Most of contingent faculty that I interact with are passionate about teaching and put a ton of effort and concern into their course. ![]() I think you’re just as (and perhaps more) likely to bring bad teachers on board when you have a huge process of hiring a professor into a permanent position. What kind of problems does this cause?įirst of all, does the absolute lack of any kind of fair hiring process for NTT instructors mean that you might be increasing the fraction of bad teachers? I don’t think so. I once knew a department chair who joked/not-joked on occasion that hiring NTT faculty is just like hiring day laborers at the Home Depot parking lot (but that the pay and working conditions for the day laborer construction jobs was better). I think due diligence often consists of a phone call or two to check references to make sure that they’re not horrible, and maybe that’s as good as it gets. I have not (yet) been in this position, but I can’t imagine fitting in a full and proper search for every NTT position that needs to be filled in the midst of all of the other job duties. But this usually is little or nothing, because there are a lot of slots to fill and this search process is probably about 1% of the workload of the person who is responsible for filing these posts. If there’s anything in the process designed to create a fair and equitable outcome, then in every department that I’m familiar with, that’s entirely at the discretion of the chair who has to fill those slots. The search process is whatever the chair decides it to be. I think in many departments, chairs are tasked with not only creating a schedule, but also hiring all of the people to teach those courses. Or maybe during the first week of classes. Because it appears to be very common at some places for adjuncts to be hired literally moments before a class starts. ![]() As far as I know, at most universities, the HR process for NTT faculty is wafer thin. Considering the workload and compensation associated with these semester-long gigs, when you find someone who is willing to take on a section, then many folks are positioned to be too picky. I think it’s worth thinking about hat this slapdash hiring of non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty means for communities.Īdjuncts* are hired with little to no vetting because departments looking to hire these instructors are often in great need. When we hire non-tenure-track positions, the process is slapdash, whereas tenure-track searches are whatever the opposite of slapdash is. I think we all appreciate the factors at play in our system that result in this dynamic. Sincerely, an overburdened departmental chair We’re a great place to work, so send us your best!” We anticipate spending a good amount of money on startup, there will be reassigned time from teaching for this person to launch well, and we work hard to support this person to make sure they earn tenure. The search will take several months and the position starts about one year from now. ![]() That way, we can pick the candidate who has the most publications in the most impressive journals, has the biggest chance of bringing in big grants, and we need a large pool to convince HR that we are following their lightweight compliance process for equitable searches. Please encourage everybody to apply, because we want a really deep pool. Our department has opened up a tenure-track search in the area of. Meanwhile, let’s contrast this with the emails I get for tenure-track faculty positions: Sincerely, an overburdened departmental chair” Ideally this person has a PhD related to this topic and some teaching experience, but if you know of a grad student who is looking to gain experience teaching a course of record and would appreciate a few thousand bucks for a ton of work, please send them to us. We’re looking to hire an adjunct to teach for us before the semester starts in a few weeks. Hi everybody I know who is driving distance from campus, Once in a while, I get an email that sounds like this:
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