Atlanta Area Meet & Greet, Jan 25

…for contingent faculty, NFM friends, members & anyone interested in meeting us to learn more). In the neighborhood? Please drop by for a visit this coming Friday, January 25 1:30 - 5:30 pm at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, 265 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, in the Spring Room (lower level)

New Faculty Majority and the NFM Foundation invite friends and member to attend all or part of a meeting designed to update participants on our activities, introduce NFM to those who are not familiar with its work, and engage in conversation about issues related to the relationship of "adjunct" or "contingent" faculty working conditions and student learning conditions.

Discussion topics will include

Happy New Year from New Faculty Majority!

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.

Nov-Dec 2012 issue of The Bullhorn

…the outstanding, award winning & #contingentfaculty aware newsletter of the SUNY New Paltz UUP Chapter, edited by NFM Board member Peter D.G. Brown. View Bullhorn back issues online. While on New Paltz UUP site, check the Contingents section, resources, links, articles, petitions & more. It's a good model for anyone looking to insert more contingent faculty information into their organization pages or just building a resource list. 

Download this file: BULLHORN November-December 2012.pdf.  NFM Foundation president Anne Wiegard reminds us,

#NewFac at Public Sociology Conference, GeorgeMasonU

…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.

Outing the eponymous Professor ‘Staff’

The long awaited NFM Foundation report from CFHE Center /think tank is out and fab. I really wanted to write “simply mahvelous” but fabulous is what Gary calls it, so I’ll go with ‘fab” and the awesome alliteration of “fab Foundation” report as assembled, organized, written and edited by Gary Rhoades and our own fab five. Steve Street (to whom the report is dedicated), Maria Maisto, Esther Merves, Judy Olson and Anne Wiegard. Introducing the release, Gary Rhoades writes,

Attached (linked actually, see below) is the second report of the think tank, the Center for theFuture of Higher Education, courtesy of the FABULOUS work of the NewFaculty Majority Foundation. 

"Who is Professor ‘Staff’ and how does this person teach so many classes" offers not only data about "just in time" employment and insufficient access to instructional resources for contingent faculty, it also provides a tool for redressing SOME of those problems at limited cost, though we emphasize in closing the report that there is a structural deficit in higher education that must be resolved to ensure affordable, quality higher education. 

The key points in brief [but no surprise to any contingent faculty] are as follow:

#NFM a strong voice for #ContingentFaculty @ 3rd #CFHE Gathering

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.  

@DeanDad: Where is He?

I am very tired, in a good way, after our wonderful NFM-AAUC conference in DC. Read more about it here and here. Then I stumbled across a recent reference to our noble organization on Friday Follow-ups, to which I take exception. Following are my remarks, to Dean Dad ~ some of you may know him, even his name. Anyway, this is just for the elite, the cognoscento, as it were. Gosh, I really am tired. Anyway, I chunked this in here because I can't seem to get it out on the great webish highway any other way:

Dear Dean Dad, 

Your comments, as always, are most provocative. You must be enjoying yourself. As a board member of New Faculty Majority though, I have to take exception to your comment about New Faculty Majority’s advocacy of the “Vancouver model” for paying adjuncts making you worry about your hair because you “pull out what little” you have left whenever you read NFM on such subjects. Please. Whatever your notions about Canada being where it is, and not being in the United States, the published NFM position is that we advocate equity in compensation, job security, academic freedom, faculty governance, professional advancement, benefits, and access to unemployment insurance. 

Summit Up #NewFac12!

Summit Program - Final.doc Download this file

  

Yes, today is the day. Can't be there? Got it covered: Twitter, Facebook, live blogging, social media team at the ready and other attendees armed with mobiles. Follow #newfac12 on Twitter. Lee Bessette will be liveblogging the Summit at College Ready Writing. Check out her pre-Summit post with resource links and listing the team so I don't have to again here. 

Check @NewFacMajority and NFM's Facebook wall for introductions and links. We'll add others as they come up. I'll be here and there, dropping in on Twitter and Facebook, checking mail and rss feeds. All from New Mexico...

Alas, no livestreaming video. Who knows, maybe there will be mobiles with web cams in the crowd. Never discount serendipity. Audio will be available after the event.    

 

Talking Points: plus a great late add from Gary Rhoades, visibility

Reading Room: The college years

Take a reading break while waiting for final report and wrap on #CFHEs 2nd  National Gathering this past weekend at UMass. Preliminary reports for Friday and Saturday are available on Restructuring Public Hi Ed. Have you checked out the NFM Foundation page for information on our 2012 Summit? Results and analysis of our back to school hiring experience survey will appear there soon. Not to left out, the New Faculty Majority page is poised for a relaunch. 

.... A review of The University and The People: Envisioning American Higher Education in an Era of Populist Protest by Scott M. Gelber .... Oberlin English professor Anne Trubek quizzes Victor E. Ferrall Jr., author of Liberal Arts on the Brink, about the glum future of the American liberal arts college .... Barbarians vs. Centurions: Culture wars over the literary canon have always been with us — we should make those conflicts part of the conversation in the classroom .... 

Sources of illumination: Characterised by creativity and attuned to the needs of their age, the first European universities have important lessons for higher education today .... Why we need for-profit colleges: Profits and education shouldn’t have to be such an ugly combination. Accountability is all the rage in today’s education reform industry and at the university level, but do we really want professors to be productive? Ann Blair on her book Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age.

Read the rest of The college years on the Book Forum