Michael Lisi is the winner of the 2011 Max Steinbock Award, the highest honor given by the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA). Lisi, who writes for the United University Professions’ (UUP) “The Voice,” won for his story “Speaking Up for SUNY.” 

UUP, an affiliate of AFT and the National Education Association (NEA), represents more than 35,000 academic and professional faculty on 29 State University of New York (SUNY) campuses. 

The Steinbock award, named after a longtime ILCA president, honors the best labor story written in the previous year.

The ILCA’s annual Labor Media Awards this year include prize categories for social media, print, Web, photo essay, electronic newsletter, blog and multimedia campaigns. The awards will be presented formally Sept. 24 at the ILCA Convention in Seattle.  Click here for a full list of this year’s winners.

Lisi’s story describes the impact that budget cuts have had on students, parents, faculty and staff on SUNY”s campuses. They all are increasingly feeling the sting of $410 million in state cuts to SUNY over the past 18 months—including a whopping $90 million mid-year slashing of the university’s budget in October that knocked SUNY funding to its lowest levels since the 1990s.

Juliette Price came to SUNY’s Oneonta campus with a year’s worth of college credit earned in high school and a goal to graduate in three years, which would give her a jump on finding a job and save her parents a full year of college tuition.

Now, because of budget cuts, Price, a junior pursuing a double major in anthropology and French, is going to be at Oneonta for an extra semester because she can’t get the advanced French courses she needs to earn her degree. According to Price, one teacher retired and fewer course sections are available. So she’ll have to wait an extra semester until the course she needs is offered.

“It’s a sore point for me,” Price’s father, Scott Price, told Lisi.

Higher education is tough enough to fund without having [the state] ship tuition money off for other purposes. Picking on higher education is regressive.