Association Receives Grants to Support Work
The Association was pleased to receive a $400,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support its efforts in 2003 and 2004 in the areas of work and family issues and contingent appointments.
The AAUP is committed to initiating changes to create a more family-friendly academic workplace. In 2001, the Association issued a policy document, Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work. The Sloan Foundation grant will allow the AAUP to continue its work in this area by convening a meeting of scholars who investigate work and family issues; creating and distributing a special issue of Academe devoted to the topic; and creating an expanded Web resource.
The AAUP is also concerned about the increasing use and abuse of contingent faculty, and is currently developing a policy statement on the academic profession and contingent appointments, which will be published in Academe for comment.
The Sloan Foundation grant will allow the Association to disseminate its contingent faculty statement; focus on contingent appointments at its annual governance conference; explore models of less-than-full-time appointments that include teaching, scholarship, and service; and conduct further research into the limitations on the number of tenured faculty positions (or tenure "lines") and how they are allocated.
The Sloan Foundation made the grant to the AAUP as one of a number of grants to higher education associations intended to promote a more receptive work-family climate within the academy for faculty.
In March, the Association also received a $50,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to support the activities of the Special Committee on Academic Freedom and National Security in Times of Crisis. The committee is completing a report on the effects of recent national security measures on academic freedom since September 2001. The report discusses actions and policies that affect the academic freedom of individual faculty members, graduate students, visiting scholars, and other members of the academic and scientific community; teaching, research, and scholarly communication; access to information important to inquiry and research; and the climate for academic freedom enerally.
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