No office? Tips for student meetings and paper storage.

[polly_mer]

For various reasons, many of us teach, need to meet with students, and store student work while not having an office or not having an office that has storage and enough chairs (who thought all 23 new grad students could share one office that had 4 desks and 6 chairs?!  True story!).

What are some tips to meeting with students that allows real conversations and especially FERPA-affected conversations when a private office isn't a possibility?

What solutions do people know to the paper storage problem that isn't to go all electronic?  I found paper tests given in class too handy to give that up.  Yet, I remember a recent discussion on what to do with the unreturned papers and final exams at the end of the term in which several people mentioned taking the papers home because of a lack of other options.

[mamselle]

For meeting spaces, many libraries have study rooms or closed carrells that can be signed up for. You usually have to ask about them, since they can be closely guarded secrets, or may be hidden away on some floor in the building you don't know about.

A couple places I know of have online signup sites (which a librarian helped me locate, in one case, it was not evident on the website.)

One other place had two small enclosed meeting rooms in the adjunct lounge with signup pages on the front door.

Or there's always a nearby cafe....or if the public library is near campus, those, too, may have study rooms for which you sign up to get a key.

I use many of these quute regularly. As an independent scholar, I have some of the same constraints for meeting spaces, but these have worked out well.

M.

[AvidReader]

I have met students in library study rooms, in empty classrooms, in the on-campus cafe/cafeteria. Both of my recent schools have had "quiet discussion" areas on one floor of the library, and I often find that meeting in the library is great for all students except the ones with major issues that require privacy. If I need to show grades, I print out the grades in the adjunct office and can then point to things on the printout in the discussion.

I try to give most work back during the semester, but even when I do so, I've taken to scanning the pages for my records. It is a little bit of an annoyance when documents are stapled, but most of my department photocopiers have had a scan-to-PDF option. If I have a large stack, I'll cut off the staples with a paper cutter, run the whole stack through the scanner, and then re-staple. If a smaller stack, I'll photocopy the unstapled documents first, and then do the stapled ones page by page (manually). So I have a lot of PDFs on a flash drive that I guard very carefully, and I keep these for about a year. If a student wants to see past work, I can print the relevant pages to a new PDF and send just that to the student.

AR.

[lightning]

RE: storage
Some buildings have lockers, and they are not necessarily the HPER or fine & performing arts buildings, only. Maybe you can get lucky, and high-school types of lockers exist in your academic building. Some academic libraries have study carrels with locking shelves or even study rooms with locking storage cabinets or drawers, for multiple users.

RE: student meeting space
Reserve rooms, even if the room it too large. Find "maker spaces" in engineering or IT buildings, or "collaboration" rooms in business school buildings, and use those. Some libraries will have meeting rooms for general use. Student Commons buildings may have meeting rooms that you can reserve. Check out buildings, also, that seem to have no student or academic purpose, too. They might be dying for you to use their facilities, such as "Community partnership/Community outreach" facilities. You will have to find the reservations point person for each building, and you will need to be super nice to them.

[polly_mer]

Check out buildings, also, that seem to have no student or academic purpose, too. They might be dying for you to use their facilities, such as "Community partnership/Community outreach" facilities. You will have to find the reservations point person for each building, and you will need to be super nice to them.

That's a great idea, lightning!

[Caracal]

Slightly off topic for this post, but office space is one of those things that is incredibly important in terms of working conditions. I've been lucky enough to always adjunct at places that always at least gave me a shared office and it has always made me feel much better about my job. It gives me a home base on campus, being able to go in early and get work done, having a place to put my stuff. It also has less tangible benefits. I've become friends with a few permanent faculty members just because they have offices next to me or I see them in the hall.

[mahagonny]

Slightly off topic for this post, but office space is one of those things that is incredibly important in terms of working conditions. I've been lucky enough to always adjunct at places that always at least gave me a shared office and it has always made me feel much better about my job. It gives me a home base on campus, being able to go in early and get work done, having a place to put my stuff. It also has less tangible benefits. I've become friends with a few permanent faculty members just because they have offices next to me or I see them in the hall.

Bravo! But does anyone here want to have a conversation about faculty work conditions? Be advised, there will be work involved.

[mahagonny]

Obviously you do want to have a discussion of working conditions, Caracal, and your post was superb. I just wondered if anyone else on this forum does. It appears to be Polly_Mer heavy and probably self selects from the old CHE forums for Polly_Mer fans. That's fine. I am not contributing to the functioning/cost of this forum and it should be like it is.
That said, this is a weird thread from the get-go. Here it is June already. Why would a working adjunct be coming here for advice from a former administrator on how to cope with substandard working conditions when that is what he already does for a living? Y'all should be asking us how it is done, and the answer should be the middle finger.

What is on display is an attitude.

[mamselle]

Hunh????

I lost the logic in there somewhere.

If a new thread on conditions seems like a good idea, go for it.

M.

[mahagonny]

Hunh????

I lost the logic in there somewhere.

If a new thread on conditions seems like a good idea, go for it.

M.

No, thank you. Not gonna happen. What's missing is a critical mass of administrators who want even one of these consistently and seriously: (1) good, (2) better, or (3) as good as they can be
working conditions for teaching faculty. The thought process in this post from a related thread shows its resignation to the current state of affairs and the expectation that most who are currently professional college instructors should or will give up on an academic career in the near future. Despite Caracal's clear account that better working conditions can be enough of a reason for a talented professor to be attracted to the job enough to hang around longer.

"Let's be brutally honest: everyone needs to eat and probably wants to live inside.  Sure, adjuncting at multiple schools isn't necessarily a first choice, but it could be an adequate stop-gap measure for a couple years while getting ducks in a row for a different career path while applying widely for jobs that will be more stable.

How many schools is realistic?  From the data, 2 schools is not uncommon, but what tips can we share on how to make this an efficient effort?

What can one do to maximize income while keeping effort at a reasonable level?  Some of the sad stories end up with someone working 60+ h/week and still not making $30k/year.  Are there any great tips on how to come up to a full-time income while still having time/energy left in the week to have a non-work life?"

From the new forum's 'Adjunct Support' by Polly_Mer, which, not surprisingly (to me at least) is already a ghost thread.

Logical endgame: you might as well actually resent the part time teacher, his union, and his modest aims for improving the working conditions so that he will be motivated to give up on a teaching career forever, which you believe is the right life choice. CYA.

[marshwiggle]

From the new forum's 'Adjunct Support' by Polly_Mer, which, not surprisingly (to me at least) is already a ghost thread.

I think Polly started various threads here based on what was popular on the old site; I don't expect her to provide ongoing content for all of them. If people are interested, the threads will survive.

Logical endgame: you might as well actually resent the part time teacher, his union, and his modest aims for improving the working conditions so that he will be motivated to give up on a teaching career forever, which you believe is the right life choice. CYA.

:mod edit:: Do not out other users by suspected past monikers, or any other identifying feature.

If not, and you're new here, I think I can safely say that there are lots of people who genuinely are interested in improving the lot of part-time faculty, whether or not they think that the "academic death march" is a reasonable career decision.

[mahagonny]

Workplace conditions, Marshy. Not 'I think I know where the nearest coffee shop is. You're welcome!'

[revert79]

Well anyway, back to the original question: at one of my 2 adjunct jobs I have no office, and I work out of a tote bag (saving up for a real backpack woo hoo!).  But I have always found ways to have private conversations with students without any trouble.  Library, cafeteria, somebody else's office, empty classroom--it always works and nobody snoops.  If they need to leave papers for me, they leave them in the faculty mailroom.  This is at a small private art school.  I also like the idea of just reserving an empty room of any size.

While I do like having an office at my other job, sometimes I kind of hide out there.  I think having no office can be totally workable.

[mamselle]

:mod edit:: Do not out other users by suspected past monikers, or any other identifying feature.

M.

[mahagonny]

Well anyway, back to the original question: at one of my 2 adjunct jobs I have no office, and I work out of a tote bag (saving up for a real backpack woo hoo!).  But I have always found ways to have private conversations with students without any trouble.  Library, cafeteria, somebody else's office, empty classroom--it always works and nobody snoops.  If they need to leave papers for me, they leave them in the faculty mailroom.  This is at a small private art school.  I also like the idea of just reserving an empty room of any size.

While I do like having an office at my other job, sometimes I kind of hide out there.  I think having no office can be totally workable.

Agreed, it is workable, of course. But having readily available workspace is preferable. That's why the faculty whose job involves running the department (governance) hoard it for themselves.