In A Working Model for Contingent Faculty, Robert Samuels offers an outline of fair and effective practices for improving the working conditions of faculty in precarious positions. Drawing on more than twenty years of union activism and university teaching, Samuels examines programs, policies, and practices that work for non-tenure-track faculty in the University of California system. His detailed analysis of facts on the ground offers a foundation upon which faculty in contingent positions can build arguments for improved working conditions. Throughout the book, Samuels focuses on the central issues of academic freedom, job security, compensation, shared governance, evaluation and promotion, benefits, and dispute resolution as well as critical but less often addressed concerns such as funding for professional development family leave policies, technology training, and summer teaching. A Working Model, as a result, offers resources that can support progress well beyond the University of California system.

Robert Samuels teaches writing at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is the author of 18 books, including Teaching Writing, Rhetoric, and Reason at the Globalizing University and The Politics of Writing Studies. He is the former president of UC-AFT, a union representing contingent faculty in the University of California system.