I’ve had this idea for a while now. I concluded some time ago that there needed to be more adjunct voices blogging. At InsideHigherEd.com, there is “The Education of Oronte Churm” blog. Oronte blogs somewhat sporadically and indirectly about adjunct faculty. Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, there are no adjunct bloggers, per se, though the newspaper is publishing essays from about about adjunct faculty with more frequency. It galls me to no end that the Chronicle’s high profile Brainstorm blog employs Marc Bousquet, a tenure-line faculty member, to blog about adjunct issues. So it has been for much too long that full-time tenure-line faculty have taken it upon themselves to serve as the spokespeople of their non-tenured colleagues.
With the launch of the new blogs on AdjunctNation, each of which is written by a non-tenured faculty member, the site has give voice to several individuals who will write weekly on a variety of topics that will, I believe, appeal to a wide swath of the Adjunct Nation who visit our site.
So take a few moments, and check out the new blogs:
The New Adjunct, written by Paul Porter, chronicles the launch of the web site “The New Adjunct” for non-tenured faculty throughout Indiana. I thought it might be interesting to see the progress of the group working on this project. Web pages just for non-tenured faculty are few and far between and I welcome the creation of The New Adjunct.
Kat Kiefer-Newman pitched Juggling 101 when I sent out a call for bloggers to several thousand individuals registered as AdjunctNation.com Family Members. I thought Kat’s idea was spot on. Adjuncts juggle teaching with many other responsibilities, and Kat is going to write about her busy days, afternoons and evenings. Adjuncting for two different departments, teaching five courses, is just the beginning of her day.
Check out all of the new blogs here.
You can now follow whichever blogger(s) you like via Twitter. When there is a new blog posting on AdjunctNation.com, it will be tweeted to the followers of the blog(s). The AdjunctNation.com Family email alert will let Family members when new blog postings go up, as well. That email alert contains other information, so if you simply want to be alerted when your favorite blog is updated, follow the blogger on Twitter.
In the meantime, we are going to design and launch the Adjunct Diary Page. Unlike our regular bloggers, on the Diary Page, anyone will be able to sign up and post their own blog content. Diary readers will be able to comment on posted Diary content, and the Diary content with the most views and most comments will be be highlighted on the Adjunct Diary front page. I am very excited about this opportunity for more and more non-tenured faculty to have opportunities to tell their stories.
