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Last month during APSCUF’s Legislative Assembly meeting, the delegates passed a resolution calling on the State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) to commit to not cutting temporary faculty hours in order to avoid requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The resolution also demands that PASSHE meet the value and affordability requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

Temporary faculty members across the country have been threatened by their employers’ actions as a result of the ACA requirements. Many temporary faculty members are working at or above the 30-hour threshold at which the Affordable Care Act requires businesses to pay health insurance for their employees. Some universities intend to cut adjunct faculty members’ hours to keep from providing health benefits, claiming they will save money. While many part-time temporary faculty at PASSHE universities are offered healthcare, often at a high premium share, APSCUF’s resolution is a proactive measure to ensure that temporary faculty retain their hours and that current healthcare arrangements for part-time temporary faculty members meet the minimum affordability requirements of the PPACA. read more…

This is Campus Equity Week across the nation. In Pennsylvania, PASSHE faculty are focused on the state system’s self-destructive process of mass retrenchment.

The theme of Campus Equity Week is “Stand Up. Speak Out. Organize.”

Yesterday at East Stroudsburg, hundreds of students and faculty rallied against the proposed (“planned” would sound more thoughtful than it appears to be) retrenchments there.

Last week, Edinboro students stood in the snow to rally against the faculty and program cuts there.

We are standing up and speaking out. We can still do a lot more of both and A LOT more organizing.

read more…

By Amy Lynch-Biniek, Associate Professor of English, Kutztown University

For the past two years, I’ve been working on a qualitative study of contingent teachers. In particular, I’ve been examining how temporary faculty and permanent faculty choose text books and assignments. As a former, long-time adjunct myself (the highpoint of which was having three “part-time” contacts at a single school), my intent has been to document the concrete ways in which working conditions affect classroom practices.

What I’ve found is that, even in departments that offer adjuncts a context better than the national norm—union protection, benefits, above-average pay—full-time faculty’s behaviors and attitudes have tangible effects on the work of their contingent colleagues. That’s right, fellow tenured and tenure-track folks: our attitudes matter. We need not be openly antagonistic to have a negative impact on adjuncts’ teaching. When we treat these colleagues as a separate class, as something less than colleagues, we affect their teaching. Specifically, I found that when contingent faculty are excluded from the community of the department or the campus, they may be less likely to participate in professional development and to exercise academic freedoms when planning courses. read more…

Campus Equity Week begins today and will end on Friday, November 2. This year’s theme is Stand Up. Speak Out. Organize. Around the country, faculty organizations are building awareness about the issues facing temporary faculty members. We have seen that the online conversations can often prove to be fruitful in bringing about change and striking up a necessary conversation. The New Faculty Majority (NFM) has launched a call to action. We invite you to join the conversation online by participating in any of the following:

• Sign and Share a petition
• Get tips on using social media to raise awareness
• Follow the Campus Equity Week Facebook page
• Tell your adjunct story on the Adjunct Stories blog page
• If you have a twitter account, follow CEW and tweet about it using the hashtag #cew2013
• Wear scarlet or red on Wednesday, October 30^th during Campus Equity Week
• Make the CEW logo your profile picture on all social media pages
• Include Campus Equity Week in the signature line of your emails: October 28^th-November 2^nd is Campus Equity Week. Learn more at ww.campusequityweek.org/2013

• Send a letter to the editor of your local or campus newspaper
• Blog for CEW 2013
• Attend an event and post about it on social media (don’t forget to hashtag)