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Friday, August 25th, 2006
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1:28p - Finding Sources of Funding for Conferences
I am appealing to the collective wisdom of the group: what do you do to help offset costs when you are delivering a paper at a conference in your field but your employers do not offer conference travel funds for part-time/adjunct faculty? Are there organizations outside of your home department to which you can apply to help alleviate the strain on an already-tiny pocketbook?
I'd really appreciate any ideas you might have! As a new adjunct, I'm fast becoming aware that being a graduate student actually had its privileges OVER being (part-time) faculty . . .
current mood:  sleepy (3 comments |comment on this)
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3:34p - Student services position listings
I don't know if anyone here is interested, but I'm on the LRNASST-L listserv, and I've been seeing a number of position postings cropping up lately. LRNASST-L is a discussion list for developmental educators and for learning assistance professionals. Most of the position postings have been of the tutoring services coordinator/ TRIO-SSS program coordinator type. You can check out LRNASST's archives here for more info.
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4:12p - A reason for concern?
The theme of yesterday's collegewide convocation (which we call "Fall Focus" at CCBC) was Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. The book was presented to us as a commentary on the effects of globalization on the American economy. Anirban Basu, NPR commentator and economist, was our keynote speaker, and a panelist comprised of faculty and administrators responded to Basu and to the text. In closing, our president made what I felt were the most striking remarks of the afternoon when she said that our community college, if it wants to remain competitive and responsive, will have to look to successful models of higher education such as the University of Phoenix.
That's when the alarms and flashers that had been going off in my head for hours went into overdrive. U of P???? Sometimes it sucks to be right. For the past four or five years, I've been saying to anyone who would listen to me that community colleges are headed the way of the for-profit institutions. I saw it back in San Antonio when our college president leased our biggest computer lab to Toyota right out from under our students. Apparently, Toyota's need to train new employees was much more important than our need to support currrently-enrolled students. Our motto was changed, too. We stopped being "the heart of the community" and started being "the economic engine of San Antonio's south side." Now, I'm seeing it here in Maryland. We already use Thompson Ed2Go for many of our online continuing education course offerings (as do many community colleges), and now we're talking about looking to U of P as a model for our future success.
Soon we'll be doing as Baltimore City Community College has already done, and we'll be farming out tutoring services out to SmarThinking.com, and next we'll be shaving back our full-time faculty even more. As it is, the only new hires in the School of Liberal Arts this year were replacements for retirees. No new positions were created. I wonder if they'll contract out campus landscaping work? The custodial work? Offshore the telecourses? The online courses?
Oh, I think it's definitely coming...
I was talking to my hairdresser the other day, and she had a point. There aren't many jobs left that must be done face-to-face. We'd be foolish to think teaching is one of those jobs. Cutting hair, yes. Nursing, yes. Mortuary work...hrm. They might even figure out a way to ship us off to embalm us and then ship us back for burial. Who knows? But teaching? No. Don't get too comfy behind the desk.
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