Reading Room: Omnivore on college campuses

Hadley Arkes on Ave Maria University: A challenge among friends. Acts of Faith: Divinity grads aim to compensate for the chaos in contemporary society. Should we arm Christian campuses? David C. Cramer wonders. Faith and the cosmos: Can Catholic universities foster dialogue between religion and science? 

Humanities 2.0: New digital tools are bringing new ways to teach humanities courses, even Shakespeare. From THES, a review of Higher Education and the Public Good: Imagining the University by Jon Nixon; a review of The Public Value of the Humanities; and Urania's lessons for Clio: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto on the humanities' need for scientific insights. 

Gary Wills reviews All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly. Richard Arum on his and Josipa Roksa’s book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (and more). A review of The Campaign for an Academic Bill of Rights by David Horowitz. A look at five myths about liberal academia. Speaking untruth on behalf of corporate power: Leo Casey on academics in the service of union-busting. 

Tales of the unexpected: There's no such thing as a typical academic, but some have more unusual backgrounds than others. A review of In the Basement of the Ivory Tower by Professor X (and more). Collateral Damage: From John Dewey to the Ivory Tower of Babel in two easy steps. Are women’s colleges outdated? Tom Matlack thought women’s colleges were anachronistic — until he toured Barnard with his daughter. 

Why safety schools can be smart choices: Brand-name diplomas don't have much to do with success later in life. Grade point average (GPA) is a historical mistake in two senses, and there is no reason for its continued acceptance.

reading (or re-reading) the university: on college campuses, from Omnivore

April 15: Final Community College Regional Summit, San Diego

Following the initial DC Summit, more disappointing than not for most adjunct faculty, the first two regional summits slipped by without much notice and even less adjunct presence. The word "adjunct" was rumored to have been uttered at least once. We all hoped for more since we do most community college teaching and know conditions on the ground. Maria Maisto and Tracy Donhardt represented New Faculty Majority at the third Summit, held in Indiana at Ivy Tech. Contingent faculty representation at the fourth and last regional summit this Friday in San Diego seems uncertain. We hope for the best and wish California contingent faculty (the preferred term in their neck of the woods) a good showing and recognition. Get some media out to ask the right questions too.

 

San Diego City College

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The final Regional Summit focuses on veterans, military members and families

Tomorrow, April 15, ED will hold its fourth and final Community College Regional Summit at San Diego City College in San Diego, Calif. The focus of this one-day event is on Exemplary Programs for Veterans, Military Members, and Families, and will bring together federal, labor, industry and philanthropic partners to discuss how each entity can support local community college efforts to meet the President's goal of having the best-educated workforce and the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.

Other topics to be discussed at the summit include solutions and promising practices in college completion, developmental education, industry-education partnerships, services to military service-members and veterans, transitioning adults to community colleges, and successful transfer programs to four year colleges and universities. The Summit will also provide a forum to identify local, state and national recommendations for increasing community college completion in order to meet the President's 2020 goal.

Join the summit at 12:00 PM EDT on April 15, 2011 for a LIVE webcast of the summit (link will become active when the summit begins).

The above ed.gov blog entry was written by Cameron Brenchley, posted on April 14, 2011 at 1:26 pm, filed under College Completion, Community Colleges, Headlines, News and tagged Community Colleges, Graduation, Summit. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.

Adjunct Night at the Movies, BYOP

Your average (adjunct) college professor earns less than a sanitation worker..... 


Please take a few minutes to watch the video below about working conditions for adjunct faculty who comprise over 70% of the total teaching staff at the college in question. Appreciate the very "Network moment" courage too of someone, "mad as hell" and "not going to take this anymore!"  Then forward the It is indeed rare among the precariously employed. We're no John Galts, but Peter Finch's Howard Beale (unfortunate outcome not withstanding) suits.

Accompanying note:

"The gutting of higher education in America has resulted in a corporate model of employment utilizing affiliate college professors who earn less than garbage men and train conductors. This exploitation is reprehensible, immoral and indefensible. This abomination solely serves the interests of college presidents, boards of trustees and administrators at the highest level, while bankrupting teachers, adversely affecting students, tuition payers and ultimately all stakeholders in the educational arena. It must end."

What are your experiences? How do they compare? Are you ready to shout out, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" ? If not yet, when...

Today, April 13: Class Action Day

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Several states saw actions today as part of the Class Action Day for Higher Education called for by the California Faculty Association and  which has spread to some extent in other areas. My thanks to Wes Strong of Defend Public Education for supplying this list and promising further reports and updates as he gets them.

• California and a few other states (listed below) 
• New Jersey Posting

News from NFM #6,

New Faculty Majority eNewsletter, April 7, 2011 

Table of Contents (use Control + F to navigate)

• Presidents Message, (Connecting to) The News of the World
• New Jersey County College Adjuncts Federate, By Bill Lipkin
• Meet the NFM Board: Anne Wiegard (NFM Secretary)
• Me and UC: Fighting "reasonable assurance" One adjunct's story
• A Word from NFM's Treasurer By Bill Lipkin
• A Documentary in the Making: Con Job
• Teach-on: Teach-in By Vanessa Vaile
• Announcements

(Connecting to) The News of the World    by Maria Maisto, NFM President

First, I am pleased to report that The Marguerite Casey Foundation in Seattle, Washington has awarded $25,000 to our nascent 501c(3) organization, New Faculty Majority Foundation, to support its ability to provide programming complementary to that of NFM.  The NFM Foundation's goal for the next year is to 1) build capacity in ways that include employing staff, seeding further fundraising efforts and expanding its base of stakeholders; 2) begin identifying and gathering essential data currently missing from research on adjunct and contingent faculty; and 3) sponsor a summit meeting in Washington, DC, tentatively titled "Confronting Contingency."

Dear Colleagues:  Incredible, inspiring movements in support of justice and democracy have swept our country and others over the last couple of months. At the same time, unimaginable tragedy has befallen the residents of Japan, and regularly occurs both locally and globally every day. I sometimes find it difficult to keep perspective in the face of events that are so large in scope and significance. The project in which we are engaged - to establish fair and ethical working conditions for all higher education faculty in the US - can seem trivial when compared to the life-or-death situations of people in our communities and around the world. Indeed, when we take our message beyond our campuses, we often find that people respond to us in exactly this way. Expecting support from members of our communities, we are hurt when we hear instead, "You should be glad you have a job rather than complaining about your pay."