Call for proposals

From Gwendolyn Bradley, PhD, Senior Program Officer, American Association of University Professors, Phone: 202-737-5900, ext. 112, Fax: 202-737-5526, www.aaup.org, 1133 19th St. NW, 2nd Floor (forwarded from adj-l, emphasis added)

Call for Proposals

The AAUP invites individuals and teams to submit proposals for our annual Conference on the State of Higher Education. The conference will take place from June 9 to 12, 2010, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. International participants are particularly invited to take part in the conference. Washington’s museums, monuments, theater, and restaurants and pleasant June weather make this a great time to visit the city as well.

Presenters are invited to propose a wide range of issues related to academic freedom, governance, faculty work life, rights, and responsibilities. Among the questions the conference will explore are:

• The role of faculty in institutional decision making
• Challenges to academic freedom in the United States and abroad
• The exploitation of contingent labor in colleges and universities
• The conflict between institutional rankings and educational priorities
• Strategic approaches to furloughs, cutbacks, and salary freezes
• Funding and defunding public education
• Increasing access to tenure
• Race, gender, and sexual orientation
• Discrimination in hiring, promotion, and tenure
• Online education: the pros and cons
• Assessment and accountability
• The corporatization of teaching and research
• The twenty-first century curriculum

The goal of the conference is to provide a faculty perspective on critical issues in higher education presented in a format accessible to the general public.

The conference will include special AAUP-sponsored workshops on:

• Protecting an Independent Faculty Voice at Public Institutions: the Legal Landscape
• Winning Anti-Discrimination Policies and Domestic Partner Benefits: Case Studies of Campus Successes
• The Ratcheting Up of Expectations for Tenure: Are Faculty Their Own Worst Enemy?

The AAUP conference receives extensive coverage in the educational press, often including coverage of individual papers at sessions of interest to the press; selected papers from the conference will be published in the AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom, a new online journal distributed to 355,000 faculty

Deadline for submission of proposals: October 31, 2009. Learn more about the conference and see the guidelines for proposals. Please forward this announcement to relevant listservs.

News: SUNY cuts

"New cuts to SUNY will devastate system", October 12, 2009, from NYSUT: A Union of Professionals.

"Gov. David Paterson dealt a staggering blow to public higher education in New York when he ordered millions of dollars cut from SUNY's budget and proposed to do the same to CUNY.

Higher education leaders reacted with shock and outrage to the governor's executive order for the midyear cuts, which slashes $90 million from SUNY and — pending legislative approval — $53 million from CUNY."

Even more fodder for CEW: time to move beyond the campus.

Shared via AddThis

the view across the pond

We are not alone. This story in Times Higher Education has a familiar ring: "The insecure scholar: My name badge is about to let me down again" is from THE's new weekly online blog on the daily struggles, petty indignities and insecurities of an academic life on casual contracts: "Conferences are fun but the chat about position and status can be so embarrassing."

The writer then describes a typical conference encounter, "Yes, I’m fully qualified with a good track record of post-doctoral research and publication. But my position within academia since completing my doctorate has been unclear. For a number of years after completing my thesis I did not hold a university position, subsisting on freelance community research projects. In those years, I came to dread receiving an integral part of any conference – the name badge. I had no institution to put underneath my name. When I bumped into people I knew, they would frequently come out with something like: 'so you’re now at... oh', looking embarrassed at my lack of affiliation. I’d have to quickly summarise my complicated employment situation before apologetically explaining that I was still doing some academic writing in my field."

What's on your name badge? Maybe it's time to face up and out ourselves as what and who we are, precariously employed some still desperately seeking permanent academic employment. Imagine the effect of complacent tenured conference goers looking around a room and seeing themselves in the minority, outnumbered like Custer at Little Big Horn... 

Other UK post-secondary (tertiary) education links of possible interest:

• College and University Support Network (CUSN):  an independent charity supporting all adult, further and higher education staff and their families to improve their wellbeing and effectiveness; established by the Teacher Support Network, in collaboration with the University and College Union, to meet the specific needs of those working in further and higher education.
• University and College Union (UCU): represents more than 120,000 academics, lecturers, trainers, instructors, researchers, managers, administrators, computer staff, librarians and postgraduates in universities, colleges, prisons, adult education and training organisations across the UK and is the largest post-school union in the world. 

A comparative, global overview of Higher Education

 

1st U, & founder: Rupert I: 

how times have changed

Matt reports on the Staffing Summit

from NFM VP Matt Williams: Maria and I had a great day yesterday as we attended the AAUP Summit on Higher Education Staffing for Ohio held in Columbus.  The meeting was attended by about 50 state and local AAUP, AFT, NFT, NEA, OEA, and OFT representatives along with Maria and myself from NFM and several graduate students from Ohio State University. The meeting took a very favorable change in course toward our issues, specifically Ohio Senate Bill 129 that seeks to overturn Ohio law with respect to the exclusion of graduate assistant and part-time faculty labor from collective bargaining in the state.  We received a very supportive hearing, and Maria did a great job getting her message across.  The meeting concluded with a consensus that Senate Bill 129 should be the top legislative priority for the three unions during the coming months.  There was a sense of collective agreement on the need to reverse this arcane provision of Ohio law. The meeting was also attended by two members of the state legislature as well as by a staffer representing a third. The staffer left the meeting very enthused about the issue and intent on informing his colleagues in other offices throughout the State House.  Maria and I, in consultation with AFT's lobbyist, have determined that she and I should spend time visiting every member of the legislature in our effort to seek their support for the legislation.  SB 129 is not a slam dunk, to be sure, but looks promising in as much as the issue is beginning to receive coverage in the press.  Regards, Matt Williams, VP, New Faculty Majority Note: spread the word... join NFM and AFT in working toward passage of Ohio HB129. Write, fax or email an Ohio legislator. Sign the petition (coming soon). Wondering how to find a legislator and then how to write a legislator?  Follow New Faculty Majority on Twitter too ~ @NewFacMajority

Public Service Loan Forgiveness

A guest post by Jen Bills, New Faculty Majority board member: Here's some information to disseminate to our members, other academic labor organizations, and individual adjuncts. Many adjuncts are likely to be eligible for:

Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a new program for federal student loan borrowers who work in certain kinds of jobs. It will forgive remaining debt after 10 years of eligible employment and qualifying loan payments. (During those 10 years, the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan can help keep your loan payments affordable.)

Who can get Public Service Loan Forgiveness? This program is for people with federal student loans who work in a wide range of "public service" jobs, including jobs in government and nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations.

What are eligible jobs? In most cases, eligibility is based on whether you work for an eligible employer. Your job is eligible if you:

• are employed by any nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization;
• are employed by the federal government, a state government, local government, or tribal government (this includes the military and public schools and colleges); or
• serve in a full-time AmeriCorps or Peace Corps position.

If you don't meet these criteria, the Department of Education's regulations create a two-part test of other circumstances under which you may still be eligible:

(1) your employer is not "a business organized for profit, a labor union, a partisan political organization, or an organization engaged in religious activities, unless the qualifying activities are unrelated to religious instruction, worship services, or any form of proselytizing;"

and,

(2) your employer provides any of the following public services: emergency management; military service; public safety; law enforcement; public interest law services; early childhood education; public service forindividuals with disabilities and the elderly; public health; public education;public library services; and school library or other school-based services.

These definitions of eligible jobs reflect the Department of Education's final regulations for PSLF, as posted in the Federal Register on October 23, 2008.

What kinds of loans does it cover?  It covers federal Stafford, Grad PLUS, or consolidation loans as long as they are in the Direct Loan program. Borrowers with loans in the Guaranteed (or FFEL) loan program must switch to the Direct Loan program to get this benefit.

When does the 10-year clock start, and which payments count? Only payments made after October 1, 2007 count towards the 10 years (120 monthly payments, not necessarily consecutive) required for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Qualifying payments are payments made through the William D. Ford Direct Loan Program in any of the following three repayment plans: the Income Contingent Repayment plan, the Standard (10-year) Repayment plan, and the Income-Based Repayment plan.

To count, these payments must be made while you're working full-time in an eligible job. "Full-time," according to the final regulations issued by the Department of Education, means an annual average of 30 hours per week or the standard for full-time used by the employer, whichever is greater. For people working part-time at two or more qualifying jobs, "full-time" means an annual average of 30 hours across all jobs held. In professions such as teaching, annual contracts that include at least eight months of full-time work will be treated as the equivalent of a full year's employment. If you meet all the criteria, the earliest your remaining debt could be forgiven is October 2017.

What if I've already paid off my loans by then? This loan forgiveness program will only benefit people who still owe money on their federal loans after 10 years of eligible payments and employment. If your income is low relative to your debt, and you qualify for reduced payments under IBR (or Income Contingent Repayment) at any time during those 10 years, you will likely have debt left to forgive. (Learn more about IBR.)

Find out more about how to qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness