April Update: Portland State University-AAUP

This year the full-time faculty and academic professionals at Portland State University will be celebrating the 40th birthday of our union and professional association, PSU-AAUP!
40 years strong and more vital than ever!

About 85% of us are full members (that is over 1,100 unionists!), and our union makes a difference in the lives of one and many, literally every day. On any given week:

• We successfully challenge irregularities in evaluation, promotion, tenure, and post-tenure review processes. A faculty or academic professional would suffer irreparable harm to their career if no one was here to represent them. We are here.
• We put teeth on university shared governance. Through PSU-AAUP, we have leverage to get proper input into new university policies that would otherwise be crafted and implemented in a top-down fashion with little input. We do this either through exercising our statutory right to “demand to bargain” policies, by letting the university know it must abide by its own Policy on Policies, and by keeping all faculty and academic professionals informed about policies passed without adequate consultation.
• We defend the academic freedom of members from undue influence on their teaching or research.
• We contribute to a healthy life-work balance by protecting access to benefits that make a difference, such as the Donated Sick Leave Bank and free travel on the Portland Streetcar.
• We support and offer advice to members struggling with the experience of discrimination and make sure everyone gets their due process rights respected.

A fair university is a good place to study and work, and our PSU-AAUP makes a significant contribution to a fair and just PSU:

Our association takes a strong stand to keep our faculty and academic professionals whole, through contractual annual cost of living adjustments, continuous contracts for non-tenure track colleagues, funds for professional development, and funds to remedy inversion, compression, and equity problems, to name a few. When our students organize to contain tuition rises and when our colleagues in the union for part-time faculty (PSUFA) bargain for equitable treatment, they reach out to us because they are are well aware of our commitments to a just university.

40 years strong and staying strong with an eye on our 50th birthday in 2028!