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An Achievement to Celebrate

BY CAROLYN BETENSKY In the middle of a pandemic, faculty activists have accomplished something of real significance.  Working with their provost, the town-hall style faculty governance group at Worcester Polytechnic Institute has managed to secure forty-five tenure lines for existing “teaching” faculty.  While the idea of expanding tenure to include teaching faculty has been promoted…

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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”…

Stack of the "Adjunct Cookbook"

The 2020 Adjunct Index

BY CAPRICE LAWLESS A big part of our success in chapter-building and awareness-raising in the Colorado Community College System is a list of facts we publish biennially in a document we call “The Adjunct Index,” modeled on the “Harper’s Index.” The index is an easy format to send to our press contacts, lawmakers, and to…

Tell Us about Your Summer

BY KELLY HAND You’re probably all too familiar with the common misperception that academics have a cushy schedule. If you are only in class fifteen or fewer hours per week and do not teach at all during winter, spring, and summer breaks, the assumption is that you can do whatever you want with your abundant…

New Academe Focuses on a Profession “in the Crosshairs”

POSTED BY KELLY HAND The new September–October issue of Academe focuses on a profession that increasingly finds itself “in the crosshairs.” Articles address recent and historical instances of targeted harassment of faculty, the obligations of tenure-track faculty toward colleagues on contingent appointments, and the suppression of a course scrutinizing collegiate athletics. Follow the links in…