The Adjunct Advocate

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ARCHIVE: May 2008

May 29th 2008

Working the Phones

Listen to my blog entry here.

I have this disconcerting habit of answering the phone in a way that makes people think they have reached an answering machine. It's somewhat embarrassing. "Good afternoon, this is the Adjunct Advocate and Part-Time Press." Invariably, there is a pause on the other end of the line. After a moment, I say something like, "Hello." Then, the caller laughs and says something like, "Oh, you're not an answering machine." Well, no, I'm not. Despite this, I enjoy answering the phone. I never know who'll turn up on the other end of the line.

Today, it was a Dean from a college in Virginia. She was trying to convert her subscription to a digital one and having some trouble with what I like to believe is a fail safe system devised by our Web Programmer. As much as I'd like to think we've worked all the kinks, it's just never the case. She needed help, and so had phoned us. I helped her out. She was pleased by the excellent customer service. She had a problem, and I fixed it immediately. She asked my name, and when I told her who I was she asked me how I had decided to publish Adjunct Advocate, and then to take the publication digital.

I have written about how I left teaching to publish a magazine for part-time faculty. I was in the mail room of the department in which I taught and noticed that the part-time faculty had, well, an entire wall of mailboxes, while the full-time faculty had significantly fewer. I did a bit of poking around and discovered there was no magazine for part-time college faculty, but that there were 325,000 adjuncts. That was 1992. I was 31 and without children, and had just met my partner. I actually had money saved up. I took that money and started the magazine.

The Dean represented to me something very symbolic. I never expected anyone except part-time faculty to subscribe to the magazine. That was just one of the many mistakes I made along the way. She had subscribed to the print edition for many years, she told me, and wanted to check out the electronic version and, perhaps, take advantage of the institutional subscription we now offer that allows everyone on a campus to access the contents of the magazine. As it turns out, she also uses our books in her faculty development program. We chatted about how very important it is for temporary faculty to be supported professionally.

She called just as I was writing a letter to editor of The Atlantic Monthly in response to a piece titled "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower," written by an adjunct faculty member. In my letter, I wrote that, yes, Professor X's student has failed the research paper assignment, but more importantly, Professor X had failed the student. Further, Professor X's college employer had failed their adjunct faculty by the obvious lack of supervision and mentoring as described in Professor X's essay. I hope you'll read the piece and let me know what you think. I believe the student could have been taught what she needed to know to succeed. Let me know what you think!

The Dean told me her supervisor had charged her with creating a model mentoring program for the adjunct faculty she hires and supervises. I assured her that she was not alone in her task. At the American Association of Community College Conference, I met many administrators who were finally getting funding to develop similar programs for adjunct faculty.

I know I may get blasted for saying this, but as long as adjuncts are hired at the last moment, not required to perform service, don't get professional recognition for their scholarly work, or conduct research, and are not fully integrated into the departments in which they teach, they will continue to be poorly paid and unsupported. On this the Dean and I agreed. I just wish I could get more part-timers to see the logic of tying pro-rata pay and benefits to greater responsibility and professionalism.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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May 23rd 2008

Memorial Day

I want to wish a thoughtful and reflective Memorial Day to all of the Adjunct Advocate's readers, and all of the visitors who come and use the resources at AdjunctNation.com. Memorial Day was established in 1866 as "Decoration Day"—to honor the dead of the Civil War by decorating their graves. After World War I, it became custom on Memorial Day to honor all those who had died in all of America's wars.

Our troops are currently fighting in the midst of a civil war in Iraq. Whether or not we agree with the foreign policies of our government, I hope we can all take a moment and remember the sacrifice of those who have died in the service of our country since that first memorial Day 142 years ago.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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May 19th 2008

I'm Flattered (I Think)

Listen to my blog entry here.

Just a couple of hours after posting my blog piece that mentions selling Adjunct Advocate, over at the American Federation of Teachers Craig Smith had this to say. Well, kind of this to say. He offers my blog posting without comment. Then, he asks his readers to guess who will buy the magazine, and how much it will sell for. Both very good questions. The implication seems to be that selling to a larger company and/or selling for money are worth commenting on.

Hmm....maybe I should take payment in camels? Nah, I'm already planning on getting chickens once the Ann Arbor City Council passes the ordinance allowing residents to keep hens in the city (if I lived in Madison, Wisconsin, I could be eating my own fresh eggs already). Chickens will occupy all of my animal tending time. I'll not have a spare moment for camels. I could take payment in precious gems, but what happens when you send the bank a couple of diamond chips instead of a mortgage check? I suppose I'll have to settle for dollars, dammit.

Maybe AFT could buy Adjunct Advocate. Lord knows they'd love for the publication to quit with the questions, already. The nagging questions about FACE and part-time faculty gains from FACE (or lack thereof, thus far), about union finances, about all of that pain in the neck stuff we've been asking about since 1992, when we asked in a feature story headline, "Who's Going to Organize the New Proletariat?"

Just between you, me and the 20,000 people who read this blog, I'm hoping Rupert Murdoch calls in a lather hoping to add Adjunct Advocate to his stable of newspapers and magazines. I am also hoping he'll call when totally intoxicated and insist he must give me $40 million dollars, cash, and that he doesn't need to consult with his Chief Financial Officer. I know. Wait. I turn down Rupert Murdoch, because on line two they tell me Punch Sulzberger from the New York Times is calling. There are scads of of part-time faculty in New York. Adjunct Advocate is a perfect complement to the Times magazine.

Seriously, I am actually quite conflicted about my decision to sell the magazine, primarily because I have met so many incredibly bright, passionate and interesting people on this almost two-decade journey of mine. In addition, I am proud to have built a thriving business that has supported my family, and provided both my partner and I the opportunity to participate fully in the lives of our sons. I expected to be a professor, or a travel writer, or maybe even a novelist; I never expected to own a publishing company. Now, I can't imagine doing anything else!

So, if I sell Adjunct Advocate, you will be among the first to know when it happens. Until then, it's back to work. May/June will feature a profile of the part-time faculty group who organized the new union at Henry Ford Community College, in Dearborn, Michigan. There will also be a piece on the diversion of part-time faculty equity money to full-time faculty in Washington State. Until then, thanks for stopping by and hanging out with us at the AdjunctNation.com web page. In April, the site hosted 115,000 visits, and served up 1.7 million pages.

Posted By Patricia L. at 8:00 AM

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May 16th 2008

Spring Brings Change

This has been a very busy Springtime for me.

Anyone who lives in a northern climate can tell you that when the weather changes from snow, sleet and ice, to warm breezes, sun and gentle rains, it's tough to keep your nose to the grindstone. This past winter, my part of the state of Michigan got sprinkled with nine feet (yes, I said nine) feet of snow. So, when it all melted, and the ground unfroze, we tapped the five sugar maple trees we have in our backyard and made maple syrup. I know this might sound odd, but it actually works. For the past two years, we have ended up with about a pint of syrup per tree. This year, however, thanks to the snow (or so say more experienced maple syrup makers) our production was up, up, up. We boiled down enough sap to produce an entire gallon of maple syrup.

Then, in April, I bought myself a new bicycle. When my eldest son was 10 months old, (a decade ago) I bought a Cannondale with a baby bike seat. Both of my sons and I spent many a morning biking to one park or another. This year, I gave that bike to my oldest boy. He is almost as tall as I am now, and gladly moved up to my very expensive, very well cared for, Cannondale, the "Green Machine," as it was dubbed shortly after I bought it. My new Cannondale is made in America, and significantly lighter than the old one; it's a good thing, too. A lighter bike is the only way I'd ever keep up with my kids when we ride together. However, since we are a one car family, having really well made bikes doesn't seem such an extravagance. Our family bikes, walks and takes the bus whenever we can.

In May, I decided to do something I thought I would do a very long time ago. When I began Adjunct Advocate in 1992, I imagined working on the magazine for 10 years. That seemed so far into the future, I couldn't really envision past that. I just knew that a decade seemed like the outside limit for me to work on a project. I thrive on creation. It's part of why I like to write. It's an opportunity to constantly create, learn and think. I can think of no better way to spend a life than engaging in those three activities.

When you own a business, one of the most crucial decisions you have to make (if you don't, you can get into a lot of trouble) is whether you want to grow your business, hire staff, own an office building and work toward growth. Many years ago, when my kids were little, I decided that I wanted my business to stay small. Despite this, almost four years ago, I decided to buy a book publishing company, which I renamed the Part-Time Press. It was a gamble, but it has since proven a very sound business decision. Today, one out of every four colleges and universities in the United States uses our books for part-time faculty professional development and orientation programs. I enjoy book publishing. Immensely. More than I thought I ever would. As a result, I have decided to sell Adjunct Advocate and pursue book publishing. I can't do both.

However, as I was determined to keep my business small so that I could participate in parenting my sons, university administrators had other ideas: in the almost 20 years I have worked on Adjunct Advocate, the number of faculty off the tenure-track has doubled. When I launched the magazine, there were 300,000 part-time faculty, and people didn't even know what an "adjunct" was. Today, 700,000 faculty work off the tenure-track. I believe very strongly that those faculty deserve a national publication that can serve their professional needs and look after their professional concerns. Nothing irks me as much as hearing editors of education publications say that their mags., web sites and newspapers "publish pieces about adjunct faculty."

The days for separate drinking fountains for part-time faculty were over a decade ago. Higher education newspapers, web sites and magazines whose editorial leaders believe it's fine to simply "publish articles about adjuncts" are still operating under the mistaken impression that we are in 1980, and tenure-line faculty are the majority in higher education. Those days are finished. It's time for the content of higher education publications to reflect this. To be fair, my colleagues in the higher education press realize that the demographic of the faculty population has changed dramatically. It's just that I got a 20-year head start on them. You and I know it's impossible to write about any subject of import to higher education without looking at how it impacts temporary faculty. Those other guys are coming around slowly.

That they are coming around is good news for part-time faculty, and for me. I want to see Adjunct Advocate fly to the next level, and that's going to take selling it to a larger company, not growing my company any larger.

I want to end by sharing a note I recently got from a reader and a posting about Adjunct Advocate I recently came across on a blog. They demonstrate the wide spectrum of the population Adjunct Advocate reaches. First the blog posting. It's from the blog Vlorbik. There, on March 14, 2008, the blogger referred to "the execrable Adjunct 'Advocate.'" Evidently, the publication is not "advocating" as it should, or perhaps I am not. Your guess is as good as mine. Now, the message from the reader:

Hi P.D.
I just wanted to let you know I successfully completed my Ph.D. last November 2007 and want to credit Adjunct Advocate for getting me started and seeing me through, and, to thank you personally for the note of confidence you gave me when you forwarded a requested paper regarding the number of dissertations about part-time or adjunct faculty. My dissertation is titled: "A Case Study of the Utilization of Adjunct Faculty in a Private University." Everything went so well mainly because I really believe in the merit of the subject and the passion behind your publication. Sincere appreciation to you and your staff and contributors. Mahalo and aloha!
Skip Kazarian, Ph.D.
English Faculty
Hawai'i Pacific University

See why I've kept publishing Adjunct Advocate for almost a decade longer than I expected I would? Some day I'll tell you about the letter from an absolutely enraged reader I got that was written in orange crayon, and the thank you note for the free subscription I received from the guy in prison.

Posted By Patricia L. at 10:00 AM

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May 1st 2008

Who Says Crow Isn't Tasty?

In this blog entry, I posited that, perhaps, the new part-time faculty union at Wayne State would have a tougher time than leaders expected to negotiate a new contract with a job security clause. Well, I am here to tell you that Susan Titus, whom we profiled in the latest issue of Adjunct Advocate, and her colleagues, did just that!

According to union officials, UPTF has reached an agreement with university officials. The contract, I was told, includes pay raises and a good first step toward job security. Full details will be made available over the next few days. The union's 900 members will then have to vote on whether to accept the agreement.

Join me in sending an email message of congratulations to UPTF President Susan Titus.

I am delighted to say that my prediction that the union would have to wait for Wayne State to get its new president before negotiating a contract was totally wrong. The crow I am eating, in this case, tastes just wonderful. It would have been unthinkably horrid for a faculty union in Detroit, the home of some of the most powerful union actions and union history in the U.S., to have languished without a first contract, like the part-time faculty at Pace University, in New York.

Posted By Patricia L. at 9:53 AM