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Re: Parttime faculty and AAA
Tim Wallace (twallace@NANDO.NET)
Sat, 16 Dec 1995 11:35:00 -0500
Jane Gibson raises another good point. If we do not start talking to
each other about the conditions for parttime faculty, we will eventually
find more of us untenured and in the same boat. I would suggest that
talking about parttime faculty in public is about as hard as getting a
professional to say how much s/he makes.
Currently at my university, NC State, our college (which includes most of
the humanities and three social sciences (no economics and psych, which
are in other colleges) utilize parttime faculty to teach approximately
45% or more (as of 1994-95) of the students in our courses. We want to
reduce this, but given budgetary constraintsfind it hard to do.
Keep in mind that there are several categories of parrtime faculty here:
1) graduate student TA's
2) persons who prefer teaching only one or two courses, because they want
to stay in the area
3) persons who have a fulltime job elsewhere who are
asked to teach a
specific course (e.g., a lawyer specializing in family law might teach a
sociology course on Legal aspects of the Family)
4) persons who teach a fulltime load but are counted as parttime because
they do not have a fulltime contract
5) persons who teach parttime one or two courses hoping to get a toehold
for a longterm job
6) persons teaching parttime for 5 or ten years or more without a
longterm contract.
Are there any other categories?
Should they all be grouped together as parttime?
Should they all have a standard contract?
In our case, contracts might not be written until the last minute before
the Fall semester begins because our budget for parttime faculty may not
be decided until a week or two before classes begin, sometimes. So, this
is a difficult situation for both the department and the faculty person.
Does anyone know of any situations where parttime faculty get a very fair
shake?
Tim Wallace
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