Letter Concerning Lecturers and Searches
President Cauce
[Add your name. Read the petition below. ]
Elizabeth George, UW Seattle, English, Principal Lecturer
Samuel Jaffee, UW Seattle, Spanish & Portuguese, Lecturer
Beverly Naidus, UW Tacoma, IAS, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts
Kim Davenport, UW Tacoma, SIAS, Part-Time Lecturer
Paul Franco, UW Seattle, Department of Philosophy, Lecturer, Full-Time; Temporary
Michael Berry, UW Tacoma, SIAS, Part-Time Lecturer
Sarah Hampson, UW Tacoma, School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Assistant Professor
Charles Williams, UW Tacoma, SIAS, Associate Professor
Amy Hagopian, UW Seattle, Health Services & Global Health, Associate Professor
Jeanne Sears, UW Seattle, Health Services, Research Associate Professor
Aaron Katz, UW Seattle, Health Services, Principal Lecturer
Jonathan Warren, UW Seattle, Jackson school. , Professor
Dolores Alcaide Ramirez, UW Tacoma, SIAS, Associate Professor
Megan Callow, UW Seattle, English, Lecturer
Tom Foster, UW Seattle, English, Professor
Jean Dennison, UW Seattle, Anthropology, Associate Professor
James Tweedie, UW Seattle, Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media, Associate Professor
Colin Marshall, UW Seattle, Philosophy, Associate Professor
Laurie Sears, UW Seattle, History, Professor
Edwin Kraemer, UW Seattle, Social Work, Lecturer
Edwin Kraemer, UW Seattle, Social Work, Lecturer
Laura Chrisman, UW Seattle, English, Professor
Chris Marriott, UW Tacoma, Institute of Technology, Senior Lecturer
Julia Eaton, UW Tacoma, SIAS, Associate Professor
Karen Emmerman, UW Seattle, Philosophy, Part-Time Lecturer
Christine Di Stefano, UW Seattle, Political Science, Associate Professor
Stuart Taylor, UW Seattle, Oral Medicine, Assistant Prof
Sarah Dowling, UW Bothell, IAS, Assistant Professor
Henry Laufenberg, UW Seattle, English, Senior Lecturer
Stephen Bezruchka, UW Seattle, Health Services, Senior Lecturer
Turan Kayaoglu, UW Tacoma, SIAS, Professor
Sudhir Mahadevan, UW Seattle, Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media, Associate Professor
Josh Tenenberg, UW Tacoma, Institute of Technology, Professor
Tasha Buttler, UW Bothell, IAS, Part-Time Lecturer, Temporary
Rolf Christensen, UW Seattle, Oral Medicine, Part-Time Lecturer, Temporary
Christina Kleisath, UW Bothell, nursing and health studies, Lecturer
Tanya Ranchigoda, UW Seattle, Social Work, Part-Time Lecturer
Linda Ishem, UW Tacoma, Urban Studies, Senior Lecturer
Juliana Castro, UW Tacoma, School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Part-Time Lecturer
Manka Varghese, UW Seattle, Education, Associate Professor
Riki Thompson, UW Tacoma, SIAS, Associate Professor
Eva Cherniavsky, UW Seattle, English, Professor
Carrie Matthews, UW Seattle, English, Senior Lecturer
Charity Urbanski, UW Seattle, History, Senior Lecturer
Christoph Giebel, UW Seattle, Jackson School of International Studies, Associate Professor
Moon-Ho Jung, UW Seattle, History, Associate Professor
James Daniel, UW Seattle, English, Lecturer
David Goldstein, UW Bothell, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Senior Lecturer
Heather Galindo, UW Bothell, School of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, Lecturer
Katrina Harack, UW Bothell, Culture, Literature, and the Arts, Lecturer
Louise Spiegler, UW Bothell, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Lecturer
Ariel Wetzel, UW Tacoma, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Lecturer
Ben Meiches, UW Tacoma, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, Assistant Professor
Todd Edwards, UW Seattle, Health Services, Research Associate Professor
Rose Njoroge, UW Tacoma, IAS, Full Time Lecturer
Jane Compson, UW Tacoma, SIAS, Assistant professor
Asao Inoue, UW Tacoma, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Professor
Robert Trumbull, UW Bothell, IAS, Part-Time Lecturer
Ingrid Walker, UW Tacoma, SIAS, Associate Professor
Michael Forman, UW Tacoma, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Associate Professor
Michael Reagan, UW Tacoma, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Part-Time Lecturer
Eric Bugyis, UW Tacoma, PPPA; IAS, Lecturer
UW AAUUP Executive Board and Officers
- Charlie Collins, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Bothell
- Eva Cherniavsky, Department of English
- Abraham Flaxman, Global Health
- Christoph Giebel, Jackson School of International Studies, and History
- Jim Gregory, History
- Michael Honey, UW Tacoma, Humanities
- Jay Johnson, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences
- Bruce Kochis, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Bothell
- Max Lieblich, Mathematics
- Ann Mescher, Mechanical Engineering
- Diane Morrison, School of Social Work
- Hwasook Nam, Department of History and Jackson School of International Studies
- Duane Storti, Mechanical Engineering
- Dan Jacoby, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, UW Bothell
- Amy Hagopian, Global Health, UW Seattle
- Robert Wood, Atmospheric Sciences, UW Seattle
- Bert Stover, Environmental Health, UW Seattle
- Abraham Flaxman, Global Health, UW Seattle
Sponsored by
To:
President Cauce
From:
[Your Name]
We are writing to express concern about recent practices regarding the treatment of “temporary” lecturers as well as hiring practices designed to replace “temporary” lines with permanent ones. Existing processes are harmful both to current UW faculty and to potential new hires. We wish to address the following issues:
• Multiple competitive searches have been canceled this year on the grounds that the applicant pools were insufficient to ensure diversity among applicants. At UW Tacoma, a search for a lecturer in technical communication receiving approximately 30 applications was canceled for this reason. The criteria for canceling searches on these grounds, however, are opaque and apparently inconsistent: another search at UW Tacoma was allowed to proceed to completion despite receiving approximately 30 applications and despite the search committee’s reservations concerning the diversity of the pool.
• The administration’s inconsistent, ad-hoc handling of these searches is a disservice both to creating real diversity and equity in UW’s faculty hiring and retention practices and to improving conditions for existing contingent faculty. Moreover, it creates a false dichotomy between advancing equity and creating job security for lecturers, leading to unnecessary division among faculty who are interested in addressing both issues.
• UW’s lack of clear guidelines on what constitutes diversity puts an unnecessary burden on search committees and leads to late search cancellations. It also can pit search committees against administrators and—in some cases—allow administrators to go against committee decisions that would have advanced diversity and equity, at the expense of the most qualified candidates from underrepresented communities. If consistent guidelines existed, UW would be better at hiring and retaining these faculty.
• Canceling searches also means that “temporary” lecturers in their third full-time year at the UW lose the opportunity to apply competitively for longer-term positions as internal candidates, despite their track record of contributing to the university’s mission through their teaching and service. Moreover, units that are counting on competitive hires to cover future teaching loads must resort to less-secure, worse-compensated part-time positions to fill curricular gaps. In some cases, experienced and respected “temporary” lecturers have been converted to part-time lecturers teaching the same courses for less payment and with less job security.
Therefore, we, the undersigned faculty from multiple UW campuses, write to demand that the university take the following actions:
• Develop clear, explicit guidelines for diversity expectations in searches and the conditions under which a search should be canceled due to concerns about diversity. These guidelines should be developed in concert with faculty of all ranks, they should be made available to faculty and administrators in all units, and they should be applied consistently and transparently. These guidelines should include criteria for measuring pool diversity and an early-period audit that could potentially lead to a more diverse pool if the current one does not meet the criteria. While it is essential that the UW implement hiring practices to diversify our faculty, those practices must be principled and consistent, not ad hoc judgments by administrators.
• Revisit and reform the three-year policy for “temporary” lecturers. Reforms should include A) a clear mandate, not subject to administrators’ discretion, to replace expiring “temporary” lines with permanent ones through competitive searches, B) a commitment to see those searches through to completion whenever possible, consistently with the criteria called for by point 1, above, and C) a one-year extension to the three-year limit in the event that a search to replace an expiring “temporary” line does not occur in the third year.
• Develop clear, explicit guidelines for evaluating internal candidates. These guidelines should be fair to not only external but also internal candidates, and they should encourage search committees to prioritize experience “on the ground” at the UW. This does not need to be at the expense of diversity or equity measurements.
• Replace the “temporary” label for lecturers with the job title visiting lecturer and pay visiting lecturers a salary commensurate with their permanent counterparts. “Temporary” is a stone’s throw from “disposable” or “replaceable,” and the language faculty use to refer to their colleagues matters. Moreover, visiting assistant professors are compensated comparably to their permanent counterparts; there is no reason for the UW not to do the same for its lecturers.
The University of Washington simply could not function without lecturers. Faculty and students know this; it is time for administrators to acknowledge this truth and treat lecturers with the respect they have earned.
Sincerely,