Candidates for elected leadership

Officers

Candidate for Chair

• WON – Mia McIver, UC-AFT Local 1474
  HELU’s coalitional power has increased tremendously in the past year. I am running for chair to keep our momentum going and channel it into political and organizing actions that reclaim higher ed as a public good. Wall to wall and coast to coast means bringing more staff, student, and medical center unions and more workers without collective bargaining rights into HELU’s work. We must continue to forge solidarity across job titles, ranks, and institution types in order to fight for higher ed for all. Our goal is public reinvestment to end the crisis of contingency in its many forms and return our colleges and universities from centers of private debt-financed profit to centers of teaching, learning, research, and service in the public interest.

Candidate for Vice Chair

• WON – Levin Kim, UAW 4121
  Over the last two years, organizing with HELU has been an empowering way to build power for a better higher education system from coast to coast and wall to wall. I’m excited to run for Vice-Chair to work with others in leadership and the steering committee to enact a bold vision that brings in academic workers from across the country, to build a fighting labor movement that can transform our higher ed institutions.

Candidate for Secretary-Treasurer

• WON – TJ Acena, AFSCME Local 328
  Hi, my name is TJ Acena. I’m a project coordinator at Oregon Health and Sciences University and a member of AFSCME local 328. I’m also pursing my masters in labor studies through Umass Amherst. I’ve been involved with HELU for two years now, as a member of the interim steering committee and serving on the outreach committee. I got involved with HELU because I feel strongly that we need a national coalition to change higher education, a movement that works to help organize higher ed workers of all stripes, but also works to educate workers about the challenges facing higher education. We’re told that austerity is the only path forward when we know that we live in a country that could easily fund higher education for all. I want to help HELU build a movement that can re-imagine what is possible.

Steering Committee

Part-Time Adjunct/Contingent Faculty

• Joe Berry, AFT 2121
  I have been active in HELU since first summit in 2021, then on the SC and member of the Outreach Committee. I have worked as contingent faculty teaching history, labor education, non-credit, extension, public and private, community college and R-1 universities, was member or staffer in most of the major faculty unions. Wrote Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts etc, and co-authored (with Helena Worthen) Power Despite Precarity etc. I believe in industrial organizing “wall to wall and coast to coast” with a vision of higher ed as a public good to be supported by taxing the rich. I see HELU as the most important national development in higher ed since the consolidation of a national contingent faculty movement in the early 2000’s. As a member of the SC, I will continue to organize via Outreach Committee to bring in local unions to make “wall to wall” a reality.
• Bill Lipkin, Union County College Chapter of United Adjunct Faculty of NJ
  My name is Bill Lipkin, and I am running for the position of representative of Community Colleges or Part-Time Adjunct Faculty. representative on the HELU Steering Committee. I have been a member of HELU since inception. One of my current positions is President of United Adjunct Faculty of New Jersey, representing adjunct faculty in most of the community colleges in New Jersey. I have been teaching in several community colleges for the past 35 years, and I have a deep understanding of the unique issues faculty and staff deal with at 2-year institutions, and how they differ from 4-year institutions. One issue I have been dealing with is creating pay equity for adjunct faculty in community colleges with their counterparts in 4-year institutions. I am also a strong advocate for adjunct faculty in community colleges and the need for recognition of their contributions to the system.
• WON – Anke Wolbert, EMUFT9102
  My name is Anke Wolbert. I have been a HELU activist almost since its inception. I am currently President of EMUFT, AFT Local 9102, representing Full- and Part-Time Lecturers at Eastern Michigan University. I have served as bargaining co-chair twice and during my time as Vice President, we merged the full- and part-time contracts, taking one small step towards a wall-to-wall union. Our goals at EMUFT are to increase the visibility of lecturers, improve their treatment by upper management and tenure-track faculty, and fight for pathways to full-time employment. Seeing and living the treatment of contingent faculty daily, I understand the urgent need for national action. The challenges we encounter at our campuses often cannot be solved at the local level, they require state and federal solutions. HELU is our best chance at coordinating our effort to affect real change for Higher Education.

Full-Time Contingent Faculty

• Jaclyn Pittsley, United University Professions
  I’m Jaclyn Pittsley, and I ask for your support for a seat on the HELU Steering Committee. I’m a member and delegate of United University Professions. I have been a full-time contingent academic at SUNY Cortland for twenty years and a strong advocate of union values in higher education. I speak truth to power and hold management accountable.
  I’m a member of the 2022-2026 UUP Contract Negotiations Team, which resulted in historic, structural gains for UUP members. I am Chapter President at Cortland, a member of the UUP Statewide Executive Board and Co-Chair of the UUP Statewide Contingent Employment Committee.
  I wrote the strategic plan of the CEC. I co-wrote the 2019 revision of the landmark Memorandum of Understanding for Full-Time Lecturers at Cortland between UUP and the State of New York.
  I work hard to share progressive ideas, propose reasonable solutions, and fight for inclusive advocacy across higher education.
• WON – Joseph Ramsey, Faculty Staff Union (FSU/MTA/NEA)
  With ten years as a full-time Lecturer and union activist (FSU/MTA), and as chair of HELU’s Contingency Task Force, I have been a strong voice for centering contingent faculty struggles, as part of the broader mission of defending higher education. We cannot speak of higher ed as a place to pursue critical inquiry for common good when most educators don’t have meaningful academic freedom. And we can’t speak of faculty having academic freedom when most lack basic job security. How can educators serve our students and communities when we are looking over our shoulders, exhausted, precarious, and marginalized within our own institutions? HELU must work at all levels—from contracts and legislation to cultural efforts within our own unions—to de-normalize, and ultimately, abolish, labor contingency…and not only for the sake of adjuncts. Only through greater unity and equality across ranks can we repel the multi-pronged assaults on higher education.

Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty

• WON – Bret Benjamin, United University Professions (UUP)
  It would be a privilege to help build HELU into a broad and powerful national coalition of unions with the capacity to reshape higher education from the perspective of labor. I am a tenured faculty member in English at SUNY Albany, and a member of United University Professions (UUP), which represents some 40,000 academic, professional, contingent, and health-care employees. I have been the lead contract negotiator for UUP and currently serve on its Executive Board. I have served on HELU’s interim steering committee, and have been involved in outreach, convention planning, constitutional drafting and coordinated organizing. I believe both in the HELU vision of sectoral higher-ed coordination, and in the organizational structure of a member-funded coalition. However, I realize that HELU’s aims can only be realized with full participation of member unions. I am committed to doing the work neede to realize HELU’s ambitious and principled goals.
• Rebecca Givan, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
  I have served in Rutgers AAUP-AFT as treasurer, vice-president, president and bargaining chair and am currently General Vice-President of our union. In Rutgers AAUP-AFT we have worked hard to build a fighting, organizing union representing full-time tenure track and non-tenure track faculty, graduate workers, post docs and counselors. Together with our sibling unions representing biomedical faculty and adjunct faculty, we have worked to build power and win the kind of university our students and patients need. By organizing together, bargaining together, and striking together we won significant material gains and improvements across our campuses. I believe strongly in the HELU vision of a wall-to-wall, coast-to-coast higher ed labor movement and look forward to building a strong, well-coordinated organization where we can fight together for higher ed for all, fighting unions, and the just campuses our students deserve.

Student Workers

• WON – Jesús Fernández Cano, TUGSA-AFT Local 6290
  As president of TUGSA and as an organizer of one of the many fighting unions that went on Strike in 2023, which represent graduate workers at Temple University in Philadelphia, my focus has been to build a strong and long-lasting labor movement that reaches across campuses and units. In a time where economic and financial self-imposed constraints are causing ruckus around our Higher Educations Systems, where academic freedom is stifled by moneyed-interest, and where accessibility is an always present concept in our institutions mission as long as it doesn’t affect their bottom-line; the importance of self-organized labor is at its highest. I want to put the experience I have gathered as an organizer and union official to help create political commitment for the labor movement in Higher Ed, pushing for a brave and comprehensive vision aiming for Colleges and Universities for the many, and not just the privileged few.

Service and Maintenance Staff

No applications were received for this seat.

Clerical, Technical, and Research Staff

• Evan Bowman, AFSCME Local 328
  I joined HELU as a delegate and member of the Communications Committee in September 2023. I have been a member of the Convention Planning Committee since it’s inception, and in that capacity worked closely with Ian and Tracy on the convention’s technical aspects.
  My day job is an IT Project Coordinator. In my union, AFSCME Local 328, representing 8,500+ healthcare workers, I am the IT Chair, a lead steward, and member of the Labor/Management Committee. I have recently begun an 8-week Emerging Leadership program with Oregon AFSCME.
  I am very invested in, and encouraged by, the work being done by HELU and seek to put my skillset to use for the Common Good. I am the father of four teenage students who will not be able to access higher education without fundamental change. I’m also greatly concerned by the crackdown on Academic Freedom.
  I ask for your vote.
• WON – Sean O’Brien, Wayne Academic Union Local 6075
  I joined HELU at our first Summer Summit and have been active ever since, working on numerous committees including Budget, Outreach, Politics, and more. My relationship with HELU evolved as my relationship with higher education evolved – starting as a GTA, moving to part-time faculty, and finally as staff member for Labor@Wayne. I’m a proud delegate for my local, WAU 6075. Formerly, I led two contract negotiations for Wayne State University’s GEOC, including double digit wins without strike power. We won with HELU’s support and I’m dedicated to returning that support.
  I am seeking to represent Clerical, Technical, and Research Staff to the HELU Steering Committee.
  It is important to me that delegates and representatives stand for all workers in higher education. My experience ties me across categories and sectors. My future lies with higher education’s future and I’m ready to fight for it.

Healthcare Staff

• Evan Bowman, AFSCME Local 328
  I joined HELU as a delegate and member of the Communications Committee in September 2023. I have been a member of the Convention Planning Committee since it’s inception, and in that capacity worked closely with Ian and Tracy on the convention’s technical aspects.
  My day job is an IT Project Coordinator. In my union, AFSCME Local 328, representing 8,500+ healthcare workers, I am the IT Chair, a lead steward, and member of the Labor/Management Committee. I have recently begun an 8-week Emerging Leadership program with Oregon AFSCME.
  I am very invested in, and encouraged by, the work being done by HELU and seek to put my skillset to use for the Common Good. I am the father of four teenage students who will not be able to access higher education without fundamental change. I’m also greatly concerned by the crackdown on Academic Freedom.
  I ask for your vote.
• WON – Carolyn Kube, United University Professions 2190
  Thank you for considering my nomination for a seat on the HELU steering committee. I am a 30 year union activist and currently the statewide Vice President for Professional in United University Professions (UUP). I am a medical technologist who worked in the laboratory that supports the kidney and bone marrow transplant services at Stony Brook University Hospital. (SBUH). I have held various elected positions in UUP, one being the chapter president of SB HSC and hospital chapter. This chapter is a microcosm of our wall to wall union, in which I gained knowledge about all types of academic and professional members working conditions. I bring a wide breath of knowledge having served on 3 negotiations teams, a deep understanding of hospital funding, safe staffing, contingent work and physician practice plans. I have organized a successful multi union campaign for hazard pay during COVID. I humbly ask for your support.

Community Colleges

• Joe Berry, AFT 2121
  I have been active in HELU since first summit in 2021, then on the SC and member of the Outreach Committee. I have worked as contingent faculty teaching history, labor education, non-credit, extension, public and private, community college and R-1 universities, was member or staffer in most of the major faculty unions. Wrote Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts etc, and co-authored (with Helena Worthen) Power Despite Precarity etc. I believe in industrial organizing “wall to wall and coast to coast” with a vision of higher ed as a public good to be supported by taxing the rich. I see HELU as the most important national development in higher ed since the consolidation of a national contingent faculty movement in the early 2000’s. As a member of the SC, I will continue to organize via Outreach Committee to bring in local unions to make “wall to wall” a reality.
• WON – Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela, Faculty and Staff Federation of Community College of Philadelphia, AFT 2026
  Community Colleges educate almost half of the nation’s college students but are included in maybe 1 in 1,000 conversations about higher education in the U.S.? The disrespect is rampant. I want to change this. Better yet, I want to build solidarity and collectively figure out how to play some offense. HELU is an important and overdue movement, and I commend all of the hard work that has come before this moment.
• Bill Lipkin, Union County College Chapter of United Adjunct Faculty of NJ
  My name is Bill Lipkin, and I am running for the position of representative of Community Colleges or Part-Time Adjunct Faculty. representative on the HELU Steering Committee. I have been a member of HELU since inception. One of my current positions is President of United Adjunct Faculty of New Jersey, representing adjunct faculty in most of the community colleges in New Jersey. I have been teaching in several community colleges for the past 35 years, and I have a deep understanding of the unique issues faculty and staff deal with at 2-year institutions, and how they differ from 4-year institutions. One issue I have been dealing with is creating pay equity for adjunct faculty in community colleges with their counterparts in 4-year institutions. I am also a strong advocate for adjunct faculty in community colleges and the need for recognition of their contributions to the system.

Statewide Systems

• Bret Benjamin, United University Professions (UUP)
  It would be a privilege to help build HELU into a broad and powerful national coalition of unions with the capacity to reshape higher education from the perspective of labor. I am a tenured faculty member in English at SUNY Albany, and a member of United University Professions (UUP), which represents some 40,000 academic, professional, contingent, and health-care employees. I have been the lead contract negotiator for UUP and currently serve on its Executive Board. I have served on HELU’s interim steering committee, and have been involved in outreach, convention planning, constitutional drafting and coordinated organizing. I believe both in the HELU vision of sectoral higher-ed coordination, and in the organizational structure of a member-funded coalition. However, I realize that HELU’s aims can only be realized with full participation of member unions. I am committed to doing the work neede to realize HELU’s ambitious and principled goals.
• Evan Bowman, AFSCME Local 328
  I joined HELU as a delegate and member of the Communications Committee in September 2023. I have been a member of the Convention Planning Committee since it’s inception, and in that capacity worked closely with Ian and Tracy on the convention’s technical aspects.
  My day job is an IT Project Coordinator. In my union, AFSCME Local 328, representing 8,500+ healthcare workers, I am the IT Chair, a lead steward, and member of the Labor/Management Committee. I have recently begun an 8-week Emerging Leadership program with Oregon AFSCME.
  I am very invested in, and encouraged by, the work being done by HELU and seek to put my skillset to use for the Common Good. I am the father of four teenage students who will not be able to access higher education without fundamental change. I’m also greatly concerned by the crackdown on Academic Freedom.
  I ask for your vote.
• WON – Rebecca Givan, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
  I have served in Rutgers AAUP-AFT as treasurer, vice-president, president and bargaining chair and am currently General Vice-President of our union. In Rutgers AAUP-AFT we have worked hard to build a fighting, organizing union representing full-time tenure track and non-tenure track faculty, graduate workers, post docs and counselors. Together with our sibling unions representing biomedical faculty and adjunct faculty, we have worked to build power and win the kind of university our students and patients need. By organizing together, bargaining together, and striking together we won significant material gains and improvements across our campuses. I believe strongly in the HELU vision of a wall-to-wall, coast-to-coast higher ed labor movement and look forward to building a strong, well-coordinated organization where we can fight together for higher ed for all, fighting unions, and the just campuses our students deserve.
• Carolyn Kube, United University Professions 2190
  Thank you for considering my nomination for a seat on the HELU steering committee. I am a 30 year union activist and currently the statewide Vice President for Professional in United University Professions (UUP). I am a medical technologist who worked in the laboratory that supports the kidney and bone marrow transplant services at Stony Brook University Hospital. (SBUH). I have held various elected positions in UUP, one being the chapter president of SB HSC and hospital chapter. This chapter is a microcosm of our wall to wall union, in which I gained knowledge about all types of academic and professional members working conditions. I bring a wide breath of knowledge having served on 3 negotiations teams, a deep understanding of hospital funding, safe staffing, contingent work and physician practice plans. I have organized a successful multi union campaign for hazard pay during COVID. I humbly ask for your support.

Non-collective bargaining advocacy organizations

• WON – Aimee Loiselle, Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education (SFNDHE)
  As a facilitator for SFNDHE in 2021, I was active in three events that facilitated the formation of HELU. I worked with the Labor and Working-Class History Association to coordinate a plenary on College for All. I was also active in recruiting unions and leading breakout sessions for the summer Labor Summit that became a foundation for HELU. I played a similar role in the 2022 Summit and helped revise the Vision Platform. I have continued attending general meetings, writing pieces with the Media/Communications Committee, contributing as co-chair of the Politics/Policy Committee, and serving on the Interim Steering Committee. Tracy Berger and I coordinated an event about state battles in Connecticut, Florida, Texas, and Massachusetts. I have an understanding of HELU’s development and the significance of formalizing leadership and membership for the long fight to make higher education a public good for all students, faculty, staff, and communities.

Non-collective bargaining jurisdiction organizations

• WON – Emily Steinlight, AAUP-Penn
  As my chapter’s HELU delegate and a founding co-organizer and current VP of AAUP–Penn, I am honored to run for Steering Committee. I have seen firsthand how vulnerable our institutions are to political attacks and long-term structural attacks that put us in this position, including state disinvestment in education and increasing contingent employment. My cross-rank chapter fights for job security and fair pay for lecturers, freedom to learn, and democratization of university governance. Our labor solidarity work supports unionization and building a campus coalition. I’ve been involved in national mobilization on the Steering Committee for the Day of Action for Higher Ed. As chair of Organizing & Outreach, I worked with a small team to get 110 union locals and chapters to organize campus actions on April 17. I am committed to higher ed for all and coordinated organizing wall-to-wall and coast-to-coast to win the higher education system we need.

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