The pitch wasn’t exactly straightforward, but to some faculty members at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, the meaning was clear enough: Their university was trying to hire unpaid adjuncts.
In an email to department chairs, Michael R. Molino, associate dean for research, budget, and personnel, asked for help in finding alumni with terminal degrees who would apply “to join the SIU Graduate Faculty in a zero-time (adjunct) status.“
Alumni who accepted the three-year positions might serve on graduate students’ thesis committees, teach graduate or undergraduate lectures, or collaborate on research projects, according to Molino’s email. The program was created by the Alumni Association, it said.
The “zero-time” positions might be valuable opportunities, it continued. “Participating alumni can benefit from intellectual interactions with faculty in their respective units, as well as through collegial networking opportunities with other alumni adjuncts who will come together regularly.”
Someone forwarded the email to Karen Kelsky, a career consultant for academics who wrote the book The Professor Is In. (Kelsky writes an advice column for The Chronicle.) She posted it to her Facebook page on Monday, along with a plea to her followers to contact Molino to express their disapproval.
The post drew a swift and loud response from academics who were enraged by what they saw as the latest attempt by a university to devalue their work. By Tuesday evening, more than 800 people had shared it. On Twitter it drew an even bigger reaction.
Molina referred a request for comment to Carbondale’s chief marketing and communications officer, Rae Goldsmith, who responded with a statement calling the plan to hire alumni a “proposed pilot project” meant “to connect qualified alumni with our students as mentors to enhance — not replace — the work of our faculty.”
The statement referred to participants in the program as “volunteer adjuncts.”
The statement, which Goldsmith attributed to Meera Komarraju, interim provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, also said that alumni who participate would not teach full courses. Instead, it said, they “might deliver an individual lecture or lead a seminar discussion based on their expertise.”
The program, it said, would help alumni who “are eager to give back to their university” an opportunity to serve as role models and professional contacts for graduate students.
David Johnson, an associate professor of classics and president of the university’s Faculty Association, was dubious. It’s common for professors at other institutions to work with Southern Illinois faculty members by speaking in a class or serving on a dissertation committee, he said. But formalizing that relationship in this way seemed odd to him.
“It looks like an attempt to outsource work to unpaid labor,” Johnson said. “That’s my first impression.”
Like its public-university peers in the state, Southern Illinois is not exactly flush with cash. A protracted political showdown left the state without a budget for about two years, and in 2016 the university’s president told The Chronicle that his system had left vacant nearly 200 positions, many of them on the faculty.
Johnson acknowledged the university’s financial challenges. But “this effort to entice alumni to do work that SIUC faculty should be be doing instead is problematic,” he said.
Some departments have requirements for how many Southern Illinois faculty members have to serve on dissertation committees, Johnson said. The new program, he added, might be an attempt to get more people designated as faculty members at the university as a way get around those rules.
Johnson said faculty representatives would meet with administrators this week. The meeting was scheduled before the volunteer-adjunct program was announced, but Johnson said he now expected the new project to be a topic of discussion.
Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.
