Happy Holidays... all of them

NEH summer programs for Community College faculty

The National Endowment for the Humanities supports tuition-free summer programs for community college faculty. There is also a series for K-12 teachers. Friends who have taken these workshops recommend them enthusiastically. You can follow NEH Education on Twitter.

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NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture: Workshops for Community College Faculty. Application Deadline: March 1, 2011


NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops are tuition-free summer programs for community college faculty. These one-week projects take place at sites of historical or cultural significance across the nation. Participants receive stipends to help cover travel and living expenses.

These projects are designed for faculty members at American community colleges. Adjunct and part-time lecturers as well as full-time faculty are eligible to apply. Other community college staff, including librarians and administrators, are eligible to compete, provided they can advance the teaching and/or research goals of the workshop. An applicant need not have an advanced degree in order to qualify. Applicants must be United States citizens, residents of U.S. jurisdictions, or foreign nationals who have been residing in the United States or its territories for at least the three years immediately preceding the application deadline. 

AAUP Joins Week of Action for Higher Education

Yesterday, November 17, was a Global Day of Action, which may seem to have come too close to Oct 7th for some. Maybe it's a generational thing, whether attention span, age thing or tiring more easily than the students. You can still follow the action at Defend Education, Global Wave, on Twitter and at various blogs. 


The university is conflicted: nor is anyone ~ students, staff, faculty, techs. researchers, managers ~ in it immune. Does it have to be an either/or when it comes to aligning ourselves with either the suits at conferences or bullhorns in the streets. Wherever individual sympathies lie, we must ~ in my personal opinion ~ listen to / work with both (however long a spoon that may call for), cannot ignore either. 


The 2nd Annual SEIU Forum on Part-Time Faculty Unions is this coming Saturday, Nov 19,  ~ D.C. in case you're in the neighborhood. AAUP Shared Governance Conference (with workshops) was last weekend, Nov 12-14. Reports in my RSS reader await an ever dwindling attention span.  In today's mail, a reminder from the "National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions"  about its 38th annual conference, April 10-12, 2011. If there is a more ungainly acronym than NCSCBHEP, I don't want to know about it.

AAUP Report on October 1-7 week of action... 

Oct. 17th Global Day of Action for Education

Reposted from the Defend Education Announcement List, info@defendeducation.org. We're not involved but in my opinion should be aware and informed ~ even members who don't support involvement for whatever reason. You can subscribe to updates or join the Defend Education group / mailing list online at Defend Education (which also organized and sponsored March 4th and October 7th Actions that included / represented faculty and staff as well as students). Follow on Twitter by searching hashtags #globalEdu or #ondaGlobal

Rereading the University Classics, Part 3

Reblogged from the Chronicle. Knowing where we've been is part of better understanding where we're headed (Whither U?) and deciding accordingly on strategies.  See also: Ortega y Gasset, Thorstein Veblen and Karl Jaspers on the university. 

Part 3 by Kai Hammermeister, from The Chronicle of Higher Education

"(Chronicle) Editor's Note: This is the third in a monthly series intended to introduce new generations of faculty members and administrators to a core set of classic books about higher education and its institutions. The first two columns are here and here.

John Henry Newman's 1852 collection of lectures and essays, The Idea of a University, goes to great length to defend the inclusion of theology in the curriculum of the then-new Dublin unversity. Newman, who had converted to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism, was the driving force behind the university's founding and its first rector. For American universities, teaching theology was never an option, and thus many of Newman's efforts seem to evaporate instantly. Yet the way he advocates the inclusion of religious instruction contains ideas that are applicable to today's curricular debates."

Read the rest at Rereading the University Classics

NFM Newsletter, Issue #4, now out

Members have already received their copies of News from New Faculty Majority by email. Back issues are available online here and on the New Faculty Majority website's newsletter page. The address for online viewing will remain active for 90 days ~ not indefinitely. It will still be available archived at a different link. Once archived, that link will be added to both back issue sites noted above. In the meantime, I'll be adding the temporary link to the blog's newsletter archive. 

Yes we have no targeted anchors in the menu to navigate a long page. Sorry about that. I keep asking. Until then, use ToC keywords + page search function. It's that or scroll. scroll, scroll your cursor (or the ↓ arrow ke y) merrily down the page.  

Table of Contents 

• On adding more voices: President's message
• Our collective voice will be heard: Tracy Donhardt, Board member, Newsletter Editor 
• Noteworthy adjunct activism: Board member Steve Street 
• Me and UC: unemployment filing narratives
• Gaining support and benefits at UI filing party: Peter Brown
• Part II: Non-tenure track researchers: Paul Erlich
• How to file a Freedom of Information Act request
• Announcements
• (Passing the Mortarboard)

And now jump to the newsletter...

SEIU 2nd Annual Forum on Part-Time Faculty Unions

click image for larger version

Nov 19, 9 am-1 pm at SEIU; 1800 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Click here for map

Learn how part-time faculty at higher education institutions across the country are joining together to improve their jobs and the education their students receive at SEIU's second annual forum on part-time faculty unions. Our contributions in and out of the classroom have value regardless of our tenure status, say event organizers. All professors need wages that reflect that value, access to benefits, job security, not to mention a voice in the policies that affect our students and our working conditions. 

Please join us to learn how others are making it happen. The forum is free and includes a catered breakfast. 


Click here for an event flyer; email mcleera@seiu500.org or call 301-740-7122 to RSVP and for more information.

Editing Update & Call for Submissions

Jeanette Jeneault, Syracuse University, writes...

I've been planning on sending out a notice about sections and deadlines for the anthology tentatively titled Contingent Faculty Researching Contingent Faculty. We have collected about 10 abstracts ~ and have not forgotten any of you. 

To date, there are sections on: 

• Academic Freedom
• Women and Contingency
• Evaluation Practices
• Online Teaching Related Issues
• Alternatives to Tenure

Each section containing chapters and offers poetry, photographs, and personal stories to intermix ~ good lead offs to sections. Marc Bousquet has offered to write a forward, and Marcia Neufield to be my co-editor. 

Any who still want to contribute or edit, just send me a quick note. Submission schedule:

• Proposal already submitted: first drafts, January 15, 2010
• Not submitted? Last chance for proposals / abstracts is January 15,2010
• Second drafts, March 15, 2010
• Final drafts, June 15, 2010

It is not too late to join the Contingent Faculty Researching Contingent Faculty project. Sections can be added depending on interest and submissions. I would like to add one on working conditions or something similar. Also let me know if you have changes your topic or abstract.

October was extremely busy for me, but I will have more time especially in December and January to devote to this. Also, we have been offered help finding a publisher, and of course, all proceeds will go to The New Faculty Majority.

This book will be a labor of love...and a stand of truth.

Please join us ~ Jeanette Jeneault, email jjeneaul@gmail.com, Syracuse University

Reading Room: Steve' Street's columns

Originally published March 21 2010, updated to correct bad links but worth republishing as current to bring it to your attention again... and mine as well for not following up on my exhortation to bring back the Reading Room series, which has only two other posts, "What are Universities for?" and "A Proposal to American Labor" (unless I retro-tag likely candidates among past posts).


Here's what I wrote introducing the first Reading Room post:

Remember the reading tradition in US union history? Reading Rooms in hiring halls. Samuel Gompers' cigar rollers voting to have a member on the clock read great books to them as they worked. Why not an online reading room right here

The call for suggestions still stands. Who and what are your choices? Cary Nelson, Keith Hoeller, Marc Bosquet.... all obvious choices. Let's include the less obvious as well. Accompanying links always appreciated. Post as comment or email me at vanessa.vaile@newfacultymajority.info

Thanks to NFM Board Member and Research Chair, Ross Borden, for list and heads up. Let's bring back the Reading Room and post more link lists. Suggestions welcome...

Steve Street: Select Bibliography 2008-2010

• “The Fog” (12 August 2010), Inside Higher Ed 
• "Wouldn't a New Progressive Era Require Faculty Equity?" (Fall 2009), Thought & Action (see Table of Contents under Special Focus). In pdf format 
• “Sticks and Stones, or Titles and Truth?" (23 Sept 2009), Chronicle of Higher Education 
• "The Silence of the Grads" (5 June 2009), Chronicle of Higher Education
• "Let's Talk Equity — Later" (14 Jan 2009), Chronicle of Higher Education: 
• "Mad About Numbers" (11 Dec 2008), Chronicle of Higher Education
• "Don't Be Kind to Adjuncts" (24 Oct 2008), Chronicle of Higher Education h
• "Don't Pit Tenure against Contingent Faculty Rights" (May-June 2008) Academe
• " A Cheeky Plea for Faculty Unity" (14 May 2008), Part-Time Thoughts, Adjunct Nation

What Happens if the Charter School Companies Win?

Among the arguments made by advocates for charter schools is that they expand consumer choice and that given the state of education in many inner-city minority communities experimentation with alternatives can only help the situation. As buzz words, choice and experimentation always sound good. After all, we know about the disappointing performance of many students in inner-city schools under the current educational system so why not try something else?

Unfortunately, we already know what will happen if private-for-profit charter school companies take over K-12 education in the United States because for-profit proprietary companies have already successfully invaded what used to be called "higher education." These companies have defrauded the government, left families deep in un-repayable debt, and cheated students out of an education.

via huffingtonpost.com

Higher ed and K-12 are connected ~ what goes down in one, affects the other; "innovations," policies, programs, etc. implemented in one domain will eventually come home to roost in the other, trickle up or trickle down. It behooves each to trend watch the other.

Posted via email from Meanderings

The Future of Work

this bit of research on the Gartner site; while it dates back to August has some interesting speculation about the Future of Work.
“People will swarm more often and work solo less. They’ll work with others with whom they have few links, and teams will include people outside the control of the organization,”
“In addition, simulation, visualization and unification technologies, working across yottabytes of data per second, will demand an emphasis on new perceptual skills.”
-       Tom Austin, Vice President and Gartner Fellow
Gartner points out that the world of work will probably witness ten major changes in the next ten years. Interesting in that it will change how learning happens in the workplace as well. The eLearning industry will need to account for the coming change and have a strategy in place to deal with the changes.

via upsidelearning.com

So much of this applies as much to teaching and learning possibilities.
"De-routinization" of work (or teaching) could return to autonomy to teachers, already implied in Downes. Work swarms and teaming fit in at PLENK 2010 but seem less likely candidates for the entrenched academic mind.
And on down the list. Just because it could happen doesn't mean it will though.

Posted via email from Meanderings

Class dismissed

Adjunct blogger, David Ruccio teaches economics, blogs ~ links, excepts, keen commentary thereon, invariably illustrated to perfection ~ and never fails to come with the best of images: art, photos (frequently of public art), cartoons, graphics, illustrations, sketches, charts,and so on. I may be a lit person. but most of the blogs I reach for (figuratively speaking) are by historians or economists. David's is worth following for either copy or images alone ~ both is a twofer treat ...

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Class dismissed via occasional links & commentary by David Ruccio on 11/5/10

In the brave new world of the cost-cutting corporate university, students can stay in their pajamas and earn course credits. Right in their dorm rooms, by viewing on-line courses.


It may not be learning. Or learning much. But students are able to accumulate course credits, and therefore consume what the new corporate university is supplying.


The New York Times reports that universities are teaching thousands of students who never have to step foot in a classroom to earn course credits in Economics, Spanish, Psychology, and so on. And they're not the usual distance-learning students, students who for some time have been offered the opportunity to purchase the education commodity without setting foot on a college or university campus. No, these are on-campus students who, because of budget-cuts, are being forced to purchase course credits by taking-on-line courses.


A single professor, sitting in an office (at home or on campus) can "teach" thousands of students, many more than can fit in a lecture hall, via a relatively simple computer hook-up. Students stay in their rooms, without ever meeting the professor or other students in the course, and attempt to learn the material via on-line lectures and exams.


On-line education represents a fundamental change both in the labor process (it is a form of speed-up) and in the commodity being produced (since one of the distinctive features of consuming the commodity higher education is that students have to work—alone, with the professor, and with other students—to realize the use-value of learning).
It is the future of higher education—and the end of the university as we have known it.

explaining the profession

One view of how it looks from the inside, at least among the tracked and tenured...

"College professors take a lot of heat from the general public, and we deserve much of what we get; and humanities professors get the worst of it. And arguably, English professors the worst of that: we represent, apparently, the absolute nadir of contemporary culture.

I said that to some degree we deserve it; what I did not say, you’ll notice, is that it’s true. Untrue, but we deserve it? Well, yes: I think that college professors as a group, and English professors as a high-visibility (and high-risibility) subset, have done a terrible job of explaining just what it is that we do, and actively countering the most pernicious caricatures of our work that circulate in the larger culture."

Read the rest of The Tender-Hearted Professor at the fake chinese rubber plant blog

Organizing for Power, Organizing for Change

Lisa Fithian has been working for nonviolent social change since the mid 1970’s. A student, labor and community organizer on a broad range of issues over the years, she writes,

"I am so glad you found this website, Organizing for Power, Organizing for Change. It’s full of information, resources, photos, stories and more from past movements, campaigns and actions. I hope it will be useful to you as an organizer, student, activist, journalist or researcher.

This website is based on the notes I use for training. They reflect lessons from 35 years of organizing. I feel very privileged for all the opportunities I’ve had to learn. Weaving together work within and between the student, environmental, labor, immigrant, anti-war and global justice grassroots movements has made me a very wealthy woman (not financially unfortunately!).

These training notes are now divided up onto tabs corresponding to what I call the “building blocks” for change."

Read more at Organizing for Power, Organizing for Change

BYOP: CAW Survey video on ExtraNormal

Today opens the 2nd (and last) month for taking the CAW Survey. Don't let it stall midway through. If you haven't already, take it now. 20,000 have, but there are millions of us. Millions minus 20,000 slackers and procrastinators. Don't be one. Do you need a ribbon, a badge or a gold star?



Video heads up courtesy of AFTFACE. Please share ~ re-blog, forward, backlink, bookmark, review, vote for it on BuzzFlash, like and share on Facebook, and so on. Do you need a tutorial? That can be arranged.