caribbean participated in this novel Product Development Competition to:
- Create an innovative product that both reflected the theme of the conference and applied their food science backgrounds and
- Name these health-inspired products as a Ruby-Red Dessert Pone, an 18 Carrot Nugget, and Barbadian Breadfruit Crisps.

The positive outcomes and benefits of my conference participation were innumerable—with particularly one benefit being the expansion of both my pedagogical repertoire and current interdisciplinary research and scholarship, blending English and science.

I am deeply grateful to UFF for supporting and sponsoring me to attend such an academically and professionally stimulating experience.

LOGISTICS

Chapter Meeting tomorrow Friday, September 22, on USF Tampa in EDU 161.

We will have lunch at the meeting. All UFF members are invited to attend. Non-members are also invited to come and check us out. Come and join the movement.

Membership: Everyone in the UFF USF System Bargaining unit is eligible for UFF membership: to join, simply fill out and send in the membership form.

NOTE: The USF-UFF Chapter website is http://www.uff.ourusf.org, and our e-mail address is uff@ourusf.org.

About this broadcast: This Newsletter was broadcast from uff.ourusf.org, hosted at ICDsoft.com, and is intended for all members of the UFF USF Bargaining unit (USF faculty and professionals at most departments). A (usually identical) version will be broadcast to USF-News and USF-Talk from mccolm@usf.edu.

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