Teachable Moments

If every adjunct walked out, the community colleges and universities would be paralyzed. Perhaps we should organize a national adjunct walk-out day?! They can’t fire all of us. Although, I’ll modify this comment and say it’s not all admin.’s fault. Lack of public funding, legislative priorities, and lack of public awareness and support are equally to blame. However, recently, our campus provost essentially insulted all of us with an email regarding the cut-backs of adjunct faculty for both budgetary reasons and perceived lack of classroom quality. I can wrap my mind around budget cuts. I, however, am sick of the implication that adjuncts do not provide quality, consistency, and excellence in the classroom. I am one of the most highly demanded instructors in my department, students consistently ask for over-rides to get into my classes, and my department chair told me I receive some of the best evaluations in the entire department. However, due to the “old school” mentality of our provost, the poor students will now be subjected to the full-time faculty members being co-erced (poor them) into actually teaching more than one or two courses per semester. I hate to say, some of those are the instructors that the majority of my students complain about, because they lack the skills of engagement, motivating students, or they behave condescendingly toward lower-division students. Matt, you nailed it again. Got my dander all up, my shorts in a bunch, and chapped my hinny. Well done.

Karl, I have no issue with tenure-track faculty / creating more tenure-track positions for the highly qualified, highly deserving who have paid their dues. You missed my point. If one is going to be coerced into teaching more sections as part of one’s full-time, tenure-track position, I have no problem with that. My problem is constantly sitting in department meetings and hearing snarky comments from other faculty, admin, and now the provost about “those adjuncts...” I’m simply giving the other side of the issue...students BEGGING me to teach more sections, signing up for two or three of my classes, asking the chair to invite me to teach more, and constantly sharing complaints about the quality of the tenure-track faculty, (primarily that they are SO boring). And no, my classes are not watered down—I have a mandatory attendance policy and daily to weekly homework due, in addition to the midterms and finals and presentations. One faculty member informed me my first sememester that I would soon lose my enthusiasm for teaching. Wow. Welcome to U.S.E. ME. If one gets the golden ring, and one makes it to full-time, tenure-track, one should at least consider providing the quality and passion that these university students deserve and pay for. The point of the cartoon was the perceived status of adjuncts. It should be apparent from the cartoon that we are no imminent threat to the full-time, tenure-track, tenured faculty, whathaveyou. The cartoon just hit close to home because of the dismissive attitude of our new provost who equated full-time teachers with higher quality and part-time teachers with a lack of quality—a very general, and undiplomatic, handling of the current constraints. Yes, probably many or most adjuncts would not stage a walk-out—the comment was facetious—because we are all too busy freeway flying from campus to campus, building our own IRA’s, figuring out how to pay for medical care, and oh, the latest—being charged $210 to park on campus for the year. Thank goodness I have been building my own consulting and training business which pays me double. Money will always be a contentious point in public education. I’d simply like adjuncts to be given a little more credit and recognition, as really the majority of faculty on community and university campuses, that many of us provide high quality services, regardless of our employment “status.”