The faculty union for the University of Akron sent an email to its members the morning of Aug. 2, outlining its concerns related to the university's administrative leaders and policy initiatives.

The University of Akron chapter of the American Association of University Professors surveyed bargaining unit faculty on a variety of topics in March. An email provided to Crain's said the results "paint a picture of an administration — in particular chief administrative officer Rex Ramsier — which is operating in a way that is antithetical to the mission of the university."

About 40% of faculty responded to the survey. (In a statement, Wayne Hill, the university's vice president of communications and marketing, estimated that this response rate represented about 15% of the university's full- and part-time faculty.)

The majority of respondents said the university, their college, their department or school and the students were all worse off at the time of the survey than they were two years prior. Respondents overwhelmingly thought work on program reorganizations and new workload policies should be delayed until the university has a new president and provost.

The survey also asked respondents to rank Ramsier and interim president John Green on a variety of measures, such as whether they treat faculty with respect or promote the university's academic mission.

Green fared better than Ramsier on all measures. But the majority — 51% — said he was doing poorly on being supportive of faculty needs. Thirty-nine percent said his overall performance was poor, with another 33% rating it as fair. Only 28% rated it as good, very good or outstanding.

As for Ramsier, 81% of respondents thought his overall performance was poor and 14% thought it was fair. Eighty-two percent thought he did poorly on treating faculty with respect and 86% said his job of supporting faculty needs was poor.

Chapter president Pamela Schulze shared the results of the survey with the university's board of trustees in March and April, the email said. Shortly after that, the university named Chand Midha interim chief academic officer. Ramsier retained the position of chief administrative officer. He had been serving in that role, as well as in the role of senior vice president and provost, prior to the change. In the email, the union contends Ramsier has continued to oversee a variety of academic matters, including academic workload and faculty contract enforcement or grievances.

The union is requesting that the university meet with it to come to an agreement on how the duties of the provost, as outlined in the contract, should be split between the chief academic officer and the chief administrative officer. The union is also requesting that Ramsier not have any administrative duties related to faculty.

Additionally, the union wants the university to abandon the split chief academic officer and the chief administrative officer positions once a new president is named and launch a search for a new provost. It also wants the university to put any academic reorganizations on hold until the new president is named and to put any faculty workload policy changes on hold until a new provost is named.

The university responded to the claims made in the faculty union's email in a set of prepared statements.

Board of trustees chair Joseph M. Gingo in a statement said the board "strongly supports the leadership and work of interim president Green and his entire leadership team, including executive vice president and chief administrative officer Rex Ramsier." He also expressed disappointment that the union would publicize the results of an "anonymous, five-month-old survey," particularly given the involvement of the union and other campus constituencies in the close-to-completed presidential search process.

In his statement, Hill said "the Akron-AAUP's demands are essentially that all initiatives should be delayed for what could be many months to come" and noted that the chief administrative officer's responsibilities had already been defined. The board of trustees established the executive vice president and chief administrative officer role in December 2017 and outlined the role's responsibilities to include overseeing human resources and labor relations.

"In summary, Dr. Ramsier is fulfilling the duties that the board assigned to him as part of the university's management rights and responsibilities, including negotiating the next collective bargaining agreement with Akron AAUP," Hill said in the statement.