Faculty Records

The faculty records collection breaks down into six series: faculty meetings and activities, publications centered on faculty, campus wide professional associations, women's clubs, annuitant's organizations, and faculty vita. Both President Adams and President Holmes regularly called faculty meetings during the academic year from the 1930's through the 1950's. Agendas, minutes, and reports from these meetings appear in the first series. Similar records for the Faculty Club's activities and meetings are also available. With the attainment of university status in 1957 and the explosive growth in the 1960's, college faculty meetings replaced the traditional campus wide meetings. Records of the college meetings may be found in the files of the various colleges. The annual presidential State of the University Addresses are in the Presidential Papers Collection (UA 4), and a few are on tape in the Audio-Visual Collection. Faculty Club records were added to the files until the organization dissolved in 1996. With her arrival on campus in 1940 Clara Sperling began to publish a monthly Faculty Bulletin. It is the best single source on faculty growth and accomplishments up to 1998 when the publication was discontinued. The staff directories and publications bibliographies provide information on individual faculty. Series three, records of professional associations, documents the establishment of a Sigma Xi chapter on campus, the efforts to bring a Phi Beta Kappa chapter to N.I.U., and the growth of several collective bargaining units on the campus during the past thirty years. Sigma Xi, a national organization dedicated to "the encouragement of original investigation in science, pure and applied," established a local chapter at N.I.U. in 1969. The Sigma Xi records are complete and trace the founding and activities of the local unit from 1957 to 1969. N.I.U. faculty brought local branches of the National Education Association (N.E.A.), the American Association of University Professors (A.A.U.P.), and the American Federation of Teachers (A.F.T.) to the campus in the 1950's and 1960's. These local units allied in a Coalition of University Professors (C.O.U.P.) in 1975. In October of 1980 several faculty unions merged into the University Professionals of Illinois (U.P.I.) local 4100. Ten volumes on the First Collective Bargaining Campaign and Election at NIU as assembled by Jack Bennett of NIU's Biology Department during his involvement with the collective bargaining campaign are included. Minutes of meetings, reports, policy statements, constitutions, news clippings, and correspondence document the origin and growth of these organizations. Series four, women's clubs, covers Academic Women for Equality, Charter Club, Newcomers' Club, Dames Club and University Women's Club. Included are minutes, newsletters, news clippings, membership lists and directories, correspondence, treasurer's reports, and scrapbooks. The fifth series deals with the NIU Annuitants Association (NIUAA), the State Universities Annuitants Association (SUAA) and the State Universities Retirement System (SURS). The history and progress of the various organizations at NIU are documented through minutes, reports and newsletters. The faculty vita file, series six, is primarily comprised of vitae, but also includes press releases, information sheets and obituaries for some of Northern’s faculty over the years, beginning in the early 1950's. A list of faculty included in this series follows the collection inventory. Further information on faculty may be found by searching other closely related series held in the University Archives, in particular the Faculty Papers Collection (UA 18). The Public Information Office Records (UA 12) include newsletters for faculty and staff, news/press releases, and other publications including “Northern Today” that relate to faculty. The Audio-Visual Collection (UA 11) contains photographs of many teaching and administrative faculty, and the collection does have an index. "Reports of Academic Staff" in the Provost's Office Administrative Records (UA 16), yearbooks, catalogues, and departmental files also contain information on faculty.