Adjuncts Helping Adjuncts

As we are now seeing, adjunct faculty, along with full-time faculty and staff, are being approached by various unions to join in for the purpose of support in grievances, pay scales, and other issues.  Colleges and universities are being asked to provide the names and positions of employees to these unions, and because of the freedom of information laws, they cannot avoid doing so.  Unions are being pretty persistent in these efforts of late.

However, adjunct faculty, in some instances have already formed their own organizations, not to seek higher wages or deal with grievances, but more positively, to help in networking, professional development and sharing best practices in teaching.

In this week's blog, I want to share with you one such group that has been actively working together for 12 years.  It is the Maryland Consortium for Adjunct Faculty Professional Development (MCAPD).

Initially this group formed when one community college put out a call to other local colleges to invite a representative for a meeting where professionals in the areas of continuing professional education could discuss what the schools were doing in their work with adjunct faculty.  That first meeting had about 20 or so administrators, faculty and adjunct faculty attend.  From that point on, a monthly meeting was held where these folks could share best practices in teaching, administration of programs and various topics of interest to each college.  All found the meetings helpful in the area of professional development.  They were no longer alone in their work, but had a new group of colleagues with whom they could share information freely.

Important to these discussions is that the primary recipients of the work of MCAPD were the adjunct faculty. What seemed to be missing however, was a way to provide the professional development opportunities to a wider number adjuncts.  Thus, an annual conference was born.

MCAPD has now held yearly conference each first Saturday in October for seven years and is working on their 8th..  Besides a keynote address from outside of the organization, workshops and presentations are almost exclusively the purview of the adjuncts themselves.  The conference is well known around the Baltimore region and now draws some 300 adjunct faculty members who give up their Saturday to share and to network with others across the state.  The meeting has had rave reviews and is again planned for October 4th in 2014.

Beyond the networking and sharing, adjunct faculty are given the opportunity to offer a professional presentation and show others the great work they are doing in the classroom.  If you haven't heard of this group or the conference itself, I highly recommend them to you and hope you will take the time to join them online or in person at one of their monthly meetings as they prepare for this year's gathering.

To be notified when the next blog is posted, please sign in with your email address in the box at the upper right corner of the blog.  You may comment on the Blog at the end of each post, as well.



I encourage you to  join MCAPD on facebook.  Go to your facebook page and search MCAPD or go to the MCAPD website and click on the facebook link.  The Website where you will soon find information about this year's conference can be seen at ola.aacc.edu/mcapd