Work and Life

THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME

2011-11-17T06:30:00.000-08:00

How very suitable for this neglected corner of my blog network. With all the workplace related posts piling up in my reader, I really should be doing better here.

Briefly commenting on the following article: emphasizing the recent bull market in this truly annoying genre overlooks that it has always been with us. Remember Paul Harvey? Little People Overcoming Adversity On Their Own stories were a specialty of his. As an underemployed single parent at the decade turned from 60s to 70s, I recall the depression of reading and hearing about other single parents rising up what was dragging me down and wearing me out. Not just overcoming without assistance but single-handedly reroofing their homes. Somehow the roofs were the final straw.

The last few years have seen a bull market for Sadness Journalism – stories of foreclosures, medical bankruptcies, layoffs, homelessness, hunger, and a host of other woes that were invisible when they happened to the underclass but are now polite conversation since they're happening to middle class people. The narratives inevitably follow one of a few well established frameworks. The sad story (man loses job, descends into alcoholism, accidentally kills loved ones/ends up in prison). The downshifting story (well paid professional loses job, realizes she is happier living in a small house with a garden and no car).

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English Department of the Future

2011-03-05T04:03:00.001-08:00

The time: some decades hence.
The place: The University of South Jetsonville, a large state university.
The Grand Administrator is speaking to one of his minions about what used to be called the English Department. Although there are four faculty members who still comprise the "English Department," most of the department, and its chair, have been "restructured" and have disappeared in the name of increasing efficiency. Curiously enough, the number of administrators has only increased. We enter in the midst of the conversation.
The Grand Administrator: "What can you tell me about how we're achieving excellence in the English Department?"
Minion: "Well, our single section of English 101 is a success. The accrediting agency is happy that we have moved to weekly Scantron grammar quizzes instead of actual writing, since it's impossible to be accredited without measurable outcomes. There's nothing more measurable than a quiz."

It gets 'better' ~ read the rest at notofgeneralinterest.blogspot.com

From April 2008, so either prescient or just another case of the le plus ça change le plus c'est la même chose. That or, quoting Gen DeGaulle, ça c'est le chit en lit. Inspired by discussion of tenureless university, closer now than it was then. The scenario is equally reminiscent of a certain rural NM branch campus, cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, circa 2003.... and no doubt innumerable others of its ilk

Posted via email from Academentia

Inside PermaShelter Model 2011

2011-03-03T10:34:00.001-08:00

From Transitional Shelter to permanent or long term housing. A home. You've seen pictures of the outside ~ now take a tour of the compact interior, designed for efficiency and to maximize limited available space.

Of course production values and sound track are unlikely to get us any Oscar or other film prize nominations. That's not the film's purpose anyway. Can you visualize PermaShelters as real world living space, a home where there was none before? That is our purpose.

Posted via email from Haven at Harbor Homes

what is academic work?

2011-02-13T18:58:00.001-08:00

Rounding up all the usual suspects and then some: Omnivore, the Book Forum blog, surveys academia as written about online in magazines, book reviews and blogs, via selected, annotated links.

From Miller-McCune, blacks and Latinos who apply to the most selective public universities in some "race-blind" states are being reshuffled downward to lower-quality schools, researchers say; and studies find a decline in Asian-American students’ success once they move away from home and go to college. A review of Diary of a Dean by Herbert I. London. A review of No University is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom by Cary Nelson. Does Google Scholar push the most popular content rather than act as a neutral tool? A review of Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age by Ann M. Blair (and more). Laurie Fendrich on the humanities and human temperaments (and part 2). Challenging the Left: An Objectivist case for intellectual diversity in academia. A review of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa (and more and more). Cult Stud Mugged: Why we should stop worrying and learn to love a hip English professor. Stephen Brockmann wonders if a key cause of the crisis facing humanities programs can be traced to the culture wars of the '80s. Monty Python's Academic Circus: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition — or high modernism in the guise of British goofballery. What is academic work? In academic debate for academic debate's sake, the pleasures are as palpable as they are esoteric. Do rich, white Protestants have a big edge in admissions?

via bookforum.com

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Haitian remembrances, in their own voices

2011-01-13T01:14:00.001-08:00

Anniversaries are supposed to be celebrations, not catalogs of destruction, marked by delays and frustration. I can't help but recall that the 1st year is the paper anniversary and think on the symbolism, "Paper represents fragility, a delicate nature, but can also denote the acquisition of knowledge." Fragility, yes. Knowledge, to be hoped for.

Blogger DocCrof writes, "Google and NewsNow are saturated with earthquake-anniversary stories, with few adding anything useful to our understanding of Haiti."

After going through my feed reader skimming and tagging anniversary stories, looking for standouts for an anniversary remembrance post, I'm of the same mind. The post excerpted below, itself compiled from other posts by Haitian bloggers, caught my attention for its authentic and unadulterated voices.

Perhaps later, I'll return to the anniversary stories, pick out a few for sharing links and images.

Haiti: One Year Ago…We Remember via Global Voices in English, written by Janine Mendes-Franco,* 1/12/11*

Today marks one year since the devastating earthquake struck Haiti. Haitian bloggers are remembering…

The Livesay Haiti Weblog writes:

On 1/12/2010 at 4:53pm the landscape of Haiti was irrevocably changed. Despite great tribulation and loss the heart and spirit of the people endures. Today an entire country stops to remember those they lost. Please pray for them and with them.... There is no week in our lives in 38 years that is as vivid and clear in our memories as a year ago this week.

Pétion-ville cemetery by caribbeanfreephoto, used under a Creative Commons Licence.

Karlito's Blog posts an image that “you possibily have been seeing this image pop up pretty much everywhere on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, BBm) today”, explaining:

Late last night as I was thinking about a way to commemorate the one year anniversary of Haiti”s devastating earthquake, It came to mind that I didn’t need to do much, I just needed to be a survivor, so I created this little image symbolically.

We need to be there not only to tell a story, the story, our story as we remember it to our children and our grandchildren but also to help built a better and safer future for them. We need to be survivors everyday so that every step we make forward in this life be the reflection of our gratitude for the blessings that God has bestowed upon us everyday since that day. Nothing is greater then the gift of life.

National Palace, by caribbeanfreephoto, used under a Creative Commons Licence

On Twitter, the hashtags for the one-year anniversary of the earthquake are #remember #Haiti - and Tweeple have been using the micro-blogging platform to do just that. Bloggers on the ground in Haiti continue to weigh in. The Apparent Project Blog writes:

The last few days have been hard. Somehow I wish the calendar wasn't cyclical, because I'm not really ready to remember what happened a year ago.... I heard that they resurrected the Iron Market and it opened yesterday.... It was a place of significance for me and I cried as I saw the beautiful historical marketplace crumpled on the ground in the wake of the quake. I think for me it will be a moment of joy to see it rebuilt. The one thing that is fixed. The one thing that has been restored and repaired.

Indeed, @RAMHaiti posted several tweets about the inauguration of the rebuilt Iron Market…and a few about the stark contrast of the new facility to other areas of the capital:

Tent city, Juvenat by caribbeanfreephoto, used under a Creative Commons Licence

Today, whether it was through tweets, poetry or suggestions about ways in which to move forward, there is no doubt that this sad anniversary was top of mind in the regional blogosphere. Perhaps Shelley Clay sums it up best - today is important to remember because it is about the Haitian people:

It is January 12th. A baby is coming into the world today. A country is on her knees today. I will spend my day waiting for news of a boy or girl, probably go down to see the beautiful Iron Market, probably cry a little, hug my kids a lot, and remember what happened one year ago. God Bless Haiti this year!

All photos used in this post are by caribbeanfreephoto, used under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Creative Commons License. Visit caribbeanfreephoto's flickr photostream here.

Posted via email from Haven at Harbor Homes

Another MLA Online Roundup « Post Academic

2011-01-10T22:28:00.001-08:00

Still no personally crafted MLA Convention-from-afar round-up, instead I spent the day community blogging, researching a story on, would you believe, the local Chamber of Commerce (which displays the same stunning disregard for transparency as highered admin), setting up for and settling into a couple of open online classes/workshops, one an experimental online super-mega-class, a MOOC.

Both delivery and subject for this last course, Learning and Knowledge Analytics, have major implications for the future of highered and academic labor. Why am I doing it? Curiosity, it's free, definitely a change of pace and, unless you are into ostrich, relevant.

Anyway, back to Post-academic's excellent MLA Convention roundup...

I would have made this a Twitter roundup, but the #mla11 feed is admirably polite and professional, aside from concerns about cliquishness among a certain group. To which I say, this is a convention, not high school, so make your own group if you don’t like the dominant group. It can be done. It’s a large convention, not a cafeteria. Watch “Police Academy” or “Stripes” or any other inspiring misfit comedy, take some notes and call me in the morning.

Anyway, on to the roundup:

via postacademic.org

The message of the digression (yes, intended or not, there's a message, or subtext if you prefer): nice to hear about the convention, but we all still have lives. Haven't checked recently, but not much about #mla1 on the adj-l list, not even about the "Academy in Hard Times" opening day initiative. A different quantum universe.

Posted via email from Academentia

the academic divide

2011-01-09T18:51:00.001-08:00

I'll get back to MLALA, Boston AHA and other convention follow-ups tomorrow or whenever the blog and media post-mortems roll in to supplement in-the-moment twitterati observations, not to mention the wealth of links on the rss reader to sort. In the meantime, Ominvore's annotated, academic-themed links fill the gap.

Communicating across the academic divide: Universities must nurture interdisciplinary relationships, which can lead to creative ideas that could fuel the economy's long-term health. Are English departments killing the humanities? From Minding the Campus, Russell K. Nieli on why Caltech is in a class by itself. What does a relationship between the intuitive symbolic work of children and the design of contemporary technologies mean for the academic world? The man who financed Facebook is offering 20 two-year $100,000 fellowships to teenagers with big ideas — as long as they leave university. An article on the 7 most important classes to take in college. With a cross-disciplinary approach to education, we can train a new class of problem-solvers to address current global challenges, from poverty to climate change. No talking in class: Campus liberals sacrificed free expression on the altar of political correctness. What happens when college is oversold: Why are more and more college graduates not entering the class of professional, technical and managerial workers that has been considered the main avenue of employment? An interview with Ronald A. Smith, author of Pay for Play: A History of Big-Time College Athletic Reform. For-profit college companies are taking in enormous amounts of federal student aid money by recruiting and enrolling members of the military, veterans and their families, with questionable returns.

via bookforum.com

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My PLN Blueprint in 5 parts

2011-01-06T21:18:00.001-08:00

This was one of my early posts explaining how I became involved in Social Media and the idea of a Personal Learning Network.It seems to be a topic that needs to be continually explained because of the growing number of educators who continue to enter the world of social media for educators.

Part 1

One of today’s educational buzzwords, or fad terms is the PLN. For my purposes it stands for Personal Learning Network. Others call it a Professional Learning Network or Community or even Environment. That would be PLN, PLN, PLC, or PLE. Many educators today are involved understanding and developing their own PLN’s. Everyone has one, and each is different and as unique as a fingerprint. Some employ technology, and others dwell in faculty rooms across the country and around the world.

The history of my PLN began back in the late 70’s. It was formed not through the technology of the computer, but rather about the technology of a 27 foot sailing vessel. It was merely a sailboat, but in my mind, being my first boat, it was truly a vessel.

I live on Long Island in New York. It is a place where boating thrives for about five to six months a year, beginning in June and ending in October. As I grew up, I always went on others’ boats, but never owned my own. Working in a school district of a community on the shore of an island, I found many of my faculty friends were avid boaters. More specifically they were sail boaters , or more accurately, sailors. It was at this time of my life that I made a big decision to become a boat owner. I purchased a brand new 27 foot O’Day sailboat. There was only one small drawback to this major purchase and commitment, I had no idea how to sail.

I took a Coast Guard Course and read a bunch of books. I ordered several catalogues and every sailing Magazine subscription I could get delivered. As my purchase was being readied for delivery, I determined that my preparation might be lacking. That is when I developed a plan out of desperation. This was to be my first organized development of a Personal Learning Network.

The plan was simple and bordered on genius. It was based on knowing that sailors are a breed of boaters who love to sail at every opportunity. I informed the Yacht dealer that I wanted to take delivery of my vessel in the water and ready to sail in April. This was unheard of, since boating season did not really get going until June. That, however, was the genius part. I had two months before all of the sailors that I knew would have their own boats in the water. I on the other hand had a spanking-new Sailing vessel at their “Beck and call”. They only needed to take the owner along for the sail. I had about ten experienced sailors teaching me all that they knew in my Personal Learning Network. I was golden.

I also recognized that I stumbled upon a real plan for personal learning. I did not want to make any other major purchases to test my assumptions, but I did pay close attention to what I had accomplished and how I did it. I took note of what I needed to know and how I gather those who knew it around me. With the advent of the Internet I have expanded my reach for those who know what I need to know. I have developed a PLN beyond the faculty room and to Educational experts literally around the world.

via tomwhitby.wordpress.com

Possibly the best description of the Personal Learning Network and how it works. Thinking just in terms of technology is misleading. I remember my first PLN: I was 14 and certainly didn't call it that. I was just trying to learn about something new on my own.

Posted via email from Academentia

Name That Weird Invention!

2011-01-03T08:58:00.001-08:00

Life surrounds us with weird inventions and practices. Some we become so accustomed to that they no longer seem weird ~ normalization. I'll spare you extended references structuralism and Gombrich on the visual arts.

It’s time for the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of crazy ideas in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenters suggesting the funniest and wittiest names will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop. Let your imagination run wild, and good luck!

via neatorama.com

Somehow this also reminds me of Mountainair Moments. What would you designate as the oddest / weirdest structures, practices, stories, etc. about Mountainair? If unnamed, then go wild naming it. Yes, we have no free T-shirts today. Sorry about that...

Posted via email from Meanderings

announcing a new digital daily

2011-01-02T13:24:00.001-08:00

... PermaShelter SA covers #Haiti news, art, culture, music, development, disaster relief updates and more online at http://bit.ly/PDaily, Subscribe by email (button on site) or to RSS feed. Learn more about Haiti, conflicts, triumphs and why rebuilding matters.

Before PermaShelter...

tent city image from NonProfit Times, 1-1-11 Cover Story, Haiti, A Year Later

Our vision of "After"

and in many colors

Posted via email from Haven at Harbor Homes

HNY & Independence Day ~ with soup

2011-01-01T22:08:00.001-08:00

★* Happy New Year *★* ˛. _██_*.。*./ ♥ / .˛* .˛。.˛.*.★*

For Haitians, the day was more than just the start of another year: it is also their Independence Day. Like many holidays, this one comes with its own special dish, joumou or pumpkin soup, which is poignantly symbolic of freedom to Haitians.

Haiti marks 207th anniversary of independence
Haitian Freedom = Haitian Pumpkin Soup
New Year's Day... Soup Joumou Day...

1 lb.cubed beef stew meat
2 lb. pumpkin (winter squash)
1 lb. cabbage sliced, chopped
3 carrots peeled and sliced
2 stalks celery sliced and cut,
3 quarts water (more later if needed)
1 large onion cubed
6 medium potatoes
1 lb. malanga peeled and cubed or equivalent
3 medium sized turnips, peeled and cubed
2 limes cut in half and juiced
1/4 lb vermicelli, macaroni broken short
4 garlic cloves, 2 sliced scallions, 1 teaspoon thyme, 2 teaspoon of salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, all grinded or pounded
1 scotch bonnet pepper, whole with stem.(hot)

Clean the meat with hot water and lemon juice and set aside in a bowl.
Add the spice paste and let marinated for at least an hour.
Bring water to boil in stockpot, add meat and hot pepper, cover the pot and let cook until tender (about 1 ½- 2 hrs)
Add carrots and pumpkin to the tendered meat and continue cooking for 20 minutes
When pumpkin gets soft, remove and puree it in blender but, discard the chile pepper. Add the puree back into the pot.
Add the potatoes, celery, turnips, malanga cubes to the soup, reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes. Add cabbage and cook for another 20 minutes. Add water if necessary because you don't want the soup to be too thick.
Continue boiling until meat is tender and vegetables are cooked (1/2 hour).
Add vermicelli and macaroni or pasta and continue cooking until tender.
Taste and add seasoning at will, salt or hot pepper. Pour in lime juice and stir.
Turn off the heat, cover pot and let sit until ready to serve in medium size bowl. Put on the side a beautiful basket of sliced bread for 6 persons.

Also posted at Harbor Homes LLC on the blog, Haven

Posted via email from Haven at Harbor Homes

the state of higher education

2010-12-28T11:21:00.001-08:00

...segues into obligatory season version of the ubiquitous "whither U" conversation ~ whether rant, lecture or dialog. Our New Year's resolution (another obligatory seasonal genre) should be moving it from rant and lecture to inclusive dialog. By inclusive, I mean not leaving adjuncts, contingent and NTT academic labor out of the national discussion and decision make. Don't just toss an occasional hush puppy panel or even all day bone to the noisy dog.

Anthony Grafton reviews Higher Education? by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus and Crisis on Campus by Mark Taylor. Is going to an elite college worth the cost? The sluggish economy and rising costs of college have only intensified questions about whether expensive, prestigious colleges make any difference. Michael Konczal on the 21st-century retreat from public higher education. The academy as a commodity: What if the market has already devalued the knowledge on which the entire operation of accountability is based? From Arcade, Gregory Jusdanis on the oppression of peer review. Academics have long been criticised for being out of touch with the real world; many make great efforts to dispel ivory tower attitudes, but others believe such habits will never disappear. An interview with Phillip Brown, Hugh Lauder, and David Ashton, authors of The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Incomes. The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time. Can Tolstoy save your marriage? Cultural classics offer vital lessons about how to live, but our universities don't teach them that way. An interview with Martha Nussbaum on the value of the humanities (and more). Victor Davis Hanson writes in defense of the liberal arts: The therapeutic Left and the utilitarian Right both do disservice to the humanities. We're all conservatives now: Academics from the left and right blame each other for the state of higher education, but they're in agreement more than they realize.

via bookforum.com

Our part is to come to table stunningly well informed: homework done, all sides researched ~ add well articulated objectives to the list. Hence the timeliness of yet another review.

Coming up in this seasonally appropriate Janus series: an adjuncts' top 10 list for 2010, maybe even best and worst lists. Then if not resolutions, directions and realistic objectives for 2011.

What's on your list?

Posted via email from Academentia

Update to issue 17 of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

2010-12-15T15:53:00.001-08:00

Higher ed concerns and issues are interconnected with and cannot/must not be separated from those of K-12

The current issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor has been updated with two new field reports.

Issue No. 17 of Workplace “Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions” is guest edited by Howard Stevenson of Lincoln University (UK).

The new field reports include:

The NEA Representative Assembly of 2010: A Longer View of Crisis and Consciousness
Rich Gibson

Abstract
Following the 2009 National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly (RA) in San Diego, new NEA president Dennis Van Roekel was hugging Arne Duncan, fawning over new President Obama, and hustling the slogan, “Hope Starts Here!” At the very close of the 2009 RA, delegates were treated to a video of themselves chanting, “Hope starts Here!” and “Hope Starts with Obama and Duncan!” The NEA poured untold millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours, into the Obama campaign. In 2009, Van Roekel promised to tighten NEA-Obama ties, despite the President’s educational policies and investment in war. What happened in the year’s interim? What was the social context of the 2010 RA?

Resisting the Common-nonsense of Neoliberalism: A Report from British Columbia
E. Wayne Ross

Abstract
Faced with a $16 million budget shortfall, the Vancouver school trustees, who have a mandate to meet the needs of their students, have lobbied for more provincial funding to avoid draconian service cuts. The government has refused the request, and its special advisor to the Vancouver School Board criticizes trustees for engaging in “advocacy” rather than making “cost containment” first priority. The clash between Vancouver trustees and the ministry of education is not “just politics.” Rather, education policy in BC reflects the key features of neoliberal globalization, not the least of which is the principle that more and more of our collective wealth is devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs. British Columbia is home to one of the most politically successful neoliberal governments in the world, but fortunately it is also a place to look for models of mass resistance to the neoliberal agenda. One of the most important examples of resistance to the common-nonsense of neoliberalism in the past decade is the British Columbia teachers’ 2005 strike, which united student, parent, and educator interests in resisting the neoliberal onslaught on education in the public interest.

via blogs.ubc.ca

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Precarious, Precarisation, Precariat?

2010-12-06T14:59:00.001-08:00

That's us. Precariously employed, objects of precarization, members of the academic precariat. I had a rather different post mentally laid out ~ a survey of affordable, non-institutionalized (e.g. involving neither conferences, unions nor other organizational affiliations) actions / acts of resistance available to the weary, disheartened adcon approaching semester's end, unsure and even less optimistic of what the next semester might bring. I'll still write it, but this caught my eye while searching keywords related to our condition.

Caveat: the article excerpted below does not specifically address academic labor. Yet it is relevant to the precarious working conditions of adjunct and contingent faculty.

I. Precarious literally means unsure, uncertain, difficult, delicate. As a political term it refers to living and working conditions without any guarantees: for example the precarious residential status of migrants and refugees, or the precariousness of everyday life for single mothers. Since the early 1980s the term has been used more and more in relation to labour. Precarious work refers to all possible forms of insecure, non-guaranteed, flexible exploitation: from illegalised, seasonal and temporary employment to homework, flex- and temp-work, to subcontractors, freelancers, or so called self-employed persons.

II. Precarisation at work means a growing transformation from guaranteed, permanent employment to less well paid and more insecure jobs. On a historical and global scale, however, precarious work is not exceptional. In fact the idea of a generalisation of so-called guaranteed working conditions was itself a short lived myth of the ‘welfare state’ era. In the global South, in eastern Europe, as well as for most women and migrants in the north – altogether the great majority of the global population –, precarious working conditions were and are the norm. Precarisation describes moreover the crisis of established institutions, which represented for that short period the framework of (false) certainties. It is an analytical term for a process and hints at a new quality of societal labour. Labour and social life, production and reproduction cannot be separated anymore, and this leads to a more comprehensive definition of precarisation: the uncertainty of all circumstances in the material and immaterial conditions of life of living labour under contemporary capitalism. For example: wage level and working conditions are connected with a distribution of tasks, which is determined by gender and ethnic roles; residence status determines access to the labour market or to medical care. The whole ensemble of social relations seems to be on the move.

via metamute.org

in section III. Precarisation, the article moves beyond usual discussion of part-time/ temp labor to frame precarisation as a "complex and contested process" with the potential to transform traditional understanding and postion of labor ... but also with the potential to become farce and ideological football. Section IV connects precarious and migrant labor.

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What Happens if the Charter School Companies Win?

2010-11-09T10:35:00.001-08:00

Among the arguments made by advocates for charter schools is that they expand consumer choice and that given the state of education in many inner-city minority communities experimentation with alternatives can only help the situation. As buzz words, choice and experimentation always sound good. After all, we know about the disappointing performance of many students in inner-city schools under the current educational system so why not try something else?

Unfortunately, we already know what will happen if private-for-profit charter school companies take over K-12 education in the United States because for-profit proprietary companies have already successfully invaded what used to be called "higher education." These companies have defrauded the government, left families deep in un-repayable debt, and cheated students out of an education.

via huffingtonpost.com

Higher ed and K-12 are connected ~ what goes down in one, affects the other; "innovations," policies, programs, etc. implemented in one domain will eventually come home to roost in the other, trickle up or trickle down. It behooves each to trend watch the other.

Posted via email from Meanderings

The Future of Work

2010-11-08T18:37:00.001-08:00

this bit of research on the Gartner site; while it dates back to August has some interesting speculation about the Future of Work.

“People will swarm more often and work solo less. They’ll work with others with whom they have few links, and teams will include people outside the control of the organization,”

“In addition, simulation, visualization and unification technologies, working across yottabytes of data per second, will demand an emphasis on new perceptual skills.”

- Tom Austin, Vice President and Gartner Fellow

Gartner points out that the world of work will probably witness ten major changes in the next ten years. Interesting in that it will change how learning happens in the workplace as well. The eLearning industry will need to account for the coming change and have a strategy in place to deal with the changes.

via upsidelearning.com

So much of this applies as much to teaching and learning possibilities.

"De-routinization" of work (or teaching) could return to autonomy to teachers, already implied in Downes. Work swarms and teaming fit in at PLENK 2010 but seem less likely candidates for the entrenched academic mind.

And on down the list. Just because it could happen doesn't mean it will though.

Posted via email from Meanderings

Welcome to Harbor Homes

2010-11-01T06:51:00.000-07:00

First blog for Harbor Homes: up a creek wrangling WordPress without a paddle. How different can blogging platforms be? Just do it, how Nike. Very frustrating to find out that once I leave the site, I cannot return and edit the first post, which was the auto-post that I edited after initial log in. So I started another post in the form of a sub-blog, thinking OK surely that one I can edit. And I could as long as I was on the page tweaking, Not today, I am logged in but there is no editing link. Maybe it's an admin thing. Maybe I'm blocked for inappropriate breeziness, a deficit of corporate style (a repeating chapter in my life story) in addressing an "educated audience." Maybe it's just the plug-in, not WordPress.

So here's edited post #1, taking asylum here. However, I certainly don't want to turn this into a single subject blog. Work and Life IRL aren't like that.

Allow me to introduce Harbor Homes’ new blog and myself, Vanessa Vaile, your resident blogger. I’ll be blogging 3 times a week or more. da Blog is our way of informally telling the world more about our mission, becoming better acquainted with Harbor Homes LLC clients. suppliers, and associates as well as disaster relief agencies and organizations we work with.

For now, I’m feeling my way. Posts will be informational, sometimes serious, sometimes less so, but I hope always interesting. If you have questions, suggestions about related topics you want to know more about, ideas for posts, please email me or leave a comment below to let me know. I have ideas of my own that I’ll be sharing with you but want to hear your ideas too.

In closing, a brief word about the name change in the blog post title: the blog comes already named “deBlog”, but Harbor Homes is in Georgia, near the Gulf Coast. “deBlog” is not Southern (Creole maybe) but “da Blog” ~ like da Beeb, da Judge, etc ~ is.

Later ~ until then, y’all take care

Vanessa

work, unexpected

2010-10-29T14:24:00.000-07:00

Just when I no longer expected it: I have a part time gig, web 2.0 marketing, PR (the web presence thing), primarily via blogging and social media. for Harbor Homes, LLC, the parent company, located in Georgia. Although the emphasis is disaster relief not oil patch, the nature of the company's products and my responsibilities resonate to past experiences, validating the adage that no knowledge or experience is ever lost or a waste. The opportunity to reuse either can return when least expected.

How To Ease the Pressure of Blogging

2010-09-01T23:17:00.000-07:00

Blogging and writing about it surely fit in "work and life" ~ even if unpaid. Why is it (socially) considered (worthwhile) work if we are paid for it?

A few thoughts on Life and Work: categories of work (paid, unpaid, knowledge work, manual labor, housework, volunteer work, drudgery) or not (fired, I quit, downsized, folded, etc) as subsections, not unlike my series "Poetry Matters," "Mountainair Wired," etc on Mountainair Arts. By that mark, blogging is a work phase.

How To Ease the Pressure of Blogging via ProBlogger Blog Tips by Darren Rowse

A Guest Post by David Turnbull of Adventures of a Barefoot Geek

After the initial excitement of launching a new blog fades most bloggers are a few steps away from being overwhelmed with the pressure of blogging to the point that they quit, losing the momentum they were building up and all the progress they'd made. This is an unfortunately common occurence.

Writing. Guest posting. Commenting. Responding to emails. Continuous learning. It's a lot to take in and if you're not adequately prepared to face challenges as they appear there's a likelihood that one day you'll choose not to publish another post and then you're back to square one.

Read more »

5 Levels of Effective Communication in the Social Media Age

2010-08-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

5 Levels of Effective Communication in the Social Media Age

via Mashable! by Soren Gordhamer

Soren Gordhamer is the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, which brings together staff from Google, Facebook, and Twitter with others to explore living wisely in our modern age. Mashable readers can use code 'Mashable' for a discount when registering.
In the era of social media, our networks are much larger than they have ever been, and we have more ways to communicate with those in them. Even if you are not very active on Facebook or Twitter, my guess is that your sphere of communication has expanded significantly in recent years. Who you communicate with and how you communicate has changed radically. This new connected era brings both opportunities and challenges.
In the past we had a set of contacts, all of whom generally knew how to reach us — via phone, e-mail, or regular mail. Today, thanks in large part to social media, we have many different levels of communication, each with a specific purpose and etiquette. When we do not understand the role of these levels, they can become huge time wasters. When we do understand them however, they can help us more effectively engage and navigate these new waters.

BlogLife: New Debate on Comments Brewing

2010-05-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

or would that be "blog work"? Hmmm... a differentiation still up grabs. Is work life, life work?

A New Debate on Blog Comments is Brewing via Mashable! by Stan Schroeder

If you've been following the blogging and social media scene over the last five or more years, you know that there's one heated debate that keeps on showing up: the debate about comments on blogs. Should blogs have comments? Should these comments be moderated? When has a comment gone too far? Judging from a couple of recent events, it's once again time to rethink these issues.

Myth of the Greedy Geezer

2010-04-30T14:21:00.000-07:00

David Brooks Spreads the Myth of the Greedy Geezer via Unsilent Generation, James Ridgeway

David Brooks wants to pull the plug on us greedy, grasping old folks. Or more accurately, he wants us to pull the plug on ourselves, by giving up our generous "entitlements" and submitting to Social Security and Medicare cuts. We should be more than happy to do this, he says, out of an altruistic urge to rescue younger generations from misery and penury. Too bad Brooks fails to mention that what really needs rescuing is the nation's system of social inequality and corporate greed.

In a New York Times column, called "The Geezer's Crusade," Brooks zeros in on one of the increasingly popular straw men of our times–that enemy of the people known as the Greedy Geezer.

Dripping with condescension, Brooks runs through a list of all the wonderful things that come with old age in the 21st century. Instead of sinking into dimwitted oblivion, the modern geezer–lo and behold–is actually able to think and function. "Older people retain their ability to remember emotionally nuanced events. They are able to integrate memories from their left and right hemispheres. Their brains reorganize to help compensate for the effects of aging." Brooks even has scientific proof for his claims: "A series of longitudinal studies, begun decades ago, are producing a rosier portrait of life after retirement," he writes. According to these studies, old people "become more outgoing, self-confident and warm with age." We "pay less attention to negative emotional stimuli," and are just plain happier than the middle-aged.

Yet despite all these bountiful gifts (which undoubtedly offset such minor inconveniences as not being able to walk, see, screw, or control our bladders), we old coots just can't shake the selfish idea that we ought to get a little help from society in our golden years. After working, raising and educating our kids, and paying taxes all our lives, we Greedy Geezers now want to sit back and rake in our "entitlements"–Social Security and Medicare. Can't we see that in doing so, we are actually stealing from the young, denying them a future, and worse, driving the nation into bankruptcy? Brooks writes:

Far from serving the young, the old are now taking from them. First, they are taking money. According to Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children.
Second, they are taking freedom. In 2009, for the first time in American history, every single penny of federal tax revenue went to pay for mandatory spending programs, according to Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute. As more money goes to pay off promises made mostly to the old, the young have less control.
Third, they are taking opportunity. For decades, federal spending has hovered around 20 percent of G.D.P. By 2019, it is forecast to be at 25 percent and rising. The higher tax rates implied by that spending will mean less growth and fewer opportunities. Already, pension costs in many states are squeezing education spending.

In the private sphere, in other words, seniors provide wonderful gifts to their grandchildren, loving attention that will linger in young minds, providing support for decades to come. In the public sphere, they take it away.

Brooks doesn't specify the exact reforms necessary to correct this cancer on society, but we all know what they are: We need only reduce the entitlements, along the lines Pete Peterson has been strenuously advocating. That can be accomplished by setting up an Entitlement Commission to impartially hand down "fast-track" cuts to old-age entitlement programs, tell Congress what it has to do, and get the economy back on course. When Obama sees the happy-times oldster lolling about on his houseboat in the Florida Keys, he ought to react the way Reagan did when he observed the "welfare queen" who was supposedly ripping off taxpayers: Cut off the supply of federal funds, and stop letting the Greedy Geezers feed at the public trough.

If it isn't politically expedient to cut us off (because we darned geezers insist upon voting), then convince us to do it to ourselves. What Brooks calls the Geezer's Crusade is an imagined "spontaneous social movement" by elders to reduce their own benefits. He writes:

It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change. The young lack the political power. Only the old can lead a generativity revolution — millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.

Brooks has audacity, I'll give him that. Too bad his premise is as phony as a three-dollar bill. But Brooks is far from alone in advancing what I call the Myth of the Greedy Geezer, in which old people's selfish attachment to their entitlements is the primary cause of the nation's economic woes, and entitlement cuts are the only solution. The myth is circulated by pundits of all political stripes, and graces the editorial pages of some of the nation's largest newspapers.
This fabrication serves a myriad of purposes. It substitutes a phony intergenerational conflict–a phantom battle between young and old–for the real conflict in American society: the conflict between the interests of poor and middle-class people, who pay more than their fair share, and the corporations and wealthy elite, who get an easier ride in America than they do anywhere in the developed world.

In the past 30 years, according to Congressional Budget Office data, the income of the top 1% of Americans has risen 176%, while the middle fifth have seen a 21% growth in income, and the poorest fifth just 6%. But hey–why talk about taxing the rich when you can balance the budget on the backs of those Greedy Geezers?

Wall Street had to be bailed out to the tune of $1 trillion, and they're back to business as usual. But why take measures that might "stifle" the "freemarket" when we can just cut Social Security instead? (And never mind that the Greedy Geezers saw their retirement savings decimated and their home values plunge; they'll manage.)

Millions of Americans suffer and even die from inadequate health care, and medical costs drive thousands into bankruptcy every year. But why should we expect the drugmakers and insurance companies to reduce their hefty profits, when we can just reduce Medicare payments to those Greedy Geezers? After all, does grandma really need that hip replacement when it means taking money out of the hands of her grandchildren? Should grandpa have a triple-bypass, just to get a few more years of life, when it means bankrupting the country?
What we have here is a classic bait-and-switch. Politicians are talking about the urgent need to cut Medicare because Democrats and Republicans alike won't take on the real enemies of affordable health care–the insurance companies, Big Pharma, and other providers of medicine for profit. They're saying we have to "reform" Social Security (a program which, compared to Citibank and Goldman Sachs, is a model of financial solvency) because they are unwilling to really take on Wall Street. They're devising ways to skim off of entitlements, which have lifted millions of old people out of dire poverty, because they won't consider a more "socialist" tax structure–like, for example, the one we had in the United States during the Nixon Administration.

In the long run, the Myth of the Greedy Geezer also serves one of the most cherished items on the conservative agenda: permanent cuts to core social safety net programs that date back to the New Deal and the War on Poverty. Commenting on Pete Peterson and the other right-wing "granny bashers" last year, Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research wrote: "It should be evident that the granny bashers don't care at all about generational equity. They care about dismantling Social Security and Medicare, the country's most important social programs."

This quest just got a potentially big boost from David Brooks and his "Geezer's Crusade." I just hope we geezers don't fall for it.

(For another take on Brooks's piece, read this post by FireDogLake's pithy "Earl of Huntingdon.")

Got Letters?

2010-03-31T16:01:00.000-07:00

I'm not (living as an adjunct) anymore but colleagues still are. The title comes from Betsy Smith's subject line in a post to the adj-l listserv urging adjuncts to write Martha Kanter, Under Secretary of Education.

Speaking at the Saturday lunch, Martha Kantner, also a former adjunct, assured all present that she reads all of her e-mail personally - and gave her e-mail address. I know of at least one that she has read and answered. As Raye Robertson at the The Adjunct Voice might say, It's good to have a voice.

if you haven't written yet, go to the Inside Higher Education article about adjunct issues at the 2010 NEA/AFT higher ed conference in San Jose. To get the email address, scroll down to Comments or just text search the page for "Write Martha Kantner." Then write Martha and, if you will, please share with us.

Letters can be posted as comments or emailed to me at vanessa.87036@gmail.com to post as separate entries. Please be sure to note if your prefer your name and/or institutional affiliation to remain anonymous. If you prefer the contents of your letter to remain private, that's your choice, but do let us know so your letter can be counted.

This blog is for the letters of anyone willing to share, without or without your names. Nor is it the only place to share. COCAL's Contingent Faculty email list (subscription only) invites subscribers to cc the list. No doubt other adjunct groups, organizations, blogs etc will post letters as well. The more the merrier... the louder, the clearer and the more polyphonic that voice the better.

NFM out and about

2010-03-21T21:26:00.000-07:00

Executive committee members, l-r: Ross Borden, Matt Williams, Maria Maisto, Anne Wiegard

March 12-13: Retreat and Strategic Planning meeting, Akron Ohio: Employment Insurance Initiative; budget and fund-raising; membership drive ~ chapters, "Toolit for Members" with provisions and suggestions for members to work on projects and/or in chapters; Chicago meeting planned to coordinate UI initiative; Yvonne Bruce to coordinate her faith-based initiative (Catholic universities' treatment of contingent faculty) with NFM; developing timeline and medium and long range goals for strategic plan, to be develped in time for COCAL 2010, August 13-15, Quebec City, Quebec

Webpage housekeeping... out of date news items have been "unpublished" and other minor housekeeping. Link to Facebook page added, Twitter link still MIA

March 27-28, AACU Conference on High-Impact Educational Practices, Philadelphia

June 3-5, How Class Works Conference, Stony Brook, Maria Maisto and Steve Street present in contingent issues in academic labor (maybe we can shake a preview out them to blog here...)

August 13-15, COCAL 2010, Quebec City, Quebec

Tentatively, immediate (and interconnected) priorities are:

1. Brochure

2. Newsletter

3. Fund-raising

4. Membership development

(Note: original post edited 9:45pm, Mountain Daylight Time ~ I'd put the newsletter ahead of the brochure but that's probably just the community news blogger and former newsletter editor speaking)

Dew U UCube?

2010-03-05T17:39:00.000-08:00

UCubed Catching Hold and Gaining Momentum, by Kiley Hernandez, Feb 25, 2010

"Ur Union of Unemployed" or UCubed, generated record-breaking numbers over the last 24 hours, with membership jumping from almost 480 job activists yesterday to well over 800 today. Ninety-six new cubes were created within the same time period, adding to the 84 cubes already created (six people within the same zip code make one cube). UCubed is now up-and-running in 48 states and the District of Columbia.

The UCubed website, at http://www.unionofunemployed.com, is creating an outlet for the 30 million-plus unemployed, and out-of-work America is beginning to speak loud and clear about the jobs crisis.

Since its launch in January 2010, UCubed’s steady increase in media presence and social networking is building a movement, and people are noticing. “This thing could hit critical mass pretty quick. Fire it up!” said one post on Common Dreams.

UCubed is committed to providing resources to the unemployed and providing a way to build strength in numbers via a unique web-based, grass-roots platform. In addition, UCubed allows members within their area to connect with other individuals who are unemployed and provide service and support for each other while spearheading legislative notices on critical jobs issues.

Learn more by visiting UCubed at http://www.unionofunemployed.com

work sets

2010-01-23T21:54:00.000-08:00

yes still at and now even tweeting more place and with pages on Fcbk. i love how nasty that sounds. that's one work set, if i can call something not in the least connected with gainful employment a "work set" ~ but why not? here i get to define "work." life on the other hand defines itself. work often defines life but does not have to unless you let it.

another "work set" involves learning how to use new social media and other applications for online teaching, ESL in particular. yet another personal peculiarosity in that i am not actively employed teaching online or otherwise. volunteer teaching ESL online may count somewhat.

and then there is the massive blogging effort and community networking. the chamber of commerce is no longer part of any work set though pull its tail (and the tails of true believers therein) on occasion could become one.

blogging and community networking even by blog (as in 1 if by email, 2 if by blog) should go into subcategories but not this time. ditto life not part of work sets.

Checking in

2009-12-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

I've made my peace ~ after a fashion ~ with the administrator at another (blog) I write for. He's given up on bullying me and may even have clued in ~ finally ~ to my not being that impressed with either his position in the particular world being blogged or having a column in . Best perhaps that he remain unawares that I'm more likely to consider that gig as selling out, something I suspect most prominent figures in this microcosm, with few but notable exceptions, have sold out as well, albeit unawares.

I have admin privileges ~ clever twigging onto my not posting being a sign that concessions better come my way. Apologizing would have gone further. Why I really prefer being my own boss.

To some extent, that takes away the purpose of this particular blog started as backup and asylum. Or I can make it more about life. What I really need is another blog account and pseudonym to let 'er rip. But I hate hiding behind a name mask and not being myself even more than self-censorship.

Yet another blog welcome

2009-09-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

Here's another. I dare say the process should prove to be Darwinian: throw them all in the shark tank and make book on which blog survives.

None of my blogs are particularly personal, although I like to think that my personality comes through even if more like barge, insinuate, gate crash, etc than shine" (cliché of choice, as in "shining through" ~ yeah, like The Shining, eh?).

What distinguishes this from others? Tentatively, it is more about work, although to go by Mountainair Arts, that does not it will stay about work ... maybe "life" ~ a broad blanket to cover any topic.

And what inspired this latest spin-off? What is its foundation myth? More myth-hap than myth. I'd been guest blogging elsewhere - an academic labor thus work related blog, as if I did not have enough of my own blogs to write for, and learned that the owner/administrator had deleted a handful of posts without giving me a heads up ~ not giving me a reason, not asking me to edit, delete or remove them myself. Nor any response, let alone an apology, when I brought the matter up. Despite other matters on deck this a.m., I created a new blog (this one) to have some place to stash surviving posts as none fit other blogs. Now I can pause, publish (saved in drafts for now), perhaps delete on the other blog and remove myself as a guest contributor.

Unfortunately, the most interesting (in my not so humble opinion at any rate) posts were the ones to get the axe. They were also, for the most part, ones I had invested research time in preparing. Although not so invested as to retrace research and recreate the posts, I may insert a brief synopsis.

That an academic either did not understand or understood but did not think it mattered that my words belong to me speaks volumes.

New Majority Faculty Day - now on Facebook

2009-04-12T07:04:00.000-07:00

Post imported from New Faculty Majority Day blog:

No kidding. This is April 5 not 1. New Faculty Majority Day is now a group on Facebook. Are you on Facebook? If so, go directly to group (via link posted here) or search groups for "New Majority Faculty Day" and join. If not, then join, search & join. Post links, videos, post a comment, start a forum topic. Invite your precariously contingent friends & colleagues to join.

And while you're at it, visit other (Bob's) NMF Day blog, Changing Universities. More NMF Day ideas and links right here

Comments imported from New Faculty Majority Day blog:

3 COMMENTS:

Professor Smartass said...

Post your story of life as an adjunct, part timer, non-tenure track, temporary (or all of the above) faculty here:
http://equalpayforequalwork.blogspot.com/2009/04/whats-it-like-to-be-higher-ed-adjunct.html

APRIL 5, 2009 3:53 PM

Barry R. Bainton, PhD, MBA said...

There is another resource developing for adjuncts who are members of LinkedIn. This is the The Adjunct Network. http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=1906855&trk=anet_ug_hm

This is a recently established information sharing site. In this time of economic challenge and class discrimination within higher education, it is critical that all adjunct and temporary faculty unite. We fill in the gaps of between institutional capacity (commitment) and student demand (for quality and quantity of classes). There is no price differential between what a student pays for a class and what the status of the teacher is. Equal pay for equal work??? Or discount classes for discounted teacher?? APRIL 23, 2009 10:54 AM

Vanessa said...

LinkedIn's Adjunct Network sounds promising, possibly more professional, less social - if I still were, I would. As promising & affordable as social networking apps are, we can't tell which ones will best suit w/o using them more than just cursorily. Just a hunch, but I rather suspect we'll end up with series of overlapping networks - maybe something on the semantic web. APRIL 30, 2009 3:18 PM

Higher Ed in The Nation

2009-03-31T09:22:00.000-07:00

Post imported from New Faculty Majority Day blog:

More visibility ... not just trade pubs, student & local press... there's an article in The Nation, Higher Education Takes a Hit, about "contingent labor" in higher education, "positions that have increasingly replaced full-time, tenure-track jobs" but "pay only about a fourth as much, per course, as tenure-track positions, seldom come with benefits and offer little job security or possibility of advancement."

Yes, we already know all that - old news to us - but how nice to read it in a national magazine. And even nicer for The New Faculty Majority (The Coalition) to get a tip of the hat:

Despite these organizing successes, some adjuncts say that under the sponsorship of some national organizations, like the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which also represent full-time faculty, they often get short shrift.

That may soon change, if fourteen adjunct activists from across the country succeed in forming the New Faculty Majority: The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity. The group, whose organizers first connected on a list-serv, is still in the planning stages. But co-chairs of the organizing committee Deborah Louis and Maria Maisto said they have already received membership requests.

What next? Get the word out. Even 'juncts can go viral.

Read the article, forward it, share it on Facebook, bookmark, review & rate it on the social bookmarking sites (Digg, BuzzFlash, Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon & so on). After all, to cite NFM co-chair Deb Louis (from the article), "Now, with all the Internet potential, it becomes a whole different ballgame."

While you're at it, write a Web Letter about the article. According toThe Nation's Web Letter page, "Web Letters are continuously published e-mails from real people, signed with their real names. No registration is required. Each article page on The Nation includes a Web Letters link."

(no Comments to import)

Adjunct Solidarity

2009-03-24T09:15:00.000-07:00

Post imported from New Faculty Majority Day blog:

OK so you've probably already seen this but just in case, here's Scott Jaschik's report, Adjunct Solidarity, for IHE on the Weber U letter writing campaign.

"Given that Weber State isn't known for its activist professors, administrators there were surprised recently when letters and e-mail messages started to arrive -- not from adjuncts or their tenure-track colleagues at the university, but from New York, California and elsewhere -- as far away as Japan.....And the Weber State plan struck many adjunct activists at other campuses as salt in the wounds -- enough so that they needed to let the university know that someone was watching. The Coalition for Contingent Academic Labor organized the letter writing to the university's senior officials, and distributed a sample that said, of adjuncts at Weber State:...the letter-writing campaign is part of an effort to let colleges know that people are watching the decisions they make about adjuncts."

Steve Street commented on the adjunct listserv adj-l:

A clap on the back to John [Hess, COCAL-CA] for starting this campaign and to all who emailed, as well as to IHEfor breaking the story and keeping on top of it.

That & New Faculty Majority Day are not the only campaign stops for the Visibility Express...

Comments imported from New Faculty Majority Day blog:

4 COMMENTS:
vlorbik said...
i don't read IHE regularly and have dropped off the adj-l list so this was indeed news to me. i probably oughta check there more often.
probably would too if they didn't spam me. MARCH 25, 2009 4:23 AM

SMStreet said...
Spam or not, IHE seems committed to adjunct issues, judging from its coverage. It's easy to check every morning, and it's easy to post comments on articles that affect us. In fact, I think the number and passion of such comments on previous articles has emphasized publications to the extent of the contingency crisis, if not alerted them to it. MARCH 25, 2009 4:31 AM

Vanessa said...
or was the reference to adj-l? The list can generate a lot of traffic not always characterized by optimum netiquette (eg snipping messages, changing subject line when subject changes). Send them to their own folder without supper. That's what filters are for. Setting for digest is another option. Also, you could add a keyword news feed widget to blog (so could we). MARCH 25, 2009 2:10 PM

Vanessa said...
But whichever - Steve is bang on about comments. I'd like to see a massive commenting campaign - moderately coordinated but minus attempts to micromanage or keep comments "on message." MARCH 28, 2009 3:00 PM

Press Release: New Faculty Majority: the National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Faculty

2009-03-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

Post imported from New Faculty Majority Day blog:

From the Organizing Committee for New Faculty Majority: the National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity, March 18, 2009:

Contacts:

Co-Chair Maria Maisto - emcmaistolynch@sbcglobal.net - 216-262-4375

Co-Chair Deborah Louis – deb@northmountains.org - 828-206-0128

In their third conference call since their establishment as an organizing committee in early February, faculty activists from across the country agreed on the name New Faculty Majority: The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity for the organization, which will represent the interests of and advocate for non-tenure-track faculty at colleges and universities nationwide. During the two-hour call on Sunday, March 15, the committee also referred a draft of their mission statement back to subcommittee for refinement, reviewed a rough outline of the proposed organizational structure, voted to approve the establishment of a temporary web site until a permanent web site is constructed, and approved the formation of new subcommittees on research and fundraising. The committee also decided to seek 501(c)3 status after incorporating later this year.

New Faculty Majority Day Flyer

2009-03-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

click for larger (8 x 11+) version to view or print

Here's just the graphic in case you want to put it on 1000 tees marching across the campus:

Got a knack for photo editing? Try your hand at adding text (i.e. NFMD + name of institution or group) to the image. Add the graphic to your own institution or group specific flyer.

Let us know what you do with it. Share your ideas for New Faculty Majority Day on April 30. Brainstorm here...

11 COMMENTS:

lost online said...: is there a place here for online adjunct?; MARCH 18, 2009 1:43 PM
SMStreet said...: How so, a place, and where? You're free to comment, yes: an adjunct is an adjunct is an adjunct (except for such as Jill Biden, I guess!).; MARCH 18, 2009 5:12 PM
Vanessa said...: How online adjuncts can participate in New Faculty Majority Day raises a whole new set of questions - but ones imo we must address. Lost, your numbers are growing - and even more invisible among the already invisible.

There is no quad, no public space. Platforms for virtual classroom are subject to undetected monitoring - not like being visited and seeing that body sitting in the back of the classroom, occupying physical space. Welcome to the panopticon.

Is the institution proprietary (for profit) or public, the clicks side of institutional bricks? Would an email signature line with logo get you in trouble?

Is there an off-site (not on the system platform & sans management lurkers) for getting together online?; MARCH 20, 2009 12:23 AM
Anonymous said...: ... but april 30 is after the semester's over in most places :(; MARCH 22, 2009 11:13 PM
Anonymous said...: That would be possible if a forum was set up. I'm actually looking into that for my own union.; MARCH 23, 2009 2:05 AM
SMStreet said...: If the 30th is too late on your campus, schedule activities for earlier. Consider the whole month of April a Campus Equity Month. This is purposely a U-Organize-It kind of event, since conditions as well as schedules on campuses vary so widely.; MARCH 23, 2009 4:47 AM
Bob said...: Vanessa, You pose an interesting problem. People should be encouraged to participate in anyway they feel comfortable.; MARCH 23, 2009 4:59 PM
Vanessa said...: in another sense, every day ia NFM Day...; MARCH 23, 2009 5:01 PM
Vanessa said...: No doubt showing my age with this one ... but I'm thinking happenings, street (or quad) theater... in addition to more mundane and easier to pull off...tees, bumper stickers, flyers, posters. And still thinking about what online adjuncts could. Perhaps the direction there is less digital (probably not wise to have a NMF Day signature line - albeit tempting - on emails to boss) and more on the street where they live local.; MARCH 24, 2009 9:45 AM
Anonymous said...: I'd love to distribute this flyer to my fellow adjuncts on campus, but the gif file you've provided here is somewhat low resolution. Is there any way you could post a high res pdf of the flyer?; MARCH 26, 2009 12:48 PM
SMStreet said...: The blog host won't take a .pdf file, but if you email Bob Samuels at the address above or me at smstreet55@earthlink.net, one of us can send you a .pdf (or even a .doc) version as attachment.; MARCH 26, 2009 7:33 PM

Reading Room: A Proposal to American Labor

2009-03-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

Post imported from The New Faculty Majority Day blog

Remember the reading tradition in US union history? Reading Rooms in hiring halls. Samuel Gompers' cigar rollers voting to have a member on the clock read great books to them as they worked.

Why not an online reading room right here? Hence, another topic area signaled by Reading Room in the post title. I've been reading on four articles and was going to post links on all of them in this post but changed my mind. Instead, they will come one at a time, substantially excerpted, although I hope you will take the time click through and read each in its entirety. Now for the exercise in ellipisization

A Proposal to American Labor, by Richard B. Freeman & Joel Rogers, appearing in The Nation, June 24, 2002. discusses Open Source Unionism, its history, structure and current application. I was struck by the article's timeliness and relevance to our immediate concerns - and look forward to reading what you think. Please use the comment function to share your thoughts and reactions.

During [peak periods of union organization] ... another union formation... "minority" or "members only" unions, ... offered representation to workers without a demonstrated pro-union majority at their worksite. Such nonmajority unions were critical to organizing new sectors of American industry, providing a union presence in the workplace well before an employer recognized a collective-bargaining unit....

After World War II, however, unions effectively abandoned both "direct affiliation" and "minority unionism" as common practices....We believe his self-imposed limit on the meaning of membership today poses an unnecessary barrier to union influence and growth, and it should be reconsidered.... Today as in the past, nontraditional members in nonmajority settings can give labor an immense boost.... Adding nonmajority or otherwise nontraditional workers to union membership need not, moreover, conflict with the goal of traditional majorities-only organizing....

KUDOS: Scott Jaschik, EWA Award, Education Reporting

2009-03-06T09:41:00.000-08:00

IHE editor and co-founder Scott Jaschik is among Education Writers of America's 2008 National Awards Contest Winners (in Education Reporting) for his series on adjuncts in academia, which earned a first place for beat reporting in the small media

Scott Jaschik won this award for a set of 2008 articles in Inside Higher Education (IHE) on the rising use of adjunct professors. His articles focus on issus such issues as how colleges treat their workers, the impact on students of being taught by professors without tenure, and the effectiveness of unions and other groups that say they protect faculty interests. Links to the articles can be found here.

His winning entry included the following articles:

If you have not read them, now would be a good time. If you already have, there's always rereading...