Instead of an office, imagine going to your instructor’s parked car for help after class. For faculty and students at some U.S. colleges, this was a reality. As part of a nationwide week of protest, part-time instructors could be found parking cars filled with textbooks, papers and other classroom materials next to signs reading, “part-time faculty office.”
Some faculty members also passed out peanuts on campus next to signs that said, “What do elephants and adjunct faculty have in common? Both work for peanuts.”
These national demonstrations, which called for fair pay and benefits for college and university part-time faculty members, were held by a coalition that includes the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and the National Education Association, according to a 2005 press release from the AFT.
At ETSU, the issue was raised at a Faculty Senate meeting in September when President Paul Stanton visited. “Adjuncts do the same work if not more, than regular professors, yet get paid much less,” said David Champouillon, associate professor of trumpet and jazz studies at ETSU. Stanton referred him to Bert Bach, provost and vice president for academic affairs, and Champouillon said he planned to bring up the issue again when Bach visits the Faculty Senate this semester.
Currently, ETSU employs 476 full-time faculty and 276 adjuncts, excluding the medical campus, according to Jack Sanders, assistant vice president and director of institutional effectiveness and planning.
At ETSU, departments such as curriculum and instruction, English, human development and learning, and mathmatics have the highest number of adjuncts, Sanders noted. He said he believes this is because these departments have courses “where a large number of freshmen take them.” Adjuncts help “fill in the need in order to keep pace with all of those sections.”
ETSU’s English department has the second highest number of adjuncts out of all academic departments, just after the College of Education with 38.
“The budget won’t allow us to hire enough full-time people to cover all our classes,” said Dr. Judy Slagle, chair of the English department. “It’s actually a common problem for all big departments. If we have students who need the classes, we just have to fill-in people where we can. We can build bell towers and stuff like that but we can’t afford to hire enough full-time faculty.”
Nationwide, the trend toward more adjunct instructors is growing. More than two-thirds of new faculty were hired as adjuncts between 1995 and 1997, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and in 2006 the AFT estimated that more than 70 percent of all college and university instructors are part-time or temporary.
For some, teaching as an adjunct is desirable. “I enjoy teaching adjunct faculty classes,” said Kelli Barnett, an adjunct in the College of Education. “I am a second-grade teacher at University School and it is sort of like an extension of mentoring field placement students and student teachers . I believe many in the teaching field love to do this sort of thing because we love teaching.”
At ETSU, adjunct faculty earn from $550 to $700 per semester credit hour and are hired on a semester basis, according to the part-time adjunct faculty handbook.
Nationally, this is approximately 64 percent less per hour than their full-time counterparts, according to the AAUP.
However, ETSU’s adjunct faculty handbook also states that those hired as adjuncts “must meet the same requirements for professional, experiential, and scholarly preparation, as do their full-time counterparts.”
At ETSU, adjunct faculty are defined as, “professional staff members of business, industries, and other agencies and organizations who are appointed by institutions and schools on a part-time basis to carry out instructional, research, or public service functions,” according to the part-time adjunct faculty handbook.
Another basic difference: adjuncts are generally paid per-course or on an hourly basis, whereas full-time faculty receive a salary. “Some faculty members are classified by their institutions as “part-time,” even though they teach four or five courses per term,” the AAUP says. “Whether these faculty members teach one class or five, the common characteristic among them is that their institutions make little or no long-term commitment to them or to their academic work.”
While the Tennessee Board of Regents sets pay rates for adjunct faculty, a memorandum from Sanders to all ETSU employees regarding 2006-07 guidelines for salary increases stated that while a 2 percent increase will be distributed to all unrestricted and restricted regular full and part-time employees, the increase does not apply to adjunct faculty.
Champouillon said, “The money saved from the salary and benefits are substantial. It is very wise in a business sense but lacks in personnel sense.” As a former adjunct at the University of Utah, he said while he agrees with the concept of adjuncts to help “fill in the holes,” his main concern is when adjunct faculty continue to teach year after year. “Why can’t they then at least be paid the maximum allowed or be converted to regular faculty?

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