Dear TT Faculty members,

The parties met for the most recent negotiation session on February 25th, 2026. While we have made some progress (we reached Tentative Agreements on Article VIII: Sanctions for Cause and Article XXIII: Miscellaneous), KSUFA is growing increasingly concerned about some of the positions the administration is staking out in these negotiations.  

• In our update after the October 8, 2025 session, we expressed concern that our analysis of the administration’s proposal for Article III: Management Rights would almost completely undermine our collective bargaining rights.
• In our update after the January 14, 2026 session, we noted that the administration’s proposal for Article IX: Faculty Workload and Article XI: Promotion, Tenure and Reappointment would eliminate the existing contractual protections for Faculty Senate’s exercise of its role in shared governance to approve or disapprove of changes in policy falling under Senate’s primary responsibility according to its Charter. 

Our previous concerns about the administration’s intent were only heightened by the discussion during the February 25th session around the administration’s counter-proposal on Article XIX: Faculty Professional Development. This Article incorporates by reference the University Policy on Faculty Professional Improvement Leaves (aka sabbaticals) and uses the same language used in other Articles to incorporate University Policies that both concern the terms and conditions of Faculty employment and fall under Faculty Senate’s primary responsibilities (these include the University Policies on Workload, Reappointment, Tenure, and Promotion). As was the case with the administration’s proposals for Article IX and Article XI, the administration’s proposal for Article XIX removed all reference to any role played by Senate in the development and approval of these policies.

KSUFA’s team explicitly asked about the elimination of any reference to Senate. We noted that, going back to 1978 and the very first CBA between the parties, the CBA has guaranteed that Senate’s role wasn’t merely recommendatory in the governance process when it came to these policies. Consistent with the Faculty Senate Charter, Section B.2.c.i, Senate essentially had veto power over any changes to them. These existing provisions of the CBA ensure that there is genuinely shared governance on these matters, and thus, that there can be no change in these policies without the agreement of both the Faculty Senate and the Board of Trustees. We were taken aback when we asked whether the administration’s intent with their proposals was to eliminate that role guaranteed to Senate by its Charter and protected in the CBA for almost 50 years and their blunt answer was ‘yes’.

Needless to say, there is nothing that the administration could offer us in other Articles of the CBA that would possibly make up for such a huge erosion of the Faculty’s role in shared governance at Kent State University. KSUFA has no intention of bargaining away the contractual protections for Faculty Senate’s primary responsibility of approving or disapproving changes to the University Policies on Workload, Tenure, Reappointment, Promotion, or Faculty Professional Improvement Leave.  

Make no mistake, if Faculty Senate loses this contractual guarantee, there would be nothing stopping this or another administration from making changes to the Workload policy that would render workload equivalency specifications in handbooks purely recommendatory to the local administrator. (Indeed, this administration attempted to do just that last Fall and was thwarted by the Faculty Senate.) There would be nothing stopping this or another administration from increasing the full-time TT Faculty workload to 30 hours, 35 hours, or even more with no additional compensation. Such changes could be taken to and approved by the Board of Trustees even in the face of an explicit vote of disapproval by Faculty Senate. Analogous problematic changes to the Reappointment, Tenure, and Promotion Policies or to the Policy on Faculty Professional Improvement Leave could similarly be approved by the Board even in the face of explicit disapproval by Senate. Indeed, this could be a first step toward eliminating tenure at KSU.

Several of KSUFA’s team members have negotiating experience going back over a decade. We can remember no previous administration that attempted to so radically undermine Faculty Senate’s role in shared governance or to so radically undermine our collective bargaining rights. We are deeply troubled by this administration’s stance on these matters and very much hope that they will reconsider before they entirely lose the confidence of the Faculty.  

KSUFA has created a section of our website (https://ksufa.org/index.php/tenure-track-unit/negotiations-2025) dedicated to the TT negotiations. This section contains links to all of the negotiation updates we have sent to our members and links to all proposals on all articles made by either party. From our homepage (https://ksufa.org), you can find the link to the negotiation update both under the TT-Unit drop down menu at the top of the page or just below the Surviving SB 1 section of the homepage.

Although the MOU extending the CBA expired on December 31, 2025, the provisions of the CBA will remain in full force and effect until a successor contract is ratified.

If you have any questions or concerns about negotiations, please don’t hesitate to contact me (dsmith@ksufa.org).

Sincerely,

Deborah Smith

President, KSUFA

Chief Negotiator, TT-Unit