…a significant event & busy day for #adjunct/ency today, and not just MLA & AHA...As for the other stories, you'll just have to wait for them. Tomorrow has another major, don't miss adjunct relevant session too. Meanwhile, catch up with general higher ed news with the Inside HigherEd Daily Newsletter.
This session will discuss and review recent efforts to address the working conditions of faculty members off the tenure track and will ask what those working conditions mean for the future of American higher education. If, as the New Faculty Majority slogan has it, faculty working conditions are student learning conditions, then how should we seek to improve those conditions without devaluing the work that non-tenure-track faculty members do?
Here's an #S112 Storify (long but could have been longer). Special thanks to virtuoso tweeps, Brian Croxall, Roger Whitsun and Lee Bessette for making this Storify possible and packed with tweetalicious goodness.
2012 was an important transitional year for us, and 2013 promises even more progress. (Watch your email inbox for the launch of our new e-newsletter, and stay connected daily through our blog and extensive social media.)
Our January 2012 Summit firmly established NFM on the national stage, identifying us as the leading organization working to secure academic excellence through faculty equity and launching new national leaders and projects, like Josh Boldt and The Adjunct Project. Our work this year has concentrated on educating the public and policymakers within and outside of higher education on the state of faculty working conditions in higher education and the need for reform.
…Vote MLA Online: Deadline Dec10for second vice president, Executive Council, Delegate Assembly, and division and discussion group executive committees. Members, check the website
Disclosures: New Faculty Majority president Maria Maisto is standing for the Executive Council (and would be the first adjunct to become a member). For my own part, as Board member, social media coordinator by default and activist by choice, I not only have an obvious interest in Maria's candidacy but am likely to be posting about it. Retired, I am neither a candidate for any position nor even an MLA member. (Occasionally, I do think about re-upping ~ this would have been one)
I don't know who else is standing or for what but would welcome from hearing from adjunct candidates and posting information about them. Come by the New Faculty Majority Coalition page on Facebook and introduce yourself. The same goes for candidates in other professional associations. It's not not campaigning: it's making information public as a public service. To reiterate the appeal of Karen Madison, Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession member, to adj-l, the Contingent Academics Mailing List:
Please encourage folks to Vote Adjunct in the MLA Elections. I did. I went through each candidate and found that there are many who distinguish themselves as having a focus on adjunct issues or as wanting to further adjunct labor rights--as well as candidates who are adjuncts themselves.
MLA needs adjuncts on the committees desperately if we hope to have a fair representation of the ratio of NTT to TT stream faculty in the ranks.
The following candidates have expressed an interest in issues affecting non-tenure track faculty or are actually non-tenure track faculty. One candidate is recognized as a potentially strong ally.
…as submitted by #NFMFoundation Research Director, Esther Merves
Pictured: NFM Foundation board member Gary Rhoades (keynote speaker at the conference), NFM Foundation President Anne Wiegard, NFM President Maria Maisto, and NFM Foundation Research Director Esther Merves at the George Mason Public Sociology Conference, Oct 20, 2012, Fairfax, VA. The President of the Public Sociology Grad Student Association, and NFM Foundation intern Marisa Allison, did an amazing job on pulling together a national grad student conference.
…right about NOW (Mon Oct 1) at 12:00 noon (EST), NewFac prez Maria Maisto, along with SEIU Local 500 VP Kip Lornel, and Senior Chronicle Writer Schmidt will be guests on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, a Washington DC social issues radio program on NPR affiliate WAMU that follows the Diane Riehm Show. Join them now or visit later.
…from Maria Maisto, New Faculty Majority and NFM Foundation are proud to invite NFM members to participate in an interactive one hour webinar, Alert the Press: Media 101 for Contingent Faculty Activists and Allies on Monday, September 24, 2012 at 12 noon EASTERN time (11 am Central/10 am Mountain/9 am Pacific).
Despite possible impressions to the contrary, the New Faculty Majority was well represented, highly visible and a strong voice to make adjunct and contingent issues a priority at the Third National Gathering(left) of the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (CFHE), hosted by the Michigan Conference AAUP in Ypsilanti, Michigan May 18-20.
Gary Rhoades including New Faculty Majority Foundation board membership in his Saturday morning introduction signaled our presence, further highlighted by a highly visible NFM presence that included active participation and presentations: President Maria Maisto, VP Matt Williams (right), Treasurer Bill Lipkin, Board Member Alan Trevithick, Esther S. Merves, the Foundation’s Director of Research and Special Programs, and member Daniel Maxey. Additionally, members of NFM’s Board of Advisors, Elizabeth Hoffman, Associate Vice President, Lecturers, California Faculty Association, and Richard Moser, of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, were also heard in support of a strong and continuing focus on contingency.
