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Photo/Pennsylvania Senate footage

APSCUF live-tweeted March 18’s State System hearing before the Senate budget-appropriations committee. Click here to watch the session in its entirety. We live-tweeted the event, and you can view those dispatches at the end of this post.

We’re still processing much of the Chancellor Daniel Greenstein’s testimony, but exceptionally noteworthy was his comment just after the 52-minute mark, when Sen. Joe Pitttman asked him about the “value add of being part of the State System.” The chancellor replied: “Unless we figure this out, I will be recommending to the board that we come back to the Senate next year with a legislative package to dissolve the System.”

Click here to read APSCUF’s response.

Click here to read Rep. Peter G. Schweyer’s response.

Click here to read PennLive coverage of the situation.

In last week’s Board of Governors meeting, the State System again presented only one decade of enrollment data, depicting a downward enrollment trend. APSCUF President Dr. Jamie Martin spoke up, pointing out that looking at enrollment over a longer period tells a different story:

“I appreciate the trend information that has been presented, looking at the enrollment trends since 2010,” Martin said. “The concern we have is that that was the highest enrollment our State System has ever had, and we had a similar linear trend line from 2000 to 2010, where our enrollments grew. So, if you look at a 20-year trend, you’re going to see a perfectly normal bell curve, where we had similar numbers of students in 2000 as we do now and a similar number of faculty then as we do now.”

Click here to watch and read Martin’s comment earlier in the meeting.

Photo/Pennsylvania Senate footage

As required by Act 50 of 2020, Chancellor Daniel Greenstein updated legislators about Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education’s redesign and consolidation plans at joint House and Senate appropriation- and education-committee hearings today. Click here to watch the full House hearing, and click here to watch the full Senate hearing. Read APSCUF’s collated tweets from the hearings below:

The Feb. 4 Board of Governors meeting took place via Zoom and streamed via YouTube. Below are APSCUF President Dr. Jamie Martin’s comments as prepared.

Chairwoman Shapira, Chancellor Greenstein, governors, presidents and guests,

It goes without saying that there is a lot going on in our State System and at our universities. Our university presidents and administrators — and our faculty and coaches — are still navigating the COVID-19 pandemic as they try to safely bring our students back to our campuses. Today we will hear more about the consolidation planning process involving six of our universities and learn who will lead Lock Haven University. Also to be discussed and decided upon is another retirement-incentive option offered to our faculty and coaches. While my colleagues and I are interested in all that will be considered today, I want to focus on the retirement incentive program and COVID-19. But, like any effective teacher, I will first digress.

Fifteen days ago, on Jan. 20, a new president and vice president were inaugurated. I do not mention this for any political reason; I mention that particular date because it was the one-year anniversary of the first case of COVID-19 being identified in the United States. On Feb. 13, 2020, Chancellor Daniel Greenstein sent a memorandum to the university presidents laying out his expectations for our universities to reach financial sustainability within five years — by 2023–24. On that day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the 15th case of COVID-19 in the United States. At the April 2020 Board of Governors meeting, the chancellor accelerated the timeframe within which universities had to reach financial sustainability — from five years to three years. He also instructed universities to return the student/faculty ratios that existed in 2010–11 — but now by 2021–22. At this time, the number of COVID-19 cases was approaching half a million.

A number of consequences resulted from reducing the sustainability timeline, and one of those consequences occurred on Oct. 30, when more 100 retrenchment letters were issued to faculty members at five of our universities. These letters notified them that they would no longer have a job — and, by extension, would no longer have healthcare during a global pandemic — at the end of the spring 2021 term. On that date, the number of COVID-19 cases had risen to 8.9 million, and more than 200,000 U.S. citizens had died of the virus.

I now return to the two issues: COVID-19 and the retirement incentive. If this incentive program is approved by the board, faculty and coaches will have until March 15 to submit letters of their intent to retire by June 30, 2021, in order to receive the full incentive. This incentive program is extended into the next academic year, with coaches and faculty being eligible for a reduced incentive if they retire by June 30, 2022. 

Our hope is that APSCUF will be able to work with the Office of the Chancellor to help individuals who are facing retrenchment to transfer into faculty positions that will result from retirements at other universities. We are anxious to work on this with the State System, but we fear that time is not on our side. Until March 15, we may not know who or how many faculty and coaches plan to retire by June 30. The date for retrenchment is June 4, 2021.

I don’t think that any of us could have predicted the breadth of this pandemic. Chancellor Greenstein did not have a crystal ball to look into when he made the decision to shorten the time frame for our universities to reach financial sustainability. But we have a clearer picture now. There have been more than 26.5 million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and nearly 450,000 deaths. But, there is hope: Two different vaccines are now being administered, with a third on the way. There is a glimmer that our lives may return to some version of normal later this year. Still, nearly 100 faculty face losing their jobs and their healthcare in early June.

What I am asking all of you to consider is this: Give us more time. Give us additional time so that we can help our colleagues find opportunities to transfer to another university in our State System. Give those who will not be able to continue working for the State System the chance to seek a job elsewhere — and to be able to go on interviews, find a new home, and make a move when it is safe to do so later this year. Give all of them the safety net of having healthcare coverage until this pandemic is, at least, in the rear-view mirror. The retirement incentive program extends into the next academic year, and we can use that time to continue to work with the State System to meet the chancellor’s ratios. If our universities had one more year to reach financial sustainability, I am confident that we can align our workforce through retirements, transfers and attrition. 

The chancellor and I do not agree on everything, but I know we agree that both of us are committed to Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education, we both want to see it flourish, and we both care deeply about our students. All of this is true for all of you on the board, our university presidents and all of my colleagues. Our students have endured a lot in the last year and are again facing a challenging spring semester. I believe that, by working together, we can ensure that when our students return to campus in the fall, they will find the stability and tranquility that they need — and deserve.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I again wish all of you and your loved ones continued good health.

Dr. John Pierce Watkins was a former president of APSCUF and California University of Pennsylvania.
Photo courtesy of Cal U

APSCUF is mourning the loss of past President Dr. John Pierce Watkins, who helmed the organization from 1972 to 1973. He died Jan. 28. Click here to read the former California University of Pennsylvania professor’s obituary.

Watkins led APSCUF during its nascent years as the bargaining agent for faculty members at Pennsylvania’s state-owned colleges and universities. He resigned after his appointment as vice president for academic affairs at what then was California State College. Watkins went on to lead Cal U as its president, from 1977 to 1992, supporting faculty and coaches alike.

“If you have good teachers, you are going to have academic success, and the same holds true for athletics and good coaches,” Watkins, a Cal U graduate himself who was inducted into the university’s Hall of Fame, said. “We have hard-working coaches here who are teachers in a sense and they care about the students.”

APSCUF awarded him its Distinguished Service Award in 1991.

“People ask me all the time to comment on the difference between faculty organization and faculty governance before and after collective bargaining,” Watkins said in an archived APSCUF interview. “And my answer to that is it requires the faculty to understand that for the first time they really do have power and responsibility. … The first contract, I think, was an inspired document. In the years intervening, it’s gotten bigger, but I think that the superstructure of that Red Book, the first contract, remains intact in that collective bargaining agreement. … I simply feel that the collective bargaining agreement negotiated in Pennsylvania was the finest collective bargaining agreement ever negotiated in higher education in this country. And the people who get credit for that, were, of course, the folks on the negotiating team, the members of APSCUF at that time, which had to ratify the contract, and the 14 faculties. … And I think it stood the test of time. I really believe it has. And to have been a part of that, was fascinating for me.”

In 2017, Watkins reflected on his time with APSCUF. View the video, shown at APSCUF’s 80th-anniversary celebration, below:

Have a Watkins memory to add to this post? Email it to . Please include your name and university.