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NEVADA FACULTY ALLIANCE


ESTABLISHED 1983


NFA News & Opinion

  • 25 Feb 2015 6:28 PM | Deleted user

    by Angela Brommel, NFA President

    Today is National Adjunct Walkout Day in solidarity of part time faculty all across the nation.  The NFA didn't organize a walk out, but we have been walking the halls to hear the stories of members and future members. Since David Steel joined us as Executive Director we have added 60 new members -- and new members keep signing up. David also hired a part time faculty member in the north as an organizer to help reach our colleagues on all tracks. At the January State Board meeting we also voted to hire another organizer in the south. We also have one more open position for an organizer in the north. The state board also has a seat for part time faculty representatives. Our current faculty leader in that seat is Art Lynch.  A huge thank you to our organizers, state and chapter leaders for fighting the good fight for all of us.  Solidarity!

  • 25 Feb 2015 5:57 PM | Deleted user

    Guns on campus? 


    by John W. Farley, President UNLV chapter of NFA and Tim Bungum, Professor, UNLV Dept of Health Promotion


    A number of bills have been drafted or proposed in Carson City that might result in more guns on campus.  Current Nevada law allows anyone with a concealed carry permit to bring a gun onto an NSHE campus only if the gun owner has the explicit permission of the college or university president. In practice, the president delegates that decision to the campus chief of police.  The UNLV chief of police explained to a meeting of the UNLV Faculty Senate that  if an incident occurs, the campus police chief wants his officers to be the only armed force on the scene.  The task of the university police would be hindered, not helped, by the presence of other armed individuals. In real life, as opposed to the movies, it is not always easy to distinguish immediately a good guy from a bad guy. 


    While NFA has not developed a position on every proposed bill, in the past NFA has strongly supported the existing law, and strongly opposed changing the law to make it easier to bring a gun on campus.  In the last legislature, NFA, the NSHE presidents, and the Chancellor and the Board of Regents were all in agreement on this issue.


    A useful perspective that has too often been absent from the debate is the public health perspective, aimed at harm reduction. David Hemenway is a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he directs the Injury Control Research Center. His research on gun violence was reported in his 2006 book, Private Guns, Public Health. Hemenway seeks pragmatic solutions that reduce the number of gun deaths, rather than assigning blame. His is a public health perspective, not a crime perspective. Hemenway found that  homicides are frequently impulsive acts, in which the convenience and ready availability of guns allows a confrontation that otherwise would result in a black eye or broken tooth to results instead in a tragedy.


    The Hemenway book has a chapter on guns in school, including the following important points:

    1. Our schools are safe, but not as safe as schools in other similar countries.

    2. 30-35 students are killed by guns in a typical school years (at school).

    3. All school killings involved guns (in one study).

    4. About 6000 kids a year are expelled for bringing guns to school.

    5. Kids who bring guns to school are more apt to smoke, receive poor grades and have guns in the home.

    6. All kids who killed at school had easy access to guns.

    7. College males who own a gun are more apt to engage in reckless behavior involving alcohol, drive while intoxicated, distrust the police, damage property and sustain an alcohol-related injury.

    8. In places with more guns, more students report being victims of gun threats than in other places.

    9. Surveys show that most people believe that they will be less safe if more people have guns.

    10. Most states that made carrying laws more permissive showed slight increases in homicides.


    A summary of the entire Hemenway book includes three documented findings:


    1. Arming citizens appears to increase rather than decrease lethal violence.


    2. Permissive gun laws appear to be detrimental to the health of the public. 


    3. More than 90% of adults in one survey expressed the desire to outlaw guns on campus.

  • 24 Feb 2015 7:16 PM | Deleted user

    Courtesy of the UNLV NFA Chapter:


    Top Reasons to Join the Nevada Faculty Alliance


    • The NFA protects the rights of faculty and professional staff to have free and

    open investigation, speech and thought.



    • The NFA advocates for those rights to the administration.



    • The NFA provides an effective voice for faculty and higher education in the

    Nevada Legislature.



    • The NFA is an advocate and watchdog for decent faculty salary and benefits.



    • The NFA provides legal advice for members and non-members when faculty

    rights are in question. The NFA provides legal services to members whose rights

    have been violated.



    • The NFA was involved in the original establishment of the NSHE merit pool, and

    continues to advocate for competitive salaries for faculty.



    • The NFA is the Nevada affiliate of the American Association of University

    Professors, the longest existing national organization for advocacy of faculty.



    • The NFA has great people in the organization who uniformly feel that the

    university is critically important to a functioning society.



    • NFA members receive the AAUP ACADEME and the NFA Alliance that keeps

    members up to date on national and state trends in faculty employment issues.



    • The more members we have, the more power we have. Join us!

  • 08 Dec 2014 4:26 PM | Deleted user

    Nevada professor and NFA member, Joel Thomas Tierno has an article in the most recent edition of Academe that refutes claims that students are customers. Professor Tierno teaches at CSN.


    "Tierno debunks the metaphor that colleges are businesses and students are customers." -- UNLV-NFA President John Farley


    "Special shout out to CSN faculty and NFA member Joel Tierno whose Academe article on the topic of 'Students are not our customers and Schools are not businesses' shreds that lame analogy once and for all." -- CSN-NFA President Rob Manis


    You can read the article here:

    http://www.aaup.org/article/how-many-ways-must-we-say-it#.VIYLbT-UGGp 


  • 20 Nov 2014 3:55 PM | Deleted user

    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.


  • 13 Nov 2014 10:38 AM | Deleted user

    by David Steel, NFA Executive Director


    NFA members have been active both before and after the November election, meeting with candidates and discussing NFA's political priorities.


    Top priorities of NFA include access to quality affordable healthcare, ensuring that furloughs are lifted, and opposing any plan that irresponsibly outsources distance education. NFA promotes quality higher education in Nevada, and we see faculty working conditions as inextricably linked to that goal, as they are students' learning conditions.



    From L to R: NFA Director David Steel, CSN-NFA President Rob Manis, CSN-NFA officer Andrea Brown, and assemblyperson Nelson Araujo



    CSN-NFA President Rob Manis and Assemblyperson Melissa Woodbury

  • 05 Jun 2014 11:09 AM | ANGELA BROMMEL

    After nearly two years of negotiations, the faculty of Western Nevada College ratified their first collective bargaining agreement by a vote of 42 yes, 2 no, with 8 not voting. The contract will significantly improve working conditions for faculty, and return faculty to the forefront of the academic decision making process at WNC.

    WNC is the second Nevada college after Truckee Meadows Community College to move to collective bargaining.

    “This is a huge step forward for WNC faculty. We will now have a much stronger voice in college decisions, and will have additional protections for academic freedom, shared governance and due process”, said James Strange, chief negotiator and Nevada Faculty Alliance Vice President.

    The Nevada Faculty Alliance represents academic and administrative faculty, and graduate students in the Nevada System of Higher Education.

    The CBA was signed by representatives of the Nevada Faculty Alliance and the WNC administration, and forwarded to the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents for final approval on the consent agenda. The Board approved the CBA unanimously at the June 5th, 2014 meeting.

    Contact: Jim Strange, NFA State Vice President
                  775-434 4842
                  strangewnc@gmail.com

  • 23 Apr 2013 1:20 PM | ANGELA BROMMEL

    Tomorrow the NSHE budget is on the work session agenda for the  4:00pm meeting of the subcommittee of the Senate Finance/Assembly Ways and Means Joint Subcommittee on K-12/Higher Education/CIPS.

  • 22 Apr 2013 10:35 PM | Deleted user

    The NFA State Board Election began today. An email has been sent to NFA members with a link to the election survey.

    Voting will end Saturday, April 27th, at 11:55p.m. Tabulation of the results will be done by the NFA legal defense chair, Professor Peter Bayer. Winners will be announced on Tuesday, April 30th.

    The following is a list of offices and the candidates who are running for each:

    NFA state board candidates:

    President, Angela Brommel NSC
    Vice president, Jim Strange WNC
    Treasurer, Shari Lyman CSN
    Secretary, Leah Wild UNR
    Adjunct Representative, Jeannine Klein NSC

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