Professors of the practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts most recently held a bargaining session for their first contract with the university on Feb. 25, continuing negotiations that began in April 2024. The professors are seeking wage increases, heightened research support and increased transparency on hiring practices from the contract.
Megan McMillan, a SMFA professor of the practice and a Service Employees International Union member, provided an update about the state of negotiations.
“We’re still very much in the middle of it, so we have negotiations that are ongoing. So far, we’ve had some productive conversations, but we’re still kind of trying to establish these benchmarks,” she said. “The major things that we’re concerned about, salary, workload — those are not at a place where we have made significant movement.”
“The university continues to negotiate with Service Employees International Union Local 509 on a first contract for the professors of the practice,” Patrick Collins, Tufts’ executive director of media relations, wrote in a statement to the Daily. “We have reached tentative agreement on a number of proposals and continue to be engaged in productive negotiations with the union over remaining proposals, including wages.”
39% of the PoPs live over an hour away from SMFA because of the expensive cost of living in the Boston area, McMillan said.
“I can’t afford to live nearby, and I particularly can’t afford to have studio space nearby,” she said. “I have a pretty fantastic studio set up in Rhode Island — which I’m fortunate to have been able to develop — but it means that my students are not able to come to my studio to work in the same capacity.”
Lauren O’Connor-Korb, another SMFA professor of the practice, explained how difficult the long commutes can be for student-faculty connections.
“It’s really hard to build that community when all your professors are either commuting long distances to come in because they can’t afford to live in the city, or they are preoccupied with living paycheck to paycheck, which a lot of us are,” she said.
PoPs at SMFA also seek greater support for their research in a finalized contract.
“We’re looking at studios and research support,” McMillan said. “Research is really artistic practice as well, and [if] we’re evaluated on that criteria, then we really have to be enabled to do the work. So we need research support, space to do that work and time to do that work.”
As the negotiations approach a year since they began, PoPs anticipate the negotiations continuing still longer, though the timeline is uncertain.
“I think that’s also entirely up to Tufts, right? They could settle this contract tomorrow,” O’Connor-Korb said. “None of the things that we’re asking for are that crazy.”
“We have been working on this for well over a year, and we are really committed to [SMFA] and to Tufts and being part of this, and we want to make progress,” McMillan said. “The slowdown is not on our end at all.”
For O’Connor-Korb, the new contract is not just for the current PoPs but also for those who come after.
“I want the world to be left in a better place than I found it and that seems like that’s increasingly hard, but I think it’s my duty as someone who sees all these institutional spaces as a place that I hopefully open the door for a different, more broad group of people to come behind me,” O’Connor-Korb said. “I want to try to leave these spaces more equitable with better work-life balance, with realistic expectations [and] with livable wages.”
McMillan shared that they have received a lot of support from other Tufts unions and student groups, such as the School of Arts and Sciences Full-time Lecturers Union and the Tufts Labor Coalition.
“Our students are absolutely, enthusiastically on our side. They are our very best allies and support,” McMillan said. “We’ve had incredible support from the Tufts Labor Coalition. They are incredible partners.”
In October 2024, SMFA PoPs, A&S full-time lecturers and School of Engineering graduate workers protested in demand that Tufts meet their contract demands and delivered a signed petition to the Tufts administration at Ballou Hall. McMillan said she has seen great support from other unions this year.
“We have a lot of cross-pollination in the conversations that happen around actions, and we’ve had nothing but support from the FTLs and vice versa,” she said.
