The employment of adjunct faculty is often what allows community colleges to offer excellent yet affordable education; however, this group is often deprived of the professional development and basic amenities enjoyed by their full-time colleagues. Academic administrators are those charged with hiring and supervising adjunct faculty, and this book provides them with examples of successful programs that highlight the important connection between teaching quality and effective hiring, orientation, acculturation, and professional development practices for their constituency. These models come from community and technical colleges across the United States and can be implemented into any two-year system. Through the use of research, case studies, and hands-on how-to guides, checklists, and samples, this volume’s expert contributors explain how to understand part-time faculty— how to motivate them and value them as members of the academy. They go on to offer practical advice for recruiting, integrating, supporting, and retaining these great teachers.
John S. Levin, Susan T. Kater, and Richard L. Wagoner collectively argue that as community colleges organize themselves to respond to economic needs and employer demands, and as they rely more heavily upon workplace efficiencies such as part-time labor, they turn themselves into businesses or corporations and threaten their social and educational mission.
Drawing from a national survey of community colleges, this book documents trends in the employment and integration of part-time faculty in American community colleges. Chapter 1, "Focusing on the Problems: Part-Time Faculty in American Community Colleges," describes the economic, technological, and demographic imperatives generating the increased employment of part-timers. Chapter 2, "Taking a Wide-Angle Picture: Surveying How American Community Colleges Use Part-Time Faculty," describes the methodology and major findings of the survey. Chapter 3, "Taking the Critical First Steps: Recruitment, Selection, and Hiring," reviews survey and literature review findings regarding the identification and employment of part-time faculty. Chapter 4, "Orientation: Welcome to the Community," reviews survey and literature review findings concerning activities that help part-time faculty become familiar with the college and its students. Chapter 5, "Faculty Development and Integration: Doing the Right Things for the Right Reasons," reviews what is known about the goals and objectives of successful faculty development activities. Chapter 6, "Inspecting the Expectations: Conducting Faculty Evaluation," reviews the essential objectives, components, and measures of effectiveness of faculty evaluations plans that promote growth and development for all faculty. Chapter 7, "Creating the Mosaic for a Common Cause: Putting the Pieces Together," briefly reviews the issues developed throughout the book, surrounding the employment and integration of part-time faculty in American community colleges. Contains the survey instrument and a 14-page bibliography. (KP)
"In-depth, insightful, with a masterful handling of the relevant data, The American Faculty provides the most comprehensive overview of the status of the academic profession that is available." -- Jay Chronister, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia
Drawing on nationally representative quantitative data from the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, qualitative fieldwork, and the lived experiences of administrators and faculty members, this volume provides a variety of perspectives on part time community college faculty. The multiple perspectives are intended to offer a complex and conflicted picture of community college part-time faculty, as there are no easy answers to the questions that arise from colleges' heavy reliance on their service. This volume seeks to encourage discussion and debate on the topic, update and advance the scholarship on part-time faculty and to highlight best practices and useful examples that can help two-year colleges continue to play a vital role in American higher education. Community colleges are the only sector of public, nonprofit postsecondary education in the United states where part-time faculty outnumber full-time faculty. This has significant implication for community college administrators who are responsible for recruiting, hiring, and supporting part-time faculty; for college, district, and state leaders who help set policies regarding the use of part-timers; and for all part-time faculty who seek to receive equitable treatment as they strive to enhance the quality of education for community college students. This is the 140th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Community Colleges. Essential to the professional libraries of presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other leaders in today's open-door institutions, New Directions for Community Colleges provides expert guidance in meeting the challenges of their distinctive and expanding educational mission.
This monograph provides a comprehensive overview of community college education in the United States, emphasizing trends affecting two-year colleges within the past decade. Chapter 1 identifies the social forces that contributed to the development and expansion of community colleges and the continuing changes in institutional purposes. Chapter 2 examines the shifting patterns of student characteristics and goals, the reasons for the predominance of part-time attendance, participation and achievement among minority students, attrition issues, and recent moves toward student assessment. Chapter 3 draws on national data to illustrate the differences between full- and part-time faculty and discusses issues related to tenure, salary, workload, faculty evaluation, moonlighting, burnout, and job satisfaction. Chapter 4 reviews the changes that have taken place in college management as a result of changes in institutional size, the advent of collective bargaining, reductions in available funds, and changes in governance and control. Chapter 5 describes various funding patterns and their relationship to organizational shifts. Chapter 6 discusses the rise of learning resource centers and the maintenance of stability in instructional forms in spite of the introduction of a host of reproducible instructional media. Chapter 7 considers student personnel functions, including counseling, guidance, recruitment, retention, orientation, and extracurricular activities. Chapter 8 traces the rise of occupational education, as it has moved from a peripheral to a central position in the curriculum. Chapter 9 focuses on remedial and developmental programs and addresses the controversies surrounding student assessment and placement. Chapter 10 deals with adult and continuing education, lifelong learning, and community services. Chapters 11 and 12 examine curricular trends in the liberal arts and general education, highlighting problems and proposing solutions. Chapter 13 addresses the philosophical and practical questions that have been raised about the transfer function and the community college's role in enhancing student progress toward higher degrees. Finally, chapter 14 offers projections based on current trends in student and faculty demographics, college organization, curriculum, instruction, and student services. (JMC)
The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.
