About Us, Contact Us

Do you have questions about joining - or forming - an AAUP chapter at your CCCS college?

Contact:

Caprice Lawless, 2nd Vice President, AAUP: aaupofcccs@gmail.com

What started with a few adjunct faculty crying into their beer over how things are at school evolved rapidly into something far more powerful, once we found the AAUP. Our tiny Front Range Community College chapter grew to scores of members at several colleges within the 13-college Colorado Community College System.

Before you knew it we were hosting the first-ever, day-long Mini-Innie (abbreviated version of the AAUP Summer Institute), the annual Damn It! Summit at the Denver Press Club, Adjunct Survival Workshops, an adjunct-focused Health Care Fair, an Adjunct Film Series, and monthly pub crawls. As part of our advocacy for wage and benefit equity for adjunct faculty, we launched with Rep. Randy Fischer in the Colorado Legislature, first a House Bill in 2014 (HB 14-1154) and, the next year, with Sen. John Kefalas, a Senate Bill (SB 15-094).

We published The Adjunct Cookbook in 2014; a book that tells the story of poverty-level wages for CCCS adjunct faculty in between all the food-bank-friendly recipes. It is now in its 6th printing. In 2017 we published The Adjunct Coloring Book, a similarly themed activity book, now in its 5th printing. Both books -- and our work -- have received local and national press.

In 2016 AAUP's powerful Committee A launched the first-ever investigation of a CCCS college, drawing press attention to the dumbing-down of curriculum at the Community College of Aurora as well as to the plight of CCA adjunct faculty member Nate Bork. Bork spoke out about the problem and was fired mid-semester by CCA. (He is now working on his Ph.D. in Political Science at Colo. State Univ.). Committee A has since put the Community College of Aurora on its Censure List.

We host many events to bring adjunct faculty together, including the Faculty UnService at the Denver Press Club, and countless casual coffees, Scrabble games, pub visits, picnics, etc. In Dec. 2017, we sponsored the first-ever series of AAUP Winter Break Unemployment Workshops for CCCS adjunct faculty. We held workshops in Denver, Louisville, and Castle Rock.

Our work finds facts, turns heads, changes minds, snags headlines, and dogs administrators. The powerful purpose of this work cannot be understated.

Teaching some of this state's most disadvantaged students should not be the lonely, isolating, and discouraging job it has become. We know that adjunct faculty work for years, unseen and unsupported by college administrators. We know all about the window-dressing that goes on that sounds friendly and promising in the e-mail memos, and how, after attending a few times, you realize you are just part of a box-checking exercise for administrators.

We find that just knowing one another, having a friend to call to pose a question, having a peer to meet for coffee or a beer after class can be a godsend. CCCS adjunct faculty look around at the scores of deans, vice-presidents, building projects, etc., and feel like failures. You have not failed; the CCC System has failed you. The CCCS has more money than ever before. We have done the research. We know. We deserve better. The current design is unsustainable. The CCCS loses dozens of devoted and experienced faculty every semester. That's wrong.

We can do a lot to change things, but we are missing one thing: YOU. There is strength (and solace) in numbers. Join us! At our wage level (among the lowest in the nation for adjunct faculty) AAUP annual dues are about $5/month. We make friends, make noise, and make a difference!