Awesome Adjuncts
We have another awesome adjunct to applaud! Adjunct faculty Gail Drake, who teaches IT courses here at Woodbridge was recently honored at the Heroine in Technology Gala. At that event, she received the Lifetime Heroine in Technology Award.
Check out the link below for even greater detail on Gail’s achievement! You go Gail!
Upcoming AFC Elections 2012
THE AFC has decided to postpone the election for new officers until January of 2012, in order to give us time to recruit new candidates for these awesome new leadership positions the council has created. Please consider running for a leadership position with the AFC. The AFC is announcing the following new leadership positions:
AFC Vice Chair * AFC Public Relations Chair *AFC Treasurer* AFC Secretary
If you would like to run for any of these leadership positions please review the descriptions below and nominate yourself in the comment section of this blog. With your nomination, please provide a short description explaining why you believe you can fill the particular leadership position for which you are running.
For more information on these positions, and what you need to do in order to run, please click the link below:
Adjunct Wednesdays- Every Third Wednesday
On October 19, 2011, the AFC hosted our very first Adjunct Wednesday event. Those who attended got a free dinner courtesy of Dr. Hill who was generous enough to assist the AFC with funding for that event. Former AFC Chair June Forte also made an amazing salad! Seriously! It was so very good! If you weren’t there, too bad you missed out. At our next event, on November 16, at Wegman’s we will be having informal professional development chats by sharing our best teaching practices with each other. Once again, dinner is on the provost.
The purpose of adjunct wednesdays is to bring adjuncts together to socialize, network, discuss concerns and get a little bit of professional development under our belts. We will host two sessions each semester, during the mid semester months. Mark your calendars for the spring semester Adjunct Wednesdays: A Chat and Chew at Wegman’s on Wednesday March 21, 2012 and we’re going to to try the canoe thing again, (hopefully the weather will oblige us) on Wednesday April 18, 2012.
The AFC- What’s In It For Me?
Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about why adjuncts should bother to be involved in the AFC. I find that question rather disturbing. Why wouldn’t you want to be involved? Do you want to be counted? Do you want to have a voice with regard to what happens with your employment and employment conditions here at NOVA as an adjunct faculty member? Because there are so many of us and because many of us work in the evenings, it is very easy for our concerns to be discounted; and not even intentionally. We get discounted because we are not around during prime time and/or we are not speaking up. We’re not voicing any concerns; and if we don’t do that, then conditions will never improve for adjuncts.
Since inception, the AFC has pursued issues such as a more reliable pay schedule for adjuncts, advocating for more work space on campus for adjuncts and has attempted to provide adjuncts with useful professional development opportunities and information. If you are not involved with the AFC, and you are not communicating your concerns to the AFC, you are essentially saying that you don’t matter and that you don’t care about what happens to you as an adjunct. If you do care, you need to become involved. You need to attend AFC events where possible, and you need to communicate with AFC officers about your concerns. So, what’s in it for you? A better and more productive employment experience at NOVA.