adjunct – Feminism and Religion

"Scooped" by Vanessa Vaile onto A is for Adjunct — “Scooped” by Vanessa Vaile onto A is for Adjunct

On Wednesday February 25^th, adjunct faculty across the United States walked out of their classrooms, and hosted teach-ins, lectures, film screenings and rallies, to protest the employment conditions faced by adjunct and all contingent faculty members of colleges and universities. I am adjunct faculty; and encouraged by what I learned in my own participation in the protest, I would like to share my experiences with you in this blog.

While many Universities last week held massive protests and walkouts on campus, I realized when planning my own protest that if I walked out, I would probably be standing outside on the lawn with very few other protesters. There are plenty of adjunct faculty on my campus—75% to be exact, the national average for all college and university campuses— but I know very few of my adjunct peers and we have no organized voice at the school. Weighing my options (admittedly last minute), I found a great power point presentation on the National Adjunct Walkout Day Facebook page prepared by a Texas adjunct professor, Dr. Jenny Smith, and made available for use by all through Slideshare. Instead of walking out, I taught-in; and I was surprised by how little my students knew about this issue, though I was incredibly heartened by their responses.

Continue reading ““‘A’ is for Adjunct:” National Adjunct Walkout Day #NAWD”

Last week, social media was ablaze over a September 18 Pittsburg Post-Gazette column entitled “Death of An Adjunct” by Daniel Kovalik that had the following teaser: “Margaret Mary Vojtko, an adjunct professor of French for 25 years, died underpaid and underappreciated at age 83.” Inside Higher Ed reports that the column went viral as “adjuncts across the country reported seeing something tragically familiar in her story.” The Chronicle of Higher Education likewise covered the story with this tagline: “An Adjunct’s Death Becomes a Rallying Cry for Many In Academe.”

This tragedy involves all sorts of issues with which readers of this blog are concerned: power, structural injustice, job insecurity, underemployment, unions, healthcare, and Catholic values (the last of these since Margaret worked at a Catholic institution), to name a few.

Continue reading “No More Of This in Academe! by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”