The Adjunct Advocate

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ARCHIVE: December 2007

December 31st 2007

Auld Lang Syne

First off, Happy New Year to all of our readers! I am looking forward to 2008 as a pivotal year in the life of the Adjunct Advocate and our AdjunctNation.com webpage. This new year marks a turning point for our company as it does, I imagine, for many of you. My hope is that we can all meet the year with thoughtfulness, enthusiasm and compassion for ourselves as well as for others.

And speaking of thoughtfulness, we've revamped the Forum section of the AdjunctNation.com website. We've added several new forums: The Campus Cafe, Rate Your Students, The Dish on Department Chairs and Deans, The Book Nook and Shoptalk. In doing so, we're hoping to open up the forums to a wider spectrum of users, and provide those users the opportunity to discuss a wider variety of topics. I am particularly excited about the Campus Cafe and Rate Your Students forums. In both, visitors have the opportunity to comment on, literally, just about anything that comes to mind.

I am also excited about the Shoptalk forum. Like our "shoptalk" column in the Adjunct Advocate magazine, this forum focuses on unionizing. I get questions all the time from part-time faculty who want to know if there are other part-timers with experience forming unions. In this forum, visitors can ask their questions, and present their opinions. What I hope is that it will be a place for people to connect and share information about all of the education unions, as well as independent unions and non-affiliated unionizing drives.

College faculty are voracious readers. Knowing this, we decided to launch The Book Nook. What I hope is that it will be a place for visitors to have collegial discussions about everything literary. The first posting, in fact, is about banned books!

Finally, we added a forum for forum users to ask questions. If you have one about using the forums, please post it there. We will answer your questions as quickly as possible. Users should also remember that the forums are moderated, and postings must be approved before being posted online. Primarily, this is done to combat spammers. You will also note that we kept the security code box, as well. The automatically generated code must be entered before your forum posts can be sent along to the moderators. So please be patient when posting, and remember there is no need to send along your postings multiple times. Check back in a day or so, and your comments will have been posted.

I look forward to reading what our visitors have to say! So please post in as many of the new forums as you like. Let me know what you think of the new forums, and if you have any questions about the forums, don't forget to post them in Questions, Anyone? Happy posting!

P.S. For those listening to this posting, the music accompanying today's blog entry comes from the Dropkick Murphys. The group, a Celtic punk band, was formed in Massachusetts in 1996. Enjoy!

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 10:00 AM

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December 27th 2007

When You're Smiling

Life as an adjunct, for many, is no laughing matter. However, I think it's important to keep things in perspective and to try to find the humor in situations that one finds difficult. I am not saying I always manage to do it; I do make every effort, however. To this end, we have several features on our website geared toward making you laugh.

One of the features of our redesigned site is the "Daily Excuse." You will find the "Daily Excuse" on our webpage in the right hand column, just above the "Hang-Prof" link. Right now, we are rotating 32 excuses contributed by AdjunctNation.com visitors. Here are several of my absolute favorites:

"I won't be in class today, as they are wheeling me into the E.R. right now, and I was wondering if I could turn it in next week (Sounds of T.V., videogame, talking, laughing in the background)."

"My cat caught fire."

"A squirrel ate the spark plug wires on my car."

"I cannot take the final exam on that date 4 months from now. My grandmother's funeral will be on that day."

"I know you said we were supposed to follow your directions, but I didn't think you meant me."

I chose these excuses for their sheer outlandishness, and because each of them made me laugh out loud. That is the same way I choose the cartoons for the magazine. Cartoonist Matt Hall sends me 12 or so cartoons as electronic files, and I open them up one-by-one. Any cartoon that makes me laugh out loud, I buy. Have a look at some of Matt's best cartoons.

So, I would encourage you to join in on the fun. Have a look at Matt's wonderful cartoons, and share your student excuses. Not all excuses get approved (duplicates, for example, of ones already rotating are discarded). However, you can be sure that if your excuse gets added to the rotation, it has made me laugh out loud, and will, I am sure, do the same for the tens of thousands of visitors who come to AdjunctNation.com each month.

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 12:51 PM

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December 25th 2007

Zat You, Santa Claus?

I want to take a moment and wish all of our readers a restful break from their grading, commuting, planning and, of course, teaching. I am on holiday at the moment with my family. I'll be back at work soon on the next issue of the magazine, as well as assigning content for future issues of Adjunct Advocate.

Thanks to David Sterns, an adjunct professor of English at SUNY, who gets our weekly e-Advocate Newsletter, for sending along a link to a great blog. I also want to thank all of the people who sent along messages concerning the restart of the e-Advocate Newsletter. If you'd like to sign up to receive the weekly free newsletter, click here

Oh, and why not share some of the great student excuses I bet you heard at the end of the last semester!! To submit your excuse for consideration, click here. Lastly, if you haven't checked out the Hang-Prof game page, give yourself a treat. I made up the list of Christmas songs myself.

I'll end up with a link to one of my favorite Christmas tunes. Enjoy!

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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December 24th 2007

Hit the Road, Jack: Compromise and Contracts

December 24, 2007

I know that many of our readers recently finished up their semesters and were rewarded by being summarily fired. Of all the drawbacks associated with part-time teaching, being fired between semesters is one that department chairs, deans and provosts could easily remedy. Yes, this would mean offering year-long contracts to part-time faculty. I am not suggesting that it be done simply to make part-time faculty happier. Why not?

Because management research shows little correlation between job satisfaction and job performance. However, according to a paper published in The Academy of Management Journal:
"Organizational psychologists generally endorse the view that any covariance between job satisfaction and job performance emerges only when satisfaction [derives] from performance contingent rewards."

It is true that there is student attrition between semesters, and in many departments there are fewer sections to offer to the part-time faculty. Be that as it may, refusing to use year-long contracts because some part-time faculty course loads may have to be reduced is simply a knee-jerk response by managers relying on outmoded and outdated employment practices. The truth is that even though higher education is a perceived bastion of empirical research, the reality is that managerial backwardness lives on in the shape of part-time faculty employment practices.

Just as I know many college administrators simply cannot understand why they should offer year-long contracts, I also know many part-time faculty simply cannot understand why everyone who teaches part-time shouldn't be offered year-long contracts. I believe the answer rests somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum. To get the ball rolling, administrators could offer year-long contracts based on part-time faculty evaluation and performance.

This kind of talk about compromise frequently gets me into big trouble. However, I don't mind getting into trouble for supporting a strategy that relies on employee performance. I know that part-time faculty are, as a rule, superb teachers, can and do measure up to thoughtful evaluation of their work time and again. Universities all over the country take advantage of work-for-hire rules, and this has resulted in a problem that has plagued hundreds of thousands of college faculty for more than thirty years.

The education unions are simply never going to organize the nation's 600,000 non-tenure track faculty. Colleges and universities are never going to stop hiring temporary faculty. University administrators, I believe, want to treat their faculty equitably. Administrators, then, need strategies, reasons, and to be shown research that supports the use of year-long contracts.

I just finished interviewing Dr. Dan Jacoby. The piece will be published in the next issue of the magazine. If there were ever clearly documented reasons to use year-long contracts, and better integrate part-time faculty into the departments in which they teach, it is Dr. Jacoby's study, titled: “Effects of part-time faculty employment on community college graduation rates."

In the meantime, I'll be hoping for more compromise that could, perhaps, lead to fewer part-time faculty being forced to hit the road between semesters.

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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December 21st 2007

ChChChChChChanges

I want to talk a little bit about changes that have been made recently here at Adjunct Advocate. Of course, the most important change is that the Adjunct Advocate is no longer a print publication. If you are a print subscriber, please visit our Migration Page to switch your subscription to digital. It takes only a moment, and we'll automatically extend your subscription.

We've made some changes on the AdjunctNation.com website, as well. Have a look! First off, you can now listen to my blog entries. I have been having slightly too much fun writing and finding music to go with the topic of each blog. No matter, for those inclined to hear what I have to say, you need only click on this link and scroll down to the bottom of the page.

In addition, we've made it easier to comment on the blog entries. Simply scroll down to the bottom of the entry you want to comment on, type in your comment, enter the security code provided, and hit enter. Comments will be screened in the same way comments posted to our Message Boards are. This is to discourage spammers. As such, blog comments won't be posted automatically, but rather after they have been checked to make sure they are not the product of someone trying to sell Viagra or tout the latest online gambling site.

Other changes you may notice have to do with the way visitors may read Adjunct Advocate articles. In past, we used a service called BitPass. It was a third party provider, and required users to leave our site, purchase credits and return. In response, we developed our own AdjunctNationCredits. Credits may be purchased in our secure online store, and used to purchase individual articles, as well as individual issues in PDF format that visitors would like to read. In purchasing and using the AdjunctNationCredits, you are supporting the authors of the articles directly. Unlike other higher education publications, we do not force writers to sell us all of the rights to the pieces they write for us. Ninety days after publication, all rights revert back to the authors. There is a $5 dollar minimum AdjunctNationCredit purchase.

The Adjunct Quiz Giveaway is BACK! Score a B or better on the Quiz, and a page will pop up that allows you to enter our prize drawing. Give the Pop Quiz a whirl. It's fun and challenging. We're giving away subscriptions to Adjunct Advocate, books, AdjunctNationCredits and other cool stuff!

Finally, for subscribers, when you login and go to the "Magazine" section, you will notice a new link to download the current issue in PDF format located directly under the cover of the magazine. For those who are not subscribers, the link will be to purchase the issue of the magazine. To purchase the magazine, you may use AdjunctNationCredits!!

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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December 17th 2007

Reviewing the Situation

I walk my kids to school on Monday mornings. They chatter away about whatever their latest interests are, and I listen. Walking them means I get started with work a little later than usual. Generally, I am in my office between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., pretty standard hours. However, it takes every ounce of will power I have to not work longer hours. Like anyone who owns a business, there are always 5000 things that I should do but can't seem to get around to doing. I don't work weekends, unless I am at a conference, and take holidays off, as well. When my kids have time off from school, I hang with them. We're going on the train to Chicago during their school break soon. We will eat Chicago-style pizza, walk up and down Michigan Avenue, and enjoy the big city.

My sons are thrilled because I am at work reading a book for review. They think I need to write more for Adjunct Advocate. They like to read the pieces I publish in magazines and newspapers, and especially the ones I write for "our" magazine. Well, I decided that I wanted to write a review of Gypsy Scholars, Migrant Teachers and the Global Academic Proletariat: Adjunct Labour in Higher Education. At least I think it will be reviewed. I was very excited when I read about the book, and it came to me all the way from the publisher in The Netherlands from Rodopi Press.

A few nights ago, I started the book. It's a collection of essays, so I read the introduction, but didn't start at the beginning. I like to read collections of essays out of order. Somehow, for me, it makes a collection of essays slightly less staged. In the introduction, the editors Rudolphus Teeuwen and Steffen Hantke, wrote about the difficulties of finding a publisher for their collection. As I read the essays, I understood why. The first piece I dipped into read like an journal entry. The author wrote about her feelings of persecution and paranoia. Where, I wondered, could she go with such a piece? Turns out, she couldn't go very far at all.

So, I have finished all of the essays, and am now deciding what to do. Someone suggested a book of such disappointing quality should not be dignified with a review. However, there are few books about the plight of part-time faculty being published in the EU at the moment. This one devotes half to the plight of part-time faculty in the U.S., and half to the plight of part-time faculty internationally. There are some interesting and compelling parts, but not many. I am stumped at the moment.

I'd be interested to hear what you think. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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December 14th 2007

Content is Queen and I am the Lady in Waiting

Over the past few days, I have been assigning content to my regular writers. That doesn't mean that I have irregular writers. It is editor-speak for those writers with whom I work on a regular basis. They get first choice of books to review, features to write, subjects to interview, and columns to submit. They have year-long contracts and guaranteed income over the course of the contract. I have guaranteed content. It's an ideal arrangement. You might wonder why I don't do this with all of the writers who work for me.

Put simply, not all writers are created equal. There are writers who give editors ulcers, gray hair and unending grief. I have some gray hair, no ulcer (thank goodness), but have experienced the grief part up close and personal. There was the writer who argued over every single edit. You see, her work was perfect. Really. Just the way it was. I was interfering with her artistic creativity, flow, and her right to life, liberty and the pursuit of writing assignments that did not entail any revision. I liked her as a person and I liked her writing. Nonetheless, I fired her. She went on to write for InsideHigherEd for a while.

Then there was the writer whom I assigned to write a piece about Americans working as temporary lecturers at colleges and universities in the Middle East. He ran up a $400 phone bill without clearing the expense in advance. To make matters worse, the phone calls had yielded nothing he could use in the piece. There were writers who accepted assignments, signed contracts, and then decided the work was just too difficult or worse yet, required (gasp) research. There were writers who missed their deadlines, and were surprised such behavior was problematic. There were writers who wanted me to do all of their work for them. Could I find them a few leads, maybe help them with their research?

There were times when I seriously considered launching a website for editors called "FlakeyWritersToAvoid.com." Even if we couldn't reveal by name the worst flakes who'd made our lives miserable, we could perhaps cheer each other on, and swap tips on working with writers. You see, even though I studied creative writing at university, there were no electives offered in the field of publishing. Prior to graduate school, I was a freelance writer and made a tidy sum from it while I lived and worked in Italy. Then again, could a graduate course in publishing actually teach someone how to negotiate rejecting a finished piece or how to tell by talking to someone on the phone if s/he were going to be a reliable writer?

Despite the fact that there are writers who contribute regularly to the magazine, we still accept unsolicited submissions. In fact, I love opening up emails that contain essays, story leads and ideas. I see a lot of pieces that are more about grinding an axe than anything else. However, now and again there are essays that thrill me, that puts into words some aspect of adjuncting that is unique or timely.

Gathering and assigning content is one of the most important aspects of my job around here. Content is Queen, and I enjoy shaping the editorial calendar of Adjunct Advocate. As far as FlakeyWriterstoAvoid.com is concerned, it has been, literally, years since I have contemplated launching the site. That is due, in no small part, to the pleasant, witty, intelligent, hard-working and reliable writers and illustrators with whom I have the privilege to work these days. Put simply, they're simply the best.

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 12:54 PM

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December 12th 2007

Inspiration

I received a letter in late-November from someone wanting a copy of "Adjunct as Object: A Look At a Dozen Dissertations." It was published in the July/August 2002 issue of Adjunct Advocate. In his letter, the writer said:
....By the way, I am defending my dissertation November 29, 2007--it is titled "A Case Study of the Utilization of Adjunct Faculty in a Private University." Your publication and its contributors were the very seed of inspiration. Wish me luck!

A quick search on Google, turned up these other dissertations:

The proper care and feeding of adjunct faculty. A qualitative multi-site case study: The integration of part-time adjunct faculty within the hierarchical organization of higher education.

The effects of salary on job satisfaction among community college adjunct faculty.

Successful Adjunct Faculty Personnel Practices in the VCCS.

A study of the effects of a mentoring initiative on the performance of new, adjunct community college faculty.

Using Classroom Assessment Techniques: The Experiences of Adjunct Faculty at a Vanguard Learning College and Two Non-Vanguard Community Colleges.

I am not sure if the proliferation of dissertations which examine the "adjunct problem" is good or a cause for alarm. I suppose, like with anything, only time will tell. In the meantime, glad to have been of service to my correspondent and soon-to-be Ph.D. holder. I hope, of course, he gets a full-time job.

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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December 10th 2007

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

I just popped online to view our November 2007 webpage statistics. Before you yawn and decide that I am waaaaaaay too nerdy, let me promise that I won't get too technical. To begin, I will say in my defense that I do not view the stats every month. However, having a webpage is like sending out invitations to a dinner party: I want to know who's showing up and what they liked. We have had an Adjunct Advocate magazine webpage since 1995 when a guy named John Cady, then a librarian at the University of Michigan Art & Architecture Library, volunteered to design one for me. It was fantastic and terrifying all at once. John came up with a terrific design, and from that one we were off and running and haven't stopped to look back.

In November 2007, AdjunctNation had 1.68 million hits. We had visitors from North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. There are part-timers everywhere, and I am pleased to welcome them all! I am always amazed when I read through the list of countries from which people have visited AdjunctNation. Our webpage is linked to many hundreds and hundreds of webpages around the world. When I view the online stats, I click through to several of the linked pages just to see how AdjunctNation.com came up in conversation. Today, I found the sleek Denver Adjuncts page. Check it out! AdjunctNation.com is listed as an Adjunct Resource.

John Cady is an Information Architecture maven at the University of Michigan now. He helps make the university's webpage easier to navigate. Several years ago, I hired a young man named Ryan Sexton, a programmer whose favorite phrase seems always to be "We can do that!" He and I worked on the recent redesign of Adjunctation.com, as well as the design of the Part-Time Press website (where we sell professional development books for part-time faculty). Thanks to Ryan, I have a much better understanding of the nuts and bolts of web programming, interactivity and design. Along the way, I realized that I really like webpage design and architecture. Ryan moved to Utah this Fall, and now we meet weekly on iChat.

I was reading recently a complaint from an editor at a magazine who said that he wished he could simply spend all of his time copyediting. However, unlike editing jobs of a dozen years ago, copyediting is now an aspect of any editor's job. Tending various aspects of a webpage, managing electronic content, for example, has become an important part of most editors' jobs nowadays. Fortunately for me, I suppose, I really enjoy overseeing AdjunctNation.com. The growth in hits, visitors, page views, downloaded materials, etc....has been a direct result of my work with Ryan.

So, tell me what you love and what you hate about AdjunctNation.com. Tell me what you visit first when you stop by, and what we could do differently to make this resource more useful to you! To comment, if you are a registered user, simply log in here. If you'd like to comment but are not one of our registered users, visit this page to register.

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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December 7th 2007

Reading Between the Lines

When I read about the November 19, 2007 NEA study ("To Read or Not to Read") concerning the reading habits of Americans I had two reactions:
First, I shook my head and chuckled. Of course Americans read less than they did a generation ago. Of course we're spending less money on books. Can someone please tell me why I did not apply for a grant to study the reading habits of Americans? Much like the study that concluded that rich people get better health care, the results of NEA's reading study are no surprise. Have a look at the New York Times's list of bestselling books. Publishers print and market what they hope will be big sellers. Many newspapers have dumbed down editorial content, lost sight of editorial standards (the New York Times's front page editorial mea culpas come to mind), and some have sold their editorial souls in search of advertising dollars. Why, in short, should people be expected to read uninspiring/uninteresting books, newspapers and magazines? Just because someone wants us to buy them?

My second thought was that the changes in reading habits just may have something to do with literacy rates. In 1870, the literacy rate was 80 percent. A generation ago, grandparents could easily have not finished high school. Today, we have a 99 percent literacy rate. On the surface, it looks laudable. However, according to the 2003 National Assessment of Literacy, 30 million adult Americans have limited literacy skills, and 63 million adults have only basic literacy skills.

American adults can read and write, but tens of millions only with difficulty.

As a society, what can we do to encourage reading? According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, American children and adolescents spend between 22 and 28 hours a week watching television. That doesn't mean that television is inherently bad. At our house we watch a movie once a week together as a family, and enjoy some homemade pizza. (Ask my kids how entertaining I can be when the pizza sticks to the pan, and has to be chiseled out!). Once in a while, we will watch an episode or two of "The Simpson's" with our sons (10 and 7). We deconstruct third-grader Bart Simpson's escapades, Dad Homer's get-rich-quick schemes, and second-grader Lisa's love of learning. The episodes have led to chats about profanity, school, teachers, classmates, friendship and religion.

To be sure, American adults read less, because there is more to read. In June of 2007, AOL surveyed 4,000 Internet users about their use of email. A whopping 43 percent of respondents said they bring their Blackberrys or handhelds to bed with them at night so they can check email. The average email user checks her/his five times per day. The spam/virus crusaders at McAfee did a study of 1,500 online participants and found that respondents, when not reading legitimate emails, were spending tons of time deleting unwanted emails....about three and a half hours per week, to be exact, or 7.5 days per year.

So what's the answer? Why not share with me what you're reading at the moment (I'm rereading Bram Stoker's Dracula.), and what you think would get Americans reading more!

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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December 6th 2007

Sometimes I feel like St. Lawrence

For those unfamiliar with this particular saint, St. Lawrence was roasted alive on a grill. Legend has it that rather than tell the Roman soldiers where the riches of the church were hidden (among them the Holy Grail), he said, "I am done on this side. Turn me over."

I got to work this morning and sat down to an email from a colleague telling me that the American Federation of Teacher's (AFT) Assistant Director of Higher Education and Communications, Craig Smith, had lambasted me on his blog. Evidently, what prompted his responses was a comment I gave to a reporter from the Michigan Messenger.

It's not the first time staff at the American Federation of Teachers have taken exception to what we've published in the Adjunct Advocate. It is the first time my comments to the press on the subject of part-time faculty have resulted in such a quick response from anyone...much less the American Federation of Teachers.

Over the years, I have sent reporters to write stories about AFT policies regarding part-time faculty representation, and outlandish stunts on the part of AFT unified locals controlled by full-time faculty members. In short, we have worked to shed light on AFT initiatives on behalf of their part-time faculty members. Our reporters have asked questions that were perceived as threatening and overly probing.

Well, sometimes doing this job requires being able to take a bit of roasting. I lived in Rome for three years, and for the first year, I lived, believe it or not, in the quarter of the city called San Lorenzo (Saint Lawrence). While visiting Rome over the years I have driven many, many times past the church of San Lorenzo fuori le mura (Saint Lawrence outside the walls), where the gridiron on which Saint Lawrence was killed, is enshrined. When I go next time, I think I'll pop in and have a look at it. Until then, I'm done on this side. Turn me over!

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 10:50 AM

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December 3rd 2007

The State of the Nation

It has been a loooooong road making the switch from print to digital. Thus far, we have had nothing but positive responses from readers. I have been particularly encouraged by the responses from our library subscribers. The librarians are, almost uniformly, thrilled to be able to reach more faculty with electronic delivery of the Adjunct Advocate. In essence, when a college library subscribes, the magazine becomes available to every person on campus. More to the point, it becomes available to every faculty member with access to a computer–either on campus or at home.

I thought about and researched digital delivery for almost two years before I made the decision to switch to it. This past Fall, I received a promotional piece for a magazine publishing conference. One session was about moving from print to digital delivery. The teaser text that described the panel discussion asked whether switching to digital from print was just a way to go out of business gracefully. For some publications, it probably is, unfortunately. These are tough times for publishers.

When InsideHigherEd debuted, I watched their progress with keen interest. To be sure, the core group of founders, had experience at print publications, specifically The Chronicle of Higher Education. However, they were also convinced higher education was ready for an online news source. InsideHigherEd has since secured venture capital funding, and expanded into a robust and thriving online publication.

To be sure, Adjunct Advocate will face challenges associated with the switch that I never anticipated. However, I am convinced that not only are our readers ready for digital delivery, but that we will eventually reach exponentially more readers by making this switch. Finally, for years I have gotten chewed out by part-timers at conferences over our subscription rates. The price we charged was just too much for some people. I am, however, absolutely delighted to have been able to cut the price of an individual subscription by close to 50 percent and to expand the page count of each issue.

I am still not absolutely positive that we won't ever do another print issue. It was, after all, Goria Swanson who said: "Never say never, for if you live long enough, chances are you will not be able to abide by its restrictions. Never is a long, undependable time, and life is too full of rich possibilities to have restrictions placed upon it." In the meantime, enjoy the magazine.

Listen to my blog entry here.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM