Write a Letter
Thanks for supporting the Save UE campaign! If you would like to help our campaign, you can:
- Gain more information about the campaign by e-mailing us at ueaaup@gmail.com
- Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram
- Sign the change.org petition
- Share our story through Likes, Shares, re-posts, and re-tweets
- Tell us what the University of Evansville (UE) means to you
- Write to President Pietruszkiewicz or contact the Board of Trustees and urge them to support our campaign
- Tell UE alumni about our campaign
- Write letters to the Evansville Courier and Press affirming your support
- Alert other universities of our campaign through websites like The Chronicle of Higher Education
- Spread the word within the Evansville community
- Join us! Save UE is a campaign by the UE members of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). If you are a current or retired UE faculty member, you can join the AAUP to become a part of the campaign.
If you would like to write a letter inviting someone to join the Save UE campaign, you can use this template:
[Date]
Dear ____________,
I write to urge you to join the Save UE campaign. This is a campaign by the University of Evansville (UE) chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to restore shared governance to UE.
In August, UE President Christopher M. Pietruszkiewicz announced that he and his senior administrative team would be evaluating the university’s academic programs for the purpose of selecting programs for elimination. Over the course of the following semester, the faculty repeatedly asked the President for involvement within his program evaluation process but was met with only promises of future participation that went unfulfilled.
On December 10th, the President proposed an academic realignment plan that would eliminate eighteen majors and thirty-eight faculty members. These eliminations would include the removal of three entire departments: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Music, and Philosophy and Religion. Were the President’s planned cuts to be implemented, the consequences would be disastrous. Those cuts would impede the university from fulfilling its educational mission, diminish the surviving programs, lower the teaching standards for current UE students, and restrict the options of future UE students.
Furthermore, the plan proposed by the President neither follows the university’s policies on curricular change nor recognizes that, within the university’s shared governance system, the faculty has primary responsibility over education policy. Instead, it defines the President and his senior administrative team as the sole decision-makers on academic matters. Since introducing his proposed plan, the President has spoken on numerous occasions of “meaningful faculty input,” and yet, so far, the faculty has been allowed to do nothing more than offer proposals to the President and his team.
The Save UE campaign stands against the President’s proposed academic realignment plan, the manner in which it was created, and the process by which is it being developed.
Save UE supports:
• The implementation of the AAUP-derived system of shared governance defined in the Faculty Manual within which the faculty has primary responsibility over educational policy
• The following of the university’s policies on curricular change as defined in the Faculty Manual within which proposals for curricular changes are to pass through the Curriculum Committee and the Faculty Senate
• The release of a complete draft institutional “alignment plan” including but not limited to all proposed changes to curriculum, faculty, staff, administration, and athletics prior to the making of any final decisions on the removal of departments, majors or faculty members
• The completion of a process within which each department is given the opportunity to review and verify all the program data used within the President’s program evaluations that relates to its programs prior to the making of any final decisions on the removal of departments, majors or faculty members
• The adherence to university policies on dismissal as defined in the Faculty Manual and to all the AAUP documents relating to dismissal endorsed by the Faculty Manual in all dismissal proceedings
If you would like more information on the Save UE campaign, you can visit the campaign website at saveue.com or e-mail the UE chapter of the AAUP at ueaaup@gmail.com.
I very much hope that, like me, you will join the Save UE campaign. By restoring the shared governance envisioned in the University of Evansville’s founding document, we can Save UE and so truly face the future unafraid!
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
