From:  Mary Ellen Goodwin <megsplace@earthlink.net>
        Jon Curtis <curtissj@concentric.net>

 To:    Bruce.simon@fredonia.edu

 Date: Saturday - December 16, 2000 4:06 PM

 Posted: Sunday - December 17, 2000 9:12 AM

 Subject:  The California Part-time Faculty Association (CPFA) is hosting and
 sponsoring a conference on contingent academic labor in January (12-14, 2001)
 in San Jose, CA.  It would be great if grad students from around the country
 could attend.

CPFA represents the interests of the 30,000 part-time faculty teaching
in the California Community College System.  The policies and goals of
CPFA include abolishing the exploitation of part-time faculty by seeking
legislative remedies. This type of exploitation not only exists in the California Community College system, but is symptomatic of higher education throughout the nation as colleges and universities become increasingly more dependent on contingent academic labor, including grad student labor.

The goals of the conference are multifold.  One of our main objectives
is to build public and political awareness of the threat to higher
education created by the growing use of and dependency on part-time and
adjunct faculty.  Additionally, we hope to forge new links and establish
a coalition among higher education organizations in order to create the foundation needed to support the work being done at local, state, and
national levels to achieve progressive and lasting changes for part-time
faculty.  By integrating the first two goals, we hope to set the stage
for a National Equity Week, based on the highly successful A2K Part-Time
Faculty Equity Week held on community college campuses across California
last spring.  We hope to draw support from not only faculty associations
and unions, but also from student organizations as well as non-academic
and administrative groups, all of which make up a campus community.

The conference has already received the support of many state and
national organizations with our list of sponsors and co-sponsors growing
steadily.  We have also received inquiries from a number of Canadian
colleges and Universities and expect to have representatives from
several Canadian organizations in attendance.
 

You can visit our website about the conference:
http://www.cpfa.org/cocal/index.html 

You can find an updated list of sponsors and co-sponsors at the site, and we hope to have the agenda posted by the end of the week.

Should you be interested in further information, don't hesitate to
contact me.
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