Erich Gruen, University of California at Berkeley and Carla Antonaccio, Wesleyan University
Introduction
A nationwide epidemic now threatens to erode the academic enterprise. Employment of part-time, adjunct, and temporary instructors has reached alarming proportions. Recent surveys indicate that the numbers of persons in those categories have nearly doubled since 1970, and constitute 40% of all faculty, rising as high as 64% at community colleges and 29% at four year institutions.
This development has grave implications for every corner of learning in our colleges and universities. Part-time employees do not normally participate in departmental decisions, their pay scales and work loads are dramatically different from regular faculty, and they rarely enjoy health or retirement benefits. No matter how excellent their teaching or deep their commitment, the heavy demands on adjuncts' time, the problem of morale, and the insecurity of their positions inevitably exact a toll on students, institutions, and faculty. Students suffer from the lack of continuity and stability in the academic staff. The presence of stop-gap appointments (far cheaper than permanent faculty) can provide pretexts for reducing departmental size. And the reverberations are felt by the most vulnerable members of the profession, young PhDs who must compete in a shrunken job market.
The AIA and APA undertook to explore this issue in a joint Forum, entitled "Expedient and Expendable: Adjunct and Part-Time Faculty" at the Washington meeting in December 1998. The Forum was sponsored by the AIA Committee on Professional Responsibilities and the APA Committee on Professional Matters. The special needs of classics and archaeology dictated a close examination. Since most Classics departments are small (many exist only as components of a larger unit) and archaeology rarely has an autonomous structure, their situation is particularly precarious.
The three hour Forum produced papers from a panel of seven speakers. They ranged from experienced administrators to veteran adjuncts and they constituted a balanced representation from AIA and APA. The speakers were Ernst Benjamin, Associate General Secretary of AAUP, Cathy Callaway, adjunct at Westminster College, Eric Cline, adjunct and postdoctoral fellow at U. of Cincinnati, John D'Arms, President of ACLS, Matthew Santirocco, Dean of College of Arts and Sciences at NYU, Judy Weinstein-Balthazar, former adjunct, current Assistant Dean at Bryn Mawr College, and Hector Williams, Professor of Classical Archaology at U. of British Columbia. The Forum produced some stimulating ideas, generated a productive discussion, and opened the way for further debate and action on these matters.
Among the first steps taken by our organizations, the AIA and APA have joined the newly formed Coalition on the Academic Workforce, a group of professional organizations committed to finding constructive and immediate ways of addressing this problem.
The following papers were among those delivered at the Forum. We also provide links to other resources and documents from the AAUP, and the statement of purpose for the Coalition on the Academic Workforce.
Ernst Benjamin, Associate General Secretary, AAUP
Disparities in the Salaries and Appointments of Academic Women and Men
Ernst Benjamin's report may be accessed at the following location at the AAUP Web Site http://www.aaup.org/Wrepup.htm
Hector Williams, Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, University of British Columbia
Part Time Faculty in Canadian Classics Department
As a preface I should say that I come to this gathering as a tenured full professor with thirty years at the same institution, the University of British Columbia, but with a spouse who has held a number of temporary positions at different institutions. I am also from a department that has gone in a few years from only few part time or sessional appointments to seven a year, two full time and five supplementary. I also have a number of friends and co-workers of varying ages who have been adjunct faculty for many years and am grateful to them for sharing their experiences with me. I should add, however, that I found it difficult to obtain hard figures, especially for more than the past two or three years and this presentation should to a considerable degree be considered anecdotal. It is based on email responses from members (full time and part time) of 14 of the ca. 28 classics departments in Canada.
The phenomenon of dramatically increasing employment of part time, sessional, and supplementary faculty in all disciplines has been receiving increasing attention from both the media and academic organizations. Many of you will remember the Doonesbury cartoons of a few years past that highlighted this issue. Earlier this month the front page of the Vancouver Sun, for example, contained a feature article by one of the paper's leading columnists on the drive for unionization of part time faculty at my own institution, the University of British Columbia. In November there was a national conference on the subject in Ottawa. In my own department--which has recently been combined with Religious Studies, a phenomenon found elsewhere Canada in recent years at several universities--we have seen the numbers of temporary instructors of various sorts on the classics side go from one or two a year to seven in this academic year as colleagues departed and were not replaced. With three early retirements in the past twelve months added to other departures we have gone from 13 to 8 faculty with responsibility for all classical languages, history, art and archaeology and about 35 graduate students. The attraction of the financial savings to administrators is all too evident: a twenty-four thousand dollar a year sessional will teach as much as or more than an eighty thousand dollar a year full professor. Indeed salaries for part time extrasessional instructors can be even lower. If you ask sessionals nicely you can get some help with unpaid graduate supervision and examination out of them as well.
I discovered that getting hard figures on the use of part time faculty is not easy and am grateful to the various sources in different universitiesoften adjunct facultywho provided me with what figures I have. I stress that these are not official and they represent the current year. In some cases because of sabbaticals, disability or maternity leave some departments have substantially more adjuncts than normal. Nevertheless some clear trends emerged and while the picture is not altogether bleak there is cause for concern. One reason for more temporary positions that might not be obvious at first is a benign one: as tenured faculty get older, pay off their mortgages, see their children finish college, etc. they are no longer interested in teaching night school or summer school for the extra money, especially if more than half of it goes in income tax as is the case in Canada. Thus there is an immediate need and opportunity for part time instructors.
The university system in Canada has some marked differences from that of the United States: virtually all universities (apart from a few religious schools) are state run and among them there are only a handful of what might be called small liberal arts colleges; most of these institutions are found in the eastern maritime provinces. Each province runs its own system, generally not interfering in what universities spend their money on although usually new programmes must be approved at a provincial administrative level. Few community colleges offer classics courses. The system almost everywhere is under stress as are most public institutions. Pay levels in the public service have been frozen for years and strikes are a frequent threat or reality, even at universities. Practices that have become common place in businessdownsizing and outsourcing, to use two favourite termshave become increasingly common in public organizations. In a large B.C. regional hospital, for example, there have been no full time nurses hired in the past two years; all new appointments are part time contract employees. Large private companies like Safeway are buying out their older full time unionized staff earning twenty dollars an hour and replacing them with part timers who earn $7.50 or so.
What further directions can downsizing take? There has been a proposal recently at my own university and, I understand, one that has also been discussed by Deans at a national meeting to replace all first and second year language teaching with adjunct employees, reserving regular faculty for senior and graduate courses. Of course in many large universities graduate students de facto already served this function but in classics at least I have found that many departments feel their best teachers, often senior faculty, should be put in the first year Latin and Greek courses to encourage students to go on.
The most striking use of part timers and sessionals seems to take place in departments in crisis. Two universities, Alberta and Ottawa, stand out in Canada: they once were with U.B.C. the largest departments in the country after Toronto with as many as 12 and 17 full time faculty members. The first now has six regular faculty and nine adjuncts and has been combined with History while the second has four faculty and eleven adjuncts and has been combined with Religious Studies. In each case for a variety of reasons the departments virtually imploded, losing a large number of faculty members in a very short time to death, departure and retirement, early or regular. Often a department is the prisoner of its own demographics: in my own case I am the youngest tenured member of the classics side of our department at 53; there is one younger untenured assistant professor. In other areas of the country the situation is variable. The figures from the maritime provinces seem encouraging with only modest use of part timers from the little that I have been able to learn there. I have not been able to get figures from francophone Quebec but the figures at Concordia and McGill, the two large English language universities, are not encouraging. In the former the department (now three down from four) has always relied heavily on part time instructors, perhaps because of its heritage as a university for part time working students. At the latter Classics has declined to a rump of three with its historians transferred to History (one of whom is a sessional) and the archaeologist to Fine Arts. In Ontario there is a mixed picture: I have mentioned Ottawa but the Classics department at the other university there, Carleton, is now down to two regular members and six part timers, three of whom are retired faculty. Trent and Brock use a relatively large number of part timers; Queen's and Toronto, Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier relatively few. In the West Winnipeg has none and Manitoba one; Saskatchewan is under threat in any event and has several. In Alberta the U. of Calgary has several but is adding two tenure track positions this year. In B.C. the U. of Victoria is doing well with a pair of sessionals and new tenure track positions currently advertised.
Another aspect of part time work that we may expect to see developing is the use of distance education courses. At present only a few universities in Canada, especially the U. of Waterloo, use these courses to teach classical studies but we may expect to see a marked increase as use of the Net grows. Indeed one enterprising ABD in Hamilton is already offering his own Latin course on the Net for interested persons and has thirty paying students. A number of these courses are being staffed by part timers who serve as tutors to supervise, advise and mark participants. Thus it may soon be possible for universities not even to have to provide for office space for adjunct faculty. We are moving into a slightly different territory here as such courses are desirable in promoting our discipline to persons unable or unwilling to attend regular institutions. They are even more economical in financial outlay than hiring a regular adjunct as pay is often based on piece work. The only real expense to the institution is hiring someone to develop the course. My own limited experience with our Open University equivalent, the Open Learning Institute, saw that organization in fact just buy a British OU course on Athens that had been adapted for American academic consumers. To give you an idea of just how far such institutions appeal I might refer to a press release two or three years ago after a meeting of governors of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon about setting up a virtual university of the U.S. Northwest on the Web rather than putting more money into existing institutions.
The impact of the increasing use of part time instructors is almost always negative. Those hired often have a feeling of being exploited after the initial euphoria of finding any sort of academic employment passes. They have sometimes accomplished more as scholars and teachers than permanent members of departments who had been hired and tenured in easier times. They feel a lack of collegiality, of being part of an institution, however long their contracts may continue to be renewed. In some cases a spouse's income makes the life possible; in others individuals with family responsibilities can be found teaching in two or three institutions simultaneously to make ends meet. When tenure track positions do come available they may be passed over for a fresher face although I should say that I have also encountered the opposite phenomenon as well. When part timers make up a significant element in a department the lack of contributing voices at departmental meetings and on programmes can be a real problem.
I have talked to undergraduate students about their perception of the situation. A frequent comment is that they feel that letters of reference from part time staff will carry less weight with prospective graduate schools or scholarship granting bodies. To judge from my own experience on such admissions committees I think that this fear is not unfounded, especially if all the letters for an individual come from adjunct faculty who may have taught the applicant in a single course: one wonders about the state of the department in question and the soundness of its programmes. I think that there may be another factor that comes in at this point too grade inflation. One former student of mine, a sessional for many years, told me that part time faculty are usually trying to build up a teaching file and may be inclined to be generous to the students who will be judging their performance. I have, however, noticed the opposite can be the case, i.e. that part timers mark harder and are more demanding.
Another problem that I have noted is at institutions that have no department of classics but wish to have classics courses taught. The cheap and easy thing to do is to hire part time instructors about whose qualifications the hiring institution may have little knowledge. I know of one case where an M.A. level student is teaching a subject in which the individual has failed to pass reading exams on at least three occasions. Patronage and convenience may also play a major role in part time hirings, especially where criteria for appointments are lacking and hard pressed administrators are simply looking for bodies.
What can we do? I do not think that this situation is going to change any time in the near future and I fear that it may in fact get worse. We shall probably even see more often retired faculty teaching our subjects for free to keep them alive at some institutions; often faculty will retire early because of golden handshakes. It would certainly help bodies like the AIA and the APA in assessing the matter to have accurate and reliable figures do the figures of 69% and 40% in community colleges and four year colleges in fact apply to our fields or are they more to be found in departments of, for example, English and history that have large numbers of students taking required courses? Are proposals for the use of cheap part timers to staff junior language courses likely to be implemented? It may well be that unionization of part time faculty will be the only way to bring pressure on university administrations to increase salaries and benefits but such a course will only help our classicists in a wider context of action by other disciplines. To end on an optimistic note I did learn of one institution (the University of Calgary) that has in fact rolled a number of part time positions in Arts into regular three year contractually limited instructor positions with benefits. It would be good to think that others might follow this example.
Postscript
Subsequent to the writing of this paper the part timers have agreed to become members of the Faculty Association, a non-unionized organization of UBC full time academic staff.
At Ottawa many courses were offered both in English and French, which accounted for the large number of faculty.
A new appointment at the University of Alberta will raise their number to seven next year.
At our Washington DC meeting I learned that this proposal has in fact been implemented.
Eric Cline, University of Cincinnati
Seven Years in the Life of an Adjunct/Part-Time Professor
When I came back from a summer of excavating at Megiddo in Israel this past August and found an Email from Carla Antonaccio asking if I would take part in this evening's panel, I accepted by return Email without hesitation. This is a forum which should have taken place years ago. However, once I had accepted, I began to have second thoughts. I had no wish to be put on display as a "poster child," to be pitied by some and held up as an example by others. I was also afraid of what I might do -- would I come up here and brag about my credentials, trying to impress everyone and finally get a tenure-track job? Would I publicly become very bitter and angry, while listing my litany of woes? Would I, God forbid, start to cry? To save myself, and possibly others here tonight, potential embarrassment, I have decided to simply present the facts of the last seven years of my life, without embellishment, so that you can see for yourselves the life of an Adjunct or Part-Time professor.
Before I do that, however, let me briefly explain, especially for those of you who don't know me, how I have come to find myself teaching as an Adjunct or Part-time Professor for these past seven years, since receiving my Ph.D. in 1991. Very simply, my specialty is the archaeology of the Late Bronze Age in both Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean, and specifically the interconnections between these regions during the second millennium BC. As one might imagine, there are not a whole lot of jobs advertised for such a specialty. In fact, there have been only two junior tenure-track positions advertised for a Bronze Age Aegean archaeologist in the United States during the past seven years, since I received my degree. In both cases, I was short-listed for the position, but wasn't offered either job.
Since, therefore, there were few positions available in my own specialty, I started applying for various generalist positions in History, Classics, Near Eastern, and Anthropology departments. Since I have a BA in Classical Archaeology with a Minor in Anthropology, an MA in Near Eastern Archaeology, and a Ph.D. in Ancient History, I thought that surely something would materialize in one of those four types of departments. Unfortunately, although over the years I came close several times, ultimately I kept falling through the cracks: the historians were sure that I was an archaeologist, while the archaeologists were convinced that I was a historian; the Classicists thought I was a Near Eastern person, while the Near Eastern people were certain that I was a Classicist. The Anthropologists didn't know what I was, but I certainly wasn't one of them! So, no tenure-track jobs were forthcoming.
In the winter of 1992, I got my first part-time position, having just finished my dissertation the previous June and having moved to Fresno CA, where my wife had been hired in a tenure-track position at Fresno State starting in September of 1991. It took me the Fall Semester to line up future work, but that winter and spring of 1992 I taught a total of four classes at Fresno State and at the College of the Sequoias, a local Junior College. I had a total of 115 students enrolled in my classes and was paid a grand total of 8,600 dollars.
During the following academic year, 1992-1993, I taught a total of 12 classes at three separate colleges, with a total of 460 students enrolled in my classes, and received a grand total of $22,400. And so on, year by year, teaching between six and 12 classes per year, with between 135 and 445 students per year enrolled in my classes, with no TA's to help me in any way, and never earning more than 23,000 dollars per year as a Part-Timer, despite teaching more classes than any of the Full-Time professors in my departments.
The most unforgettable scenario was when I was at Xavier University in 1995-96. I taught eight classes at Xavier that year, in which were enrolled fully one-quarter of the entire freshman class, and was paid less than one-third the salary of the just-hired, full-time, tenure-track, Assistant Professor in the office next to me. I also happened to be teaching at three other colleges at the same time that year, with four additional classes, and still only earned a grand total of 19,000 dollars for the entire year. That total was less than half what my Full-time colleagues were making for teaching less than half the number of classes I was.
Overall, my usual teaching load as an Adjunct or Part-Time Professor was 11 or 12 classes per year, at an average total salary of about 20,000 dollars. Two abnormal years, in terms of number of classes taught were 1991-92 and 1994-95, during which I taught only four and six classes per year respectively. However, both were years in which we moved in August to a new city: Fresno in August 1991 and Cincinnati in August 1994. In both cases, by the next year (1992-93 and 1995-96) my course load was back up to 12 classes per year.
I should also point out that wages for Part-Timers have stayed essentially the same since 1991. I have never received a "cost of living" increase or even a merit raise, despite having published one book, two edited volumes, and more than thirty articles in the past decade. I was also never eligible for benefits as an Adjunct or Part-Timer, needless to say.
Part-time wages also vary tremendously from school to school. For teaching the same Western Civ class, Xavier pays 1350 dollars, University of Cincinnati pays 2000 dollars, and Miami of Ohio pays 2100 dollars. (For that matter, Fresno State pays 2700 dollars for that exact same class.)
The difference in salary when one holds a Full-Time position, even it is only a one-year position, is tremendous. For example, I taught at Xavier for a total of three years, from September 1994 until May 1997. The first year, when I was teaching two classes per semester, I received a total of 5400 dollars, with no benefits, and no office space to call my own. The second year, when I was given the title of "Academic Staff" and was teaching four classes per semester, I received a total of 11,000 dollars plus benefits. I was also given office space, but it was in a building across campus from the rest of the department. The third year, when I was given the title of "Visiting Professor" for the year, I received 28,000 dollars and a full benefit package -- nearly three times the salary for teaching the exact same four classes per semester as the year before! That was the end of the ride, though, because Xavier then decided that they needed a specialist in modern Africa rather in ancient history for the full-time tenure-track position, so my days at Xavier were over despite the fact that I had among the highest teaching evaluations in the department for two years in a row and had just been nominated for "Teacher of the Year."
Turning now briefly to the pros and cons of being an Adjunct or Part-Time professor, there are many arguments to be made both for and against, not only from the point of view of the Part-Timers themselves but also from the point of view of the departments employing them.
In terms of the use and abuse of Adjuncts and Part-Timers, I have almost always had the feeling that the departments think that if we are there living in the area anyway, why should they hire us fulltime when they can hire us by the class indefinitely? It seems to frequently be the case that we aren't hired to Full-Time positions until we get a real job offer from some other university and the department is suddenly afraid that they'll lose us.
On the other hand, if you are willing to be a Part-Timer, and are willing to swallow your pride and teach anywhere, including at Junior Colleges, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs out there. On the good side, there's almost always something to teach -- one year I was offered a total of 27 different classes at four different schools, and was able to pick and choose the ones that I wanted to teach! You also don't have to be on committees and you have plenty of time for your own research, if you can manage your time properly. On the bad side, many of the classes are repeats -- for instance, of the 63 classes I've taught over the past seven years, I've taught Western Civ a total of 35 times. Still other classes you'll spend months preparing, only to offer it one time and never again. I've been asked to teach classes in Archaeology, Ancient History, Medieval and Modern History, Anthropology, Classics, Biblical Studies, and Sociology, sometimes on a week's notice or less.
Most rewarding for me was teaching at two very different places, four years apart -- at Fresno City College in 1992-94, where I was teaching students who were the first in their family to have gone to high school, let alone college, and at Stanford in 1997-98, where as a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow working with Ian Morris for the year, I had the brightest students I've ever taught.
So, I stand before you now, with my soul bared and a mixture of emotions -- a bit angry, a bit sad, a little embarrassed, and quite a bit proud at having survived thus far. I both hate the system and am immensely grateful to it. The system has both used me and abused me, but it has also given me opportunities that would not have been possible if the choice were only between tenure-track positions and nothing at all. I have also been given the opportunity to learn how to teach and to be grateful that I'm doing something I love.
Two separate people in the past year, both of them well-known junior archaeologists in their own right with well-established publication track records, have contacted me wanting to know what my secret is...how do I always have jobs wherever I go? My answer to them, and to anyone else, is simple: if you want to survive, be willing to teach anything, anywhere, for any salary, and on a moment's notice.
On the other hand, I'd give up this idyllic life in an instant. If anyone out there has a full-time, tenure-track job for me, let's do lunch!
Table of Eric Cline's teaching career
Cathy Callaway, Westminster College
In order to write this statement, I decided to take advantage of the latest technology which my employer has provided for me. I surfed the Web. I sometimes spend the "free" time I have as an adjunct doing this. When I typed "adjuncts" in Alta Vista, one of the search engines, I got "Grains/malts/adjuncts." Apparently I should apply for a job in a brewery. Continuing, I learned that adjuncts are "anything other than malt that adds sugar to the wort." I added this to my "Learn something new everyday" file, and modified my search. I tried "adjunct professors." Too many entries -some seemed to be web sites of adjuncts looking for jobs. Again, I filed this away for future use! On a side bar was an advertisement for Amazon.com - which promised "books on adjunct professors." Here we go. The only book was one called The Adjunct Professor's Guide to Success by Richard E. Lyons, not yet published. Then I got intrigued by another side bar: WELCOME CATHY CALLAWAY. IF YOU ARE NOT CATHY CALLAWAY, CLICK HERE. What would happen? If I wasn't Cathy Callaway, would I turn into Cathy Callaway after clicking? I decided to shut down the computer. I have since found a great variety of information on the status of non tenure track faculty, which the American Association of University Professors defines as two groups: 1) those who teach part-time and 2) those who teach full time but are not on tenure-track lines. I would be glad to share the bibliography I have and would appreciate any exchange.
I welcome this panel which provides the opportunity to voice our experience and perhaps create some proposals and resolutions to remedy this "problem." It is a problem, as you no doubt realize now and will become more familiar with as the testimonials bear witness to the fact. I have had experience at two institutions of higher learning, the University of Missouri at Columbia and Westminster College in Fulton MO. Both schools follow the national trend by having at least 40% of their faculty working part-time.
It is my understanding that personal stories may have some value and shed some light on this complicated issue. Here is mine: I defended my dissertation in 1990. I applied for jobs in 1990 and 1991 and interviewed at the APA/AIA meetings in San Francisco and Chicago. I was offered a one year full- time position for the 1991-92 school year in the department of Classical Studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia (MU) as a visiting assistant professor. I was pleased and honored. I had received my MA at the university, and considered the fact that the departmental members knew me as a grad student a major handicap that I had overcome. At this same time, I turned down an on-campus visit for a tenure-track position at a small college in Texas. The proximity of the position at MU to my husband, who was teaching classics at Westminster College, 30 minutes from Columbia, made MU the logical choice. I received $23,000 along with benefits, and had a course load of 3 classes per semester. The next year I applied for the tenure track position but was not hired. I had focused on my 3 preparations and not my publication record, despite the fact that the department did not require any committee work for my first year. The disappointment turned into pleasure when the department offered me an adjunct position. For the next 5 years I would teach 1 or 2 classes per semester, on an irregular basis. I retained the title of visiting assistant professor for those years, and was grateful that none of my colleagues ever asked when I was going home. I am uncertain what the going rate was for adjuncts - or what the price per class was at the university. I suspect that there is no flat rate. As the associate dean of Arts & Science (who happens to be a classicist) states: "A&S has no 'base pay scale' for adjuncts, in large part because 'adjunct' has so many possible connotations. Some 'adjuncts' teach one course; others teach a full semester 'load'. Some courses meet one day a week, others five days a week. Our basic 'policy' is to try and come up with an equitable 'standard' within comparable fields, and proceed from there."
I received $3,500 per class during the regular semester and summer school. I know that the department partially funded my position out of the money they received for having faculty teach outside the department: in the honors college, etc. I was present at one meeting where they discussed my salary, and all voiced their concerns over a fair pay scale. They made me feel as though they valued my teaching, but their generosity was hamstrung by their budget. I was not required to do committee work or advising; I was welcomed at departmental meetings and my opinion was always listened to politely and with consideration. Because of this positive treatment, I felt motivated enough to volunteer to do research into several issues that were of a concern to the department and reported back about these during the meetings.
After an on-campus interview at a university in northern Missouri, I was offered a one year replacement position for 1993-94 in classics. The course load was 4 per semester and the salary was nearly $30,000, with benefits. Although it was in Missouri, the university was far enough away to make commuting impossible, except on weekends. At this same time, my husband and I decided to start a family. Turning down the position, a full time one with people that promised to be good colleagues, was a tough decision. When I became pregnant it proved to be the right one. I taught a myth course with 250 students at MU in the fall of '93, but declined a course in the spring. Instead, I taught part-time in the Learning Disabilities Program at Westminster College. At this same time, I had a contract with Microsoft as the subject expert on the Romans for a CD ROM production called "Ancient Lands." Working at home had great benefits. When the production director invited me for an all expense paid visit to the Microsoft campus, I had to admit I was too pregnant to travel. Thanks to email and faxing, he never realized I usually reported to work in a bathrobe.
The willingness of the Department of Classical Studies at MU to rehire me on a part-time basis enabled me to stay home and enjoy time with my infant son, but still have the mental stimulation a classroom provides. In 1995-96 during my husband's sabbatical I took the opportunity to live in a small Greek village, read Horace, and master the modern Greek of a two year old. I also finished two articles, one an archaeological topic, which I was able to research in situ. Again, the flexibility of the department at MU contributed to this.
I was asked to be a replacement for one of my colleagues at MU who was going on leave in 1997-98. The chair of the department argued to the administration that I deserved more pay; the offer he was given was $14,000 for 3 classes a semester. If you are doing your math, you will realize that I made the same amount teaching 2 classes per semester. Pointing this out, the chair was able to reduce my load to 2 classes per semester and still get me benefits, something I hadn't had since 1993.
For this 1998-99 school year the department at the University of Missouri was fortunate to be able to replace a full-time position, but they lost funding for an adjunct. The full-time position would have provided a salary in the mid 20's and a course load of 3 a semester. The irony was not lost on me that this was what I had been initially offered as an adjunct last year for at least $10,000 dollars less. This perhaps is the price one pays for the flexibility of being an adjunct. I was encouraged to apply for the full-time position, but finally reached the conclusion that I did not want to work full-time. Raising a child, keeping up with and trying to publish in our field, along with working on other projects, such as Volunteer Coordinator at our local battered women's shelter kept me busy enough. I realized that I LIKED being an adjunct, no matter how lowly and apologetic it made me feel! I made a conscious decision to not pursue a full time position in Classics. It made sense at this point in my life. That decision was sorely tested when my husband was named interim dean of Academic Affairs at Westminster College, where he has taught Classics since 1979. Here was another opportunity to apply for the sort of position I had been preparing for in theory since I started grad school. I still opted for part-time. I couldn't resist teaching two Latin courses: a third semester with 6 students and an Independent study course with 3 seniors. The course load at Westminster is generally 4 courses a semester. My husband often teaches 5 or 6 a semester out of the kindness of his heart (and his interest in encouraging students to continue in Latin). It took 2 other adjuncts to complete his course load. I feel compelled to do a commercial for Westminster here and point out how extraordinary it is to have a college of 700 students with 9 Latin students in mid and upper level courses. They were outstanding students, too; many were science students who had been convinced by the kindly science faculty that no one could hold their head up in the sciences without knowing some Latin.
As an adjunct at Westminster College I made $2600 per course. The independent study course I did for free; it had been tagged on to the lower level course. I had the luxury of time to teach these separately: the full-time faculty at Westminster can't afford to do this. As an adjunct at Westminster I could vote in faculty meetings, but I was not allowed to serve on regular committees. More temporal luxury! I was made welcome at the meetings of the department of Foreign Languages and Literature, although I often felt their concerns were alien to those of teachers of classics and archaeology.
So here is my statement: I like being an adjunct: the freedom it gives me, the ability to still teach (which is what I enjoy), but also the time to work on academic and nonacademic pursuits. I taught high school while I finished my dissertation and I had many of the same problems with the schedule there that I would have in a non research institution: the heavy course load and demanding committee requirement. Teaching at MU gave me the opportunity to teach a wide variety of classes, from Women in Antiquity to a grad course fondly termed "Latin Boot Camp." An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 24, 1998) analyzes a 1993 U.S. Department of Education survey. We have heard the fact that in 1992 42% of all faculty members were part-time, up from 1968 when it was 20%. Perhaps the startling percentages are that 52% of the adjuncts surveyed said they taught part-time because they preferred to, and 86% said that they were satisfied with the arrangement. They were still complaints about pay and lack of health insurance, of course. But I am not alone. I am proud of my publication record but I also realize that I have benefitted from a lack of pressure as an adjunct in a research institution. In other words, I didn't have to publish because by opting for part-time employment, I might as well have perished.
I admit I have been lucky. I have a spouse who supports me, because one person couldn't live on the salary I make. I also have been lucky to be able to spend more time with my son while he grows up - he starts all day kindergarten next year and perhaps with that I will have to rethink my occupational goals. In the meantime, I am hoping for an OK on a book proposal (a Festschrift) and some time to catch up on a few novels that have been sitting on my shelves. I anticipate a continued need for help in the women's shelter in Fulton. With so many adjuncts in the academic world, if you are not one, then you know one: your mother, father, sister, brother, or spouse. I feel a great deal of concern for people in our position from full-time tenured faculty, and I am certain that we will be able to come to an agreement on a statement of policy regarding adjuncts and part-time faculty in the areas of archaeology and Classical philology.
Thank you.
Judy Balthazar, Assistant Dean, Bryn Mawr College
As an archaeologist turned administrator, I have been invited to talk of my impressions of the impact adjunct faculty have on the quality of higher education and on the experiences students have at college. My remarks are based on observations I've made over eight years as assistant dean at Bryn Mawr College, an academically intense liberal arts college for women.
From what I've seen, I've come to believe that adjunct professorsthat is, faculty hired on a temporary basisprovide a vital service to the institution but not without a cost to the students.
While Bryn Mawr employs fewer adjunct faculty than most other institutions, those we do hire play vital roles at the College. Most come to replace permanent faculty who are on leave or to fill an interim appointment while a tenure-track search is on. Occasionally, they're recruited to teach subjects we don't normally offer but which our students crave and our faculty deem valuable: folklore, constitutional law, and media studies, for example. And they're often hired to cover sections of courses with fluctuating enrollments such as the introductory languages and the freshman writing-intensive courses.
Charles Loiacano in the Chronicle of Higher Education of July 17th 1998 divides adjuncts into three categories: hopefuls, experts, and master teachers. We see many of the first category, the "hopefuls", at Bryn Mawr: young and not-so-young nomadic Ph.D.'s who haven't landed that first tenure-track job. And we also see some of the second category, "experts" such as journalists, artists, and lawyers. But we also find a third sort, those I call deliberate adjuncts, people who choose part-time work or reject the tenure race for personal or professional reasons. Some of our continuing non-tenure track faculty fall into this category.
Adjunct faculty play crucial roles at the College. Whenever adjunct professors replace faculty on leave, they ensure the continuity of the curriculum. When they offer new courses in disciplines outside our normal offerings, they enrich the curriculum and expose students to new ways of thinking. And when they take the time to get to know their students, they enhance the range of mentoring and advising students can receive.
Yet the very attributes that make adjuncts valuable to the institution make them liabilities as well. They come to the College to ensure continuity and to fill in gaps, but those that do get involved on campus create discontinuity and new gaps when they leave. Students can feel abandoned, especially those who have become passionate about a discipline that departs with the instructor. They might be forced to choose between putting this new academic interest aside or continuing their education at another school.
Practical constraints can undermine the impact of even the most talented and best-intentioned adjunct professors. When they are hired over the summer (as they often are), their courses might not be announced until the last minute and might be overlooked by the students who could profit from them most. And those adjuncts hired for only one course or for only one semester can seldom take the time to invest in their students; they come in, teach their classes, hold a few office hours, and leaveoften to more pressing responsibilities. Finally, the burden of maintaining a continuous job search not only saps ones energy but also tempers ones behavior. One "hopeful" reports that he finds himself cultivating positive evaluations from his students. He censors himself, expects less of his students, inflates gradesin short, plays it safer than he'd like to.
And finally, while students look to their teachers for guidance in negotiating College culture, adjuncts are seldom equipped to offer that guidance, in part because they have not had time to get acclimated themselves, and in part because the continuing faculty and administrators neglect to show them the ropes. Instructors who don't know the College well can do inadvertent damage, creating honor code misunderstandings, misdirecting students to support systems, misguiding students about add/drop policies, and so forth.
Bryn Mawr College already practices some strategies that enhance the positive impact adjunct faculty have on undergraduate education, and minimize the negative effect. We know it takes time to get acclimated to a college. My sense is that we try to offer contracts for as long a period of time and as full a teaching load as possible, as well as office space, fair pay, and reasonable teaching loads. Yet I also believe that the continuing faculty and administratorsmyself includedcould reach out more to adjunct faculty to help them understand the institution. If we do so, we will be creating faculty better equipped to serve our students, which after all is our goal in the end.
For more information, see the following: