The Texas A&M University-San Antonio chapter of the American Association of University Professors will hold a faculty-only meeting to discuss ongoing compensation issues from 10-11:30 a.m. Dec. 2 in Room 309 of Classroom Hall.
The meeting will be open to all faculty, not just members of the A&M-San Antonio AAUP chapter.
Dr. Scott Gage, associate professor of English and AAUP chapter president, hopes that the meeting will create a space for faculty to discuss the compensation issue openly and honestly.
“There are not a lot of spaces available where faculty can engage one another, and have an honest conversation that isn’t being monitored by some administrative presence,” Gage said in a Nov. 18 interview.
Gage hopes the meeting will be a catalyst for faculty coming together.
“We want to bring faculty together on this issue,” Gage said. “We want to find out … not just how they feel about it. But we want to find out what people want to do about it. And we want to organize faculty to have a response and take some action.
“And it’s important that the response is not just from our AAUP chapter, but that it’s from a broader coalition of faculty. And so what we’re hoping to do is to try to bring that coalition into existence.”
Gage explained why the issue with faculty compensation is so important.
“Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions,” Gage said. “So whenever faculty complain about compensation, what we’re ultimately complaining about are the working conditions in which we are trying to deliver an education to our students.
“And so while it may seem as though this issue is only affecting faculty and staff, it’s affecting students as well.”
The A&M-San Antonio Faculty Senate will host a meeting at 11:30 a.m. Dec. 2 in Room 218 of the Central Academic Building. A Zoom link will be sent out by email for faculty who cannot attend in person. The senate holds its regular meetings on the first Friday of every month at this time.
