Adjunct instructors find opportunities, fill void at area colleges

Adjunct instructors find opportunities, fill void at area colleges

By Sherri Dauskurdas
Associate editor

Business professionals seeking part-time employment are finding increased opportunities in college classrooms.

The role of adjunct faculty, those who teach on a class-by-class basis, has grown in both number and scope over the last decade, as colleges expand their programming despite cutbacks in funding.

Many people who have lost jobs, are seeking to make up for pay cuts or simply want to boost their incomes have migrated to part-time college jobs. And it’s a number that’s growing.

In November 2008, the number of people who worked part time for economic reasons, meaning that they would like to work full time but couldn’t because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to, rose to 7.3 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At Benedictine University in Lisle, an overwhelming number of science majors has led to more than twice the number of adjunct faculty as full-time professors teaching in the sciences.

The adjunct faculty members include individuals employed full-time in the private sector or at area high schools, retired faculty, and those who have retired from other jobs and remain active by teaching.

Ralph Meeker, acting dean of the college of science at Benedictine, said the adjuncts are utilized primarily to meet the demand for the introductory science and laboratory courses.

“An unusually high percentage of our full-time undergraduate students are enrolled as science majors (fall 2008 enrollment figures showed 800 science majors out of nearly 2,200 full-time undergraduates).” Benedictine likes to keep the classes small, no more than 16 or 20 per section, which means many class sections to teach.

“Obviously, there is a significant financial advantage to having a mix of full-time and adjunct faculty staffing our programs,” Meeker said. “If we had to employ full-time faculty members to staff all the course sections now taught by adjuncts, we would need to add 15 to 20 new full-time faculty members.

“In addition to the increase in compensation costs, we would also need additional office space to house the faculty, thus increasing the size of the physical plant. All of this would translate to a significant increase in tuition cost to students.”

The same holds true across the suburban market. At College of DuPage, Aurora University, Benedictine and Joliet Junior College, there are roughly three part-time faculty members for every one full-timer. At Waubonsee Community College, more than 80 percent of the faculty are adjunct.

Balancing the mix of full-time and adjunct faculty is extremely prudent in managing financial resources, Meeker added.

But it is just those financial advantages to the college or university which have led populations of adjuncts to organize.

Just last month, adjunct faculty from across the nation met to begin the formation of the Coalition for Adjunct Faculty, an advocacy group that would represent solely adjunct faculty members. Proponents of the national group say that while many adjuncts are represented through branches of higher education unions like the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, there are issues that these unions are not addressing.

“There is a natural conflict of interest that is quite difficult to negotiate when an organization or union is charged with representing both contingent faculty and their supervisors under the same roof,” said Maria Maisto, co-chair of the newly-formed CAF.

On the other hand, she suggested some existing unions have been successful in negotiating the delicate balance between tenured professors’ interests and contingent faculty interests.

Because of this, Maisto and her fellow organizers want the group to keep itself detached from the politics of existing faculty unions has the best chance of serving the highest number of fixed-term faculty most effectively.

“We have no official position on the desirability of forming unions, since we recognize that that is a question best left to adjuncts who understand and must contend with the particularities, both political and cultural, of their local contexts,” Maisto said. “We would like to provide all adjuncts and contingent faculty with the support and resources that they will need to better their conditions, regardless of the paths that they choose to take.”

Their main concern is creating a national voice for adjunct faculty.

“Currently, no national organization, devoted only to adjunct and contingent faculty exists,” she said. “Some cities, states and regions have them, but there is nothing truly national.”

The group is moving quickly, with the goal of being set up as an independent organization with a viable web presence before the year is out. Presence is especially important during economic times such as these, she added because of the added pressure on faculty from increases in enrollment.

“Historically during economic downturns, student enrollments increase as people try to acquire the education and training they need to secure (better) employment,” she said. ”In these times in particular, the country needs to invest in its human capital—the students who need education and training and the professionals who are providing it.

“Students at colleges and universities have, for many years, been receiving extraordinarily high quality instruction from their adjunct and contingent professors in spite of the conditions in which the majority of these professionals have been forced to work.”

But despite inadequate funding and space limitations, choosing to overwork full-time faculty and staff is not a responsible solution to this problem, she said. If anything, it will drive away the faculty the schools so desperately need.

“Community colleges, four-year colleges and universities do not only need their adjunct faculty, most could not function without them.”

But if the opportunity is high, the desire for adjunct positions in even higher. At the College of DuPage, more than 1,200 adjunct faculty members teach in any one semester. They are chosen from a pool of about 2,400 available instructors, a group Sue Dreghorn, officer with the COD Adjunct Association, affectionately calls “the stable.”

Out of the about 1,200 who teach every semester at COD (in addition to the 300 full-time faculty), only about 400 have satisfied the prerequisites to be a bargaining unit member of the College of DuPage Adjuncts Association, which requires at least three years of continuous teaching with at least 12 credit hours in the academic year preceding membership.

“We do not like the three-year wait and intend to bargain for a reduced period for our next contract,” she said. But another issue is health care, and Dreghorn thinks a national voice like the one CAF proposes, would be helpful.

“If nothing else, a national adjunct group might be able to provide health insurance, something not yet available from any educational unions, including the IEA/NEA with which we are affiliated.”

In the meantime, many adjunct professors use the position as a way to stake a claim as full-time faculty positions open up. Such an opportunity came to longtime adjunct instructor John Draut.

Draut had been an adjunct professor of business in the suburban market since 1981, teaching at Aurora University, St. Xavier University and Benedictine. Today, he has translated his adjunct experience and his work experience outside the classroom into a full-time teaching opportunity in Benedictine’s MBA program.

His journey started as a quest for professional development.

“I started being a lecturer as a response to a superior’s suggestion to refine my management skills and improve my MBO raise potential,” he said. “They felt I had management potential but needed to improve my presentation skills and ability to think quickly in unique unstructured settings. It was the best career move I have ever made on many levels.”

The veteran of the business world used his skills to move up through the corporate world, in financial positions at such organizations as Allis-Chalmers, Inc.; Stantel, Corp.; NBN Company; and most recently, Marriott Corp. He has always brought his knowledge and day-to-day experiences from the corporate world into the classroom.

“Since my first day as an adjunct professor, I have worked continuously in business,” he said. “My classes are rich in my personal experiences, from traveling overseas to managing diverse groups of people in varying organizational structures. I attempt to augment the text and course materials with insight that many of my peers may lack, because of their lack of hands-on business expertise.

For Draut, the transition to being a university lecturer and seminar leader was an easy one, he said.

“I seem to have an innate ability to communicate easily with all levels, types, and skill levels of students and organizational forms,” he said.

“Working at various levels of corporations, various types of organizations, and the huge diversity of the workforces has prepared me well for today’s demanding and intelligent students—I am always learning from them and for them.”

Posted on Monday, March 23, 2009 (Archive on Monday, March 30, 2009)
Posted by jstoltz Contributed by jstoltz

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