Tuesday, October 6, 2020
UE AAUP Supports No-Confidence Vote in President
Evansville— 10/6/20 — The University of Evansville (UE) members of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) stand in solidarity with the UE Faculty Senate, which today passed a vote of no confidence in President Christopher Pietruszkiewicz by a margin of 13-2.
The vote comes on the heels of the Faculty Senate passing a resolution requesting meaningful involvement in the administration’s ongoing program evaluation process and the sharing of the program data that the administration has solicited from the consulting firm BKD. That resolution was endorsed by the faculty by a margin of 109 votes to 11.
The response that the Senate received from the President’s Council made clear that the Senate’s request would not be honored.
The Senate therefore had no choice but to assert its request more forcefully through the form of a vote of no confidence. In explaining the rationale behind that vote, the Senate also laid out the means by which the president could regain its confidence:
1. The President will release to the faculty as soon as possible all of BKD’s data points relating to academic programs and any accompanying reports.
2. All academic program evaluations will be conducted by a group that includes voting, facultyelected faculty members from all four of the university’s colleges and schools.
3. The number of faculty members in that group will be at least equal to the number of administrators.
4. All academic program evaluations will use a set of criteria that has been approved by the Senate and the Faculty through votes.
We, the UE members of the AAUP, applaud the Senate for its careful, patient, and considered work, and we thank its members for their dedication to the principles of shared governance. We call upon the alumni, students, emeriti faculty and staff of the university as well as the broader Evansville community to support the vote of no confidence in the president and to strive to convince the Board of Trustees of the necessity of shared governance. Only by working together can we Save UE! To learn more:
• Visit our website at saveue.com • Follow us on Facebook at Save UE
• Follow us on Twitter at @Save_UE • Follow us on Instagram at save.ue
• E-mail us at ueaaup@gmail.com
