Talk:Main Page
From Mlawiki
Hello,
I'm new to this wiki and met Doug Hesse at CCCCs...thanks again, Doug, for suggesting I post to this wiki.
I'll provide a brief introduction of myself and what I'm doing at my university. I'm a part-time English faculty member at IUPUI in Indianapolis. Part-time means I get paid by the course, get course assignments less than a semester in advance, have no contract or stability, receive no benefits, share cubicle space with lots of other part-time faculty (107 of us share 23 cubicles)...you get the picture.
Last semester, I formed an Advisory Board comprised of pt faculty within the School of Liberal Arts. We are trying to improve working conditions and the culture for pt faculty and have begun a number of initiatives: hosted a dinner for deans and administrators to begin a collaborative dialogue; recruited department liaisons; created AdjunctMatters.org (www.AdjunctMatters.org) to be a forum for pt faculty across the country to share teaching ideas and classroom activities (need a webmaster to build out our site); collected tons of data on pt faculty, the contributions they make to the campus and community, plus the courses they teach at IUPUI; created communication flyers for faculty and students; and most recently are organizing a Teach-in for April 5-8.
For our Teach-in and beyond, we created a short documentary in which pt faculty and administrators participated by discussing pt faculty issues. We've uploaded that to YouTube...have a look; it's less than 10 minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHb0PnpgWIw
We attempted to get private group health insurance for pt faculty in Liberal Arts and were able to obtain quotes for a plan which many desperately need but were then told by Indiana University (our parent university) that we were violating IU policy by getting our own group policy. So we had to quit that.
And as we began to expand and announced our intention to represent part-time faculty across campus in the fall, not just those in Liberal Arts, we were recently denied affinity group status given to groups like the Black Faculty/Staff Council and the Gay/Lesbian Faculty/Staff Council at IUPUI. We were told the denial was because the advisory board "does not represent an underrepresented group." I know...doesn't make any sense.
While we are not yet exploring unionizing, that may happen down the road. For now, we're in what I'm calling our patient, professional, and persistent mode of enacting change.
And finally, this work with the advisory board and improving conditions for pt faculty is my thesis project so hopefully this all will be published someday.
I welcome any thoughts or suggestions on what we're doing at IUPUI.
Tracy Donhardt, tdonhard@iupui.edu
