049 - Departmental Management and Leadership Workshop. Adjunct, Contingent, and Part-Time Faculty: Creating Department Structures to Support Faculty and Promote Student Learning

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Description

In recent years there has been an increased national focus on the growing number of non-tenure track faculty and the conditions in which they work. Tenured and tenure track faculty, who made up almost 60 percent of total faculty in 1975, are now only 25 percent of the professoriate. Non-tenure track faculty are the new faculty majority and research shows that they often lack equitable compensation (with many earning less than a living wage), with little to no benefits to their employment, are heavily relied upon to support the teaching needs of their institutions with little to no assurance of continued employment, have few advancement opportunities, and are given little support for their teaching and within their classrooms.
Research has shown that hiring temporary faculty was initially a short-term solution to a set of larger problems in higher education, including a booming student population and a decline in state and government funding. It has now become the standard hiring method at colleges and universities across the nation. This trend toward contingency is accompanied by several well-documented problems, including a decline in educational quality, lower graduation rates and less contact time between faculty and students, band-aid solutions to larger educational staffing problems such as reduced hiring standards, and the rise of what has been described as a “caste-based faculty system”.

This workshop will address the ways in which sociologists are affected by the changes within the professoriate and how we can support efforts to improve working conditions on college and university campuses. Examples of best practices both within and outside of sociology programs will be shared to workshop participants.

Sub Unit

• Departmental Management and Leadership Workshop

Session Organizer

• Marisa Camille Allison, George Mason University

Leader

• Marisa Camille Allison, George Mason University