Adrianna Kezar: An Award to to Inspire and Support Reform of Contingent Faculty Working Conditions

Adrianna Kezar: An Award to to Inspire and Support Reform of Contingent Faculty Working Conditions

pulliasadmin Changing faculty, Pullias Voices

An Award to Propel Action: The Delphi Project Offers a $15K Incentive to Inspire and Support Reform of Contingent Faculty Working Conditions

Pullias Center co-director Adrianna Kezar was interviewed about the Delphi Project for Changing Faculty and Student Success and the project’s recently announced $15,000 Delphi Award. The Q&A was published in Majority Rule, the official blog of the New Faculty Majority, on April 23, 2018.

New Faculty Majority (NFM): You have been working for a long time — at least ten years — informing, persuading, warning, and encouraging higher education leaders to take the contingent faculty crisis seriously. NFM has been gratified to work with you. Like us, you point out that contingent faculty employment practices harm the educational mission of colleges and universities. You’ve taken the lead in exploring what accreditors can do, what administrators should do, and what trustees can do. You’ve highlighted contingent faculty voices and leadership. So: what exactly is this new Delphi Award and what is its purpose?

Adrianna Kezar (AK): Thanks to NFM and its members for their on-going support! This annual award recognizes an exemplary policy, practice, or program that supports student learning by improving working conditions for contingent faculty. It comes with $15,000 to invest in development and sustainability of that policy, practice, or program. The background of this award is that I have been striving to find a way to both accelerate work to better support contingent faculty and garner examples that would help propel more action. Whether I am speaking to unions, faculty, administrators, or staff on campus, they all ask me for examples of good work — changed policies and practices — but it has been hard to get people to submit examples of that work to me to highlight (there is an area on the Delphi website for this).

Through an award, the Delphi Project can promote and inspire work that provides good models for others. These models can be used in union bargaining, for faculty mobilization or administrative action. I also hope the attention that awards receive will help provide visibility for this kind of work and propel more action.

Read the rest of this blog post on Majority Rule.

.

Adrianna Kezar is the co-director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California.