The American Association of University Professors posted detailed information on its Web site today, explaining a proposal to restructure the organization into three separate but related groups. Cary Nelson, the organization’s president, also sent e-mail messages to 38,000 of the group’s members today alerting them to the restructuring proposal.

The AAUP is the chief higher-education organization representing professors nationwide. But in the last generation, its membership has dropped by half, to about 44,800, and it has experienced financial and operational problems. The restructuring is one way its officers are trying to update it and put it back on track.

The AAUP is classified as a charitable organization that also engages in collective bargaining and work to support professors’ academic freedom. The restructuring would separate the AAUP’s activities into a charitable entity, a group for the association’s collective-bargaining activities, and another for its work on academic freedom. All would fall under one umbrella organization.

The changes would mainly give the collective-bargaining units — which represent a growing proportion of the association’s membership — more freedom to pursue different types of organizing activities that they might be prohibited from doing as part of the current charitable organization.

The group’s 39-member National Council voted to approve the restructuring in November, although some of its collective-bargaining members have been concerned that the plan would not devote enough money and staff members to union activities.

All members will be asked to vote on the restructuring plan at the AAUP’s annual meeting next June. —Robin Wilson