Do You Personally Know Your Adjunct Colleagues?

[Wahoo Redux]

Over brunch with my wife and her colleague, I happened to mention another place we should all go to in the future.  I said something to the effect of, "We went there with Ken last week and it was really nice."

Colleague said, "Who?"

I said, "Ken.  From the department." [Not the man's real name, BTW.]

"I don't know him."

Ken, my wife, my wife's colleague, and I all arrived at our slowly dying school at about the same time.  Ken has a PhD, been teaching PT this whole time, and is very well liked by everyone who knows him and has a reputation among those that know him as a very good teacher.  Unfortunately, he is looking for jobs outside of teaching because our profession is slowly being crippled.

Our little exchange just made me wonder how many of us personally know our adjunct colleagues.  When I thought about it, I knew only a handful of adjuncts by sight and even fewer by name, even when I was an adjunct myself.

And we haven't had a good adjunct brouhaha for a while.

Related free-association: somewhere we chatted about how quiet our floors and departmental offices  had become.  Part of this is students emailing questions instead of coming to office hours, I think, but part of it is the percentage of workers who have dedicated office space, real office hours, committee work, a full teaching schedule, and an actual reason to stay on campus after they are done teaching.

[kaysixteen]

Certainly when I was an adjunct myself, three separate times at three separate schools, the only colleagues I knew were dept chairs, and I do not recall meeting a single other adjunct.   It seems to go without saying that I was never even informed of when or where dept functions were being held, let alone invited to one.

[jerseyjay]

I was an adjunct professor for more than a decade, and I rarely knew any of my part-time colleagues except those whom I happened to share an office with (or had shared an office with). I had no reason to come to campus or stick around campus when I was not supposed to be there to teach. At schools where I taught odd hours (say, night classes), I might go an entire semester without seeing anybody, including the departmental secretary. Usually I would know a few full-time faculty: the chair (or whoever hired me); a full-time professor who was around the same time I was and I would run into in the department; the full-time person who had observed me.

My current position is somewhat strange. I began as an adjunct, teaching one day a week, and I only knew the chair and one other part-timer who had encouraged me to join the union. Then after a year I became a full-time non-tenure track member and I met all the full-time faculty (because I went to faculty meetings) and became friendly with several. I only knew those adjuncts whose schedules overlapped with mine. After several years I returned to adjunct teaching, and since I taught mainly online, I didn't really see anybody. After several years, I got a tenure-track position, which I've had for a while.

I would say I have met three-fourths of the part-time professors. Some I know better than some of my full-time colleagues, but some I have never met because they teach days when I am not on campus, teach online, or teach evenings. I would say that I know 100 per cent of those who were hired in the last five years (in part because I teach one of the introductory courses and have become the go-to person for questions about these); about two-thirds of those who were hired before this (some of whom have been teaching for more than a decade but have very set schedules that do not overlap with mine and who know what they are doing and require very little "handling").

As a general rule, though, the bigger the department and the more adjuncts, the less likely it is for part-timers to know full-timers.

[Myword]

 When I was an adjunct for several colleges, I did not know the others by name, usually.

  I  made friends with three adjuncts at three different colleges. I am still friends with one after 20 years, though we meet up only rarely now out of choice. Never met a female friend, but there aren't many in my field and the few around seem aloof and or married.

   A dean once said that every department has its personality and ways of acting--some are personal and others untalkative.

[Parasaurolophus]

Yes. But we're a relatively small department and only have two (one now, because one just found a TT job nearby). The remaining sessional is a friend who's nearly done her PhD (nearby) and thus doesn't yet need FT work, and whom I pushed us to hire so she'd have her foot in the door if or when some gaps opened up in the department.

[EdnaMode]

We have very few adjuncts, usually only five or six in the whole School of Engineering. I know three of them, one occasionally teaches an evening section of one of "my" courses so I set up his Canvas shell, answer any questions he has, etc. Another one I know from industry, as I do consulting for the company he works for full time. The third one introduced himself to me, what he teaches is not in my department but he saw me one day working in my lab and asked about what I/we do in there.

[apl68]

Yes. But we're a relatively small department and only have two (one now, because one just found a TT job nearby). The remaining sessional is a friend who's nearly done her PhD (nearby) and thus doesn't yet need FT work, and whom I pushed us to hire so she'd have her foot in the door if or when some gaps opened up in the department.

Congratulations to the one who just got a TT position!

Alma Mater's small SLAC departments always seemed to be pretty close-knit.  My mother always knew everybody in her language department.  Although she was more of a case of "understood tenure" herself.

[downer]

Having had different roles at different stages in my academic career, I can answer with a firm "It depends."

It can be useful to know other adjunct faculty when you are an adjunct, because you get access to more info about what the hell is going on.

FT faculty rarely have much interest in knowing adjunct faculty, but occasionally people are friendly. It's very random unless there are careful efforts made to bring all the faculty in a department in contact with each other. That is very rarely a priority for any chair. It is more possible in places where there are visiting speakers or events open to all the faculty.

There are times when I've shared an office with other adjunct faculty. People rarely talk to each other much. Most often people come in, prepare, use the office if they have time to spend between two classes, and then get off campus. But sometimes long-term adjuncts know each other pretty well.

[mamselle]

I've adjuncted at...let's see...four different places.

1. At one, which was a art institute with a studio vibe, there were a lot of folks coming and going, but each was on their own track and I might have been the only one teaching art history that term. I got to know the permanent slide librarian quite well (it was that long ago) and the department chair was good (and showed up at another place, later) but I don't think there were a lot of adjuncts, most were instructors with specific studio charges, so it didn't work like that.

2. At another one, I was only covering an Intro/second survey course until they hired a permanent person, and they only had four full-timers and no other adjuncts, as far as I knew; they were a 'blended' humanities department with languages, art history, etc. in a fairly tiny school, and I got pulled in for things like helping evaluate the new French prof candidates, etc.

They were very friendly, generally, except one of the other art history teachers seemed fairly tightly-wound, and I mostly steered clear of them. Again, no other adjuncts; I still see the former (now retired) chair from time to time, she lives nearby, and we speak if we're not both running for buses or trains at the local station where we usually run into each other.

3. At another one, where I was teaching for 3-4 years while they a) accommodated an extra 600 freshers the computer admitted by accident; b) started up a new split-off architecture school from the art history program; c) covered a couple of serious illnesses among the permanent staff, and d) had overflow problems down the road as they accommodated the bolus of over-admitted students year-by-year, I again saw very few adjuncts.

Most instructors had TT positions, whether teaching FT or PT in any one semester, and some were split between studio and art history assignments (mostly in the moderns and graphics groups, where printmaking, typesetting, etc. were concerned). So, again, I got to know many of them very well (slide libraries used to be an art department's melting pot site; going to online visuals has cut that out in part, although people still have to drop off physical items to have digital photos made, etc.).

I was asked to direct two honors' papers and was paid for it (not a lot, but enough to buy a couple books I needed, and cover a nice dinner on my next research trip to Paris...), and the other instructor was very cooperative and collegial.

I left after a couple of wacky interactions with students in which the new chair didn't back me up as the old chair had done.

4. By contrast, the most recent place had 65% adjuncts and was proud of it, and of how well they took care of the adjunct population. We had our own study/prep area, our own dedicated printers, two small and one large conference room, our own lockers inside the lounge, a food prep area, etc. (They also bought out the art place, no. 1, and my old chair was my new chair there for a bit, until he was promoted...!)

I was teaching French there, not art history, and more of the focus was on educational development, research, and policy, so it was a very mixed group, but very pleasant (except for the other French teacher, whom everyone warned me about the first week).

I got to attend research luncheons and make presentations in the scholastic community offerings in March, was invited to give a paper for the visual studies conference, etc. I was also allowed to use resources like the research study office advisor, who ran spin-searches for me for grant offerings, etc.

After the other French teacher undermined me in a proposal I'd been asked to make (everyone was right, she really was a snake-in-the-grass) I didn't go back, but would have gladly taught in another area if something had opened up....I was scouting out the art history group but they were very-well-set and also didn't need anyone, people there stayed for a very long time.

So, I'd say, mixed in some ways, positive in some very important ways; I never expected any of them to last forever, overall, I enjoyed the experience, and got to know the adjuncts there were to know--except for the last place, though, there just weren't many of them.

M.

[Myword]

A prevalent attitude is--I am here to work, not socialize or be friendly. And even, go away, I'm working--. True in many other jobs also. If the other only answers questions but does not initiate any, then he or she is just polite, probably...especially male-female interactions.

[RatGuy]

I know some of them. I'm on a committee with full-time and part-time instructors. I know the adjuncts who attend monthly meetings -- I suspect that some are interested in gaining FT employment in that particular department, which is why they make a point to attend the meetings to which they're invited. And given that this committee is currently grappling with NTT salary issues, there are a lot of interested parties attending.

Other than that, no. But my office space is away from the main department in which I teach. I have an interdisciplinary position, so even though I'm FT and have been here about 10 years I suspect that many TT faculty don't know who I am.

[Ruralguy]

I know the adjuncts who have been around for a while because we are a small school, and they contact advisers about students, shown at a social event, etc. But there is some flux, and so I don't get to know all. Of course some, even here at a rural school, just "teach and go"' and I don't fault them for that.

[artalot]

Agreed with others who said that one's relationship/knowledge of the adjuncts depends. I know most of our adjuncts, especially colleagues who have been around for more than a few years. But we give the adjuncts office space and studio space, let them use facilities and tools, etc. so some of them are around quite a bit. I think we benefit from having them around - it makes our tiny department more dynamic and they tend to see the students more, too, and establish relationships with them. 

[Hegemony]

Our adjuncts come to department meetings and serve on some committees, so I do know a number of them. I hear that our department is considered more than usually collegial.

[Puget]

We have basically no adjuncts, aside from a few postdocs and other staff with PhDs who teach a class now and then. I usually know them.

Instead we mostly have full time or half time (their choice- usually as a phased retirement path) NTT faculty, who are treated as equal colleagues in every way, just with a different job description than us T/TT folks. We are a relatively small department and all know each other pretty well.