Enhancing the Academic and Social Integration of Part-Time Faculty at Community Colleges

• In Event: Honoring the (Often) Invisible: Community College Faculty in an Era of Reform

Abstract

Seventy percent of community college faculty members teach part-time (Knapp, Kelly-Reid, & Ginder, 2010). Much has been written about part-time faculty, including the lack of connection they typically feel to their colleagues and institution (e.g., Gappa & Leslie, 1993; Levin & Montero Hernandez, 2014; Thirolf, 2013). Yet, scholarship that examines policies and practices that integrate and support part-time faculty is few and far between (Kezar, 2012). This is a concern because, as a recent report from the Center for Community College Student Engagement (2014) noted, colleges cannot effectively foster greater student success without adequately supporting their part-time faculty. The goals of policy reforms like the Completion Agenda may be impossible to meet if the majority of community college faculty members remain ignored and isolated.

This study adopts a longstanding theoretical framework used in higher education research that, to date, has focused on students, not faculty--Tinto’s (1993) integration model. As a participant in this study noted, part-time faculty at community colleges are very much like their students: “Come to campus, go to the classroom, do your thing, go home. That’s it. No interaction with anybody else.” With this in mind, this study asks, what are the effects if a college takes intentional steps to academically and socially integrate their part-time faculty?

Tinto has explained that integration is a “state or perception of fit” or a sense of identification with an institution (Wolf-Wendel, Ward, & Kinzie, 2009, p. 419). Based on Tinto’s framework (1993), this study defines academic integration for faculty as a sense of feeling intellectually and professionally connected to their academic department. Social integration is defined as a perception of fit or collective affiliation among departmental colleagues.

A case study approach (Yin, 2009) was used to examine the ways in which the English and math departments at a US suburban community college academically and socially integrated their part-time faculty and the effects of these practices. In addition to touring campus buildings and observing faculty meetings and orientations, the author conducted a total of 15 interviews with faculty in these two departments. As transcripts were coded, college documents and observation data were used to contextualize participants’ responses that related to their academic and social integration experiences (Corbin and Strauss, 2008).

Many part-time faculty participants described feeling like they were “jugglers on a tightrope,” “one of millions,” and lacking connection to colleagues. Ultimately, they felt like an invisible majority at their college. New policies and practices that aimed to integrate them into their departments led to notable positive outcomes. For example, holding small-scale yet inclusive departmental conferences before the beginning of each semester engendered academic and social integration across faculty. Adjuncts noted that the conferences helped them feel more connected to their colleagues and more prepared to teach their classes that semester, representing an example of a “socio-academic integrative moment” (Deil-Amen, 2011) that cultivate feelings of belonging and competence (p. 72). Several more examples of worthwhile and feasible policies and practices that support part-time faculty at community colleges will be highlighted in the paper.

Author

• Kate Thirolf, Jackson College