Every semester, Charitianne Williams wades into the stream of papers that her students churn out for her classes in English composition at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The long hours she puts in give the senior lecturer a sharp reminder that her paycheck and her workload don’t match up.
“You’re grading papers night and day, and if you’re good you can make minimum wage,” says Ms. Williams, who has worked in the English department since 2003. She estimates that each semester she puts in a minimum of 356 hours on basic teaching duties for each of her three courses. When time attending conferences, giving extra help to students, and other tasks are added on, her pay approaches $8 an hour, which is the minimum in her state. Among adjuncts, she says, “I don’t know anybody who hasn’t done the math.”
Ms. Williams is no part-time instructor. She and roughly 40 other English lecturers at the university are full-time employees. They have benefits that many part-timers avidly seek: health insurance, retirement benefits, office space, contracts of one or three years in length. And their pay, which starts at $26,000 for teaching six courses in an academic year, is high among those who work outside the tenure track in the region.
Yet they still grapple with some of the same issues as their part-time brethren—low pay, no job security, and for some, no good prospects of a tenure-track job—signaling that the full-time grass isn’t as green as it might appear to be.
For lecturers, “teaching English and making a living wage is not happening,” says Robert Romeo, another senior lecturer in the department.
The money, or lack of it, causes some adjuncts to question their careers. Mary Hibbeler, for instance, was excited when she became a lecturer after earning a master’s degree in literature at the university. “Great, I can use my schooling,” says Ms. Hibbeler, whose prior experience included a stint as a weekly newspaper reporter and various kinds of office work.
Now, though, in her fifth year as a lecturer, she is contemplating her future. She could pursue a tenure-track job at a community college or try to land additional classes as an adjunct at any of Chicago’s other colleges. She’s not sold on doing either.
Besides, maintaining a work-life balance is a struggle. “I have a hard time drawing work boundaries,” says Ms. Hibbeler, who this semester is teaching a first-year writing course in which students write about various social and community issues. “When I’m teaching, it feels like I’m teaching 24/7.”
Still, there are moments that motivate. In the 19th-floor office she shares with two other lecturers, Ms. Hibbeler shows off a greeting card with a handwritten note praising her teaching skills. “Every once in a while I get positive feedback from a student,” she says. But her next move may be teaching English in a foreign country; she recently got a second master’s degree, in teaching English to speakers of other languages
Usefully Flexible Schedule
While Ms. Hibbeler is thinking about opportunities abroad, Marla Weeg wants to take advantage of her flexible schedule to produce writing that would improve her chances to win a tenure-track job. The 52-year-old lecturer earned a Ph.D. in literature and fiction writing from the university last year and now teaches students how to write research papers. Her job brings her to the campus three times a week. Being a lecturer gives her extra time—few meetings, no research—that she needs to write. The job also appeals to her because, as a former improvisational actor, she “needs to be around people. I thrive on that,” Ms. Weeg says.
Published fiction is what she hopes will help her get a tenure-track job in the Chicago area. She has had one short story in print so far. “I’ve been told I need to have three or four short stories published to be a viable tenure-track candidate,” she says. “I’m going to see where I go with this fiction writing. But I’m kind of in limbo. You see other friends going on the tenure track. … “
Ms. Weeg says her husband’s income gives her the chance to press her way toward her goal. Still, leaving Illinois at Chicago behind for better-paying work has crossed her mind,
“I’m certified to teach high school, and I could be doing that now,” she says. “I like the student body here. I really do. But the ideal thing would be if we could get paid a little more.”
Assurance of continued employment would also help. English lecturers at the university don’t have to weather the ups and downs of semester-by-semester hiring, but their status as contingent workers is still a source of trepidation. Recent belt-tightening, brought on by the recession, has left some of them anxious.
“If you’ve just got a yearlong contract, and there’s budget trouble, that’s who goes,” says Ms. Williams, who is at the end of a three-year contract. By and large, she says, lecturers return to the department year after year, “but the university is under no obligation to rehire you.”
And that reality, says Mr. Romeo, in his 10th year at Illinois at Chicago, puts lecturers in a bind. “What does it do to people when you have no kind of guarantee of employment?” says the 62-year-old Vietnam veteran, who has three master’s degrees. “You really are worried about whether you can challenge the system. I can say that sometimes I cut off my nose to spite my face. But if you’re 32 years old and just starting out, you’re not going to put your 2 cents in.”
Mr. Romeo came to the university, after working as an actor, to pursue a master’s degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages. He settled into a lecturer’s job after graduation. “I just kind of rolled along and went with the flow,” he says, despite his outspoken personality. “After a while you’re kind of doing a lot of stuff that needs to get done,” even though an official title and more pay aren’t part of the deal.
Institutional Appeal
As for Ms. Williams, who is also an assistant director of the university’s writing center, no other institution has the same appeal as Illinois at Chicago, whose student body reflects the ethnic diversity of the Chicago area. Her teaching career on the campus where she was a graduate student—she earned master’s degrees in literature and in teaching English to speakers of other languages—began in a way that is typical for non-tenure-track instructors at many colleges: She was offered an English-composition course just two weeks before classes began. “By the time I showed up, they had a full load for me to teach,” says Ms. Williams.
Her professors, among others, expected that she would go on to get a Ph.D. in linguistics and then look for a tenure-track job. But Ms. Williams, who was working as a lecturer while earning her second master’s degree, says pursuing a doctorate wouldn’t have allowed her to “start living a more balanced life. All I did was eat and sleep and breathe academe.” Plus, at UIC, she has found her niche.
“I had really found what I loved doing, and I was good at it,” says Ms. Williams, 33, who has applied for tenure-track jobs. But such positions, with their expectations of research and publishing, “would take me out of the classroom,” she says, “and I don’t want that.”
The other perks, of course, would be nice. She points to the recent creation of the senior-lecturer position in the English department, which tries to “give lecturers a little more respect,” she says. Applicants must apply for the title, present a teaching portfolio, and, if hired, take on other duties, such as working on the first-year writing curriculum and observing other lecturers in the classroom.
“Teaching writing is a way to show students they have a voice,” says Ms. Williams, whose writing courses are geared toward students whose first language isn’t English. “I think teaching at UIC in this discipline allows me to enact my idea of social justice. I do feel like I’m making a difference.”
