A long day of negotiations continued between Eastern’s University Professionals of Illinois and the administration Thursday.

The negotiations still plod toward producing a mutually agreeable contract, but Eastern’s UPI Chief Negotiator Charles Delman, professor of mathematics, said resolving differences on issues such as workload, intellectual property rights, distance education, non-tenure- track faculty, academic freedom and governance has been more difficult than expected.

The workload negotiations center on what the appropriate teaching load at a university of high academic quality is, and how this affects the opportunity for students to learn.

Intellectual property rights involve protecting faculty from exploitation of their work. Delman questions how to maintain this protection while benefiting the public with educational opportunity and works of scholarship and art.

The protections and rights of faculty to provide distance education are also being negotiated.

The UPI is questioning the role non-tenure-track faculty play at the university and what can be done to provide them with adequate pay, working conditions and job security.

David Radavich, professor of English and Eastern’s UPI president, said these individuals are hired year to year and are sometimes pressured to do inappropriate things or risk losing their jobs.

Negotiations on the proper scope and protection of academic freedom and ensuring that faculty has some governance authority continue as well.

Delman said the “tough” negotiation issues are all things that involve money, such as workload and compensation.

“Once we got talking today, I thought things went better,” he said. “It was a pretty productive and much more open discussion.”

However, Delman said the UPI feels there needs to be a change of priorities.

These priorities include the lack of appropriated fees going towards faculty salaries, and the need to have one administrator for every three faculty members.

Delman said the UPI will not go public with more specific information at this time and the next round of negotiations will be Tuesday.

William Weber, acting associate vice president for academic affairs, declined to give his opinion on the progress of the negotiations, except to say that both sides continue to move forward.

“We continue to make substantive progress,” he said.

*News editor Jamie Fetty contributed to this report.