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State Labor Board Certifies Faculty Union at U. of Illinois at Chicago

September 15, 2011, 1:51 pm

The Illinois Education Labor Relations Board on Thursday certified a new union for tenure-track and adjunct faculty members at the University of Illinois at Chicago, upholding an administrative-law judge’s conclusion that state statutes do not limit such faculty unions to tenured and tenure-track faculty members, and allow them to include adjuncts. The University of Illinois system’s administration had said it would appeal any board decision in the proposed union’s favor. If the new union, UIC United Faculty, is allowed to stand, it will be affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and the American Association of University Professors.

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  • edwoof

    Haven’t you read Lionel Tiger’s “Men in Groups”?

    That sort of team identity that is especially male can lead to team sport hooliganism, but that is a small price to pay in order to have a military that will defend you when the need arises.

  • katisumas

    Congrats Adjuncts!  Keep up the good fight!

  • kate987

    I just had to think about this with the recent death of my father. But skip Delta — purchase and travel to the funeral/service has to be within 3 days of the death or else one cannot get the fares. Which, in this far-flung world we live in, is really hard to pull off. So since his funeral mass was one week after his death, and I flew out 5 days after his death — nothing — no bereavement fare, no waiving of fees, no nothing.  So read the policies carefully, because they are not all alike.  http://www.delta.com/planning_reservations/special_travel_needs/bereavement/index.jsp

  • drnels

    Another thing to keep in mind is lodging.  We kept a certain number of Marriott points on file (since they don’t expire) just because we knew, after my mother’s stroke, that we might have to fly down at anytime over the new few months, or maybe not at all, and we also thought it would be good idea to have enough points to be able to get a hotel room for three nights, at least.  Yes, most people try to stay with family, but I just imagined how horrible things were going to be, and I knew I’d want a place to go back to with just the husband.  We didn’t do bereavement fares and actually got oddly lucky that Continental was having a sale on direct flights at the time.  I always said my mother planned her death to make it as convenient on her children as possible.  It was nice to have a hotel room and not have to pay for it.

  • mitchkeller

    Frequent flyer miles can come to the rescue here, too. Delta has horrible availability for 25K domestic award tickets far in advance. However, in the last couple of days before travel, they open up a lot of seats on flights that aren’t full. Since Delta doesn’t charge a fee for last minute award tickets, you’re look at $10 in taxes at most. Their change policy is not as flexible as other carriers at the last minute (no changes within the last 72 hours before a flight departs, but you might be able to get them to waive it if it’s a situation like we’re discussing here), but they do tend to have the best last-minute award availability. Not fun to spend miles on this sort of trip if you’ve been saving them for a fun trip, but probably better to save the money if the bereavement fares are still really high.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1411985930 Rosa DuCree

    Good news to share

  • http://www.briancroxall.net Brian Croxall

    Excellent suggestion, Nels. It’s best in such situations to think about what will help you best manage your grief.

  • http://www.briancroxall.net Brian Croxall

    That’s a great tip, mitchkeller. I’ve never looked for award travel on short notice. I’ll have to try that in the future.

  • bghansel

    It can be worth it to work via a travel agency in such cases. I was traveling in Europe when my mother slipped away suddenly on a Wednesday. Who knew that there was a cheap weekly direct flight every Thursday from Dusseldorf to Ft. Meyers, Florida? This turned out to be much cheaper than replacing the Lufthansa ticket. I had assumed I’d have to take a train back to Frankfurt, but I was actually only 45 minutes away from Dusseldorf. I was so glad to have a travel agent to work this out for me instead of sitting in the hotel lobby trying to use the only available WiFi with my netbook.

  • cfox53

    I used a bereavement fare when my dad died – not cheaper but they got me on the next flight out to be with my mom when the next normally available seat was a few days later.

  • benbel28

    Different, but related– I was awakened by a phone call from my spouse in an ER a thousand miles away.  My son grabbed his overnight bag (I was unable to travel at the time) and left at 5:00 in the morning,”I’m headed to the airport.”  He went to the ticket counter to arrange a flight and got great service–not necessarily a cheap ticket, but one with a flexible/ no penalty return flight. 

    My son’s convinced that the reason the ticket agent was so nice was that he showed the agent the piece of paper that had the hospital name, address, and phone number on it, scribbled in my foggy terror at 4:00 a.m.   

    Five days later they both flew home– my son on his flexible return flight ticket.  My spouse had to pay a penalty, even with the evidence of hospital discharge papers.  That was Northwest, now taken over by Delta.

  • http://www.briancroxall.net Brian Croxall

    Thanks, all, for sharing your experiences here. I hadn’t thought to use a travel agent, but that might very well be the right person for the job.

  • http://twitter.com/martinclinton Martin Clinton

    Hi Brian – I just found your article and wanted to share what I’ve learned about bereavement fares. While researching an article of my own about them, I did some price testing and found that the quoted bereavement fares aren’t always the best prices since they are only discounted on the full fare costs. Surprisingly, finding a flight on a discount airline, –  or even a package deal including hotel and/or rental car – can have greater savings than a quoted bereavement fare. If you’d like more detail, my article is here: http://www.cheapflights.com/travel-tips/bereavement-fares/.

  • antiutopia

    Mr. Schuster: the technology for “automated grading of student essays and papers” will never work out, at least not until we’ve developed AI that is meaningfully comparable to human intelligence — and in that case, we’ll have other things to worry about.  At present and for the foreseeable future, though, computers don’t know how to read.  This type of learning eliminates the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills from the learning process, which is good for creating a nation of lemmings, but not so good for social, political, or technological advancement.  That being said, classes that don’t encourage critical thinking anyhow could be replaced by courses like these.      

  • http://hiresteve.com/ Steve Foerster

    That wheel was invented thirty years ago and has been rolling along ever since.  Charter Oak State College in Connecticut, Excelsior College in New York, and Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey are all regionally accredited, all accept nearly unlimited transfer credit, and will all accept anything ACE evaluated.

  • joncrispin

    I continue to be dumbfounded each and every day as this wave of free and open course materials is gaining momentum. Over on another thread an actual professor teaching nearly 3000 students live is being shredded and is being called an entertainer, but it’s at least a real professor.

    Yet there is a parallel discussion regarding free and equal access to courses that are no more than online independent study courses, or modern day correspondence courses, and they are being lauded as positive disruption to the higher ed model. Heck, these courses listed here aren’t even correspondence courses! They are simply course materials slapped online with some testing wrapped around it, but not even real testing of skill or knowledge acquisition. From their site:

     Does someone moderate student assignments and assessments?
    Students that take our courses will not be able to interact directly with a professor.  Our courses and instructional notes are instead specifically designed to engage and accompany you as you independently work your way through the assigned learning materials.  We believe that this model will enable us to accommodate any individual interested in taking a course at any time and on any schedule. Therefore, your work will not be graded by professors; we instead provide you with either automated grading or access to the answer keys, rubrics, and other tools you need to assess your own work.
    So great, now we are trying to go down a path of getting ACE course credits basically based on the honor system. Please make the insanity stop!

    chris freeman

  • arrive2__net

    These software don’t really seem feasible to me either on the face of it, but there the stories and/or claims from apparently credible sources. For example, MIT claims to have developed such software ( http://chronicle.com/article/MIT-Will-Offer-Certificates-to/130121/ ). A recent Education Week story reported a competition among essay grading software that was sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and written up in a paper by a University of Akron prof ( http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2012/04/computer_v_human_who_wins_the.html ).
    Perhaps in many situations the software will just be a preliminary grading system with the professor examining more advanced content issues? With today’s heavy workloads I’m not sure how much profs will object to electronic assistance with the mechanical work.

    If these automated systems for software grading are being validated today, I wonder where they will be in 10 years. I wonder how widely these systems might spread in the short term. Of course its been possible to scan papers for spelling and grammar for some time, the essay grading software however are supposed to be much more advanced.

    Bart SchusterOnlineGraduateSchool.tripod.com/All.htmTwitter.com/arrive2_net

  • misanthropic789

    Critical reading fail.  The entire point to this article is that Saylor (where you got that quote) has the material, but Straightline will provide testing and certification of what was learned.  That test will be the step from unmoderated to moderated.

    The fact is that while many students can learn in this model many more cannot.  No one is giving away the store here.  If you are worried about your job, it’s your inability to comprehend the article that endangers it more than this particular trend.

  • mhmiller74

    I suppose “disruptive innovation” is the same as the business world’s “creative destruction” we hear about.  Over the last century or so, every new technology was touted as a revolution in education: radio, television, video discs (anyone recall the big 12 inch video discs?), the computer, and now the internet.  We have a “credentialing” system in place which we have come to accept: the bricks and mortar colleges that grant degrees.  But pressure is building to give non-traditional students credit for life experiences so that an institution can fast-track students and improve the institution’s  graduation rate.  Concurrently, the on-line educational organizations may have arrived at the revolution before the bricks-and-mortar crowd (of which I am a long standing member/supporter).  The accreditation process was supposed to assure quality and consistency, but if accredited institutions are accepting transfer credits from non-accredited entities then the model is not working, and if the model is not working there is a reason.

    Maybe we are asking the wrong question.  Instead of “Where’s your diploma?” perhaps we should be asking “What do you know and what can you do?”  I’m proud of my diplomas and the work they represent, but I am reminded of one of my father’s favorite sayings: “There’s nothing like living a year.”  (When he said that it meant that I wasn’t ready to do whatever it was I wanted to do, and he was, for the most part, correct.  Hindsight proved that).  But after over 30 years in higher education, I am well aware of the fact that most of what I know and use on a daily basis has come from experience – living those years.

    The on-line for-profit higher education horse has escaped from the barn.  The rest of us have to decide how – not if – we will deal with this issue.  As for when, I think the sooner the better.

    Mike Miller

  • squacky

    Your post raises an important question: How far can you throw an empty refrigerator?

  • fiscalwiz

    Interesting concept.  However, I just did a check of the material used in a course that I know something about.  It is crap.  Somebody needs to establish a bit of quality control over what is in the programs before diving whole hog into the idea. 

  • adjunctivitis

    I don’t see how this is free.  A profit-making company uses a foundation’s resources get more customers and money. 

  • rwejd

    The entire process will soon be co-opted by corporate sponsored players that are not traditional education companies. This is happening as we speak, in stealth mode, and is going to be huge.

    Beyond the “rolodex effect” gained from attending one of the top schools (I’m talking undergraduate education), there is little to be gained by anyone whose primary goal is learning acquisition. Of course, there are attitudinal, social, and cooperative aspects to the application of learned skills. That’s hard to get online, for now, but even that will change.

    Little by little, the current edifice of higher education as we know it, will crumble – only the well-branded traditional schools (Harvard, Stanford, U Mich, etc) will survive with gusto, mostly due to the status gained by attending, and the quality of their research offerings.This will take at least a decade, or two – but it will happen.

  • jenny_franklin

    The  disruptive innovation of competency based degrees could have some interesting unintended consequences – for example, assuming we have adequate competency measures what will happen if we use the same measures to assess and compare competencies of brick and mortar graduates with those studying on their own, shopping around for courses that best meet their interests and needs.

    I’m not sure that in fields that do not have terminal licensing examinations, that the cumulative assessment of student learning, course by course over time,  will yield  the degree of competency we suppose an undergraduate degree from any accredited school should represent.

       
    Now, I’m imagining the John Henry assessment moment where a team of  steam
    drivin’ self-educated folks compete with a team of graduates from the
    bricks and mortar machine laying down Competencies  (valid and reliable,
    of course, and independently scored).  

  • jwr12

    Awesome! Thanks for sharing!

  • arrive2__net

    I like your thinking on that.  A true proof of competency may be better than merely passing a course, unless passing the course is actually a proof of competency, in which case they are equal. Of course the validity of proofs of competency, and the meaningfulness of passing a course, can vary widely.      

    This discussion reminds me of the Academically Adrift research which suggested, for me, that greater and perhaps more competency-based assessment may be justified.  ”High-stakes testing” may not always be the solution, but it might be a valid solution for many people.   

    By the way, you may know that the ACE recommendations for passing scores on CLEP-tests are based on testing campus undergraduates who passed the associated course.  So the purpose there is to provide equivalency.

    Bart Schuster
    OnlineGraduateSchool.tripod.com/All.htm
    Twitter.com/arrive2_net

  • swift clc

    Well thats great idea… I really appreciate the concept its was nice….the swift group of colleges also provide the excellent education services.

    Swift

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  • http://www.trainingcourseonline.net/ anblessing

    I honestly have to agree with this post.

  • poppysabina

    The CLEP history courses are equally bad.

    Incidentally, when moving house I tossed some old nineteen-teens, teach yourself “Western Civ” volumes. Plus ca change, eh?

    Massive inequality plus hunger for knowledge yields distrust of educational elites yields trust in auto-didactism, resulting in any number of hustlers prowling around, looking for easy marks.

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