From the Editor: Contingent Issues, HBCUs, and Other Stuff of the Profession
Paula M. Krebs
This issue of Academe features a cluster of articles on contingent faculty concerns. Julie Chisholm offers a thoughtful and sobering look at pedagogical technology in relation to contingent labor. Monica Jacobe gives us an overview of the state of contingent faculty in various disciplines, and Georgia Rhoades and David P. Haney offer a picture of the steps Appalachian State’s writing program has taken to regularize non-tenure-track positions so as to eliminate adjunct hiring. As they point out, the AAUP’s Contingent Appointments and the Academic Profession can help institutions or programs aiming to move away from per-course hiring. The guidelines offer strategies for gradually increasing the proportion of tenure-track hires at your institution.
Two sets of insights into historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) come from Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Dolan Hubbard. Guy-Sheftall describes the progress in faculty governance at Spelman College, thanks to strong faculty leaders and open-minded administrators who are committed to moving away from an older hierarchical model of governance. Hubbard points out that a huge proportion of African American students who go on to the PhD start their higher education at HBCUs. The rest of the higher education system can take lessons from the HBCUs when it comes to how to instill confidence and a drive for success in minority students.
The rest of the issue offers a little something for everyone. If you’re dreading an upcoming faculty governance review at your place, you’ll want to check out “Governance Review Without Tears” by Lynn Davis and Deborah Page for excellent step-by-step advice. David Siegel reflects on why his own graduate students in educational leadership are so taken with business models for higher education. He offers suggestions for mounting a defense of academe’s unique, and appropriate, governance methods. You wouldn’t impose an academic governance model on a successful business, so why take universities that have been operating for generations and try to model them on corporations?
We wrap this issue up with a version of the address Michael Bérubé delivered at last summer’s AAUP annual meeting. Bérubé, a thorn in the side of anti-intellectuals in the blogosphere and beyond, champions academic freedom like no one else. Long may he blog.
Speaking of blogs, don’t forget to check out Academe’s at http://academeonline.blogspot.com/. And send us your how-to articles, your reflections, your relevant research findings, and your success stories. Our manuscript submission guidelines can be found at http://www.aaup. org/AAUP/pubsresearch/academe/MS-submission-guide.htm.
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