Adjunct

JOHN STREET has been invited to teach a Temple political science course at the "nominal salary" of $30,000. That's only some 10 times what an eminently qualified adjunct professor is paid. Perhaps Mr. Street might be induced to donate his token salary to provide hot lunches for underprivileged academics. Harold Gullan Philadelphia A case of a dime dropping Too many people are making a big deal about John Timoney catching Officer Cassidy's killer. They caught him because somebody recognized him and called it in. Timoney didn't use any special supercop techniques.

An adjunct mathematics professor died Wednesday after he reportedly dived off the second tier of a rotunda to the ground floor of a building at Chestnut Hill College in front of students and staff, a college source said Thursday. A statement on the college's website identified the professor as Rudolf Alexandrov and described his death as the result of a fall, but did not elaborate. Philadelphia police confirmed that there had been a suicide at the college, but declined to release any further information.

The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board will hear a discrimination complaint filed by the adjunct instructors at Bucks County Community College. Adjunct faculty - instructors contracted to teach specific courses - filed an allegation last spring alleging that the college had discriminated against several adjunct faculty who had tried to join a union. The complaint says the individuals either were not hired to teach the spring semester or were assigned classes only days before the spring semester started.

Adjunct instructors, who say they make up nearly half of Temple University's faculty, called for better pay and working conditions yesterday at a demonstration in front of the campus bell tower near Paley Library. The part-time professors, who complain that they don't have their own offices or a clear path for promotion to full-time teacher, have held demonstrations every day this week and plan to be out again today. The group calls the event "adjunct awareness week" - the first of its kind on the Temple campus.

In a first-floor office in the Bucks County Community College administration hall, negotiators for the college and its faculty union gathered last week to begin work on a precedent. Discussions began Tuesday afternoon to determine the terms under which part-time campus faculty would be covered under the same contract as their full-time counterparts. Union, college and state officials say the situation represents the first time at a Pennsylvania community college that both types of faculty would belong to the same bargaining unit.

A contract proposed for part-time teachers at Bucks County Community College would bring hefty increases in county taxes or student tuition, college officials warn. Administrators and trustees, in their third month of negotiations with the college's newly organized adjunct faculty, predict that if the union's current proposal were approved, it would cost $4.1 million next year. If that spending increase were funded through tuition, students would face a 40 percent increase - $345 per semester for a student taking 12 units, administrators said.

After five years of double-digit tuition increases, Rowan University officials introduced a 2002 budget yesterday that includes an increase of about 9 percent. The university also expects to raise tuition by 8 percent each of the next two years, president Donald Farish said. In the proposed budget, in-state students would pay $4,500, an increase of $360, and out-of-state students $9,000, an increase of $720. In-state graduate-student tuition would be $7,080, an increase of $576, while tuition for out-of-state graduate students would be $11,328, an increase of $912.

Three things are clear after a meeting yesterday between Father Jim St. George and officials of from Chestnut Hill College, which had fired the former adjunct professor for being gay. He will not be reinstated at the college, there will be no legal action on his part and both sides agree it?s time to move on. ?I am pleased to announce that I have reached an amicable resolution with Chestnut Hill College that will end this controversy,? St. George said in a statement released after the meeting at the Center City firm of his attorney, George Bochetto.

Autoworkers at a General Motors plant in Flint, Mich., went briefly on strike recently. The main issue was money - the workers wanted less of it. That is, they were working 60-plus hour weeks and wanted to work less in order to spend more time with their families and to feel less exhausted, a result of the long hours. To achieve this, the management would have to hire more full-time workers and pay them benefits, which they were unwilling to do because it is cheaper to keep a leaner work force and require them to work long hours, than to hire new full-time workers.

An adjunct mathematics professor died Wednesday after he reportedly dived off the second tier of a rotunda to the ground floor of a building at Chestnut Hill College in front of students and staff, a college source said Thursday. A statement on the college's website identified the professor as Rudolf Alexandrov and described his death as the result of a fall, but did not elaborate. Philadelphia police confirmed that there had been a suicide at the college, but declined to release any further information.

Three things are clear after a meeting yesterday between Father Jim St. George and officials of Chestnut Hill College, which had fired the former adjunct professor for being gay. He will not be reinstated at the college, there will be no legal action on his part and both sides agree it's time to move on. "I am pleased to announce that I have reached an amicable resolution with Chestnut Hill College that will end this controversy," St. George said...

I have been following the essentially biased coverage of Chestnut Hill College's alleged firing of Father James St. George with keen interest ("College calls priest's ouster 'sensationalized,'" Saturday). I have been an adjunct professor of business communications at the college for 11 years - and this fall my granddaughter will enroll in the college as a full-time student. Is Chestnut Hill College the kind of place I want her to go? Absolutely and without reservation. I am proud of the college and prouder still of the wonderful leadership there.

Should teaching college be a full-time, high-paid job? Or is it so easy that we should let the market maintain today's low prices for casual professorial labor? Alexander Kudera says he spent 10 years shuttling on the Broad Street subway and the subway-surface trolley, between Drexel and Temple , teaching four or five writing classes a term. Kudera, with his master's degree, was paid the way thousands of faculty gypsies are these days: as an "adjunct" professor, on a per-class basis.

While still a teaching assistant at Temple University, Amy Weigand knew one thing: She was not interested in being an adjunct professor, a position she equated with low pay and little security. In fact, she promised herself she would organize a union if that turned out to be her fate. Nine years later, as luck would have it, she is an adjunct, as nontenure-track, part-time college instructors are known. True to her pledge, she is knee-deep in the effort to convince other adjuncts that they should be represented by the Temple Association of University Professionals (TAUP)

One morning last week, the force of nature that is William Woys Weaver was getting his hands dirty at Roughwood, his rustic manse in Devon, planting flats of heritage seeds that had been tottering dangerously close to expiration. Various pole limas were on the menu this particular day - Sadie's Climbing Baby Lima, among them, and one of Doctor Martin's coveted Chester County beauties (once sold for a whopping 25 cents a seed), and the purple Blue Shackamaxon Treaty Bean, and old Quaker beans, and seeds that his late grandmother had squirreled away in jars in her own freezer.

Adjunct instructors, who say they make up nearly half of Temple University's faculty, called for better pay and working conditions yesterday at a demonstration in front of the campus bell tower near Paley Library. The part-time professors, who complain that they don't have their own offices or a clear path for promotion to full-time teacher, have held demonstrations every day this week and plan to be out again today. The group calls the event "adjunct awareness week" - the first of its kind on the Temple campus.

The announcement for Burlington County College's job fair yesterday was enticing: "Numerous full and part-time positions are available. " And that's no exaggeration. With enrollment for the fall semester expected to grow by double-digit percentages, the college plans to identify up to 200 new adjunct faculty members, increasing its part-time teaching force to about 575, said Kathleen Carter, vice president for academic affairs. The hiring splurge and influx of students come as the college faces a cut of up to $5 million, or 42 percent, in its funding from the county, and flat funding from the state.