TL;DR
Our bargaining team formally put three articles across the table: Article 30B for the School of Nursing, focusing on eliminating the disparities between the BHSNJ and AAUP-AFT faculty who do the same work under grossly unequal terms; Article 40B for the School of Health Professions, addressing the need for a balanced workload across teaching, scholarship, and service; and a new article on educational technology and AI, which threaten academic freedom, intellectual property, and data privacy, among other things. We argued that, to protect the integrity of our core mission, faculty unions must be involved in decision-making regarding purchasing and deployment of ed tech.
Highlights of the Session
We presented three articles to management on April 30, 2026 including 30B School of Nursing; 40B School of Health Professions; and an un-numbered new article on Educational Technology.
Briefly:
30B – School of Nursing
Workload fairness and consistency between BHSNJ and Rutgers Faculty Union members. Rula Btoush, School of Nursing, outlined the key points in the proposed changes:
- Making the article applicable to both BHSNJ faculty (46 members) and AAUP-AFT faculty (38 members) at the School of Nursing in Newark and New Brunswick (not only BHSNJ).
- Removing the “Lecturer” and “Instructor” titles consistent with our proposed changes for “Article 27.A – Non-Tenure Track Faculty.”
- Adding two items addressing emerging models for clinical teaching.
- Increasing Teacher Contact Hours (TCHs) for developing new courses.
- Student enrollment caps for online, hybrid, and face-to-face courses, with compensation when enrollment exceeds the caps.
- Defining the maximum students allowed in clinical teaching groups.
- Forming a workload committee to define how workload is determined for course leaders, program/specialty directors, and any other emergent issues.
- Clarity that overload pay would be consistent with the fractional NTTs rate.
- Clarity on examples for service that faculty may negotiate for workload TCHs.
- Adding “service to the profession” as another form of service.
- Increasing tuition reimbursement from $750 to full tuition.
The administration asked clarifying questions about the workload committee and whether it makes recommendations and decisions. The answer was that it would make decisions via a majority vote. Given that the committee would be majority-faculty, using majority voting for making decisions, this process would be faculty-driven.
The administration asked us to clarify if we meant for overload pay to be consistent with the “fractional NTT” rate for the “Lecturer” title. We confirmed that we were referring to the proposed new title for Lecturers.
The administration asked if this article would apply to faculty in the Camden School of Nursing. We responded that we had not yet addressed that.
40B – School of Health Professions (SHP) Faculty Effort Clause
Claire O’Connell, School of Health Professions, gave an introductory presentation highlighting how limitations in the current contract made it difficult to adhere to four points of the strategic plan with 4 priorities:
- Provide the highest quality, most innovative health professions education to ensure career-ready graduates
- Foster growth of research and scholarship
- Build healthy, vibrant, and inclusive communities
These three priorities feed the 4th priority:
- Strategic Stewardship and Sustainability for financial stability with regional and national reputation.
Conversations with SHP members highlighted common concerns related to workload variability, lack of transparency, and insufficient recognition of the full scope of faculty responsibilities. The resulting revisions aim to address these challenges by providing clearer definitions, standardized calculations, and a more balanced distribution of effort across teaching, scholarship, and service.
Overall, these proposed revisions create a more balanced and sustainable workload model that better supports faculty success across all domains of their responsibilities. By increasing protected time for scholarship, the model enhances research productivity and aligns more closely with promotion and reappointment expectations. Additionally, the proposal more accurately accounts for often-overlooked efforts, such as online teaching, laboratory instruction, and coordination roles. Collectively, these changes are expected to improve faculty morale and retention while strengthening SHP’s academic programs.
Danielle Nanni, School of Health Professions, reviewed the proposed revisions to the SHP faculty effort clause that:
- Clarify the teaching effort
- Identify the myriad ways that SHP produces scholarship
- Rectify inconsistencies across departments within the school regarding faculty effort
- Enhance opportunities for professional growth and growth of SHP
- Strengthen the relationship between faculty and administration with shared goals
- Expand the proportion of faculty effort dedicated to scholarship.
Management asked questions about calculating workload, the financial cost of revisions, and comparable programs across the Big Ten Academic Alliance.
New article – Educational Technology
Britt Paris, Information Science (New Brunswick), highlighted how both nationally and at Rutgers, technology adoption and deployment in higher education are obstacles to many goals of a higher education institution with a public service mission. We have needed better institutional policy around technology in higher education and at Rutgers for a long time. And now with AI, it cannot be avoided. These concerns deeply impact our working conditions, and the faculty are the best situated to determine what technologies are included in our work and how. Indeed, other large university systems with bargaining units have successfully negotiated for protections around technology. We hope to do the same, and even lead here.
She stepped through the main concerns the article addresses, concerns that were raised as important by members.
- The primary goal of the article is to develop a committee of members with equal participation with management in decision-making around technology. There are several pieces to how this committee might be composed and function in the article.
- Arnold Lau, Computer Science lecturer (New Brunswick), provided short testimony to support this from his vantage as a technology governance expert at Barclays.
- Ability to opt-out of technology use, provided pedagogical and accessibility needs are met. This is intertwined with data privacy concerns that are baked into Rutgers contracts with vendors.
- Katie Elson Anderson, Rutgers Librarian in New Brunswick and member of the Academic Senate Information Technology Committee spoke to how inappropriate technology deployment happens in the library, a myriad of workload concerns and issues of data privacy, and how woefully existing decision making around technology had been at the university to-date.
- Intellectual Property protections for digital likeness and data privacy, and ensuring our course materials are protected in compliance with university policy 50.3.7 are key.
- Surveillance concerns are related to academic freedom concerns. We want protections in the technological sphere from unwarranted surveillance.
- Workload and job security provisions are important. People across the university have significant concerns around demands to incorporate AI into workflows, including in teaching. We need better training, and the ability to protect jobs and ensure that the work of the university is done by humans.
Melissa Rogers, New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) talked about technology deployment in her 20+ years here, while some of these have been bad decisions, the technology is undeniably valuable. Mergers and online learning at NJMS cause significant concerns about technology rollout in terms of IP and data privacy. A committee on educational technology, like the one outlined in this article, is absolutely crucial to make sure that this technology rollout around this initiative is appropriate.
Becky Givan stepped through the article components.
There were several questions and a lively back-and-forth between management and the bargaining team. Management seemed to acknowledge that there are critical technology issues to address. They had questions about what the proposed committee work would entail and how it would be coordinated. Management also had many questions about the surveillance technology component and argued that there are laws and security concerns to adhere to. Management’s response also suggested trepidation about the committee’s role in procurement decisions. Our union bargaining committee offered a sense of what we want for the committee and answered their other questions.
Mark your calendar!
The next session is scheduled for Thursday, May 7, from 10 am to 2 pm
Other Upcoming Events
Click here for a full calendar: https://rutgersaaup.org/events/
Our Bargaining Team
| Austin | Rooney | Camden | Philosophy & Religion |
| Beth | Adubato | Newark | School of Criminal Justice |
| Bryan | Sacks | Camden | Philosophy & Religion |
| David | Letwin | College Ave-NB | Rutgers Arts Online |
| Howie | Swerdloff | Cook-NB | Labor Studies & Employee Relations |
| Boris | Paskhover | Newark | Otolaryngology (NJMS) |
| Catherine | Monteleone | RWJMS-NB | Medicine |
| Claire | O’Connell | Busch-Nb | School Of Health Professions |
| Cynthia | Sutton | RSDM-Newark | RSDM Diagnostic |
| Jeff | Levine | College Ave-NB | Family Medicine (RWJ) |
| Josh | Bucher | College Ave-NB | Emergency Medicine (RWJ) |
| Kathleen | Beebe | Newark | Orthopaedics (NJMS) |
| Melissa | Rogers | Newark | Microbiology (NJMS) |
| Pankaj | Agarwalla | Newark | Neurosurgery (NJMS) |
| Rula | Btoush | Newark | School of Nursing |
| Stephan | Schwander | NB Piscataway | SPH |
| Tessa | Bergsbaken | Newark | Immunity & Inflammation (NJMS) |
| LaToya | Gibbons | Camden | Enrollment & Student Success |
| Miguel | Rodriguez | College Ave-NB | School of Arts and Sciences |
| Adrian | Liu | College Ave-NB | Philosophy |
| Alexander | Steiner | RCI | Radiation Oncology |
| Annika | Barber | Busch-NB | Microbiology |
| Becky | Givan | Cook-NB | Labor Studies & Employee Relations |
| Britt | Paris | College Ave-NB | Library & Information Science |
| Bryan | Oller | Newark | Physics |
| Carlos | Decena | Livingston-NB | Latino & Hispanic Caribbean St |
| Chidera | Ntiwunka-Ifeanyi | Busch-NB | Biomedical Engineering |
| Emily | Marker | Camden | History |
| Ian | Oiler | Newark | Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine/Earth and Environmental Sciences |
| Kathy | Lopez | Camden | Public Policy |
| Kyle | Riismandel | Newark | History |
| Lee | Carpenter | Camden | Law School |
| Lily | Todorinova | Douglass-NB | New Brunswick Library |
| Paul | O’Keefe | Livingston-NB | Geography |
| Season | Qiu | Newark | Molecular And Behavioral Neuroscience |
| Tara | Matise | Busch-NB | Genetics |
| Heather | Pierce | College Ave-NB | Political Science |
| Luis | Soto | Livingston-NB | Criminal Justice |