Charles Delman is a professor in the math department and the president of University Professionals of Illinois. Delman has been at Eastern since 1994 when he was offered a tenure track position. This week he took time to sit down with Associate News Editor Nicole Milstead to talk about his views.

Question: What is one piece of advice you would give to students?

Answer: Think, don’t just memorize stuff. Just don’t try to follow instructions. Think about the material you are learning and try to be an independent person. Think hard about what you believe.

Question: What is UPI?

Answer: The union that represents the faculty and academic staff at this university. We have a chapter at this university, which is one of eight chapters. UPI stands for University Professionals of Illinois. We represent the tenured and tenure-track faculty, and the annually contracted faculty. Those are the people on one-year contracts and also the academic support professionals, which would include advisers, lab technicians and stock room people.

Question: What is the importance of UPI on our campus?

Answer: The importance of UPI as with any other union is to empower its members on campus. The faculty and academic staff do some of the most important work on the campus, and we are all dedicated to it. We have a big stake in it. We are committed to it, and we know how to do it well, and the purpose of a union, in my opinion, is to empower its members into taking control as much as possible with their lives at work and to make sure people are compensated for what they do.

Question: Why do you think it is important for faculty such as yourself to get involved?

Answer: Well I think it is important for everyone to get involved. There are a lot of very serious problems in the world, and there are a lot of things that could be improved about life, about politics, our economy, about our environment, and that everyone needs to get involved to make those improvements and make life better for everybody.

I think the only way it will happen is if people work together. I think it is particularly important for faculty to get involved because after all to some extent we are role models, we are older, and we have been through more of life. We have also had a lot of education, so I think faculty members can play a big role in helping the college students into being productive people and using their lives and energies well.

Question: Why is higher education so important?

Answer: I think education is important in general. Knowledge is power. The more you know and understand the better you are capable of living your own life productively and having a good quality of life for yourself. There are even statistics that show people who are better educated are healthier because they have a better understanding of how to make healthy choices: how to get good health care, avoid stress and so on. So the better educated you are the more fulfilling life you will have, the healthier you will be, the longer life you will have and the more able you will be to contribute to society.

Question: Why are labor unions so important in higher education?

Answer: It is very important for the faculty academic staff and more broadly the staff in general to be treated well, to have power and autonomy and to be adequately compensated so that we can continue to attract really good people to these kinds of work. Unfortunately I don’t think it would happen if we did not have labor unions to organize ourselves.

Question: If you could only be an advocate for one thing what would it be?

Answer: It would be for the repair of the ecological damage people have done to the planet because if we do not deal with things like global warming and serious toxic pollution problems and the devastation of the ecosystem like decline of the ocean. If we do not fix these problems then we won’t be around to fix any of the other ones.

Question: What do you think needs to change about Eastern?

Answer: I’d like to see the intellectual and cultural atmosphere develop more with more participation in political activity and debate and intellectual activity and movies and art events on campus. I think there are good events on campus, but I would like to see greater participation in them. People obviously are busy, but I think that is what makes the life of the university.

I would certainly like to see faculty and staff paid better. That would both send a message of respect and also help us to maintain the quality that we have here.

I would like to see the faculty and staff in general treated more as equals with the administrators. I feel there has been a trend toward the administrators thinking they have the vision, and it is all of our work in the classroom and laboratory and all of our creative work that counts and makes a difference.

I would like to see more movement. I think that there has been positive change in the years that I have been here but more movement to having intellectual and cultural intensity and more participation in life on campus as a community.