Notes from 3/4/08 Meeting with President and Provost

Dear colleagues,

This afternoon members of APSCUF-KU Executive Committee met with the President and the Provost. As you know, we postponed the Vote of No Confidence following President Cevallos's letter to the faculty last Thursday expressing a commitment to work with APSCUF-KU in addressing the problems raised in the bill of particulars.

We had hoped to come out of today's meeting with some concrete solutions to some of the problems posited in the bill of particulars and offer a joint statement of shared commitments. However, after two hours of discussion, we had not yet finished discussing all the elements of the bill of particulars. In order to ensure we could have sufficient time to discuss the remaining issues, everyone at the table agreed to a second meeting. Due to the President's schedule (he has commitments over spring break) the meeting will take place later this week if at all possible. At the conclusion of that meeting, we hope to have a better sense of whether or not a vote of no confidence will proceed.

Having said that, I wanted to provide you with a very general sense of the meeting.

Eight members of Exec met with the President and the Provost for a full two hours. The bill of particulars provided an outline for the meeting. Some issues such as mitigating the impact of large classrooms, the culture of decision-making at Kutztown, and budgetary issues (performance funding and funding formulas for example), took up substantial time. Other issues such as office space, hot classrooms, hiring policy, long term planning, and fund raising were also discussed. I think it is fair to say that the dominant themes of the meeting were academic quality, the budget, and the need for a new culture of how problems and planning are addressed.

I should stress that NO AGREEMENTS have been reached at this point. We are looking forward to the second meeting later this week. At that meeting we hope to finish our discussions of the bill of particulars. In the event that we are able to come to some concrete agreements that will move toward resolving problems laid out in the bill of particulars, we will let you know as soon as possible.

Best,

Kevin Mahoney
APSCUF-KU Exec