Statement of Purpose
The Adjunct Project seeks to empower GC student-workers by serving as a resource to:
- raise consciousness about academic labor issues inside and outside CUNY,
- educate GC adjuncts about ways to address these issues,
- and to activate GC student-workers to improve their collective position as workers at CUNY.
Furthermore, the Adjunct Project seeks to organize its resources for graduate students around two areas: 1) labor issues and concerns, and 2) teaching resources and pedagogy. Both of these elements are key dimensions of empowerment at the workplace for graduate student workers.
While the Adjunct Project seeks to help graduate students address their immediate labor issues, a long-term goal of the project is to create a new culture at the Graduate Center that challenges the individualistic, atomized, competitive atmosphere of academia. By working together to improve our collective position as adjuncts at CUNY we can promote a culture that emphasizes a different set of values, replacing the academic culture of competitive individualism with one of support and solidarity.
To stay connected with the Adjunct Project’s current initiatives, sign up below to be informed about updates to our website! To learn more about who we are and what we’ve done, check out this article from The GC Advocate.
Further, if you’d like to become more active with the Professional Staff Congress, a good place to start is to join the Committee of 500. This group focuses on the upcoming contract negotiations, since the current contract expires in October 2010. Read more about how the Adjunct Project, the PSC, and other groups are working together on the contract,which is especially important given recent research done by the University Faculty Senate on the state of adjunct instructors at CUNY.
More information on why and how to get involved:
Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) Guide to Fighting Budget Cuts
National Campaign to Defend Education and Jobs Factsheet