Farmingdale Chapter member Elena Eritta and Buffalo State Chapter member Stephen Street are this year’s recipients of the Fayez Samuel Award for Courageous Service by Part-Time Academic and Professional Faculty.

The award recognizes UUPers who have served their union with courage and distinction, and whose service reflects contributions to UUP at the state or chapter level.

“Congratulations to Elena and Stephen, who have tirelessly dedicated their time and energy to championing the causes of part-time employees on their campuses and across the state,” said UUP President Phil Smith. “It is devoted members like these who keep UUP strong.”

Elena Eritta has created positive change for part-timers during her decade-long tenure at Farmingdale, which has the highest percentage of part-timers of all SUNY state-operated campuses. She served on Farmingdale’s Individual Development Awards Committee, and successfully negotiated Presidential Committee Awards for professionals and academics. Eritta organized annual luncheons for adjuncts, and made sure that part-time professionals received discretionary salary increases.

She has fought for and gained a number of benefits for adjuncts, including office space, mailboxes, telephones, computers and business cards. Eritta has brought new adjuncts into the union and has informed part-timers of the process to register concerns about working conditions, job security, benefits and pay.

She has served as a member of the chapter executive board and as a member of the statewide Part-Time Concerns Committee.

“Elena has worked with conviction and enormous energy, never fearing the consequences in order to better serve that great number of bargaining unit members whose label is ‘temporary service,'” wrote Farmingdale UUP member Vicki Janik.

Stephen Street has been an active, energetic advocate for Buffalo State part-timers over the years. Last year, he convened a part-time concerns subcommittee to study part-time evaluation procedures on campus. Currently, he is working on a proposal for a feasibility study on establishing an evaluation/promotion step system at Buffalo State.

Statewide, Street is a member of the Part-Time Concerns Committee and is a UUP delegate. He has represented UUP at conferences, including the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor Conference. He has published a number of reports and papers about part-time concerns in several national journals, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, the National Educational Association’s Thought and Action, and the American Association of University Professors’ Academe.

“In our view, Stephen Street has met all the criteria (for the Samuel award) year after year, especially the decisive one: ‘Special consideration shall be given to those part-time academic and professional faculty members whose displays of courage have placed them at risk of personal and/or professional sacrifices,'” wrote Cortland member Ross Borden.

Eritta and Street will be honored Oct. 1 during the 2010 Fall Delegate Assembly in Buffalo.

— Michael Lisi