AP Assembly
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Hundreds of professional employees along with career and non-tenure track faculty at the University of Florida are expected to attend the first campus-wide meeting of the newly formed Academic and Professional Assembly or APA at 4 p.m. Feb. 25 at the Reitz Union.
The professional organization is being formed to provide these UF staffers and professors a group that can speak on university-wide issues. Faculty and students have representatively elected senators, but until now, academic and professional workers have not, according to assembly spokesperson Cheri A. Brodeur of the Institute for Food and Agricultural Science (IFAS0 division of program evaluation.
"I was assigned to be on several university wide committees and realized that suggestions I was making that might impact the university were only coming from me," Brodeur said. "I asked about and discovered there was no organization that could speak on behalf of academic and professional personnel."
Some 2,200 UF workers are eligible for membership in the APA, according to a survey done by the APA organizing committee. This group has been working since November to bring the assembly into being after holding an initial meeting with Provost David R. Colburn.
The president's office has approved a website, which is already up and online at http://apassembly.ufl.edu.
Brodeur says APA will offer its members representation, recognition and opportunities to network. "We can in a positive way represent the decisions being made that affect us as a group and we can present and clarify issues that relate to what we do," she said. "We can also give members the opportunity to meet and to get to know each other."
But Brodeur stresses the university as an institution will also benefit from the APA because its members are people "interested in positive interactions who are willing to look at possible solutions to challenges facing the university. We offer a teaming concept."
Brodeur says response so far has been "overwhelmingly positive" with some UF employees expected to come in from satellite offices around the state to attend the meeting. Elections for a slate of officers and to approve a constitution are scheduled for May.