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Faculty Rights Tips

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Faculty Rights Tips

Find below all the Faculty Rights Tips that have appeared in CFA Headlines, CFA’s weekly email newsletter.

You are welcome to subscribe to CFA Headlines and get a Tip every week along with news and CFA views.

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To find a Faculty Rights Tip on a particular topic, use the Search function above. Enter “Faculty Rights Tip” and a relevant keyword.

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Faculty Rights Tip: Assigned Time for Exceptional Levels of Service to Students

Article 20.37 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement provides for:

“assigned time to faculty employees who are engaged in exceptional levels of service that support the CSU’s priorities, but who are not otherwise receiving an adjustment in workload to reflect their effort.”

This provision was a major achievement in our last round of bargaining and is a recognition by the CSU that some faculty are providing exceptional levels of service to students but are not receiving workload relief for this effort.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Personal Holiday

With the approaching end of the current calendar year it’s useful to know that every faculty employee is entitled to one Personal Holiday each year. Our faculty contract states:

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Faculty Rights Tip: Two kinds of grievances

The collective bargaining agreement provides two methods for the filing and processing of a grievance. They are referred to as the contract grievance track and the statutory grievance track.

The statutory track provides for a Faculty Hearing Committee to review the grievance and may, as a practical matter, involve claims which range far beyond direct contract violations.

The contract grievance track does not use a Faculty Hearing Committee and, as a practical matter, tends to focus on violations of the collective bargaining agreement.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Range Elevation Reminder

Range elevation is the process through which eligible Lecturers and temporary Librarians can increase their salaries by moving from one salary range to the next.

Normally, eligibility requires five years of service in current range and no Service Salary Increase (SSI) eligibility. Thanks to CFA’s Bargaining Team, range elevation has been expanded so that long-term Lecturers, even if they have not maxed out SSIs, may be eligible too.

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Faculty Rights Tip: What to do when you want to report discrimination, harassment, or retaliation

Article 16 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the “Non-Discrimination” article, “prohibits discrimination against faculty unit employees on the basis of race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, marital status, pregnancy, age, disability, medical condition, or veteran status.”

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Peer Review Committees for Tenure-Line Hiring

Under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement’s Article 12.22, “[e]ach department or equivalent unit must elect a peer review committee of tenured employees for the purpose of reviewing and recommending individuals for probationary appointments.”

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Faculty Rights Tip: Lecturer Preference for Work at the start of the academic year

At the beginning of each new term during the academic year the teaching assignments for Lecturers are often in flux until the last minute. It can be a challenging time for both Lecturers and department chairs.

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Faculty Rights Tip: Submitting your Evaluation File for review

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Family Medical Leave

Articles 22 and 24 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) cover Family Medical Leave and sick leave.

Sometimes, faculty members develop serious illnesses or need to care for family members with serious medical conditions and need to take time away from the University.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Outside Employment

Article 35 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) covers outside employment.

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Faculty Rights Tip: I Need a Union Rep!

Have you (or someone you know) ever been called into a meeting with an administrator and you were not quite sure what the meeting was about?

And once in the meeting realized, you were being questioned or investigated about some issue for which you might be disciplined, reprimanded, or otherwise negatively affected? You need, and are entitled to have, a union representative or another advocate of your choosing with you at that meeting.

You can invoke your right to have an advocate with you before or during the meeting by saying:

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Advice on audio/video recordings without faculty consent

Q: Can students legally record audio or video in my classroom without my consent?

A: You have the right to be free from unauthorized recordings in the classroom. Instructors may be required to allow for recordings if they are connected to disability accommodations. Such recordings are for the accommodated student’s personal use only and may not be distributed or used for non-course related purposes. If you have questions or concerns, contact the disability resources center on your campus.

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Faculty Rights Tip: Reduction in Instructional Assignments for New Probationary Faculty

To assist new probationary faculty to establish their programs of research, scholarship, and/or creative activities, and to carry out other activities, CFA successfully bargained a reduction in their assigned teaching workload during the first two probationary years of their appointment.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: Get acquainted with your evaluation criteria & procedures

With the start of a new academic year, this Faculty Rights Tip should be of interest to all faculty including coaches, counselors, librarians, lecturers, probationary, and tenured faculty.

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Faculty Rights Tip: The Work Year

As summer nears, we are reminded that there is a yearly rhythm and cycle to our work.

There are three types of “Work Years” in our Collective Bargaining Agreement:

  • Academic Year (AY)
  • Ten (10)-Month Work Year
  • Twelve (12)-Month Work Year

While the individual campuses have their own particular academic calendars, they must conform to the parameters set out in Articles 20.4, 20.5, and 20.6 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: The 125% Rule

When faculty are hired, they are often told that there are opportunities for additional employment in the summer or other “special sessions.” For many faculty, this additional employment is a critical part of their income.

Article 36 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement covers the rules for additional work and places a limitation on that “overage” to 25% of a full-time position.

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Faculty Rights Tip: Lecturer Reappointment & Careful Consideration

Through collective bargaining, Lecturers in the CSU have won the important right to periodic evaluations of their work and “careful consideration” for reappointment.

Under Article 12.7 of our collective bargaining agreement, a department (or equivalent unit) has the contractual obligation to give “careful consideration” to all Lecturers who apply for subsequent employment.

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Faculty Rights Tip: Summer Term Employment

Article 21 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement covers summer term employment for CSU faculty. Many faculty with semester, quarter, or academic-year appointments also will find summer employment in the CSU.

Summer employment can vary from campus to campus. It may take the form of state-funded year-round operations (including fee buy-down) or self-support for-credit programs offered through extension.

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Faculty Rights Tip of the Week: June Deadlines for Notification of Tenure

Under Article 13: Tenure in our Collective Bargaining Agreement, June 1 is the contractual deadline for local campus administrators to notify probationary faculty of the final decision regarding retention, appointment with tenure, or appointment to a final terminal year. 

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Faculty Rights Tip: Intellectual Property: Who owns my online course materials?

These days many faculty members create electronic or online content for their courses. These materials are usually placed on the web in a variety of ways, often in course management systems like Blackboard or iLearn.

Occasionally there are misunderstandings about who actually owns these materials once they’re placed online.

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