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From left: Cynthia Shapira, Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education board chair; Interim Chancellor Karen Whitney; and APSCUF President Dr. Kenneth M. Mash sign APSCUF’s one-year faculty contract after the Jan. 25 Board of Governors meeting. Photo/Kathryn Morton

APSCUF’s one-year faculty contract moved closer to the printer today after Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education’s Board of Governors ratified the document during its quarterly meeting. After the meeting, Board Chair Cynthia Shapira, Interim Chancellor Karen Whitney, and APSCUF President Dr. Kenneth M. Mash signed the agreement. The document requires additional signatures before it heads to press. It goes into effect at the conclusion of the current contract, which expires June 30, 2018.

APSCUF President Dr. Kenneth M. Mash’s comments as prepared:

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

This morning, we at APSCUF are still reeling from the news that in the early morning hours last Tuesday, Dr. John Mansfield passed away after a long battle with cancer and concomitant complications. Dr. Mansfield began his career in social work at Hospice By The Sea in Boca Raton, Fla. He later became a program director at Children’s Case Management Organization in West Palm Beach, Fla., before joining the faculty in the social-work department at Florida Atlantic University. In 2001, he joined the faculty at Mansfield University, and in 2014 he was elected president of the Mansfield University chapter of APSCUF.

John, like the vast majority of my colleagues, viewed his membership in the professoriate not as an occupation; he saw it as a vocation. He was kind. He was smart as whip. He was deeply concerned about people. He loved his students. He loved his discipline. He loved his colleagues. He loved his community. He loved Mansfield University. And he loved the work he did on behalf of his colleagues as chapter president. This is not hyperbole. John struggled with his disease for years, and he had some very difficult times. But any time I or others might suggest that he was entitled to step back from teaching and certainly from a leadership position in APSCUF, he would tell us that this was a big part of what he lived to do. He was a fighter. And he always wore a smile and was deeply concerned about others, even as he went through the most difficult of times. He was and he will continue to always be an inspiration.

In an email exchange with his daughter, a student at IUP, she told me that APSCUF was his third family. His first was his actual family, whom he loved to talk and brag about: his wife, Julie Mansfield; his twin daughters, Alexandria and Elizabeth; his two step-daughters, Micaela and Meghan Weber; and his parents. His second was his students, whom he adored and to whom he devoted all the energy he could muster.

John is emblematic of your faculty and also your coaches in their caring for what they do.

Shortly after learning about John’s passing, I was due to attend a press conference being put on by the Keystone Research Center and the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center to announce their new proposal for affordable higher education in the Commonwealth. It was difficult to change focus, but in my head I knew that the subject of that proposal was something that John would have been for. He understood what we all understand: What we do as professors, as members of an academic community, as advocates, as members of APSCUF, are intertwined parts of our vocation.

APSCUF President Dr. Kenneth M. Mash today pledged that APSCUF will do whatever it can to fulfill The Pennsylvania Promise, an affordable-tuition plan unveiled today at a press conference in the Capitol.

“We must make a difference, and we must provide opportunities,” Mash said at the event for the Keystone Research Center and Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center‘s report. “The Pennsylvania Promise: Making College Affordable and Securing Pennsylvania’s Economic Future” outlines how the Commonwealth could make tuition affordable for Pennsylvania students for about $1 billion per year. Click here to read the full report.

KRC and PBPC will further explain the report in a webinar 11 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 24, for which you can register here.

One of the report’s authors, Mark Price, KRC labor economist, will go live to answer questions 2 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 25, on APSCUF’s Facebook page. We welcome members, students, and other supporters of quality, affordable higher education to join the discussion. If you’d like to submit questions in advance, email .

Senate Democrats recorded the press conference, which included statements from State Sen. Vincent Hughes, State Rep. Jim Roebuck, State Rep. Jordan A. Harris, and Daniel Le, a sophomore at Shippensburg University. Watch video of the full event here.

Graphics/Keystone Research Center and Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center

Today’s report is the fourth in a series by KRC and PBPC tackling upward mobility and higher education affordability in the Keystone state. Previous reports are:

Pennsylvania Higher Education at a Crossroads: To Boost Opportunity and Growth, Pennsylvania Needs to Invest in Higher Education (August 2017)

At Students’ Expense: Rising Costs Threaten Pennsylvania Public Universities’ Role in Upward Mobility (June 2017)

Pennsylvania’s Great Working-Class Colleges (April 2017)

Dr. John Mansfield addresses Mansfield University APSCUF members at a chapter meeting in April 2016. Photo/Kathryn Morton

Today we are all mourning the passing this morning of a great APSCUF leader, Dr. John Mansfield, associate professor of social work and APSCUF chapter president at Mansfield University. Dr. Mansfield was a wonderful advocate for his students and his colleagues, and we will miss him dearly. His family is in our thoughts during this heartbreaking time.

Visitation will be 5–7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 25, at Tussey Mosher Funeral Home, 139 Main St. in Wellsboro. Mass will be 9:30 a.m. Friday, Jan. 26, at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, 38 Central Ave. in Wellsboro.

APSCUF President Dr. Kenneth M. Mash encouraged the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education’s Board of Governors this morning to involve faculty and coaches in its system redesign and the search for a new chancellor. Watch his full comments on YouTube: