New York University professors are planning to march into President John Sexton’s 12th-floor office today to plead with him to negotiate a contract with graduate students.

Heading off what might have been a turbulent encounter outside of his Bobst Library office suite, where security guards stand sentinel, Mr. Sexton has agreed to meet with the scholars in a conference space that can accommodate three dozen people, an NYU spokesman, John Beckman, said.

Mr. Sexton is “always happy to meet with a group of his faculty,” Mr. Beckman said. “He’s going to be in listening mode.” That said, he indicated there was no possibility the administration would reverse course and return to collective bargaining.

Starting tomorrow, graduate students, possibly numbering in the hundreds, will refuse to perform teaching and research duties until the administration agrees to recognize their union. The United Auto Workers represented the students until this summer when their contract expired. NYU, with the permission of the National Labor Relations Board, has refused to negotiate another one.

The strike could cost NYU a chunk of its graders and some teachers, mostly in language courses. NYU has said it expects little in the way of academic disruptions and has threatened strikers with vague consequences.

Scholars sympathetic to the union have said they would show symbolic support by moving their classes off campus or perhaps online. A professor of history, Molly Nolan, said some discussed teaching with podcasting recordings of lectures using Apple’s iPod devices. She said she would move her undergraduate course on the history of women and gender in modern Europe to Fat Cat Billiards on Christopher Street.

Leading the delegation of scholars today is a professor comparative literature in NYU’s American studies program, Andrew Ross, who said he will be asking Mr. Sexton “to respect the wishes of our graduate students.”

Mr. Ross this semester teaches an introduction to American studies, which includes a three-week unit on the history of the labor movement. He has talked to his undergraduate students about efforts to unionize graduate students at NYU “at some length” during class, he said.

The professor splits grading in the course with a graduate student teaching assistant, who is likely to go on strike, he said. “I will not grade his students, but I don’t know what I’ll do with my students,” he said. It was unclear who would ultimately complete the grading.

A professor of mathematics, Jonathan Goodman, said his department has a contingency plan and courses would not be disrupted by the strike. He said graduate students would be “better served without the union,” which he said interferes with interactions between faculty and students.

The union representing the students, Local 2110 of the UAW, said 85% of NYU graduate student voting in a union election last month expressed support for a strike, but the union did not specify how many students voted. NYU’s administration has said about 1,000 graduate students act as teaching assistants each semester. It has predicted that a majority of those students would not participate in a strike.