The Kiddie Table of Academia
BY DARREN JOHNSON Originally published October 16, 2021; reprinted with permission of Campus News. It’s holiday time, and for those unfamiliar with large American family gatherings this time of year, let me tell you about the kiddie table. Most people who host big dinners in their homes have a big dining room table, usually something…
A Little Noise from Higher Education’s Junk Drawer
BY CAPRICE LAWLESS The coronavirus pandemic has hit. The nation and the economy are in a free fall. Your college has closed and your college administration is announcing how there is nothing to see over here because the faculty—those miraculous, mythical, shapeshifting creatures—have morphed overnight from classroom teachers to “online educators” engaged in “online learning”…
I Want an Adjunct
BY OLGA GARCÍA ECHEVERRÍA This creative essay was inspired by Jane Harty’s Academe Blog post “Stress and PTSD in the Academy” and modeled after Judy Brady’s 1971 satirical feminist essay “I Want a Wife.” I belong to a category of workers known as adjuncts. I am an adjunct. According to the Oxford online dictionary, an…
AAUP Issues Report on Dismissal by Pacific Lutheran University of Long-Serving Faculty Member
BY JOERG TIEDE The AAUP released a report on the dismissal of Jane Harty, a part-time faculty member with forty years of service in the Department of Music at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU). The report found that the PLU administration had acted in violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure when…
An Investigation into the Work Life of Adjunct Faculty
BY DAVID HILDEBRANDT I am studying the work life of adjunct faculty. You are invited to participate in this research if: You work as an adjunct faculty member. Your place of work is based in the United States of America. This research will help us understand the work life of adjunct faculty. We need your…
AAUP Chapters of the CCCS celebrate five years of pushing for change
Our AAUP chapters of the CCCS, now with members at six of the 13 colleges within the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) are celebrating our fifth year of organizing CCCS faculty. We have been advocating for equitable wages, health-care benefits and due process rights through five years of potlucks, pub crawls, Scrabble games, coffee klatches,…
Campus Equity Week Highlights Contingent Faculty Working Conditions
POSTED BY KELLY HAND Get ready for Campus Equity Week! During this week, which occurs every other year during the last week of October, groups plan local actions to draw attention to working conditions of faculty in contingent or adjunct positions. Such faculty, who constitute three fourths of the teaching faculty in US higher education,…
Seven Years an Adjunct: Part II
BY APRIL FORD In this, the second and last part of my mini-series about being a “terminal” adjunct on the market for a full-time teaching position in academe, I embrace my present fate (I’ve been rejected by every institution I’ve applied to since December 2016) and express my dismay in epistolary form (based, to some…
Seven Years an Adjunct: Part I
BY APRIL FORD I’ve been on the job market since January. That’s no time at all in academe time, and already two-thirds of the applications I’ve sent out, at an average of ten per week, have met form-letter deaths. My favorite rejection so far addresses me as “Sir Ford,” and closes with “good luck out…