Part-time profs don’t get same benefits
By Alex Sirney, senior writer
Posted on March 1, 2007

Bad offices, difficulty in accessing resources and even being mistaken for the secretary are all a part of being an adjunct professor.

Shelley Aley was one of those professors.

“My first year teaching in college [at Southwest Missouri State] the secretary said, ‘We’re looking for teachers, do you want to teach?’” said Aley on her time as a part-time instructor.

Part-time, or adjunct, professors make up 26 percent of the JMU faculty, according to the Office of Institutional Research. These 300 of the 1,131 professors at JMU, according to JMU Provost Douglas Brown, teach about 20 percent of all courses.

Adjuncts are paid by the section and, while the university is reluctant to give out salary figures, Aley did say those in the writing and rhetoric program average $2,350 per section. They also are not eligible for the same benefits as their full-time colleagues, including health insurance or retirement.

In addition to the lower wages and lack of benefits, Aley dealt with offices she remembers less than fondly.

“I’ve been in the old houses,” she said. “I was in the living room [office] and every student who came in thought I was the secretary.”

While JMU cleared out many of the old houses across from the Quad on South Main Street, until two years ago adjunct writing professors had offices in Stone House, where they shared two run-down computers and occasionally faced parents who worried students were meeting professors in houses off-campus.

Now the situation has improved but adjuncts still face an uphill academic battle.

“The main issues [regarding adjunct faculty] have been low compensation and lack of health insurance,” said Joan Frederick, speaker of the Faculty Senate and an English professor. “They are very poorly compensated.”

Pavel Zemliansky, who, as composition director for the writing program helps coordinate many adjunct GWRIT professors said: “It’s impractical to buy health insurance out of pocket — you can end up paying half your salary.” Without even the option to buy into the JMU insurance plan, there are few options for adjuncts.

Avent Beck, an adjunct writing professor, sees another problem with working part-time.

“Part-time professors need to be doing a bunch of things to advance their careers,” he said. “Teaching the load that a part-timer teaches makes it hard to become full-time.”

He has taught up to six sections combined at Blue Ridge Community College and JMU in the past and said that, with a heavy teaching load, he had little time to work on his own writing and help himself.

Currently, Beck is working on turning parts of his doctoral dissertation — which he completed at Columbia University in 2003 — into articles for publication while teaching four sections at JMU.

Seeing professors like Beck, who taught at JMU in the 1990s prior to his current stint, raises the question of why adjuncts have yet to be offered full-time or tenure-track positions.

Frederick said JMU, like other state universities, is only allotted a certain number of full-time professorships to distribute among the various colleges. Because there is more demand for classes and professors than what the state funds, adjuncts are hired to pick up the slack.

Brown said some adjuncts are hired because of their expertise, such as those in the College of Business, who also maintain professional jobs outside of the university. The College of Education, which employs the largest number of adjuncts with 50 of 95, also includes many outside educators and community organizers, the college’s dean, Phillip Wishon.

Breaking out of the part-time ranks can be difficult because most full-time positions look for terminal degrees, Aley said. This often means a Ph.D., which can be hard to get in areas without major graduate-level universities.

“We have some people who have risen through the ranks, but it is rare,” Aley said.
She mentioned two cases, and both times the professor was not granted a tenure-track position despite being hired full time.

Foreign languages department head Giuliana Fazzion, whose department employs a university-high 40 of its 59 professors part time, wishes there were more done for adjuncts. She has worked to get the costs of attending conferences covered, at least in part, by her department for adjuncts as a perk to make up for some of the drawbacks.

“We had a meeting set up to try and improve [relationships within the department] and [the adjuncts] got scared that they were in trouble,” Aley said. She knows and has been told that no matter what efforts the department makes at decreasing reliance on adjuncts, they can’t do without them.

Said Maryann Wolfe, another adjunct writing professor: “It’s like being in a state of perpetual transition.” The uncertainty of employment from year to year can be a challenge when the courses offered vary every semester, both she and Beck said.

Some would think this would lead to a less, not more, devoted part-time staff. Frederick said this isn’t the case.

“Their attitude is surprisingly positive,” Frederick said.

Wolfe stays philosophical.

“There’s not much you can do about it, so you just go on and see what happens,” she said. “When the jobs come up, you apply again.”

But for the part-timers, it’s all worth it.

“[It’s] for the joy of teaching,” Beck said.