Lone Star College, the Dallas Community College District, and South Texas College are featured prominently in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (March 27—subscription), on the subject of professional development for adjunct faculty. The schools are actively engaged in attempting to bring part-time teachers into the life of the campus, and to make sure they are up to speed on teaching methodology.
Many of the issues associated with the increasing use of adjuncts are discussed in the piece: salaries, benefits, "freeway flyers" who commute from school to school, and the limited amount of time and resources for meeting with students. Among those interviewed is Fred Newbury, Richland College, a member of the TCCTA Executive Committee.
Here are some excerpts from the article by Katherine Mangan:
On a recent Wednesday evening, 15 adjunct instructors and a full-time professor are sitting around a table in a classroom at Lone Star College-CyFair, trading teaching tips and insights.
One suggests playing music to put students at ease as they enter the classroom the first day. Another offers some "hooks" to draw them into the discussion, while a third describes a creative closing exercise to get students to reflect on the lesson.
Two out of every three faculty members on the campus here are adjunct professors. Like part-timers across academe, they work without benefits, private offices, or job security. Many spend hours on Houston freeways commuting from one campus to another, often working late into the evening or on weekends after full-time faculty members have gone home.
But at a time when growing enrollments and shrinking revenues are putting pressure on community colleges to hire more adjuncts, and national studies have raised concerns about the quality of their teaching, some colleges, like Lone Star, are rolling out programs to support part-timers and help them become better teachers.
And:
Elsewhere around Texas, part-timers play important roles at expanding but financially pinched community colleges.
South Texas College system, based near the Mexican border, is another five-campus community college. Enrollment rose 12 percent throughout the system this spring over last spring, after climbing 10 percent over the past two fall semesters. Applications to its technology and nursing and allied-health programs jumped 22 percent and 23 percent respectively this spring, largely because of widespread job opportunities in those areas.
Shirley Ingram, director of human resources at the system, says her office is scrambling to hire faculty members for 46 disciplines for the fall. While it has had to hire some part-timers, finding adjunct professors in a small town or rural area isn't easy, since many community-college programs require teachers to have at least a master's degree.
Ms. Ingram says the college tries to limit the number of adjuncts it hires. Unlike most community colleges, the system's full-time faculty of 461 outnumbers its 325 adjuncts.
"Full-time faculty really get involved with the community and the students," Ms. Ingram says. "They're not just teaching a class for a little extra money."
And finally:
Some faculty leaders expressed concern that the college might use this category to get rid of regular full-time employment, but administrators said they would hire no more than 10 full-time adjuncts per campus.
Expanding the ranks of adjuncts may be inevitable as community colleges struggle with increasing enrollments and decreasing revenues, says Fred Newbury a full-time professor of economics at Richland College, part of the Dallas County Community College District. He takes issue with the assumption that part-time professors are always inferior.
"We're blessed in this area to have a lot of highly educated, well-trained people who are interested in teaching and who can bring plenty of real-world experience into the classroom," he says.
The college offers a variety of evening and weekend support services for adjuncts, including a work room, lockers, message-taking service, computer support, and conference rooms to meet with students. Facilities like those get plenty of use in Dallas. Across the system, the 2,500 adjuncts make up 77 percent of its 3,243 faculty members.
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