On behalf of the AAFMCC Executive Board we would like to take this opportunity to wish our members, their friends and families, a Very Merry Christmas and the Happiest of New Years!

The following announcement is a reminder about the AAFMCC Tuition Reimbursement Program.

 

Announcing the AAFMCC/MCC Tuition Reimbursement Program (TRP)

According to Section 15.3 of the 2012-2018 Contract MCC adjuncts are eligible for tuition reimbursement for classes taken at MCC.  The following criteria apply (note these terms might be amended or expanded after first year depending on level of participation):

[1] Reimbursement is for tuition only towards the cost of a for credit course at             MCC at the in-district rate (no fees, books, etc.).

[2] Only MCC adjuncts who are members of AAFMCC in “good standing” are eligible (that is they have filled out an AAFMCC membership form declaring their full membership and are currently on the seniority list).*

[3] Tuition reimbursement is at the in-district rate.  While non-Macomb County            residents are eligible they will only be reimbursed at the in-district rate.

[4] Reimbursement is limited to one (1) for credit course per term with a             maximum reimbursement of $500 per term.

[5] Reimbursement is paid once it is verified that the adjunct received a grade of “C” or better.

The entire TRP funds are limited to $6,000 per academic year and awarded on a first-come, first serve basis so those interested should act as soon as possible.  Adjuncts who sign up for a class and want reimbursement at the end of the term need to notify the Executive Board at aafmcc@gmail.com (please put “Tuition Reimbursement Program” in the subject line) of their intention to apply no more than 10 days after the first day of class with the following information:

Ø Member’s Name and Employee ID #                                     

    Course Number, Section and Number of Credits    

    Course Name                                                                               

 

                *Those who haven’t filled out a form may obtain one by e-mailing aafmcc@gmail.com.

ATTN: MEMBERS As many of you know MCC is migrating to a new e-mail/webadvisor system with new passwords over the Holiday Break.  If you have not done so please read the following important message from the MCC Service Desk.  If you have not done so please activate your current college e-mail.  With the new system in place it will be more important for your to do so.  Also please advise your colleagues to do the same.  As many of you know there can be late changes to assignments before the start of the Winter Term and we don't want any members to fall through the cracks for lack of proper preparation. AAFMCC Executive Board EXTREMELY IMPORTANT WebAdvisor Conversion Instructions – Please Print before you leave Friday, Dec 20th!   Service Desk Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2013 4:20 PM To: Service Desk Attachments: The format of your temporary password will be Birthdate (mmddyy), uppercase first initial of first name, lowercase first initial of last name and the first 5 digits of your SSN.  (John Doe with a birthdate of July 4, 1970 and a SSN of 123-45-6789 would be 070470Jd12345) What you need to do before 5 PM Friday, Dec 20th 1.     Print a copy of this e-mail and set up directions for your mobile device from the Intranet (http://mcc.macomb.edu/menu/docDisplay.asp?dID=1581), if necessary. 2.     Delete Macomb account(s) on ALL mobile devices (the account you have configured to synchronize [send/receive] e-mail, calendar or contacts).  If you don’t, your Macomb network account will become locked over the coming weekend. 3.     Log off and completely shut down your computer. 4.     Unless you really need it, leave your College laptop in your office - it adds complexity.  Special directions can be found at the end of this e-mail. Friday, Dec 20th 5pm through Sunday, Dec 22nd. ·         WebAdvisor and e-mail will not be available for Staff, Faculty and Students. ·         Smartphone and tablet access to Macomb’s e-mail and calendaring will be suspended. ·         WebAdvisor IDs will be changed to match network IDs and network passwords will be reset to a temporary password during the weekend (format above). ·         ANGEL will be operational. Datatel system ID’s and passwords are not changing. Monday, Dec 23rd WebAdvisor for Staff and Faculty will be available by 8:00 AM Passwords must be at least seven characters with three of the following: an upper case character, a lower case character, a numeral, or a punctuation character. ·         On campus?  Login using your existing network ID and the temporary password. You will be prompted to change your password.  Don’t use your old password; this will lock your account. ·         Off campus? Go to owa.macomb.edu. o    Login using your existing network ID and the temporary password. You will be prompted to change your password. o    If you must use your College laptop, use the special instructions at the end of this document.  ·         Mobile Device?  Add Macomb account using new credentials after (!) you reset your network password. o    An incorrect password on a mobile device will quickly lock out your College network account. o    Reset directions are different for every device. Phone settings can be found on the Intranet at the “MyMacomb” link in the lower center of the Intranet homepage. Monday, Dec. 30th ·         ANGEL will be unavailable from 8am to 2pm.  ·         Login to ANGEL after 2 PM using your new network password. The instructions above are only for faculty and staff.  For further information, please refer to the intranet at: http://mcc.macomb.edu/menu/docDisplay.asp?dID=1581 . You may also contact the Service Desk for assistance at x7156 from a college phone, (586) 445-7156 off campus, or e-mail ServiceDesk@macomb.edu.      Special Directions to use your College laptop to remotely reset your network password: DO NOT use these steps if the laptop is on campus attached to the College’s wired network (not wireless)!! 1.     Login to your laptop using your OLD password (your laptop stores your password from when you last used it on campus) 2.     Open a web browser and navigate to owa.macomb.edu.  Do not use VPN or Outlook! 3.     Log into OWA with your existing network ID and the new temporary password 4.     You will be prompted to set a new password (you won’t be able to use your old one!). a.     Minimum of seven characters with at least three of the following: an upper case character, a lower case character, a numeral, or a punctuation character. 5.     If you start Outlook or attempt to access SharePoint you will be prompted for your NEW credentials.  Use your existing network ID and the NEW password you have just set. NOTE! Until you dock/connect your laptop to the College’s network, its stored password (used to log in after you boot up) and your network password will NOT be the same!  You will need to use your old password to log into the laptop upon boot, but your new password to access OWA, Outlook or SharePoint. When you return to the office, dock your laptop and login with your NEW network password.

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The Executive Board of AAFMCC Urges All Members to read the Following Article from the NY Times Regarding Adjunct Issues

 

More College Adjuncts See Strength in Union Numbers

By TAMAR LEWIN

BOSTON — Gillian Mason was passionate about literature in college, so she made a career of it, earning a Ph.D. in American studies from Boston University. She had part-time teaching jobs on different campuses, but after 10 years as an adjunct she realized that she would never find a tenure-track job, or even one that paid a living wage.

“I was teaching five classes at three different campuses. I was quickly going broke and my student debt was still growing,” she said.

So Ms. Mason left teaching and became a higher-education organizer, part of a movement catching on across American campuses where adjunct faculty members, the working poor of academia, are turning to collective action.

Only a quarter of the academic work force is tenured, or on track for tenure, down from more than a third in 1995. The majority hold contingent jobs — mostly part-time adjuncts but also graduate assistants and full-time lecturers. And the Service Employees International Union, with members in health care, maintenance and public service, is moving hard and fast to add the adjuncts to their roster, organizing at private colleges in several urban areas.

In Washington, it has unionized American University, Georgetown, George Washington and Montgomery College. In the Los Angeles area, adjuncts at Whittier College and the University of La Verne just filed with the National Labor Relations Board for a union election. In Boston, Tufts University’s part-time faculty voted to join the service employees’ union in September, and an October vote at Bentley University failed by two votes. Campaigns are underway at Northeastern and Lesley.

“The S.E.I.U. strategy has the momentum right now,” said Adrianna Kezar, director of the University of Southern California’s Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success. “And we know that unionizing leads to pay increases and at least the beginnings of benefits.”

A survey published last year by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce found that unionized adjuncts earned 25 percent more per course than those who were not unionized.

At the service employees’ union’s recent Adjunct Action symposium in Boston, organizers talked of how a citywide union might help to raise pay, improve working conditions and address the health benefits problem: Under the Affordable Care Act, employers with more than 50 employees will be required to provide health insurance to those who work at least 30 hours a week — and in a recent survey of human resources officers by Inside Higher Ed, nearly half said their colleges or universities limited adjuncts’ hours so they would not be eligible for health benefits. When the union’s organizers asked those at the adjunct symposium what they would most like to change, health insurance was right up there with pay and working conditions.

Some universities are pushing back against the union’s efforts. Northeastern, which has 1,400 part-time, nontenured faculty members, has retained one of the nation’s most aggressive antiunion law firms, Jackson Lewis.

Northeastern’s president, Joseph E. Aoun, declined to be interviewed. The university’s provost, Stephen W. Director, in a letter discussing the union organizing campaign, said that faculty members and the administration had “fostered an extremely collaborative relationship built upon mutual respect and trust.”

“We encourage all of our faculty members to work directly with the university on any issues or concerns they may have,” the letter stated. “We are concerned about the impact that ceding your rights to do so to an outside organization, which is unfamiliar with our culture, will have on our community.”

On most campuses, the professors said, they felt little support from students. Douglas Kierdorf, a history adjunct at Bentley who is teaching one course this semester, said he had worn his red Adjunct Action button throughout the organizing campaign, hoping students would ask about it so he could tell them he earns $5,000 for the course, while nearly a dozen administrators earn more than $250,000 a year. But the students were uniformly incurious, he said.

Adjuncts have also wondered how to rally support from parents, who might not have considered how faculty working conditions affect students’ learning conditions, or that their huge tuition bills were paying for instructors who commute among several universities, have no offices and may earn so little that they qualify for food stamps.

Several studies with different methodologies have examined adjuncts’ impact on student success, with most finding negative effects.

But in September, the National Bureau of Economic Research released a study finding that freshmen at Northwestern University who took their first courses in a discipline from nontenured faculty learned more than those who took the introductory courses from tenured professors. At Northwestern, an elite university, however, nontenured faculty members generally work full time, with full benefits and multiyear contracts.

While the study did not deal with part-time adjuncts hired semester to semester, David N. Figlio, the lead author, said in an interview that it had provided evidence that what mattered for students was full-time teaching status, not tenure.

“The rise of full-time designated teachers at U.S. colleges and universities may be less of a cause for alarm than some people think,” the study said.

But a preliminary national study, presented recently at a higher education conference, found that the percentage of part-time faculty members at community colleges had no impact on student success.

Organizers from the service employees’ union, analyzing local living costs and adjunct pay, said at the Boston symposium that while teaching 12 courses a year was “an extraordinary course load,” the average adjunct would have to teach 17 to 24 classes a year just to afford a two-bedroom apartment and utilities — then another two to four classes to cover groceries. Saving for retirement and going out for meals was out of the question.

The meager reach of adjuncts’ pay was no surprise to William and Barbara Shimer, who are adjunct professors at Northeastern. In all, they are teaching 11 classes this semester — he has five at Northeastern and two at Wentworth, she has four at Northeastern — paying $2,100 to $6,500 each, depending on where and for how many credits.

Mr. Shimer was once asked on a Friday to teach a new course starting the following Monday, and told to come early that day to pick up the textbook. Ms. Shimer once had a class she was counting on canceled shortly before the first class. Like most part-time instructors, they have neither job security nor health benefits. But what pulled Mr. Shimer into the union campaign was the lack of an office.

“We used the trunk of our car as our office, rushing back between classes to dump one set of books and materials and get what we needed for the next class,” he said. “Then one day, our office got towed. I decided right then to get involved with the union.”

Ms. Shimer said that although the symposium made the adjuncts’ plight seem intractable, it also gave her hope that a national movement to improve the situation was gathering steam.

Last month, Representative George Miller of California, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, set up an online forum for adjuncts to share stories about their working conditions.

The problems of adjuncts were spotlighted in September in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette op-ed article by a United Steelworkers lawyer that described the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko, an 83-year-old adjunct at Duquesne University, where the steelworkers have been organizing.

Ms. Vojtko, who taught French at Duquesne for 25 years, never earned more than $25,000, even when she taught eight courses a year, a load that eventually dwindled to one a semester. Ms. Vojtko, who had cancer, was dismissed last spring, with neither pension nor severance, and died in August. The lawyer said Ms. Vojtko had received a letter from Adult Protective Services, saying she had been referred as someone who needed help caring for herself. When he called to explain, the lawyer wrote, a surprised caseworker asked, “She was a professor?”

The story became a rallying point for adjuncts nationwide.

“It resonated for a lot of people, as a symbol of how they could end up themselves,” said Maria Maisto, president of the New Faculty Majority, a national advocacy organization for adjuncts.