2026 Negotiations EMU-AAUP Opening Statement

Friends, Eagles, Michiganders, lend me your ears,

Eastern Michigan University is on a precipice. As a faculty, we believe the university is on the precipice of greatness. Our negotiations this year are geared towards realizing EMU’s promise, to make EMU the student-centered campus President Kelly has described and that faculty have worked, and continue to work, to build. Our working conditions, like those of all of our EMU colleagues, are students’ learning conditions. The outcome of these negotiations will directly shape the educational experiences we can provide students inside and outside the classroom. Our union’s proposals articulate a vision of a thriving university that recognizes its commitment to its communities–the families that work and learn at the university; the students who grow their lives here; and our neighbors and partners throughout Southeast Michigan. The aim of our negotiations is to further the university’s mission as an institution of opportunity for students of all backgrounds and its historic importance as an engine of productivity in the region, one that strengthens democracy, commerce, and social welfare.

Indeed, a recent study found that in fiscal year 2024, EMU’s activities generated more than $1 billion in direct economic activity. Spread across all of Michigan’s 83 counties, Eastern Michigan’s more than 180,000 alumni earned more than $4.8 billion in post-tax income in 2024. Seven-hundred-forty-six million dollars of these earnings were attributable to the value of their EMU degree. The university’s economic value emanates, in part, from the significant growth in faculty research activity at EMU. In 2016, Eastern Michigan was upgraded to a Research II university for the first time. Between 2013 and 2023, externally funded research nearly doubled from $10.9 million to $17.8 million, including prestigious awards from the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of Health, and Fulbright Fellowships for Research and Teaching. These funds have provided student research support and experiences, helped secure patents for new technologies, and expanded the university’s impact in Southeast Michigan. Further, for almost two decades, the Carnegie Foundation has designated EMU a Community-Engaged University, a designation that recognizes the faculty and university’s long-standing commitment to collaborate with local non-profit organizations, school districts, and local governments in a beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources. These partnerships have immersed students in our broader community, providing them with unique, experiential service-learning opportunities.

What truly makes EMU such a transformative place, however, is the web of support created by faculty, lecturers, clerical/secretarial staff, and the campus’ operations workers. Our union’s members have historically used our collective power to support students by any means necessary. From initiating mental health initiatives to support student wellness; to pioneering new pedagogical directions in collaboration with students; to helping students navigating the new worlds of school and work created by Generative AI; to redirecting faculty parking expenditures to financial support for students via the student emergency fund; to creating classrooms founded upon empathy and deep understanding, EMU faculty have worked collectively to build an empowering campus that supports students and the region that we call home. Our negotiations are for the common good because we know that faculty working conditions are students’ learning conditions.

Our negotiations are an opportunity for the university to affirm its commitment to extraordinary instruction and transformative experiences for students. EMU-AAUP well recognizes the financial challenges facing the university, but we also believe those challenges should be contextualized. Since 2019, the university's budget has grown by 2.1 percent. However, its overall percent of expenditures allocated to instructional staff (tenure-track faculty, full-time lecturers, and part-time lecturers) has declined from 24.33 percent of the university’s budget to 20.47 percent–a decline of $10,660,408, unadjusted for inflation. An institution’s budget reflects its values and commitments, and this statement combined with our proposals are intended to create a shared investment in instruction, student support, and faculty engagement. Prior to beginning our negotiations, members of our bargaining council conducted polls with faculty and held events with students, faculty, and staff to learn what about the university they loved and enabled their success as well as what can be strengthened. Those insights have guided many of these proposals. The result has been proposals that include efforts to foster greater collaborations and dialogue between students, faculty, and administration; to recognize and support community-engaged research and practice; to collectively steward university parking in ways that enhance accessibility on campus; and to expand EMU’s relationship with the broader community.

Our proposals cut across the various articles of our current agreement and represent our union’s vision of the university and guide the aims of our bargaining, which is to reaffirm EMU as a people’s university where students thrive, community members meet, workers flourish, and, as a result, our university, region, and state prosper. We hope and believe these commitments are shared, and we look forward to these negotiations moving EMU beyond its current precipice into a renewed era of greatness.