by Rob Manis, CSN-NFA Chapter President

The CSN Chapter of NFA is going through a period of growth and increased assertiveness. Over the last 14 months nearly 50 new members have signed up, reversing several years of attrition and neglect. Outgoing chapter president Adrian Havas did a fine job of raising morale and turning the organization around. During the last year and half we have conducted three major surveys that have helped us with that turn around by clarifying what members want.

The first, conducted in May of 2013 of NFA members found a high level of disillusionment with NSHE, the Admin and NFA itself. The clear message was that faculty did not feel anyone was standing up for them enough, and they wanted NFA to take a stronger role in advocating for them. The follow-up survey in February 2014 found a much improved view of the new direction of NFA, where an amazing 90% of members said CSN-NFA was on the “right track”.

We followed that up with a survey of all faculty (members and non-members alike) in June of this year. Over 200 people responded. The responses were interesting:

The old CSN faculty evaluation system was preferred to the new one passed by Faculty Senate last year by 37%-25%

Faculty rated the three top CSN administrators as only satisfactory (modal category). A plurality distrusted CSN administrative hiring 45-28%, and an audit of CSN finances was favored by a huge 77-6%.

Additionally opinion was negative toward both NSHE and PEBP, while the most popular choice to fix PEBP was the state NFA proposal to expand PEBP board to include 5 employee members.

NFA is seen by all faculty as ‘about right’ by 48%, but many more see it as too weak rather than too militant by 38%-14% . Faculty say they support collective bargaining by a surprisingly large margin. 51-17%.

My goal as the new chapter President is to gain another 50+ members over the next year and to explore possible paths to collective bargaining, a major task in an institution of over 500 faculty.