Welcome to the COPTI blog! We are here to discuss issues as they relate to Part time Faculty on The University of Akron campuses.
Shannon says:
What would you like to learn more about? Some ideas that we have include:
- Teaching tips and techniques
- Student evaluations
- How to change ranks / make yourself a career
- Social network – Who are we? Who do you know? How can we talk? What kind of support can we offer each other?
Some business before we get too far. What this isn’t:
- Private – this is linked to a University of Akron Faculty Senate sponsored web-site
- Personal – if you have job issues / questions that you don’t want to make public – don’t post them here! Instead send a message to Shannon Osorio at sdo2@uakron.edu or April Freely at alf@uakron.edu.
- A place to push a political agenda – We welcome your reasoned and respectful opinions. A thoughtful debate of issues and concerns is always helpful. Please keep in mind that we Part time Faculty are people from all political, religious and ethnic backgrounds. This is a place to meet, learn, and carry on civil discussions.
April says:
I remember my first days, when I walked through the confusing corridors of Olin Hall to find the office I would share with three other long-term adjuncts. The room was filled with decades worth of scholarship, hundreds of past student portfolios. I was also greeted by the crazed face of Albert Einstein, tacked up on the wall—and an explosion of fantastic zebra paraphernalia 🙂
But where were my colleagues?
It’s hard to get a sense of the scope of the work adjuncts do across campus when everybody is in and out, here and there. Last Spring, I saw my officemates nary a time during the entire semester. When I first arrived, I had little sense that there were dozens of other Composition lecturers scattered about—I hardly saw a soul.
We hope this blog might be a space where we can get connected with the other part-timers floating about campus, folks we might never “meet” otherwise, so that we can take advantage of the wealth of experiences part-time faculty offer the campus community.
For instance, where do your research interests align with other folk scattered about? How can we learn best-practices from each other regarding our often transient work as adjuncts—who knows better how to teach eight courses at three different campuses than my fellow part-timers? We’d like this to become a virtual gathering-space that might combat the sometimes scattered nature of our “workplace”: some of us grade student work in the car before we’re off to the next job. Sometimes, I can pick out the adjuncts when I see your cars in the parking lot: there are signs!
Shannon and I, as your part-time representatives to the Faculty Senate, also see that having a stronger part-time faculty community contributes to the effectiveness of the Committee on Part-time Issues within the structure of University governance.
We hope to buck the trends a bit and provide a space where, in some sense, contingent faculty can become a better integrated thread in the fabric of campus-community at UofA.
Now, the real question is: would you read such a blog? Would you write content for such a blog? Would you like a more private platform for your blog? What do you think?
