Michigan
MSU tenured faculty expected to receive union recognition ⋆ Michigan Advance
A tenured faculty union at Michigan State University appears to be on the cusp of recognition without the need for a formal election.
On Dec. 22, the Michigan Education Association (MEA) filed a petition with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC) on behalf of the Union of Tenure Stream Faculty (UTSF), which seeks to represent more than 1,700 tenure system faculty and librarians at MSU. The union also asked MSU for voluntary recognition under terms of a 2021 collective bargaining policy which says the university “will accept the bargaining unit proposed by the union as long as the proposed unit is reasonable.”
That “reasonable” threshold appeared to have been met by last Friday’s Board of Trustees meeting when Trustee Brianna Scott indicated they planned to voluntarily recognize the union, after organizers said 54% of faculty members had expressed support.
“I think most of us up here, and I’m looking at you Trustee Kelly, most of us up here are pro-union, I would say,” Scott said, referencing Trustee Dan Kelly, the board’s lone Republican.
The remark drew laughter from the audience, as well as a smile from Kelly.
“I just want to make sure that people feel that they’re heard in this process,” Scott continued. “That’s all we asked for, I think as a board, is that this process is a fair process and everyone understands it. So we will support you all. I don’t think you’re going to get any pushback, at least from seven of us.”
Afterward, board Chair Rema Vassar told reporters she didn’t believe even Kelly would oppose recognizing the union, which she said should come sometime in the next four to six weeks.
“I think that we’ve been briefed over and over, and updated on how things are developing, but I think you heard the faculty say that they would like that before the next meeting we have in April. I think we’re on the clock,” said Vassar.
The board’s next meeting is April 12 and if the UTSF is granted recognition before then, it will avoid the more formal MERC process, according to MSU spokesperson Emily Guerrant.
“For the MERC election process, the union must demonstrate more than 30% support of the bargaining unit, the verification is conducted by MERC and MERC then administers a confidential ballot election,” she told the Michigan Advance. “If the union obtains more than 50% of the votes in the election, MERC certifies the union as the representative of the bargaining unit.”
Among the union organizers is Professor NiCole Buchanan from MSU’s Department of Psychology.
“I have personally talked with hundreds of faculty about our union,” she said. “They have been impressed with our forward-thinking Board, proactively agreeing that if a majority of the faculty support a union, the board would voluntarily recognize us.”
While employee unions are a fact of life for any major public university, as demonstrated in last year’s strike by undergraduate employees at the University of Michigan, organizing by tenured track faculty is less common.
According to statistics from the Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education at Hunter College in New York City, over the past 50 years, less than a third of the 480 higher education collective bargaining units have represented tenure-track faculty.
However, William Herbert, the center’s executive director, tells the Advance that doesn’t necessarily mean there is less urgency by that group for collective bargaining rights.
“Over the past half-century there has been a major restructuring in faculty positions, with tenure track positions now constituting less than a third of all faculty,” said Herbert, who noted that unionization among tenure track faculty slowed considerably following the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision in NLRB vs. Yeshiva University, which found that faculty at private institutions were managerial employees and thus ineligible to unionize.
With that said, Herbert said the overwhelming majority of those who teach in higher education today do so on a contingent basis and are appointed per course, per semester, or per academic year.
“For the tenured and tenure track faculty, the more they are marginalized in decision making, the more likely they will support unionization,” he said. “Keep in mind that it is common for those in the public sector to have some form of job security based on statute or regulation. History has shown that the mere existence of that type of job security rights has not deterred those working in public sector occupations to unionize.”
That is borne out in a 2020 Gallup poll which found that just 20% of tenured faculty members strongly agree that their employer “would do what is right” if they raised a concern about ethics and integrity. Those issues have a definite resonance at MSU in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal and continued controversy over Title IX investigations
In addition, a 2021 survey by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) found that faculty participation in presidential searches had declined, from 94% to 88% since 2001. MSU recently appointed University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz as its new president, effective March 4. Guskiewicz is the university’s sixth president in the last six years.
Meanwhile, at the University of Michigan-Flint, approximately 16 organizers are seeking to form a union among the 164 tenured faculty through an affiliation between the AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers.
Efforts to obtain comment from either the AAUP or AFT were unsuccessful. However, an article in the April 2023 edition of the Flint-based East Village Magazine quoted organizers as saying they were “propelled by concerns about work load, campus climate, pay equity and alleged administration attempts to quash dissent.”
UM-Flint, which has struggled with declining enrollment, is currently searching for a new permanent chancellor following the departure of Debasish Dutta, who left in September for a position at the University of Illinois. Donna Fry, current dean of the College of Health Sciences, was appointed as interim chancellor of the Flint campus.
If tenured faculty at both MSU and UM-Flint are successful in unionizing, they would join tenured faculty at 10 other Michigan public universities, including Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Wayne State and Western Michigan universities, that have formed a union.
Advance reporter Anna Liz Nichols contributed to this story.
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EAST LANSING, Mich. – Jeremy Fears had 21 points and eight assists and Coen Carr also scored 21, helping No. 8 Michigan State hold off Rutgers 91-87 on Thursday night.
The Spartans (25-5, 15-4 Big Ten) will close the regular season on the road against rival and third-ranked Michigan on Sunday.
Michigan State has won five straight games to secure a top-four seed in next week’s Big Ten Tournament and a double-bye into the quarterfinals.
The Scarlet Knights (12-18, 5-14) have slumped toward the bottom of the 18-team conference.
Rutgers’ Tariq Francis scored 25 points, Lino Mark had 14 and Emmanuel Ogbole added 13.
Michigan State trailed by a point at halftime and took control with an 11-0 run. Carr dunked three times in 1:13 and Jordan Scott followed with a slam 32 seconds later.
The Spartans had a comfortable cushion until the final minute, when their 10-point lead was trimmed to two. Fears sealed the win with two free throws with 2.9 seconds left.
Jaxon Kohler scored 15 points and Carson Cooper added 14 in the final home game for both seniors.
Michigan State celebrated its seniors after the game, including Nick Sanders, son of Hall of Fame running back Barry Sanders of the Detroit Lions.
The school honored a military veteran, as it does every game before the national anthem is played, and the latest was Kohler’s 102-year-old great grandfather, Earl “Chuck” Kohler, who served in the Navy and is one of 12 remaining survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Up next
Rutgers: Host Penn State on Sunday.
Michigan State: At No. 3 Michigan on Sunday.
___
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2025 MI marijuana excise tax revenues drop for local governments
In 2025, local government retail license share dropped $4,211 from Michigan marijuana sales for the tax year. New taxes could cut it more in 2026.
Michigan municipalities and counties that allow recreational marijuana dispensaries are set to receive far less money this year than last in their annual portion of tax revenue collected from cannabis sales.
Sales declined in 2025 for the first time since legal recreational marijuana sales started in December 2019.
A total of 114 cities, 39 villages, 81 townships, 75 counties and four tribes will receive payments from the Marijuana Regulation Fund, according to a March 3 news release from Michigan’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency. They will get about $54,000 per retail store or microbusiness, based on nearly $94 million collected.
Last year, each eligible government entity received a little more than $58,000 per business based on a total of nearly $100 million in marijuana tax revenue.
Detroit, once again, will receive the most money of any municipality. There are 61 active retailer licenses in Detroit, so the city will get nearly $3.3 million in tax revenue.
State law determines how the money is split. The Michigan Transportation Fund gets 35% of the revenue, which is used for the repair and maintenance of roads and bridges, and another 35% goes to the School Aid Fund to be used for K-12 education. The other 30% is split between municipalities, counties and tribes.
The payments come from revenue collected from the 10% recreational marijuana excise tax. This tax is separate from a new 24% wholesale tax that went into effect Jan. 1. The revenue from that tax will go to fixes for local roads.
Sales at recreational marijuana dispensaries declined by 3% last year to $3.17 billion, down from $3.28 billion in 2024, according to figures from Michigan’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency, leading to the smaller payouts. More government entities also split the revenue compared with last year.
Payments to municipalities could get smaller if sales continue to decline. Recreational marijuana sales in Michigan plunged nearly 16% in January compared with December as heavy snow, cold temperatures and fears of higher prices due to the new 24% wholesale cannabis tax kept consumers at home.
While recent trends indicate a cooling period, a February report from Headset, a cannabis market intelligence firm, said the market — one of the largest in the country — has shown resilience over the last two years.
Below are the municipalities that received the most tax revenue:
- Detroit: $3.3 million
- Grand Rapids: $1.5 million
- Lansing: $1.4 million
- Ann Arbor: $1.2 million
- Kalamazoo: $1 million
- Flint: $648,000
- Traverse City, Hazel Park and Adrian all will receive $594,000.
For a full list of municipalities, counties and tribes that will receive marijuana tax revenue, go to www.michigan.gov/treasury.
Contact Adrienne Roberts: amroberts@freepress.com
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping everything from classroom conversations to social media, and leaders at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) say West Michigan is positioning itself to help determine how the technology is used, responsibly.
The university’s College of Computing is launching the West Michigan Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) Consortium, aimed at helping businesses, researchers and the community better understand how to use artificial intelligence.
Right in the heart of Grand Rapids, along the Medical Mile, the consortium will meet at the Daniel and Pamella DeVos Center for Interprofessional Health (DCIH) every week, with quarterly meetings open to the general public.
The effort is aimed at helping West Michigan industries adopt AI that fits their specific needs, while problem-solving for security, bias, privacy, and ethical concerns.
Right in the heart of Grand Rapids, along Medical Mile, the consortium will meet at the Daniel and Pamella DeVos Center for Interprofessional Health (DCIH) every week, with quarterly meetings open to the general public. (Abigail Taylor/WWMT)
Marouane Kessentini, Ph.D, Dean of the GVSU College of Computing told News Channel 3 that a wide range of companies in the region are bringing forward questions of where, and how, to ethically integrate artificial intelligence into their practices.
“Here in West Michigan, we have a high concentration of many industries, health, manufacturing, and of course high-tech companies,” said Kessentini. “The first questions are about security, privacy, ethics and bias. It’s not just about deploying tools. It’s about deploying them responsibly.”
Kessentini said the consortium will focus on training, research and community education, with a heavy emphasis on data privacy, cybersecurity and misinformation.
“There are many examples where AI systems were trained on data that wasn’t diverse,” he said. “That can lead to inaccurate results. That’s why testing and training are critical.”
The consortium will bring together faculty researchers, students, and industry leaders, with weekly meetings planned to develop guidance for using AI at scale.
The goal is to help companies validate AI outputs, clean and manage data, and identify bias before systems are put into real-world use, especially in high-risk industries like healthcare and manufacturing.
Some projects will involve software design, others will focus on creating public data sets that are reliably sourced, but anonymized for safe use, and many more are yet to be ideated.
Some projects will involve software design, others will focus on creating public data sets that are reliably sourced, but anonymized for safe use, and many more are yet to be ideated. (Abigail Taylor/WWMT)
The initiative is backed by $1,031,000 in federal support, through the Community Project Funding (CPF) process, resources that U.S. Representative Hillary Scholten (D-MI-03) said she advocated for among members of congress in Washington.
“West Michigan should be leading the way in how artificial intelligence is developed and used, and that starts with investing in people and institutions we trust,” said Rep. Scholten. “This funding will help GVSU bring together educators, industry, and public partners to build AI systems that are ethical, secure, and transparent while preparing students for good-paying jobs and strengthening our region’s economy. I’m proud to support this work and to continue delivering federal investments that ensure West Michigan remains at the forefront of responsible innovation.”
It’s important that AI is useful, but also safe…
GVSU also launched an online certificate portal that is open for community members interested in learning about ethical AI use, for free.
Kessentini said the training is for the general public to learn how to navigate the technology, including the risks and limitations.
“It’s important that AI is useful, but also safe,” said Edgar Cruz, master’s student with a badge in cybersecurity.
Cruz is currently researching how AI systems can be attacked or manipulated with poisoned data, specifically as it relates to vehicle-to-vehicle communication, where AI helps self-driving cars exchange information like speed and position.
“We want to ensure that the system is robust and safe,” he said. “Because obviously people are involved.”
Kessentini said the consortium is designed to be a public resource, not just an academic project.
Quarterly community meetings will be open to the public, and training materials are available online through the College of Computing website.
“This is innovation with purpose,” he said. “We want to start here in Grand Rapids, but we want to make a global impact.”
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