PATFA is promoting Adjunct Awareness Week, Feb. 23-28. Adjuncts around the University of Maine System are finding "A" buttons in their mailboxes, and we encourage you to wear them.
In a news release we are distributing around Maine, PATFA Vice President Jim Seymour writes:
"Few college students, much less the public, know that most first-year and sophomore classes are taught by fully accredited professors who earn significantly less than full-time faculty members, with no employment security and scant access to benefits such as health care.
"Known as adjuncts, these part-time faculty members are the faces and feel of the college experience for students entering higher education. Across the nation this year, these underpaid adjuncts are trying to raise their visibility so their large and largely undercompensated role in U.S. higher education can be recognized and brought into equitable treatment with that of their full-time peers.
"The University of Maine System’s adjunct faculty union, the Part-time Faculty Association (patfa.me.aft.org), has chosen Feb. 23-28 as Adjunct Awareness Week. Members will be wearing "A" buttons to prompt conversations and simply make their presence and numbers visible.
"Their campaign is just part of a thousands–strong national outreach by this invisible backbone of higher education to students, college administrators, legislators and the public at large. A PATFA member lucky enough to accrue three classes in a semester will generally earn less than $20,000 per year. Most make much less, despite many having doctorates and investments of twenty or more years in the University of Maine System.
“PATFA believes that even while the university faces continued economic challenges, priorities need to be reexamined, and attention must be paid to those devoted professionals tasked with guiding younger students through their first difficult years of college,” says Jim Seymour, PATFA vice president and film lecturer at UMA’s University College. “When you see a teacher wearing the ‘A,’ ask some questions and lend an ear!”
"PATFA hopes that increased awareness of the wider income inequality facing so many workers nationwide as well as a concern for public education as a model for equitable employment practices will encourage the UMS administration to address fair compensation for the more than 1,800 adjunct professors who shore up the UMS faculty."