Indiana AAUP President Issues Warning To UE President 

 Indiana AAUP President issues warning to UE President 

Evansville— 1/12/20 —On January 8th, David Nalbone, the President of the Indiana Conference of the American Association of University Professors (ICAAUP), sent a letter to the President of the University of Evansville (UE), Christopher M. Pietruszkiewicz, outlining his concerns regarding UE’s ongoing realignment process. Writing on behalf of the Governance Committee of the ICAAUP, Nalbone observes that the information his committee has received from the UE chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) regarding UE’s realignment “suggests that the process to date violates AAUP principles of shared governance.” 

Nalbone opens his letter by noting that UE is bound by a number of AAUP guidelines because those guidelines are incorporated into the Faculty Manual. He then goes on to note how the President has refused to follow the guidelines on shared governance shared by the AAUP and the UE Faculty Manual: 

In your email to the faculty on October 5, you explicitly refused to follow the shared governance procedures that the faculty requested and that had been used at the University of Evansville in the past. In your January 1 reply to the faculty vote of no confidence in the draft realignment plan, you claim that the ordinary shared governance procedures of the Faculty Senate and its Curriculum Committee do not apply to the proposed realignment, although there is no provision in the Faculty Manual of bylaws for suspending normal shared governance. … In lieu of the well-established shared governance procedures at UE, you have adopted a mechanism to solicit faculty input that is wholly inadequate and does not constitute a bona fide program discontinuance process. 

The letter concludes by asking for further information from the President and by noting the potential consequences of non-cooperation: 

We appreciate that all our information comes from the Evansville faculty, and that your administration might have further information that would help us better understand the situation at your institution. We would therefore welcome your reply. If, however, our understanding of the realignment program is substantially correct, the Indiana Conference of the AAUP urges you to reconsider your current course of action and create a program realignment process in keeping with the UE Faculty Manual and AAUP shared governance 

principles. The Indiana Conference is prepared to work with you and the Board in revising the realignment process so that it complies with AAUP-supported standards. The national office of the AAUP would almost certainly open a case concerning the University of Evansville if the process continues without revision and results in terminations of tenured faculty. Should the realignment process go forward on its current trajectory, the Indiana Conference will request that the national office authorize an investigation, which could result in AAUP censure or sanction. 

We, the UE AAUP chapter, thank David Nalbone and the entire Governance Committee of the ICAAUP for their work in putting together this powerful and necessary letter. It accurately captures the exclusion of the faculty from the President’s realignment process and clearly explains why this exclusion is at odds with the university’s policies and the AAUP’s guidelines. We welcome the letter’s call for President Pietruszkiewicz to work with the ICAAUP on revising his realignment process and we hope that he will accept this generous offer. There is still time for the university to avoid being censured or sanctioned by the AAUP. 

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

Sincerely, 

 Daniel Byrne, Secretary-Treasurer UEAAUP, ueaaup@gmail.com