Recordpub.com - KSU trustees OK contract with faculty 3-year deal offers benefits to domestic partners, raises

By Dave O'Brien
Record-Courier staff writer
Kent State University's Board of Trustees ratified a new three-year collective bargaining agreement with the university's full-time, tenure-track faculty members Wednesday.
The KSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors and the university signed a tentative agreement Aug. 1. Tenure-track AAUP members voted 373-19 on Aug. 18 to accept the agreement.
The agreement includes an across-the-board 3 percent salary increase each year of the contract. A 3 percent "merit pool" also is available beginning at mid-year the first year of the contract and 1.5 percent in the third year of the contract.
For the first time, KSU also will offer domestic partner benefits for faculty with heterosexual or homosexual partners. There is no increase in the employees' percentage of contribution to their health insurance premiums in the first year of the contrct, with increases in the second and third years of the contract capped at 2 percent.
Other contract benefits include a "success pool bonus" for hitting goals in research funding, student retention and fund-raising over the next three years and up to a 5 percent increase in faculty parking rates over the last two years of the contract.
The board's action "brings to a close what may be the most expeditious and collegial negotiations in recent memory," KSU President Lester Lefton said.
He said the new contract, effective through Aug. 23, 2011, "shows what we can accomplish" by working together, calling it "fair to faculty" and an agreement that will help KSU continue "to attract and retain the very best students."
Patrick Mullin, chairman of the board of trustees, commended Lefton and members of the university's bargaining team for their work, calling the contract "reasonable and consistent" with the university's mission.
The tenure-track bargaining unit represents 864 faculty members across KSU's eight campuses, according to the university.
In other business, the board also approved the establishment of an applied career studies major at KSU's regional campuses.
Targeted to working adults and housed in the College of Education, Health and Human Services' department of adult counseling, health and vocational education, the university hopes the new major will provide workplace development and job skills to some of the more than 500,000 adults age 25 and over in Northeastern Ohio who have completed some college credits but never obtained a degree.
Lefton said he has Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut's assurances that the program will be "fast-tracked" through the review process and rolled out for spring 2009.

1.	Posted by Dowhatsright August 28, 2008
	Well I will bet that they will raise the tuition. It is way to expensive to attend college. No wonder our schools are in such a mess. Kids know that most can not afford to go on to college because of the cost. Oh, sure there are loans and grants, but all these do is encourage the Colleges to raise their tuition, and increase the cost. Sure, they will start, but the burden of trying to study and compete with those that go free and working to help pay the cost is too much. They drop out. By the time a students graduates he is so far in debt that he can not afford to marry and have a family. There is something wrong with an education system that teaches its students to start life so far in debt. If the students had the money it cost to go to college, he would be better off to invest the money and go on with his life. Do you still wonder why the U. S. is falling behind other countries, it is because of the greed of those running the system.