PSC History

2022 was the PSC’s Fiftieth Anniversary:

On April 14, 1972, the Legislative Conference and the United Federation of College Teachers merged to create the Professional Staff Congress.

The union organized several fifty-year commemorative events in September 2022, including a gala on September 22. Click here to view a photo gallery of the 9/22/22 event.

At the September 22 gala, the PSC presented a slideshow covering the union’s first five decades.

The retiree chapter presented a special virtual program to celebrate the PSC’s first fifty-years on Monday, June 6, 2022. Here is a video of the full program.

Irwin Yellowitz, PSC History from 1972-1997 (27:30)
Lilia Melani, CUNY Women’s Class Action Suit (42:35)
Barbara Bowen, Retrospective on her PSC Presidency (55:00)
Cecelia McCall, History of PSC Legislative Work since 2000 (1:13:00)
Slide Show, Fifty Years of Images and Memorable PSC Moments (1:22:00)
James Davis, Moving Forward (2:03:00)

Click here for a list of 50-year members of the PSC.

Archival Material:

Seventeen interviews by the PSC Archive Committee of leaders and activists in the PSC’s history are available at the NYU Tamiment library. They are accessible online. Go to the Digital Tamiment, do a search for the “Professional Staff Congress” and you will have access to the interviews. Most of these interviews plus much more PSC historical material is available at the CUNY Digital History Archive. A search for “Professional Staff Congress” or “PSC” will yield rich results.

4 Decades of PSC History:

Below are images of five poster boards created to mark the PSC’s 40th anniversary in 2012. You can take a closer look at the poster boards with an enlarged view by downloading them as PDFs. (There are also two YouTube videos available exploring PSC history: 1. Irwin Yellowitz on the first 25 years of the PSC; and 2. Steve London on PSC history from the mid 1990s).