The University of Akron’s leadership and its faculty union have agreed on a new contract.

The university on Thursday, March 24, announced in a news release that its board of trustees and the University of Akron chapter of the American Association of University Professors both ratified a new labor agreement. The local AAUP membership had voted for the ratification of the new agreement in an electronic vote, which ended Wednesday, March 23. The university board approved it Thursday in a special board meeting. The release stated that the agreement will be made available after it is executed by both the union and the board. For now, it offered a handful of details, including what it simply called “improvements” in “initial hiring, retention, tenure and promotion, professional development leaves, non-tenure track faculty and distance learning.” It also noted that the agreement would provide for annual raises, averaging 2.4% per year, and “modest increases” in the employees’ health coverage obligations. In the release, Akron AAUP president John Zipp said the agreement will take the faculty and administration through 2020, which “should lend a great deal of much needed stability to faculty-administration relations.”