The nascent national voice for contingent faculty members now has a name: The New Faculty Majority.

Adjuncts have been trying to form a national organization and met in a teleconference at the end of February to hash out preliminary details. This past Sunday, during another call, the 18 members of the organizing committee picked “The New Faculty Majority” as their calling card, with a subtitle: The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity. Nearly 70 percent of professors at the nation’s colleges and universities work off the tenure track.

The group also decided to seek tax status as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization after incorporating later this year. The founding group plans to hold its next teleconference on April 5, when agenda items include agreeing on a mission statement, approving plans to launch a Web site, and voting on an organizational structure.

“We feel that we’ve made significant progress in a very short period of time, which reflects the commitment and hard work of this committee,” said a co-chair of the organizing group, Deborah Louis, an adjunct professor who teaches political science, criminal justice, and women’s studies at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and Eastern Kentucky University, in a written statement released today. —Josh Fischman

Update: The New Faculty Majority blog, at thenewfacultymajority.blogspot.com, has contact information for the new group.