AFT president Sandra Feldman applauded the work of higher education activists over the past few years at a Wednesday breakfast during which the union honored four outstanding leaders. She noted that since taking office in 1997, higher education membership has grown from 79,000 to 114,000. The division recently has made great strides in organizing groups that represent the new face of the American work force, Feldman noted. "The issues of contingent workers touch us all," she said, but no group is affected as much as higher education where institutions rely on increasing numbers of part-time and adjunct faculty and staff, and graduate employees. "It is critical that we organize and represent these people," she said. Mitch Vogel, retiring president of the University Professionals of Illinois and a long-time member of the AFT higher education program and policy council (PPC), received one of the union's two Higher Education Leadership Awards. The other went to Art Hochner, former president of the Temple Association of University Professors and also a member of the PPC. The body awarded Washington Federation of Teachers assistant to the president Wendy Rader-Konofalski with the Higher Education Staff Award for her legislative work for the state federation. The Norman Swenson Higher Education Militancy Award went to the AFT Alliance of Graduate Employee Locals (AGEL), the coalition of 13 AFT locals representing 14,000 graduate teaching and research assistants. [Trish Gorman]

[July 17, 2002]