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UFF Biweekly EXTRA
United Faculty of Florida -- USF System Chapter
28 June 2012
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ANNOUNCEMENTS

REMINDER

Dr. Wes Johnson, retired USF professor in Neurosurgery (and formerly affiliated with three USF Engineering departments) will be speaking about his candidacy for Florida State Senate, District 17 (largely northwestern Hillsborough and southern Pasco). All USF faculty and professional employees – UFF members and non-members alike – are invited to the UFF USF Chapter Meeting tomorrow, Friday, 12 noon, at CDB Restaurant at 5104 E. Fowler Ave. in Tampa, just west of the USF Tampa campus; salad, pizza, soda and beer will be provided by the Chapter.

A LETTER FROM UFF PRESIDENT TOM AUXTER

Members of the Governor's Blue Ribbon Task Force on State Higher Education Reform began meeting last month with the goal of reforming higher education to make it more efficient in operation and more directly focused on producing economic activity and jobs in Florida. The first hearing gives some insight into what these goals mean. The Chamber of Commerce is organizing it with the Governor. It reflects their priorities, but UFF is having some success in raising faculty concerns. Here are two news articles give the best background information on it: Governor Scott's approach to higher education challenged and Task force gets report on higher ed challenges. See also the video of the first hearing; my comments start at 164:30 minutes.

It is a good idea for faculty to email Dale Brill, the chair, to express concerns on salaries, benefits, funding, quality of programs, faculty/student ratio, difficulties in hiring and retention, hiring tenure-track faculty vs. hiring temporary faculty, privatization, etc. His email is: brill.dale@gmail.com. The website with info on members and links is www.flhighered.org. Most of the detail can be found in "file sharing," which contains many citations and references (in various places under file sharing).

If you scroll across to the last 10% of the hearing, you will find my comments given to the Task Force. I have been careful to use a respectful tone and speak to the issues that affect faculty.

Tom Auxter

LOGISTICS

Next Chapter Meeting tomorrow Friday, at 12 noon, at CDB Restaurant, 5104 E. Fowler Ave. in Tampa, just west of the USF Tampa campus.

Pizza and beer will be provided by the Chapter, and 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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Articles from past issues of the Biweekly are also posted on-line.