education

On Becoming an Adjunct Instructor: 3 sources for further reading

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Good News: Inside Higher Ed publishes career advice for adjunct faculty

My cautionary essay, “Advice to a Friend on Becoming an Adjunct,” has been published by Inside Higher Education.

The idea and structure for the essay came from reading Benjamin Franklin’s “Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress,” which dates back to 1745. I saw similarities between Franklin’s words and present-day discussions of adjunct faculty. You may remember one of the Franklin’s oft-quoted lines, “And as in the dark all cats are grey…”

DEFINITION: Adjunct faculty may be called lecturers, faculty associates, or similar titles. Adjunct or contingent faculty are contracted to teach one or more university courses each semester. While they are not on the tenure track, adjunct faculty hold advanced degrees in their subject areas, and teaching may be their full-time job.  

I began drafting this essay after receiving an adjunct teaching contract with a per-course pay rate so low that it was similar to my first teaching contract in 2000.

Regrets surged at having stayed with adjunct teaching and its attendant fears of losing full-time work (and health insurance) every fall and spring. Looking back, I would have advised myself to exit the academic treadmill of year to year or semester to semester contracts and re-enter the ranks of higher ed. classified or professional staff—jobs that offer more stable schedules, competitive incomes, and maybe even raises.

In any case, the Inside Higher Ed essay offers advice I wish someone had told me (or that I had listened to). If you’re interested in some of my sources, I’d like to share the following:

Sources (partial list)

The Adjunct Underclass: How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission, University of Chicago Press book

The Adjunct Underclass: How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission by Herb Childress, a former dean at the Boston Architectural College, was published by the Chicago University Press in 2019. The book offers “Recommendations for Survival in the Current Climate,” including that grad students should consult the National Research Council’s assessment of doctoral programs. “Be cautious about applying to any school not in the top 10 percent of its discipline,” writes Childress. “Lots of doctoral programs can give you a wonderful intellectual experience; only a few of the are likely to give you a chance in the [higher ed.] labor market.” To further gauge one’s prospects for a career in academia, Childress’s self-test, “The Academic Career Calibration Protocol,” may feel like an ice-water dunk.

“Who Are the Part-Time Faculty: There’s No Such Thing as a Typical Part-timer,” American Association of University Professors article

“Who Are the Part-Time Faculty: There’s No Such Thing as a Typical Part-timer” by James Monks, an economics professor at the University of Richmond, Va., was published in AAUP’s Academe in July-August 2009. The article includes a plethora of economic, demographic, and related data about contingent faculty. “[P]art-time non-tenure track faculty earn between 22 and 40 percent less than tenure track assistant professors on an hourly basis,” writes Monk in citing his earlier article, “The Relative Earnings of Contingent Faculty in Higher Education,” which was published by the Journal of Labor Research in 2007. Monks’s earning percentages seem high, based on my years in the adjunct world at Wisconsin and Arizona universities.  

“Professional Identity in a Contingent-Labor Profession: Expertise, Autonomy, Community in Composition Teaching” Writing Program Administration article

“Professional Identity in a Contingent-Labor Profession: Expertise, Autonomy, Community in Composition Teaching” by Ann M. Penrose, an English professor at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, was published in Writing Program Administration in 2012. Among Penrose’s points is a discussion of how a profession is defined to include growth and development. She asks whether contingent instructors are members of a profession/discipline given their often-narrow opportunities for growth. “But under the conditions of contingent employment, ‘professional development’ can easily be interpreted as a euphemism for brainwashing or remediation….,” writes Penrose. Brainwashing is a strong word, but my professional development opportunities related almost solely to practical concerns, such as university technology adaptations, curriculum changes, or course development. “Under this interpretation,” Penrose writes, “professional development activities are intended to regulate and regularize and thus present a clear challenge to an experienced faculty member’s autonomy and professional identity.”

Other Sources

Publications regularly covering issues concerning adjunct university instructors, such as unionization efforts, include:

Related post

Thinking about a college teaching gig?

Thinking about a college teaching gig? 

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3 resources for new university adjunct faculty & instructors.

DEFINITION: Adjunct faculty may be called lecturers, faculty associates, or have similar titles. Adjunct or contingent faculty are contracted to teach one or more university courses each semester. While they are not on the tenure track, adjunct faculty hold advanced degrees in their subject areas, and teaching may be their full-time job.  

The default for many new or inexperienced university instructors is to teach the same way they were taught. However, what worked for them — successful, and most likely, high-performing students — may not work for today’s college students. For example, some students may score high on traditional lectures followed by multiple-choice exams, but those lecture/ Scantron-test scenarios don’t always foster a deep understanding of course content. 

However, a second default for new adjuncts and instructors may be more useful — namely, returning to their roots as students. By studying successful college teaching, new instructors can create classroom experiences that are more rewarding for their students (and themselves). Effective college teaching can be learned, and the following resources may help:

NOTE: For adjunct faculty and tenure-track professors alike, college teaching skills are often learned on the job. Novice instructors have subject-area expertise, but they may have zero teaching experience. Many instructors are expected to teach courses while they’re learning how to teach. At the same time, each of their students is paying $20 (or a lot more) for each class session. No pressure. 

1.      Communication within a Course – Book: Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, 2nd Ed., by James M. Lang (2021)

The little things make a difference. Imagine you’re listening to a music broadcast, and you hear a song you love and want to know its title. However, the program just keeps going and going, and you never learn the title of that song. Many students have this type of experience in their classes, and the small teaching techniques that Lang discusses can reduce student’s frustration and help them learn.

Simple things, such as giving students a preview of the day’s lesson can help. Better yet, explain how a day’s activities fit into the course’s overall learning goals (knowledge or skills the instructor will need to measure on exams or projects), so everyone in the classroom can focus their time more productively.

Throughout his book, Lang details classroom techniques, supported by research, that facilitate meaningful teaching, learning, and communication.

2.      Alignment to Course Goals — Video: “Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding” (2009) 

“Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding” is a short film about teaching at the university level that offers a true north sort of message, with a few dashes of humor.

A key takeaway is that if you are aligning your course content, activities, assignments, and assessments with the course’s overall learning goals (see the college catalog or departmental course description for these), you’re headed in the right direction. The film’s keyword is alignment. As in, the “Constructive Alignment” theory from educational psychologist John B. Biggs underpins the film’s content.

Bonus points for linking the film’s points back to Lang’s Small Teaching methods to communicate to students how specific elements of your course connect to the overall learning goals. Explain to students what they should learn and why. Double bonus points for incorporating activity-based opportunities for student learning.

3.      Deep Learning – Book: Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice, 2nd ed., by Maryellen Weimer (2013)

Speaking of active learning… Weimer encourages instructors to go beyond delivering information to passive students. Ever spoken before a passive audience? People dozing off? Multitasking on their phones? Whether your audience is students or coworkers, imagine how well passive learners will retain your detailed, exceedingly important information. Not well.

Active learning — such as think-pair-share strategies that ask students to grapple with course content together — are more likely to foster deeper learning. Deep learning goes beyond the surface level — such as vocabulary terms memorized for a test (and often forgotten) — so that students may retain and apply what they’ve learned. It’s much like the difference between watching home repair YouTube videos that make tasks look easy, until you try to do the actual jobs yourself.

Weimer notes that learning can be a messy process, and she encourages instructors to position students to work in collaboration with other students (take an active role in their learning), as well as to reflect on their own attempts and progress toward the course goals.  

To some, college teaching might seem like a dream gig. Show up in class for three hours a week and viola! Easy peasy. Get paid. However, much like ballet, there are hours and hours of work going on behind the scenes to make those classroom hours, online portals, assignments, and assessments work to prepare students for success in higher-level classes and careers.