Dear Davis Faculty Association members,
I sincerely hope that your quarter is going well. I hope that you are successfully navigating the competing demands of undergraduate and graduate teaching, research and scholarly mentorship, and university, professional, and community service. More important, I hope that you are enjoying the process of navigating these competing demands and that your life is otherwise thriving and fulfilling.
I am writing to you for three reasons. First, I want to thank you for joining with your fellow Davis Faculty Association members to sustain the DFA and thus support its various activities on behalf of the UCD Senate Faculty. Second, I want to invite you to continue and perhaps elevate your engagement with the organization. Third, I want to ask you to encourage your colleagues who are not members of the DFA to join our organization. Below I elaborate on these three purposes of this letter.
What your support of the DFA has enabled
The Davis Faculty Association is the only independent organization that exists to represent and fight for senate faculty at UC Davis. The DFA analyzes administrative proposals and policies pertaining to faculty salaries and benefits, instructional resources, and research support emanating from UCD, UCOP and from the state legislature. And it registers its assessments of these proposals and policies via letters and petitions to campus administrators and political representatives in Sacramento. It also organizes forums and panels on topics of interest to faculty, such as recent attacks on academic freedom in higher education, and releases occasional white papers, such as its evaluation of the UCD Police Accountability Board.
In addition to its activities focused on the Davis and Sacramento campuses, the DFA is a member of the Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA), which means DFA members are organizationally connected with faculty associations at all University of California locations. CUCFA has had a long partnership with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), one of the largest organizations of university professors in the US representing professors at all levels of higher education—community colleges, state colleges, private colleges, and state universities. Last year, the AAUP affiliated itself with the American Federation of Teachers, a group that also represents thousands of university professors nationwide. This new partnership enabled the DFA to be represented on the Sacramento Central Labor Council, which we were able to join this past year.
Here are some things the DFA and CUCFA are continuing to be involved in:
- Lobbied the Governor and legislature for more base funding to UC.
- Supported state legislation that would provide funding to build student, staff, and faculty housing.
- Helped create the national Higher Ed Labor United (HELU). Through two summits this past year, the unions and organizations that have joined represent over 550,000 student workers, postdocs, staff, and adjunct, contingent, and tenured faculty across the country. HELU’s goal is to influence national higher ed legislation.
- Petitioned the systemwide BOARS (Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools) in support of the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council-authored UC A-G ethnic study’s requirement.
- Supported the Academic Senate memorial to the UC Regents that UC reduce on-campus fossil fuel combustion.
- Opposed the proposal for a broad change to the College of Letters and Science upper division writing requirement.
- Supported UC-AFT lecturers as they bargained a new contract with UC, including by collecting signatures from nearly 1,000 tenured faculty who pledged to honor the picket. In the end, no strike was needed.
- Fought for full central funding of the costs associated with last winter’s successful UAW Academic Workers strike.
- Called on UC to expand health plan fertility benefits.
- Supported state legislation which proposes tuition-free public higher education in California, with the proviso that per-student funding should not be reduced in this process.
How you can participate in the ongoing activities of the DFA
The success of the DFA depends on the financial support and participation of its members. Thus, we invite you to step up and get involved. If you think the DFA should take a stand on something, let us know. If you think the DFA should engage in a specific activity in support of Davis faculty, let us know. And if you think the DFA board made a wrong call on an issue or erred in some other respect, let us know.
How you can encourage your colleagues to join the DFA
It is up to you, our members, to strengthen the DFA. We ask you to pass this letter on to a colleague and encourage them to join us in the DFA. It is easy to sign up. Interested faculty only need to click on this link: https://ucdfa.org/join/.
Donald Palmer, DFA Chair (Graduate School of Management).
Other members of the DFA board:
Richard Scalettar, Physics
Jesse Drew, Cinema and Digital Media
Laura Bogar, Plant Biology
Glenda Drew, Design
Joe Kiskis, Physics
Stacy Fahrenthold, History
Valeria La Saponara, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Susette Min, Asian American Studies
Seth Sanders, Religious Studies