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ARCHIVE: January 2008

January 30th 2008

The Denial Twist

Listen to my blog entry here.

By now, if you haven't already heard about it, you must be very busy with grading papers. The "it" to which I am referring is the Preliminary Report from the New York Commission on Higher Education. The United University Professions, (UUP) spent quite a bit of time "urging" New York's Gov. Spitzer to fund additional full-time faculty slots. Of course, politicians need causes, and UUP's then president William Scheuerman and UUP gave Spitzer what he needed. In December, Dr. William Scheuerman talked up the idea to newspapers around the state. In one, he is quoted as saying, "UUP believes that there should be at least 70 percent full-time academic faculty at each SUNY campus." Currently, 62.2 percent of faculty are full-time, down from 73 percent in 1994.

Dr. Scheuerman was also quoted here as saying, "There’s a place for part-time professors, who may have a specialty or skill that’s not available in a department, [but] part-time professors may not stay at universities for the long term, so there is less stability...." This is simply a denial of the truth. Colleges typically hire many more faculty on the tenure-track than they ever intend to tenure. As a result, after 5-7 years, those full-time, tenure-line faculty who don't win tenure leave.

On our website, we polled visitors and asked: "How many years have you taught as a temporary faculty member?" Here are the results.

1-3 years	137 votes	34%
4-7 years	133 votes	33%
8-11 years	72 votes	18%
12-15 years	29 votes	7%
16-19 years	13 votes	3%
20+ years	18 votes	4%

Adjunct Advocate published an interview with Dr. Scheuerman in 2001. In that interview he said, "You simply can't have quality education when half the faculty is part-time. We used to have Rhodes scholars. Now we have roads scholars." Fundamentally, I agree with him. When part-time faculty teach loads in excess of 100 percent to make ends meet, it's just not possible to do one's best work, I believe.

All that being said, I am very disconcerted that UUP's leadership, as well as the AFT higher education leadership have chosen to focus solely on securing funding for more full-time faculty positions. That was the easier sell to the politicians, of course--more full-time faculty. What's bothering me about the AFT's multi-state drive to convince legislatures to pony up more funding for full-time faculty is that, despite the platitudes about the contributions of part-time faculty and their importance, the drive has left them twisting in the wind. For example, in New York, AFT affiliate UUP pushed for funding from the legislature which would benefit only full-time faculty members.

On January 25th, I sent along an email to UUP's president Dr. Frederick Floss, as well as the union's Vice President for Academics, Dr. Kenneth D. Kallio, for information concerning the recent contract negotiated by UUP. Officials negotiated across the board percentage raises for both full- and part-time faculty. I wanted to find out, in dollars, what the percentage raise meant. I also asked how many part-time faculty sit on the UUP's Negotiating Committee and Executive Board.

As is often the case when I ask these questions, I haven't heard anything back yet. As is wont to happen, UUP's leaders just may be busy doing the denial twist.

Posted By Patricia L. at 10:16 AM

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January 28th 2008

Monday Morning

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I spent Sunday morning filing out my tax forms. I actually don't mind doing it. It's just that it takes so much time. We use a computerized accounting program for personal finances, and that makes it exponentially easier to gather together the necessary data. I try to envision my entire chunk of a federal tax bill going toward, say, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Sleeping Bear National Park, Hiawatha National Forest--all national parks in Michigan that I've visited any times. I think taxpayers should be able to opt out of having their tax dollars go to fund certain things, say, the military. That way, there could be, literally, no blank check for war. When the Pentagon ran out of tax money alloted to it, well, the generals of the Joint Chiefs could hold raffles and bake sales.

Monday mornings usually find me playing a bit of catch up from the previous Friday. I never seem to get everything done on Fridays that I need to. I also do quite a bit of reading on Mondays, and make an effort to answer all of the unanswered email from the previous week. On Sunday, I received an email in response to the latest issue of the e-Advocate Newsletter complaining that the Adjunct Advocate needs to devote more editorial space to solutions aimed at wiping out the exploitation of part-time faculty. I replied to the email, and invited the author to contribute an essay. I asked her to write about how she decided to stop teaching as an adjunct. In her email, she said she would rather flip burgers than work as a part-timer. I look forward to her piece.

Writer Terri Hughes-Lazzall turned in her piece this morning. She is a writer new to the pages of Adjunct Advocate and she did a piece about adjunct bloggers. Writer Marjorie Lynn is set to begin her interview with the organizing committee at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Michigan. Marjorie, you may remember, just finished a profile of Susan Titus, president of the new part-time faculty union at Wayne State University. The members of Oregon's statewide COCAL organizing committee are still working on their answers to my questions. Barry Edwards, a member of the committee, has told me that I can expect their responses soon.

Finally, you may have noticed that blog readers no longer need to login to leave comments. So if the spirit moves you, feel free to add your comments to my entries, as well as those of the "Part-Time Thoughts" blog. As a reminder, registration is no longer needed to view job particulars, either. And when you go to the magazine, you may view select articles from the current issue, as well as all of the content from the previous issue without registration.

The song accompanying this entry is "Stormy Monday Blues," by B.B. King. Hope your Monday's not as tough as B.B.'s.

Posted By Patricia L. at 9:00 AM

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January 25th 2008

Back at University

Listen to my blog entry here.

When I finished my graduate degree in creative writing, I promised myself I would not be one of those perpetual students. You know the type: they double-majored as undergrads. and hold three graduate degrees in wholly unrelated fields. They just like being students. Graduate school was somewhat harrowing for me. The Director of my graduate program took a disliking to me. To make matters worse, he was my thesis advisor, and at the end of my program refused to write me a letter of recommendation. At least he was consistent. I'm consistent, too. Every time I am asked for money by the MFA program at the University of Michigan, I politely reply I will donate when Professor X, who is still involved with the program, albeit tangentially, retires, dies or both.

Nonetheless, I decided to take a class this semester. It gets me out of the office, and since I chose an upper-level Italian comprehension and writing course, I am having a great time. I am actually studying with a teacher whom I've known since I was an undergraduate. She was a grad. student then, studying for her Ph.D. The class is small, under a dozen students, and we do reading and recitation. I am fluent in Italian; I lived and taught for three years in Rome. It is a great treat to be able to chatter away in Italian. Well, actually, I try not to chatter away too much. When the instructor asks a question and no one answers, I help her out. I am auditing the class, after all. The people getting the grades should have a chance to answer the questions first!

This past week, we read a story set in the early 1900s about a man from southern Italy who wants to emigrate to America. He goes to Naples to catch a boat, but is tricked. The Neapolitans who take his money, sail around the Mediterranean for a month, then let their 300 passengers disembark in "America" in the dead of night. Only it isn't the coast of New York. It's Sicily. The story ends happily, and I learned the word "rickety," in Italian.

Well, I hope your week has been as pleasurable as mine. In my next entry, I want to talk about some upcoming content that I am very excited about. In the meantime, saluti cordiali dalla casa editrice dall'Adjunct Advocate! (Translation: best wishes from the offices of the Adjunct Advocate, Inc.).

The song accompanying this entry is called "Postcards from Italy," by the singer Beruit.

Posted By Patricia L. at 5:07 PM

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January 21st 2008

Writing to the Other Editors

Listen to my blog entry here.

I just finished reading the November/December 2007 issue of Academe. It is published by the American Association of University Professors for the membership, around 40,000, most of whom are, not so oddly, white, tenure-line and men. Not that AAUP hasn't been trying to organize part-time faculty. I just think there's quite a bit of competition (thankfully) for the part-time groups that do organize, and AAUP loses out to more aggressive campaigns mounted by the other unions, which include the United Auto Workers, if you can believe it. We live in very interesting times.

Academe, under AAUP's Director of Communications Gwen Bradley, has made some great strides in covering issues related to part-time faculty. In the November/December issue was a piece written titled "On Adjunct Labor and Community Colleges." (Subtitled: They’re experienced, dedicated, and overworked, and they make up the majority of your colleagues at any given community college. Give them a place at the table, for the sake of the whole institution.) It's written by Catherine Adamowicz, an associate professor of English at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Rhode Island. For five years, Adamowicz was coordinator of service learning and a teacher of writing and literature courses. Currently, she is chair of English and humanities and coordinator of elementary education as well as a teacher.

I read the piece several times, and then composed a somewhat tart letter to the Editor of Academe. Writing letters to the editor is a regular part of my job. I try to keep them even-handed, but sometimes I read essays and opinion pieces written by full-time faculty about part-time faculty and just can't help myself.

Anyway, my letter to the Editor appears below. Read the Academe piece yourself. I'd be interested to know what you think.

From: editor@adjunct....
Subject: On Adjunct Labor and Community Colleges
Date: January 19, 2008 6:16:45 PM GMT-05:00
To: academe@aaup.org

To the Editor:

I read this piece with interest until I reached the section titled "Reliance on Part-Timers." In that section, Catherine Adamowicz writes, "As it is not possible for an individual, let alone a head of household, to live on $9,732 per year, parttime faculty today cobble together multiple parttime teaching positions, just as I did twenty years ago. And, just like me twenty years ago, most parttime faculty today probably have little time or energy to meet with students, create new materials through reflection on their teaching practices, or serve on committees." What?!?

As a department chair, it is absurd for her to simply accept that the part-time faculty whom she employs "probably have little time or energy to meet with students, create new materials through reflection on their teaching practices." The obvious answer would be to strive to inform herself throughly concerning the employment situations of those faculty whom she employs, and to hire in such a way so as to stop perpetuating a system that leaves students in the hands of faculty members who choose to overextend themselves for whatever reason.

Further, Ms. Adamowicz writes, "Since most institutions make no commitment to future employment for contingent faculty and offer little money and no medical insurance during employment, why should these overworked, underpaid professionals have any loyalty to the institutions or the students?" Again....what?!? The part-time faculty who accept employment have the ethical obligation to offer their best efforts to their students and their profession. Period. Expecting any less, again, perpetuates the very employment system that Dr. Jacoby documents in his study as adversely impacting student graduation rates.

In short, Ms. Adamowicz offers what can only be described as lame excuses for both her own perpetuation of a terribly misguided employment system, as well as for the part-time faculty who choose employment within the system. The time has come to expect more of part-time faculty, terminal degrees for instance, as well as advising and research requirements. Only then will these women and men be selected with the same careful scrutiny applied to full-time hires, compensated and valued as full colleagues. Part-time faculty are essential members of the academic community, not victims of circumstance with graduate degrees for whom excuses must be found.

Sincerely,

P.D. Lesko
Executive Editor
Adjunct Advocate
PO Box 130117
Ann Arbor, MI 48113-0117

The song accompanying this entry is "Please Read This Letter," by Robert Plant and Alison Krause.

Posted By Patricia L. at 1:00 AM

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January 17th 2008

You May Be Right (I May Be Crazy)...

I spend a lot of my time working on our webpage, several hours each week. It has been my goal over the course of the years to automate as much of the work as possible. That's why you can sign yourself up to receive the e-Advocate Newsletter, for instance. The weekly email newsletters go out automatically, while I'm sleeping. I am constantly amazed at what it is possible to do, programatically, with a website. It is only limited to the imagination of those involved with the website!

Several years ago, I decided to lock down some of the content of the website. I did this, in part, so that we could continue to archive the pieces written for the magazine, and respect the copyrights of the writers involved. I don't force writers to sell me all of the rights to their work. I think it's unethical. As such, when you go into the archive and find a piece written in 2002, for instance that you want to read, you need to pay a small fee to do so. That money, as I've said before, goes directly to the authors.

I also decided at that same time to require registration to view the particulars of jobs listed on the site. Anyone could search the jobs, but without registering you were unable to view the details. I did this in an effort to make sure that those looking at the jobs were seriously interested in the resource. At the time I made that decision, the company which hosts our website charged us a fee for the use of bandwidth above and beyond that included in our monthly package. Today, the job search is the most popular resource on our website.

Several things have changed over the course of the past year or so. First, the company which hosts our site has dramatically increased the amount of bandwidth we may use each month as a part of the fee we pay. They have also dramatically increased the number of gigs of storage space we may use each month. Secondly, the sheer number of people visiting the site has risen steadily over the course of the past 16 months. We have an immense database of registered users, and it grows daily. That is a clear indication that the information, services, etc...that we offer on our website appeal to a large cross-section of users. When I locked down the content of the magazine archive, and the particulars of the jobs, we lost users. We have more than made up for the folks who simply didn't want to register.

Here's the bottom line: I am preparing to open up the previously locked down content of the AdjunctNation.com website. To begin, users will no longer be prompted to login to view job particulars. When you search and click on the links that come up, the particulars will be immediately displayed. Next, I am going to offer magazine content without registration. As always, selected pieces from the most current issue will be available free of charge. The entire contents of the previous bimonthly issue will also be available without registration or charge. In order to view older content, users will have to purchase AdjunctNationCredits.

Instead of requiring registration, we will invite visitors to join the AdjunctNation Family. By subscribing to the magazine and/or joining the Family, Family members will be notified automatically when new issues of Adjunct Advocate are posted online, and other parts of the website are updated, such as the blogs, JOBLIST and Forums. There will an exclusive email newsletter just for Family members, and special weekly prize drawings: we'll give away books, AdjunctNationCredits, Adjunct Advocate subscriptions, teaching supplies and even conference entry fees to events nationwide. We'll be organizing Family events in 2008, and it will culminate with an AdjunctNation Family Reunion in the Fall of 2008.

I am very excited at the opportunity to make such profound changes to the way we serve those who subscribe to Adjunct Advocate online and make AdjunctNation.com a regular destination. For the past 16 years, we have made leaps forward and been rewarded with more cheers than jeers. As always, I want to know what you think. Crazy? Genius? Somewhere in between? I look forward to reading your comments!

The song accompanying this entry really needs no introduction; it's a classic.

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 1:58 PM

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January 15th 2008

Tuesday Morning

I am feeling much better. Fever's gone; I actually went out to dinner last night. This morning, I read that the adjuncts at George Washington University had finally nailed down a new contract. It has been a long, long, long, long process for those adjuncts at GW who set out to organize a union at their university. Many years ago, I got an email from a GW adjunct (I honestly can't remember who at this point) asking for advice concerning which of the labor unions the group should affiliate with. I actually get this question a lot. Which is the best education union for part-timers? My answer is always the same: it depends. In all honestly, after years of reporting on part-timers who've gotten the short end of the stick from their union leaders, I have become slightly cynical.

Before anyone freaks out and forwards this post to some listserv where part-time faculty unionists will flay me alive for my lack of enthusiasm and unquestioning support of education labor unions and their work...yes, Virginia, I support unionization. I have had, however, way too many convos with both adjunct activists and temporary faculty who were in unified locals controlled by full-time faculty intent on bargaining for the biggest piece of the pie for themselves. So, I support unions, but have some serious concerns about how local, regional and national union groups represent part-timers. Sue me.

I suggested the part-timers at GW check out all of the education unions, sent them information on unaffiliated part-time faculty unions, and suggested they seriously check out the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) then a new kid on the education union block. Today, it's the fastest growing union in North America. I am not surprised. When I read that SEIU President Andy Stern (a great short interview with Andy Stern appears here) had broken away from the AFL-CIO, and his mentor, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, I had high hopes for the organization. When I saw SEIU organize part-timers, I was elated.

The part-timers at George Washington University formed SEIU Local 500. This morning, I asked GW adjunct and organizer Professor Kip Lornell to write an essay about his eight year involvement with the organization effort. He sent me back a very nice reply. Even though he has a book due to Prentice-Hall soon, and other writing assignments, he is going to tell Adjunct Advocate readers all about the process of winning recognition for the SEIU-affiliated local of 1,200 part-timers.

I went to the GW Local 500 webiste, downloaded and read their new contract. For those less inclined to know the exact details, you can download the contract summary here. It makes for excellent reading.

In the meantime, I hope those of you with questions and answers about unionizing will visit our new "Shoptalk" message board. There, visitors can ask questions, share stories, and connect with other interested part-timers.

The song accompanying this entry comes from a Vancouver group called Sweatshop Union. The title of the song is "Union Dues." Enjoy.

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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January 11th 2008

Blogging From Bed

Still sick. Actually, I haven't been struck down by a virus like this in quite a long time, so I suppose I was overdue. I wrote my letter from the editor yesterday, and chatted with two new writers. I am preparing to plan our yearly Colleagues Abroad issue. So, I need to find writers from abroad to contribute. I chatted with a writer from Cambridge, England, and another from Australia. I use a software from Gizmo Project, and with my broadband connection can call abroad for between 1.5 and 2.0 cents per minute. Put simply, I call using my computer and a Bluetooth headset. The technology works like a charm! I can call family in Italy, chat for an hour and it sets me back less than $2.00.

As for the Colleagues Abroad issue, I want to interview the head of the Part-time Faculty Union in India, get the scoop on part-time faculty working in Mexico (Here's where I kick myself for not speaking Spanish fluently), find out about casual faculty in Australia, and check back with the Associate Lecturers in the UK. We'll also have an update on the foreign lecturers in Italy, all of whom teach on temporary contracts.

I read a fascinating article from the Iceland Review that looked at the renaissance of higher education in that country. Iceland's population is tiny, but administrators at the country's flagship university, the University of Iceland, recently announced that by 2010 they want their institution to be among the top 100 universities in the world. They have their work cut out for them, as the University of Iceland doesn't currently appear in the top 500 of the world's top universities. In the course of reading the piece, I also learned about Reykjavík University, a newcomer to the higher education scene in Iceland, but an extremely successful institution nonetheless. The university employs many part-time faculty, and does not offer faculty tenure. I want to learn more about the use of part-time faculty in their system.

Finally, I have been catching up on my listserv emails. I belong to several listservs related to adjunct faculty. By far the most interesting discussion was on the adj-L listserv. There, members of COCAL (conference on contingent academic labor) have been discussing whether to take the group national as, perhaps, a union. Such an organization could change the face of higher education.

So, until my next entry, I am going to try to get some rest and not feel too awfully sorry for stuffed up, congested, feverish self. After all, I have a lot to be thankful for, and it's important to accentuate the positive.

Yes, "Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive" is the song I chose to accompany this entry. I couldn't help myself. I chose Ella Fitzgerald's version. Hope you like it.

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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January 8th 2008

I Love Vienna

I am sick. So, I have been doing work from bed and my desk–when I don't have a fever and chills–and catching up on my reading. Please don't laugh when I confess that I have just recently discovered the miracle that is the RSS feed and RSS feed reader. Oh, alright. Go ahead and laugh. I can take it. I am ahead of the curve enough not to feel that insecure about my handle on technology.

I use a MacBook Pro and an open source RSS feed reader called Vienna. I adore Vienna. According to the Vienna website, "Vienna is a freeware, open source RSS/Atom newsreader for the Mac OS X operating system. It provides features comparable to commercial newsreaders, but both it and the source code are freely available for download." Vienna is absolutely free. People all over the world work on the program so that the rest of us can use it.

I am still amazed by the open source community and its commitment to providing quality software without locking down the source code. The shop we use on our site is an open source program as well called OS Commerce. Our programmer can modify it (and has) freely, and we end up with an online e-commerce solution that is incredibly sophisticated and, yes, free. However, I digress; back to Vienna.

I read education news from a variety of newspapers and magazines in a variety of languages. I also read a certain number of education blogs. I am still deciding about many of the education blogs I read. In any given day, all of the bloggers may link to the exact same article and/or each other. As a result, many higher education education blogs can be tedious.

Vienna allows me to see, at a glance, all of the headlines from a particular news source without visiting the publication's webpage–unless I want to, of course. I save time and find that I can actually read more, because I am choosing what I want to read. No more getting sucked into the black hole that is The National Review and its webpage. No more getting lost in the archives of The Atlantic.

Here are a couple of my favorite daily feeds:

International Herald Tribune.

Guardian Unlimited

I'll share more of my favorite feeds another time. If you have education news sites you'd like to recommend, please do in the comment section. Right now, it's time for a cough drop and back to Vienna.

P.S. The song accompanying this entry is "The Wiener Schnitzel Waltz" from Tom Lehrer. He was a math prof. at Harvard in the early 60s. His very successful sideline was writing and performing songs of political satire.

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM