Who We Are

Cindy Cheng

In our classrooms we speak to our students about the value of their time and the importance of being treated with dignity and consideration within their workplaces. Yet as faculty, our own agency and voice within the workplace has been eroded by the growing layers of administration separating faculty and college leadership. Rather than fully devoting ourselves to our classrooms and creative practices, we are increasingly distracted with workplace concerns that we are ill-equipped to address collectively. Our learning and work environments are intertwined; to excel in one we must have clarity in the other. I support Unionization because we are in need of the expertise, legal protections and accountability mechanisms it can provide. Unionizing would enable us to map out a more clearly defined work-landscape, with enforceable benchmarks and procedures, and one that is based in a legally-binding contract rather than good faith agreements.

David Cloutier

I believe our joining together in the Union is a way to grow the values and care were share for each other. Unionization and the solid contract it ensures, is the best way to support and strengthen our shared governance and agency in the workings of the institution. I believe in the future of MICA and want to make this institution a better place for the generations to follow. Young faculty are teaching under the burden of student debt and deeply imbalanced economics. Unionization at MICA and broadly in our City, State, and Nation, is a powerful means to correcting economic inequities, having the contract, benefits, and conditions we deserve, and bettering the working lives of all. I join for the future of MICA, I join for the future of Baltimore.

Erinn Hagerty

I am honored to be a member of our MICA community. The college’s mission charges us to “empower students to forge creative, purposeful lives and careers.” As faculty, we need to emulate these words and empower ourselves and our colleagues within our educational community. Shared governance has been an aspirational goal that many have attempted in earnest. However, lack of transparency and legal support, as well as top-down approaches have left many feeling isolated, powerless, overburdened, and ineffectual. I support a union for MICA Full-Time Faculty because it will give us the platform and support we need to advocate constructively for ourselves and our shared environment, and allow us to focus on what brought us to MICA in the first place— teaching our students.

Fletcher Mackey

Having a Full-Time Faculty union at MICA is long overdue. Shared governance has been a trying effort and having a union will give faculty the opportunity to focus on teaching and our goals of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Globalization (DEIG). The faculty would be much better off focusing on the challenges of designing new curricula to meet these set goals.

Isaac Gertman

I want a Union because I want to empower my colleagues to practice what we teach. Our work toward equity and justice in the world must start in our own community. To create the bright future we envision, we need to step into a powerful, dignified role in the decisions that shape the school, its culture, and our every day work. Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions. A Union will empower us to advocate for our community, to ensure all of us are paid fairly, have job security, and are protected in health and safety, so that we can teach and work as our best selves.

James Rouvelle

After many years at MICA I’m confident that Shared Governance is the means by which faculty are managed by the Administration, not the other way around. MICA’s BoT and upper level Administration enjoy significant freedom and control over essential institutional assets and decision making, with limited accountability to faculty and staff. This imbalance of power has produced an ongoing disassociation between the BoT/Administration and the realities of faculty, staff and student’s day-to-day, departmental/classroom experience. In previous years it was possible to fend off the frequently questionable initiatives of “Administrative MICA” while maintaining essential contact with one’s creative and teaching practices, mentoring students and participating in the holistic development of one’s department. Not anymore. The obvious problems caused by Administrative overreach are "managed" by…increased Administrative overreach and greater attempts at micromanagement. We don't need more data. We don't need more facilitated discussions. FT faculty need real agency. We need to unionize.

Jann Rosen-Queralt

It is the gap between our reality and our aspirations that the faculty has consistently called out. As MICA contributes to the fields of art, design and visual arts education, it must lead by example ushering in practices that reveal this decisive moment in national and global history. In order to accomplish this, the faculty needs to strengthen its position within the governance of MICA so their opinions are not only heard but have impact. A union will provide the resource we do not have while addressing issues of fairness, diversity and equity in the work environment.

Jason Corace

MICA is at a crossroads as an Art and Design college and its more essential than ever that faculty have a leading voice in the future of the school. I see unionization as an essential tool to make MICA the diverse, equitable and exceptional institution we know it can be. It's time to move past empty promises of shared governance and work towards a collective future alongside our part-time faculty and staff.

Jason Sloan

As a MICA faculty member for close to two decades, I’ve see numerous positive changes and growth at the college over the years. I find myself constantly inspired by our students and genuinely love working and contributing to the creative environment the college has always offered. Unfortunately, the deficiency in accountability, transparency and respect from the college’s leadership to its faculty and employees has lead to a toxic, fractured and tense working environment. Workloads and responsibilities have continued to grow while equity, compensation and collective unity has not. I firmly believe unionization can lead to many positive changes in addition to a stronger community and workplace for all of us at MICA.

John Peacock

As a college student or teacher since 1968, I have come to believe five things: (1) the common denominator in many higher education controversies is the question of whether and how to share information among administrators, faculty, staff, and students. (2) We err more often and more egregiously in withholding than in sharing information. (3) This creates power inequities between information haves and have-nots. (4) These inequities undermine the very purpose of higher education, which is to share knowledge. (5) Hence, the rampant charges of hypocrisy from within and outside academia, and the cynicism and burn-out of many students, faculty, staff, and administrators, especially in stressful times such as the Covid pandemic. Unionization is no panacea, but union representatives could help the faculty research our institutional competitors’ salary scales as well as help us write legally binding contracts. MICA administrators rarely share information with faculty about either of these matters.

Kenneth Krafchek

Unionization is the best, and from my experience, the only way to be heard and participate in key decision making at the College. The faculty represent an untapped and oft ignored asset to MICA. Our voice, knowledge, talents and invested actions are of paramount importance to the health and wellbeing of the institution and its students. We must be included if we are each to thrive together.

Kristian Bjornard

We have an important choice right now: let MICA's administration continue to have the control and hope they continue to do us the favor of working with us; or, we as Faculty instead choose to work together in solidarity for equal footing in upcoming and future negotiations. Organizing as a Union is this way to work together effectively to gain equal footing — it's not aspirational, it's pragmatic and concrete and doable. We have no recourse if choices don't go our way by the grace of the administration. In our assemblies and committees I keep hearing how we're frustrated by MICA's systems and processes and how we continue to be taken advantage of in compensation, and our time as it relates to committees and meetings and continual additional workloads. Unionizing provides mechanisms for working toward what we as a faculty feel is important — these important choices are then up to us to collectively decide! Let's collaborate to establish solid and enforceable agreements that protect us and our collective interests. I like teaching at MICA. I want to make sure that the environment we have here evolves and improves with our needs and desires, not the arbitrary and reactionary ideas of our school's administration. In Solidarity!

Lauren Adams

A union for legal assurances, collectivity, and stability

I want a full time faculty union at MICA to help us better address the core issues of fair and respectful employment at MICA. My experiences with contract negotiations at the college have convinced me of the limitations of our handbook and shared governance regarding our contracts, and the intransigence of asymmetrical labor negotiations. Long-established conditions at the college undermine our collective ability to negotiate for better wages, benefits, and job security. We need a real referendum on compensation fairness, both internal and external -- and we need legal assurances that our protections will not continue to erode given the uncertainty in our changing field. A union would allow for better representation, accountable to all faculty labor concerns. The strength of the union would limit the creeping expansion of our job scope, and let us focus on our most important work in the classroom and in the critical shared governance work, outside of the union, of steering our college towards a more stable and equitable future.

Lili Maya

In 2007, I left a tenure track position to teach full-time at MICA. During the interview process, I was told that I was trading the security of a tenure track position to join a community of serious artists, designers and scholars fully committed to education at a college that supported one’s practice, the time it entails and its essential role in teaching. Fast-forward to 2021 and with the absence of tenure, seven-year contracts are now five-year contracts. COLA increases, step increases and investment matching are on hold. Shared governance is a mirage while pay cuts and course load reductions are transforming full-time faculty into part-time faculty. Most alarming, students, faculty and staff are confused, destabilized and disheartened by a disorganized, top-heavy administration. Such disorganization generates massive increases in unfruitful workload affecting professional practice and hindering the most important commitment at MICA; educational excellence. I am pro-union for a thriving MICA.

Mark Augustine

I support unionization because I wish for faculty labor to be more clearly defined, supported, and protected. Unionization also holds the potential for greater accountability between administrators and faculty.

Matteo Uguzzoni

As one of the few International Teachers at MICA I’m really happy to be part of the workforce that is representing the DEIG values to create a more diverse body of faculty and staff. My personal experience with the work condition at MICA has not been happy at all. Since the beginning I have felt a great sense of vulnerability due to the uncertainty of our working conditions. International teachers literally pack up their life to work at MICA and they experience stress and a great level of vulnerability. This can be sustainable for a US citizen, but for an international faculty it reduces our sense of belonging and it’s putting our mental health at risk (how do you work knowing that you and your family had to leave the country if you lose your job?). I want a Union to ensure that every new Faculty, from every part of the world, can start bringing their value and diversity to the MICA community with passion instead of fear.

Mina Cheon

I’m confident in the need for concrete action related to faculty compensation, remuneration, and labor. The faculty COLA and step increase is threatened, even prior to the coronavirus pandemic. Bargaining and negotiating compensation monopolizes faculty collective energy that could be placed elsewhere towards the community and DEIG initiatives, professional development, research, studio practice etc. We need absolute protection in terms of compensation, remuneration, and labor. Therefore, I am in support of unionization as the optimal solution, as this will alleviate the grief, humiliation, and demoralizing process we go through every time our compensation is on the line. It also divides us as a community, placing higher admin against faculty unnecessarily. Faculty union will also help them (admin) since the negotiation will be done in a more structured and formal manner that will no longer be personalized. It’s a step towards a much needed cultural change.

Nadia Hironaka

Collective bargaining works for all parties involved. A happy and healthy workforce generates a more successful and committed organization. Frankly, I can’t imagine why anyone would not support unions and union workers.

Nate Larson

I support the Full-Time Faculty Union to strengthen the faculty position within the governance of MICA. The Union creates legally-protected negotiating power, permits collective legal representation, and builds a powerful unified voice for faculty in ensuring the future of our institution. Unionization strengthens our contractual protections and halts the uncompensated expansion of new duties that continually creep beyond the scope of our contracts. In doing so, it creates mechanisms to hold our administration accountable, as well as a handbrake to veto future governance by crisis. Our current system at MICA aspires to do this without the legal protections bestowed upon a union and without legal counsel consulting on contract negotiation. Now, more than ever, is the time to come together to strengthen and reinforce our workplace protections and to stand up for our rights as knowledge workers. The administration wants you to believe that you can't do better - together, we can and we will.

Rebecca Green

Unionizing is an action that protects and provides necessary resources to support all workplace relationships. As a former student and current educator at MICA, it’s clear that faculty lead in positions of critical influence and visibility. Faculty are asked to act as problem solvers and interpreters for the institution, even when this manifests as time and task outside of concerted job descriptions. Additionally, with the onset of the Pandemic, teachers have been expected to transform how the college functions, all while baring the exposure of existing on the front lines. Educators are qualified and interested in implementing crucial reform within the curriculum, and should have the time to center efforts around DEIG discourse in the classroom. We deserve increased consistency, security, and fair compensation- allowing for a central focus on student learning and in turn uplifting the university’s value of an equitable community of thrive.

Stephanie Williams

This year has been a difficult one. It has highlighted for me just how important equity is, that my voice is adequately recognized and represented, that it is heard. Too often, equity is advertised as something aspirational yet rarely tangibly realized. I support unionization because I believe that in order to be a truly valued member of the MICA community, my voice within the space I serve should matter.

Whitney Sherman

Having a healthy supportive partnership in my workplace is similar to other supportive partnerships outside work, such as a doctor acting as a health care partner or a contractor ensuring my home is safe. I know my needs and take advice from them, but it is us working together that makes the relationship strong. Working with a Union is a parallel practice wherein I know my needs but will want a partner who can facilitate achieving them. I believe that full-time faculty engaging with an established union will achieve this basic and important need for a workplace environment where we can devote our energies toward teaching

Leslie Speer

I’ve had the privilege of being part of a strong faculty union in the past and have seen and experienced how this united collective voice can make positive impacts for everyone in an organization including faculty, students, and staff. Our equal seat at the decision making table is a key component and I look forward to the same types of affordances here at MICA. The Union is the only way to have the administration hear, consider, and act on our needs – through our collective solidarity. In our fight for diversity, equity, inclusion, and clear and enforceable workloads and compensation, I support a Union of Full-Time Faculty as a pathway to that future and its goal of creating an amazing, supportive, and fair workplace for all.

Laurence Arcadias

"Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union"- Joe Biden

I chose to join a Union of Full-Time Faculty for a fair workplace.​​