BY CHELSEA FOWLER When Frances McDormand delivered her 2018 Oscars acceptance speech, she left the audience with two final words, “inclusion rider,” which sparked a flurry of Google searches across the US. Inclusion rider is a relatively new term coined by Dr. Stacy L. Smith at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. These…
BY BETHANY LETIECQ When I joined the George Mason University faculty in 2013, I had already had a taste of what could be achieved when faculty, students, community members, and organizations work together in common cause. Earlier in my career, I helped organize a faculty union at Montana State University and, in my community-based work…
BY THE COLORADO AAUP CONFERENCE Fort Lewis College’s AAUP chapter registered a victory in March when President Dene Thomas announced that no faculty no tenured or tenure-track people will be eliminated as part of proposed FLC budget reductions. Her decision followed an FLC-AAUP analysis of the proposed budget that demonstrated cuts could be achieved without sacrificing…
BY RAY HOGLER Teachers from various state school districts rallied in Denver on April 26-27, 2108, to demand increases in pay and benefits. Most affected districts chose to cancel classes on those days rather than attempting to cope with the walkouts. In Fort Collins, Poudre School District Superintendent Sandra Smyser declared that “teachers’ actions are…
BY STEVE MUMME It was a landmark moment when Colorado State’s faculty council voted to endorse the Committee on the Responsibilities and Academic Standing of Faculty’s (CoRSAF’s) proposal establishing “contract” faculty appointments for non-tenure track faculty (NTTF) on campus. The new appointment type effectively brings those faculty out of the shadows and into the mainstream…
BY CHELSEA FOWLER As discussed in my Equal Pay Day blog post, the gender disparities that exist in faculty ranks are persistent and consistent. Without meaningful efforts by individuals and at the institutional level, female faculty members will likely continue to face challenges breaking through the proverbial glass ceiling to the highest faculty ranks. Below is…
BY MEMBERS OF YOUNG APPALACHIAN LEADERS AND LEARNERS The guest bloggers, the below-signed members of Y’ALL, are members of the Appalachian Studies Association. This statement was presented to the membership as a whole. Context On Thursday, April 12th, members of Y’ALL (Young Appalachian Leaders and Learners) met to discuss J.D. Vance’s invited participation in a…
BY CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD The following is reposted with permission from the Remaking the University blog. Christopher Newfield is Professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a member of the Academe advisory board. Part I of this two-part series may be found here. Responding to Bulk Cuts in Qualitative Fields: the…
BY STEVEN LUBET Guest blogger Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor of Law at Northwestern University and the author most recently of Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters (Oxford University Press, 2017). The Kentucky General Assembly recently passed a budget that reduces funding for higher education by 6.25 percent, and will require cuts of as much as…
BY CHELSEA FOWLER Today is Equal Pay Day.* Tomorrow, April 11, 2018, the AAUP will release the 2017–18 Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, which discusses salary and compensation across higher education institutions. There has been a growing trend in the United States in the past two decades of women’s postsecondary educational…