If you are paid like an adjunct, work the hours of an adjunct, and get the limited benefits of an adjunct, then you’re an adjunct, right?
Would it make a difference if that job came with a fancier or more-prestigious title? Would it matter if adjuncts were given a new title, even if it came without new benefits or new responsibilities?
Some colleges think so. To recognize the work of part-time faculty members—who account for about half of the faculty at the nation’s public and private nonprofit colleges—institutions like California’s Grossmont College are giving them new titles. Administrators, faculty members, and some adjuncts themselves say that title changes can convey an appreciation and a sense of respect for part-time faculty members on campuses, even if the change makes little or no difference in an adjunct professor’s working conditions.
At Grossmont, a community college, adjunct faculty members can now rise in ranks—in name, anyway—that mirror the career steps of their full-time counterparts. Once you could be known only as an adjunct. Now you can be an adjunct assistant professor, adjunct associate professor, or adjunct professor.
The new ranks, which became available in February, came about at the request of the college’s Academic Senate, whose members include part-time instructors. The senate wanted more ways to recognize part-timers. The college last year also began honoring part-time faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding achievements with a medal and $500, as the college does with full-time faculty members.
The new titles do not come with more pay or better benefits. In fact, the rules of the program explicitly state that adjuncts risk losing their new titles entirely if they try to use them to win higher salaries or other tangible benefits: “The awarding of adjunct academic rank shall not result in any change in the salary schedule or in the position which the faculty member occupies on that schedule. Any attempt to effect such a change shall result in revocation of Grossmont College’s Academic Senate sponsorship of this plan.”
Public Recognition
Sue Gonda, president of Grossmont’s Academic Senate and a professor of history, said the value of the new ranks lay in the message they send. “If someone does service to the college and you’re full-time and you get rank, and someone does the same as a part-time, you deserve to be recognized for that service,” she said.
Ms. Gonda was previously an adjunct at the University of California at Los Angeles, at San Diego State University, and at Grossmont. She recognizes that adjuncts aren’t always treated fairly.
“At least at Grossmont, if we can’t monetarily compensate part-time faculty for things that they’re passionate about and their participation,” she said, “at the very least we can recognize and give them this title and allow it to be a public recognition.”
The senate reviews the applications and approves all title changes under the program, which also has administrators’ support.
“It allows us to recognize the outstanding work of these adjunct faculty members,” said Katrina VanderWoude, vice president for academic affairs at Grossmont. “It’s very useful to them. What we think is wonderful is that it allows folks to be acknowledged for their hard work.”
Grossmont had 588 adjunct faculty members teaching on the campus as of the spring semester, and the Academic Senate awarded rank to 21 of them.
Some people, though, see the titles as irrelevant. They just sugarcoat tensions and don’t deal with the real problems some adjuncts face in their workplaces, said John D. Rall, who has been an adjunct at Grossmont and its sister institution, Cuyamaca College, for five years, as well as at San Diego Mesa College for 10 years.
“The administration is trying to keep the adjuncts from organizing and complaining, and it’s a way to brush over the hard feelings that adjuncts have,” Mr. Rall said.
“The most frustrating thing is to get a title and do more work for a title that doesn’t actually provide substantive benefits,” he added. “It’s actually kind of outrageous.”
The precise requirements to apply vary by the title, but all include a set amount of time teaching at Grossmont and demonstration of academic achievements, like holding a doctorate, making a presentation at an academic conference, or starting an educational program at Grossmont. Applicants must also serve on a department committee.
New titles for adjuncts, like those offered at Grossmont, can help to bolster someone’s morale or confidence, said Maria C. Maisto, president of the New Faculty Majority, an advocacy group for contingent faculty members. But, she said, the energy that might be used in fighting for those new ranks would be better spent in advocating for more tangible goals, such as improving salaries and benefits.
“You can’t eat your title,” she said. “You can’t feed your title to your kids. It’s a limited value.”
Creating Confusion?
Titles are a problem for adjuncts everywhere, said David B. Kociemba, who in his 15 years as an adjunct has been called an adjunct professor, a part-time faculty member, and a lecturer.
The way Mr. Kociemba sees it, titles can provide a competitive advantage for adjuncts because they can suggest a promotion and can sometimes lead to small improvements in their situations. But too many variations on adjunct titles can create confusion across higher education over a person’s exact job. Titles can also be used by administrators, he said, as a Band-Aid for the problems adjuncts face.
“You’re constantly having to explain who you are and what you did,” said Mr. Kociemba, who now teaches fine arts as an “adjunct professor” at Emerson College and as a “lecturer” at Boston University. Mr. Kociemba is also a member of the Committee on Contingency and the Profession for the American Association of University Professors.
Titles seem to be ever-evolving at Middle Tennessee State University.
Faculty members who work full time but off the tenure track there are now called full-time temporary lecturers. Until 2011, some people in that position were called assistant professors or associate professors. After the change, the lecturers advocated to drop “temporary” from their titles, to no avail. Now, for some of those lecturers, their identity is about to shift again.
The Tennessee Board of Regents this summer approved a new program for the system’s six universities that allows the full-time, “temporary” professors to be promoted—to new titles with new salaries.
The faculty members can be nominated by their academic departments to be lecturers, senior lecturers, or master lecturers, said Brad Bartel, the university’s provost.
The details aren’t final, but a promotion from lecturer to senior lecturer might, he said, come with a $6,000 pay increase, while a promotion from senior lecturer to master lecturer might involve a $7,500 raise. Candidates, he said, will be judged on their academic achievements and teaching skills.
“We call upon them to do a large amount of our general-education instruction,” Mr. Bartel said. “We want to have a monetary compensation and title that reflects their importance.”
Warren T. Tormey, a full-time temporary faculty lecturer, was called an adjunct when he was first hired by Middle Tennessee State, in 1995. He’s been involved in a number of debates about titles at the university after undergoing a title change himself, from assistant professor to temporary lecturer. At one point, he was in the group that sought to remove the word “temporary” from titles. Advocates of the change argued that the word essentially categorized them as people in “perpetual career limbo.”
Now, Mr. Tormey said, he is encouraged by his discussions with administrators. “I maintain a healthy skepticism,” he said. “I just don’t want to get my hopes up for now.”
