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  • Ask the Administrator: How to Break In

    By Dean Dad July 20, 2007 6:44 am

    An adjunct, and returning correspondent, writes:

    If I was an English adjunct at your CC, where would you advise me to focus me efforts in order to--
    hope hope hope--effectively compete for an eventual tenure track opening? As I only have an MA,
    should I give up, go earn a Ph.D., go to local conferences, attempt to write for national journals, push
    my own blog, or what? I only have so much time, so I want to put it to wise use.
    When replying, please consider I have extremely limited funds, live in a rural area, and do not want to
    upset my full-time colleagues. Mucho thanks.

    ----------

    In thinking about this, I have to admit that my knee-jerk answer conflicts with what I've actually seen. Since the voices in my head (or knee) are of no import, I'll just tell you what I've seen.

    The people I've seen make the jump at the same campus – and that's how I got my start, too – did it by offering the college or department something it didn't already have. Most English departments already have people with Ph.D.'s, and people who go to local conferences. It would be a very progressive department indeed that saw a blog as a hiring credential.

    Instead, you have to show that you can solve a persistent problem of theirs. What that problem is will vary from locale to locale. It might be techno-phobia, so developing online expertise for the evergreen courses (i.e. Composition) could make you attractive. It could be the lack of coverage of a given subfield, in which case making yourself (or presenting yourself convincingly as) conversant in that field – while also being perfectly capable of covering the courses you're covering now – would make you attractive. (That's how I got my first f-t faculty gig. Although hired as an adjunct in one area, I showed that I could also cover another area that had been a persistent problem for them.) It could even be an unusual preference. At Proprietary U, the most commonly-taught math courses were the algebra-to-precalc sequence, but the faculty regarded anything below calculus as slow torture. One adjunct crossed over by making it abundantly clear that his first love was the remedial math and first-level algebra – he actually loved teaching the courses everyone else loathed teaching. Hiring him solved a major staffing problem, since it allowed the 'purists' to spend more time on the courses they actually cared about, and his palpable love of the first-tier classes resulted in more successful students there. I wouldn't advise faking this, but to the extent that you can highlight an honest and unusual and useful preference, you make yourself more appealing.

    This is a particularly good strategy in a rural area, since 'utility infielders' – people who can play several different positions passably well – are at a premium when the hiring pool is thin.

    The trick, really, is to try to imagine what would make you appealingly different from all the other adjuncts who can also cover the basics. You're good at teaching composition and literature? Great. So are most of your colleagues. What useful thing do you do that they don't, or won't, or can't? Do you have a background in industry that you can bring to bear on courses in technical or professional writing? I'm not talking about scholarly specializations, since cc's typically don't teach courses above the sophomore level. I'm talking about breadth, rather than depth.

    There are other ways, but I haven't seen them succeed very often. Some people believe in the “affix your lips to the chair's ass” method. It's risky, though, in that you're relying entirely on the whims of a single person, and that person may or may not still be in that role by the time it matters. (You may also find the chair's ass crowded with the faces of other supplicants, some with greater suction than you.) And even if it works, now you're the chair's plaything until tenure, and your life will be hell. Some take a different approach and threaten to leave if they aren't hired full-time – I call it “play me or trade me” -- but usually an adjunct who threatens to leave is allowed to leave. You need more leverage than most people have, if you hope to pull this off. (Hint: never make a threat you aren't prepared to fulfill.)

    You can also try indignant moral suasion. Good luck with that.

    Wise and worldly readers – what have you seen work?

    Have a question? Ask the Administrator at ccdean (at) myway (dot) com.

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Comments on Ask the Administrator: How to Break In

  • Posted by Perry on July 20, 2007 at 10:15am EDT

  • If an adjunct does not meet the minimum qualifications of candidates applying from outside the institution, he or she will not be interviewed. If most of the applicants have Ph.D.s and the adjunct does not, I don't believe they will be considered. For our university, it is publishing. Most adjuncts have published nothing, not even their dissertation work. It automatically knocks them out of the running for a tenure-track job. I have been told by several adjuncts that they were advised not to continue any research while teaching. That strikes me as spectacularly bad advice, perhaps self-serving if the institution where they were teacher told them that.

    At our university, if someone has made themselves indispensible, as suggested above, they will guarantee their adjunct position but not move to tenure-track. Tenure track faculty are hired because of their prospective ability to perform strongly in all of the aspects of the job, which includes more than simply teaching classes. If adjunct faculty focus primarily on their teaching abilities, neglecting the rest, they will be at a disadvantage, no matter how strong their teaching. I do not know whether it is the same at the community college level, but I have been an adjunct and made the transition to tenure track, largely by behaving like a tenure track candidate. I think adjuncts need to understand their competition and be competitive to break into the same department where they are already teaching. That is not the same as becoming indispensible in some niche.

  • A Community College is not a University
  • Posted by CCPhysicist on July 21, 2007 at 5:55am EDT

  • The advice from Perry is not unreasonable for a university, where publications and grant support for research trump everything, but it is almost completely wrong for someone looking at a CC. A CC will gladly take an MS who can teach over a PhD who cannot. Publications are irrelevant unless they concern, say, research into eliminating misconceptions about physics in introductory physics.

    There is almost zero overlap between what you need to submit to a Uni and what you need to submit to a CC when seeking a job.

    One good resource that DD overlooked would be an article in the Chronicle by Rob Jenkins
    http://chronicle.com/jobs/2004/04/2004041201c.htm
    on this very topic. Other relevant materials can be found by looking through
    http://chronicle.com/jobs/topical/community_college.htm

    The series of articles Jenkins wrote circa 2004 on job hunting at a CC are excellent, by the way.

  • Going from PT to FT at a community college
  • Posted by CC Prof on July 24, 2007 at 11:55am EDT

  • CCPhysicist knows what he/she is talking about.

    Going from adjunct to tenure track at a cc can be done, but it is very difficult. Colleges are notoriously insensitive to their own PTers. I think it is especially hard in English because so many instructors seem willing to take the crummy PT pay. I really believe there is a "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free" attitude. But it can be done.

    I'm in a very large school, and in my English dept I know of at least 4 people out of 37 FTers that started out as PTers. (There may be a couple more.) We also have over 100 PTers, some of which are obviously hoping to be considered for future FT jobs, too. I myself was never a PTer at my current school, and when I was interviewed I know I was up against a very good PTer. I still feel badly that she didn't get the job and don't completely know why she didn't. CC jobs can be very competitive.

    I'd say the way to break in is to make it clear to the dept chair that you are interested in a FT position and have a frank discussion. Always be polite and competent, and ask if there are projects you can help with. Ask if there is a way you can better utilize your skills to help the dept. That is the sort of initiative they like to see. Publications are pretty worthless at a cc, I'm sorry to say. CCs are more like high schools than univeristies, and there are lots of assessment/accreditation projects that folks generally dislike but you could help with. CCs do sometimes like to hire people with publications for the cachet, but they mostly seem to want people that will work hard. If you do extra projects, make sure you work with FT Faculty. (FT Faculty ultimately make hiring decisions on committees.) You don't want to seem like an Admin's pet. And try to get paid for your extra work. (Remember the cow.)

    The rural location you are in, if it isn't generally desirable, could be a good bit of luck for you. My school is in a generally desirable suburban location near a major city; there were 250 applicants for my job.

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