Your membership doesn’t stop at the edge of campus. It also makes you a member of NEOEA, the Ohio Education Association, and the National Education Association — and each has rooms where decisions get made that reach back here.
You are part of something considerably larger
Through this chapter you belong to an association of over 122,000 educators in Ohio and 3 million educators nationally. That scale is why we have a lobbying presence in Columbus, legal resources behind a grievance, and a voice in education policy that no single campus could build alone.
Most of that association is K-12 — which is exactly why higher education needs to show up
The great majority of OEA and NEA members teach in K-12 schools. That isn’t a problem to be fixed. It is where much of the association’s political strength comes from, and our K-12 colleagues stood with us when it counted — OEA opposed SB 1 and worked against it.
But an association sets its priorities through the people who turn up to set them. When higher education questions arise — tenure, post-tenure review, workload, program elimination, the particular way a university budget crisis lands on the people who teach — the number of people in the room who have lived those things is small. Nobody advocates well for an experience they have never had, and it isn’t fair to expect them to.
SB 1 was a higher-education-only bill. It is the clearest illustration available of why higher education needs its own voice inside the association rather than only support from it.
The goal isn’t to compete with our K-12 colleagues for attention. It is for higher education to be a constituency the association plans around from the beginning, rather than one it remembers partway through.
Where decisions actually get made
Representative assemblies are the policy-setting bodies. Delegates debate and vote on resolutions, legislative priorities, and budget — the documents that determine what the association fights for. NEOEA and OEA each hold a fall and a spring assembly; NEA holds a national assembly each summer. Delegates are elected by members here in the chapter.
Committees and councils do the year-round work. The OEA Higher Education Advisory Council (HEAC) is the body specifically concerned with our sector. Seats regularly go unfilled — which is to say there is usually room for anyone who asks.
NEOEA Committees
OEA Committees
Learning and training opportunities with NEOEA, OEA, and NEA are a way to strengthen both your teaching and service. Higher Ed voices are needed in these places as well. They are often looking for people to present, too.
NEOEA Learning and Training Opportunities
OEA Learning and Training Opportunities
NEA Higher Education Conference
What it actually takes
- NEOEA assembly delegate — two meetings a year (November and April), in the Northeast Ohio region, no overnight travel.
- Committee or council service — a handful of meetings across the year, increasingly hybrid
- Travel is covered and meal provided at NEOEA in-person meetings
- Travel and accommodations are covered by OEA for OEA All-Committee Weekend, HEAC meetings
- OEA assembly delegate — assemblies in Columbus in December and May.
- NEA assembly delegate — several days out of state in July, and the most interesting of the lot.
In most cases, YSU-OEA covers your travel and accommodations to OEA and NEA representative assemblies, though you may also seek funding from NEOEA or OEA.
You do not need prior union experience, a leadership title, or a background in labor. Most delegates learned how it works by going once.
How to start
- Watch for delegate elections in the Fall.
- Ask about committee openings!
- The Higher Education Representative on the NEOEA Board is Mandy Fehlbaum (president@ysuoea.org)
- Come to a general membership meeting and say you’re interested. That is genuinely the whole process.
If you have ever read a policy statement and thought that it clearly wasn’t written with universities in mind — that is the seat we need you in.