Joe Berry's COCAL Updates 7Mar12

Yes, these are a week late. There's another set of updates from Joe waiting in the email box for formatting, link embedding and perhaps an image or so to perk it up. I'm experimenting with layout and organization too. Email joeberry@igc.org, to subscribe to regular updates in brief and links by email. More about Joe Berry, Updates, COCAL, publications, links.

 

Joe Berry at COCAL VI

Updates in brief and links

Conferences Coming & Going: #LeftForum, #4C12, #SXSW, etc

A Rite of Spring Stravinsky would not recognize, conferences are how academics celebrate its coming. No excursions to Ft Lauderdale or other beaches.


March opened with NEA Higher Education Conference and AWP 2012, both in Chicago. Only the former participated in Occupy Chi / National  Day of Action for Education. L.A. followed with ACE 2012 annual meeting for higher ed administrators, university presidents and their ilk. Edu-geeks frolicked at SXSWedu in Austin, regular SXSW continues through March 19.  For the weekend the determined (perhaps demented) conference goer has CCCC in St Louis and Left Forum in NYC.

 

Going to #CCCC? Call for networking

#adjunct/#contingentfaculty, put your networks to work!  Seth Kahn posted in Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Faculty Seth Kahn For anybody who's a current CCCC member and will be in St. Louis on Saturday morning--the CCCC Labor Caucus has submitted a resolution calling on CCCC to establish a Contingent Faculty Travel Fund (see resolution text). I have a hunch we're going to need to muster as many votes as we can. So PLEASE, if you're in town and a CCCC member, attend the Business Meeting and VOTE.  And please, even if you're not a member, canvass members to attend and vote (because that's how networks roll...)

SSTF vs REAL Student Success

Here is a forward from the CPFA discussion group via Pamela Hanford, CPFA Director of Publications and editor of CPFA's Community College Journal.  Clearly this is part and parcel of the same process that standardizes curricula, turns teachers into facilitators and imposes the for-profit model on public education... oh, and kills the spirit too in both teachers teaching to the model as well as students conforming to it.  It works both ways: learning conditions are teaching conditions too. 


Keep the COMMUNITY in College. Read Nick Vasallo's letter below, watch the video, sign the petition, and share! Visit and like REAL Student Success on Facebook.

Reading Room: about reading highered + links of my own

Yes indeed, Joe Berry's COCAL Updates, Omnivore and Michael Meranze's "In case you missed it..." (Remaking the University) links are fine and dandy, but I have a feed reader too and links of my own, collected here for a change. This might also explain why I might miss articles in IHE and CHE and run short of time to pore over comments. News Flash! Not everyone in the universe checks them or even the Grey Lady first thing.

So much more is written about higher education, contingent workplace conditions, education and the economy than on just those august pages. Depending on either or even both for all your higher and other education news is just another way to stay trapped in the Ivory Silo©. Think too of the great adjunct writing online that doesn't make it into those pages. Why let commercial, advertising soliciting gatekeepers dictate what you read? Look for the Adjunct Label...