Dear TT faculty,

I am happy to report that KSUFA’s tenured and tenure-track (TT) bargaining unit and the University have tentatively agreed to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that would provide TT faculty a 2% cost of living raise for AY 25/26 retroactive to the start of AY 25/26 and a 3% cost of living raise for AY 26/27 retroactive to the start of AY 26/27. In exchange, the University will be able to offer TT faculty the opportunity to elect a phased retirement beginning in Spring semester 2027. The terms and conditions of the phased retirement are articulated in the MOU. 

While this MOU must be approved by the dues paying members of KSUFA’s TT bargaining unit, we predict overwhelming support. The MOU approval vote will be conducted via our BigPulse software beginning Tuesday, October 20 at 12:01am and ending Wednesday, October 21 at 11:59pm. If you are a dues paying member of KSUFA’s TT bargaining unit, you will receive a separate email from our BigPulse account Tuesday morning. If you do not see the email from our BigPulse account, please check your spam/other filter.

Please note that this MOU does not address other salary provisions (including cost of living raises for future AYs) or medical benefits and does not resolve any of the issues concerning our collective bargaining rights or Faculty Senate’s role in shared governance on which the parties have reached impasse. Those issues will still need to be addressed at the bargaining table and through the conciliation process.

What does this mean for our No Confidence Vote initiative?

The answer is “very little.” The No Confidence Petition is primarily focused on the administration’s weaponization of SB 1 and the budget bill to undermine our collective bargaining rights and Faculty Senate’s historical role in shared governance to a much greater extent than explicitly required by State law. It is also focused on the administration’s “go slow” approach to these negotiations which has unnecessarily drawn out this process for well over a year. 

None of that changes with this MOU. 

Were we to rewrite the petition, only two of the 14 “whereas” clauses in the petition would need to be edited to reflect the MOU. 

• The clause that asserts that “the University will be unable to secure in a timely fashion much needed cost saving measures in the form of a phased retirement option for faculty” would need to have the future tense ‘will be’ changed to the past tense ‘was’. It will always be the case that, due to the unnecessarily prolonged negotiations, the University was unable to secure in a timely fashion much needed cost saving measures in the form of a phased retirement option.”
• The clause that asserts that “TT faculty have not received a cost of living raise since August of 2024, while all other Kent State University employees received a 2% cost of living raise for AY 25/26” would need to be revised to read “TT faculty did not receive the 2% cost of living raise for AY 25/26 received by all other Kent State University employees until over a year after the start of AY 25/26.”

We have chosen not to rewrite the petition, as that would require voiding the approximately 150 signatures we have received and starting over from scratch even though the bottom-line function of the petition has not changed. That function is to petition the Faculty Senate to immediately schedule a vote of all full-time faculty of Kent State University on the question of whether or not the full-time faculty have confidence in Kent State University President Todd Diacon and his cabinet of Vice Presidents and to transmit those results to President Diacon and the Kent State University Board of Trustees.

If you have signed the petition, but are reconsidering that decision in light of this MOU, please contact KSUFA Executive Director Coleen Taylor by email at ctaylor@ksufa.org and request that she void your signature on the petition.

Assuming that we will still have over 100 signatures on the petition, we will continue with our plan to submit it to Faculty Senate on Monday, October 26.

If you have any questions about the MOU or the No Confidence Petition, please don’t hesitate to contact me (dsmith@ksufa.org).

In solidarity,

Deborah Smith

President, KSUFA

Chief Negotiator, TT-Unit