AWARDS

Higher Education Member of the Year

Lorna Arrington

United University Professions

Lorna Arrington has been a member of United University Professions since its inception. She is currently in her 35th year as an associate professor at the University of Buffalo, teaching mathematics in the Educational Opportunity Center Program. Arrington has been active in UUP for 15 years as a delegate to UUP Delegate Assemblies, NYSUT Representative Assemblies and American Federation of Teachers Conventions. She has served for eight years on UUP's statewide executive board. She is widely hailed as a leader in academic unionism and student opportunity programs.

Known as quiet, calm and reserved, she is also recognized as a powerful force with an iron will and a formidable advocate for colleagues and the causes they have been pursuing over the years. Just to cite one example, Arrington was chair of UUP's EOC Concerns Committee in the 1990s and played a key role in securing tenure, promotions and salary equity for her Buffalo EOC faculty colleagues. Until then, they were on a non-tenure track, contrary to what existed at the other SUNY EOCs.

One colleague suggests Arrington is "tenacious" and unrelenting in a fight. But she is also "one of the foundations upon which our organization is built. She does the little things, the unrecognized, non-glamorous things" that always fall only to the most committed.

In addition to her union leadership, Arrington has been recognized as a faculty member of distinction. Among her honors is the Buffalo EOC Outstanding Faculty and Staff Award. Twice she has chaired the EOC math department.

The epitome of the outstanding union activist, Arrington has set a remarkably high standard for quality union service. As another colleague averred, hers is "a commitment to our union ... that we should all work to emulate."