2014 Leadership Workshop

Best Practices in an Era of Contingent Labor:  A Workshop for Chairs of Religious Studies Programs and Departments

When: Friday, November 21, 12:00 PM–5:00 PM
Where: San Diego, California

Toddie Peters, Elon University, and Theodore Trost, University of Alabama, Presiding

Do you regularly deal with the hiring and management of contingent faculty in your role as a department chair? Are you concerned about how best to work with and mentor your adjunct and non-permanent faculty to ensure fairness for the faculty and quality instruction for your students?

The AAR Academic Relations Committee is hosting a pre-conference workshop to discuss best practices for managing contingent faculty and we hope you will join us for the conversation.

The shift in the last decade or so toward dependence upon contingent labor (e.g. adjunct instructors as well as other non-tenure track or non permanent part-time or full-time instructors) among college and university faculty poses challenges to academic freedom, to the intellectual well-being of students, to the health of our institutions, and to the professoriate itself. In this pre-conference leadership workshop, we will consider contingency from a variety of angles. 

An overview of the contingent labor market will be offered by Joseph Lough, adjunct professor in the department of economics at UC Berkeley who recently returned from a Fulbright fellowship in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The ongoing effort to address the steady increase of contingent labor will be the topic under consideration by our next guest, Mayra Besosa. In addition to her service as a lecturer in Spanish for over 20 years at California State University at San Marcos, Ms. Besosa is the former chair of the American Association of University Professors' Committee on Contingency and the Profession.

In the third phase of the workshop, members of the Academic Relations Committee of the AAR will initiate a discussion of the pre-circulated draft document of recommended best practices for contingent faculty in the hope of refining the document for presentation to the general membership of the AAR. The workshop will conclude with a conversation about how departments might practically assist contingent colleagues in their professional development. We will be guided in this conversation by, among others, Dr. Kelly Baker, who has written extensively on the complexities of contingent labor.

This workshop will address key concerns including the nature of collegiality and the future of our profession. We want to encourage wide participation. The cost for the workshop is $75, which includes lunch and the entire afternoon of sessions. Registration is limited to the first 75 participants.

Panelists:

Joseph Lough, University of California, Berkeley
Mayra Besosa, California State University, San Marcos
Kelly J. Baker, Freelance Writer