Hello PSU! Thank you for lending the University Staff Association (USA) a corner of your newsletter. Members of our union and yours work closely together in many places on campus, supporting departments, students, and professors. While our roles on campus may be very different, USA and PSU members largely fill education roles in support of faculty and students. USA roles include your office managers, library assistants, UHS support staff, lab technicians, IT specialists, mail clerks, and many others. 

When the Donahue Institute became part of UMass Amherst in 2020, Meghan Flanagan and her colleagues in the institute’s economic and public policy research division became part of PSU.

Until recently, I only knew Brad Turner and Andrew Gorry in one dimension—our fearless leaders, enthusiastically taking charge of fighting for PSU causes. The talking heads who lead meetings. Those people who share their screens to highlight the minutia of the steps needed to get a fairer wage structure, combat privatization, and other things… (probably mentioned in the emails I skimmed).

However, after reaching out to them, I am delighted to report that they are also humans. Full, multifaceted, people just like the rest of us. To prove it, they agreed to answer some of my questions in the hopes of fleshing themselves out a bit more in my mind (and yours too).