contingent faculty

In this episode of PDXPLORES, Assistant Professor in University Studies, Dr. Oscar Fernandez and Dr. Ami Sommariva, an adjunct Assistant Professor in the University Studies Program, discuss their recent co-authored study, The Benefits of Reflective Journaling During COVID-19: Contingent Faculty Examine Impacts on Academic Lives and Student-Centered Teaching, examining the experiences of adjunct, non-tenured faculty members during 2020’s spring quarter; the first quarter of government mandated emergency remote teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Follow PSU research on Twitter: @psu_research and Instagram: @portlandstateresearch

 In this episode, I give my thoughts on the teaching crisis a NYU. Dr. Maitland Jones, Jr., a professor of organic chemistry at NYU, was fired after more than 80 students from his 350-student course signed a petition complaining about this grading and teaching.  Jones is an authority in his field after teaching organic chemistry a Princeton University for 40 years.

His dismissal from NYU opened a can of worms about college teaching at a time when US higher education has both a perception problem and enrollment problem. I think this situation, while embarrassing, is an opportunity to raise the level of conversation about college teaching in a way that brings together different perspectives. 

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LCHP Student Research Fellows and Geography Ph.D. students Sammy Feldblum and John Schmidt join Then & Now to discuss their new LCHP research report, The Transformation of Academic Labor: Past as Prologue at the University of California. Their research details the various factors leading to the UC’s increased reliance on contingent, non-tenured faculty lecturers over the past decades. They discuss the increased privatization of the university over the past fifty years, the implications of this privatization on student learning, and their recommendations for how to foster better working and learning conditions on campus.

This conversation is moderated by Dr. Caroline Luce, researcher and lecturer at UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and communications chair for UCAFT, the union representing lecturers and librarians across the UC.   

Read their new report here. 

Topics Discussed in this Episode

• Many contingent faculty become adjuncts unwittingly because the topic has not been discussed frankly in the profession.
• States and state laws can prevent contingent faculty from unionizing.
• Contingent faculty are routinely put in a difficult position because they are underpaid and are not given the support they need to serve an increasingly vulnerable student population.
• New Faculty Majority was established as a new kind of advocacy organization, working alongside but distinctly from unions and professional organizations.
• Social media played a significant role in New Faculty Majority, for community building and having a voice.
• Higher ed has spent a lot time ignorant and in denial of the adjunct labor problem.
• We are starting to see solidarity from tenured faculty and administrators, so attitudes are changing.
• Tenure for the Common Good is an important organization that raises awareness of contingent faculty issues.
• Faculty can be resistant to thinking about academic work as work and thinking of themselves as being in solidarity with other workers in the economy.
• How tenure-track faculty can support contingent faculty is a controversial question, as there are those within the movement who want to make sure their voices are heard.
• Contingent faculty have few resources--in terms of financial resources, time, and energy--which tenured faculty do have.
• Advancing the profession must, by definition, entail advocating for the most vulnerable members of the profession.
• Tenure-track faculty must educate themselves on labor issues.
• Tenure line faculty can also support contingent faculty when they apply for unemployment by helping contingent faculty prove to state unemployment agencies that they don't have reasonable assurance of continued employment.
• Tenure line faculty could organize a national walkout and build solidarity around that expression of risk.
• People working in higher education are fundamentally decent and have a role to play in society, preserving and protecting democracy.
• If we can make better connections with what's happening outside the academy, there are opportunities to make a difference and to transform the academy.

Resources Discussed in This Episode

• Johns Hopkins University Press
• New Faculty Majority
• Association of American Colleges and Universities
• American Conference of Academic Deans
• Tenure for the Common Good
• Carolyn Betensky
• Association of American University Professors
• One Faculty Campaign