Negotiating the Paradox: Adjuncts & Writing

• Alternative Faculty, Alternative Writing

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  23 Jun 2009 /  blogging, writing
  As the Internet has flooded its way through every aspect of contemporary life, it has changed many things. One of the things net champions claim as a victory is the proliferation of blogs. According to Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere 2008″ (http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/), at that time there were 900,000 blog posts within the previous 24 hours! That number is still growing, as all estimates indicate thousands of new blogs are started daily.

  Besides being easy and cheap (in many cases free), blogs are celebrated as an alternative to mainstream media. They offer democratic options, a chance for the people to be heard, an interactive media versus a passive broadcast model, and so on. While blogs do all of these things, they can also be amateurish (in the best and worst sense of the word), intermittent, and orphaned by the official media and their makers. In other words, they are kind of like adjunct faculty members, and so I wanted to visit some blogs run by and for adjunct faculty, link to them for reader interest, and comment on what I see there.

  First, Online Adjunct Jobs (http://onlineadjunctjobs.blogspot.com/) offers simple information in a straightforward format. It doesn’t judge or comment: it just shares links and position descriptions with interested parties. (There are several other sites doing this as well, but not necessarily through a blog format.)

  The Adjunct Faculty Toolbox (http://adjunctfacultytoolbox.blogspot.com/) shares tips on teaching better and more efficiently, as well as tips on professional positioning, with interested adjuncts.

  Adjunct Central (http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/Adjunctcentral/player/index.aspx) is a blog from a publisher (Bedford /St. Martin’s). I found this fascinating: a publisher is so realistic about the nature of academic labor that it has set up their own site to support adjuncts. This includes sponsoring Adjunct Advice (http://blogs.bedfordstmartins.com/adjunctadvice), a blog where Gregory Zobel shares advice for adjuncts. (This recently moved to Bedford Bits: http://blogs.bedfordstmartins.com/bits/?author=160.) This advice ranges from the extremely practical to humor that borders on bitter tension release.

  pisspoorprof blogs on Burnt-out Adjunct (http://burntoutadjunct.wordpress.com/), and the blogger is as tired as the title suggests. This blog exists to air non-rhetorical questions rhetorically (no one is going to answer the question of what parents would say if they knew who was teaching their kids and what they were paid vs. what tuition costs), and to share specific challenges. Lowly Adjunct (http://lowlyadjunct.wordpress.com/ ) is just as tired, and shares just as much frustration with the world and workplace.

  The Unknown Adjunct (http://unknownadjunct.wordpress.com/) is somewhat less tired, and not accidentally, more fully linked in to other blogs. Adjunct Law Prof Blog (http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/adjunctprofs/) primarily focuses on breaking law-related news, but also provides updates about academic labor, especially those specific to law.

  At Blog U, Confessions of a Community College Dean (http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions_of_a_community_college_dean) addresses) offers an administrator’s perspective on running a community college, which means the blogger has to address adjunct labor (and repeatedly). Community College English (http://cce.typepad.com/) doesn’t focus explicitly on adjunct faculty, but given the nature of the gig…

  A 2004 article from The Chronicle of Higher Education sums up the story of the Invisible Adjunct, who blogged about the state of adjuncts: http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i34/34a01001.htm

  However, the link there to the archived blog goes…nowhere. The Invisible Adjunct is invisible once again.

  You know who else is invisible in this tally? The hard sciences. You can find any number of online job posts for faculty members who can teach chemistry, physics, etc. You can also find countless faculty members teaching science as adjuncts, and review their names, credentials, and pictures online. However, if any faculty members both self-identify as adjuncts and publish commentary about it online, I haven’t found it. Most often it is the folks in the humanities that do.

  One of the other ways in which invisibility shows up is in the use of pseudonyms. A number of these bloggers take on persona, in part to accent their authorial roles and in part, clearly, to protect their professional hides. Venting may be necessary. It may even be useful for the community if you’re articulating things that no one else will say. However, since there are usually reasons no one will say these things, saying them may come back to bite you in the, ahem, to haunt you.

  Besides venting and sharing, I see the writing done by and for adjuncts in the blogosphere as doing and indicating a number of things.

  First, adjuncts are using blogs and the Internet to find jobs. (Old news, I know.)

  Second, adjuncts are using adjuncts are using blogs to organize politically. (Newer news.)

  Third, publishers are using blogs to help adjuncts, but their choice to do so is a symptom of the current labor market.

  Fourth, adjuncts are using blogs to vent, but need to protect themselves as they do so. This perpetuates their invisibility.

  Fifth, individual adjuncts blogging often seem really tired and frustrated.

  Sixth, by contrast, collective bloggers or blogs that are markedly linked to other blogs aren’t defined as much by their fatigue and pain. A lesson, perhaps?

  Seventh, adjunct blogs are defined in part by a continual emphasis on practical matters, such as efficiency and economy. These are not traditional defining elements of academic discourse for higher education…though they’ve long been part of the conversation for K-12 teachers.

  And eighth, adjuncts can use blogs written by administrators to flesh out their understanding of the bigger picture and perhaps empower themselves.

  Tags: Adjunct Advice, Adjunct Central, Adjunct Faculty Toolbox, blogs, Burnt-out Adjunct, Community College English, Confessions of a Community College Dean, Greg Beatty, Lowly Adjunct, Online Adjunct Jobs, Unknown Adjunct

• Multiple Models, Some Common Answers

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  12 Jun 2009 /  publishing
  When I started talking to people about the entire adjuncts/writing question, the first answers I got were sort of depressing: comments about writing got lumped in with general complaints about the overall state of affairs for adjuncts, which means comments on writing got lumped in with a lot of comments about money, health insurance, and respect (or rather, the lack of all three).

  However, as I’ve continued to talk to adjuncts who write and writers who teach, I’m encountering multiple models that allow adjuncts to write (and even support them in doing so), and a few closely clustered answers as to why adjuncts who write do write…even when the supporting structure isn’t there.

  The first point that these writing adjuncts have made abundantly clear is that circumstances for adjuncts differ wildly—even insanely. This won’t come as news to readers of The Adjunct Advocate, but while some schools treat adjuncts with respect and pay them well, others treat them with near contempt, as disposable workers. There is little or no continuity in pay.

  I mention this basic point because it shows how fractured the traditional academic labor model has become. A second related basic point drives this home: what counts as publication differs from discipline to discipline. Adjuncts in the sciences or engineering who really are adjuncts— that is to say, who teach on the side while pursuing an full-time career in their field— may have their conference attendance fully funded by their corporate employers who want them current in the field. However, if you’re an adjunct in the sciences and not employed by a corporation, the odds against you go way up. (How do you get time to work in the chemistry lab when you’re teaching on four campuses?)

  In fields like journalism and marketing, writing news and engaging in marketing is essential for staying current. Such professionals are the preferred teachers. In fields like English, where there’s a strong service component, a flooded labor market, and little or corporate literary publication…less support.

  What has come up repeatedly in these conversations is that what determines pay for courses and often support for writing is one of two things. First, the presence of an academic union (especially one that actively supports adjuncts) actively shapes better conditions. Second, if an individual institution is committed to fair treatment, conditions are better.

  As for why the adjuncts I’m speaking with write, the answers cluster in a few areas. The first is the one mentioned above: to stay current in the field. The second is more elemental: out of love of the discipline. When I asked adjunct/writer Jamie Wheeler why she wrote, she said, ” I write for therapy.  I write for beauty.  I write for compulsion. I write for love and loss and need.  I write because I love scholarship and becoming a voice in the conversation.”

  Annie Logue, an adjunct in the finance department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said something similar when asked why she wrote: ” Because I love to write! It’s all I’ve ever really wanted to do, and the fact that I get paid to do it is just so fabulous.”

  And of course, there’s the third answer: the adjunct faculty members who are primarily writers, who write professionally and then teach for pleasure (or to stabilize a fluctuating freelance income).

  At the risk of making this my week for stating the obvious, two conclusions seem clear here. First, the economics of academia and writing both depend on love: people are paid for their work in both areas in part in love/emotional satisfaction, rather than, say, money. Second, there isn’t a direct and reliable correlation between academic quality or aspiration and how schools support adjunct writing. Instead, good treatment depends on labor organization and/or enlightened institutions.

  Tags: Annie Logue, Greg Beatty, Jamie Wheeler, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Institutional Support, Institutional Change

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  05 Jun 2009 /  adjuncts, conferences, funding
  A few weeks ago I commented on how some of the major academic organizations (Modern Language Association [MLA], National Council of Teachers of English [NCTE]) supported adjunct attendance at their conferences, both financially and rhetorically. I decided to return to that topic and contact some of the institutions involved. Since NCTE posted an email address for information about their Professional Equity Project (PEP) on their website.

  Within 12 hours, Kristen Suchor had gotten back to me. (Let me take a moment here to thank the various respondents to my questions. They have been both generous with their time and strikingly quick with their replies.) She told me that the PEP was starting its eighth year. Grants were first given in 2002, building on a resolution that had been passed at the NCTE’s CCCC Annual Business meeting in 2001. (For more on that resolution, visit http://www.ncte.org/cccc/resolutions/2001.) Kristen noted that this wasn’t the only motion calling for organizational support of adjunct involvement.

  When asked about numbers of faculty attending under this program, Kristen replied, “We typically receive between 100 and 150 applicants each year and we fund between 60 and 94 applicants (there are currently 94 grants available each year but we are not always able to give all of the grants away due to last minute cancellations etc).” Kristen estimated about a third of the grantees receive matching funds.

  NCTE doesn’t track how many institutions match funds for attending adjuncts, or why some administrators do so while others don’t. (Kristen did mention that CCCCs asks program administrators for nominations, contacting many of them directly [especially those who are based near that year's convention site].)

  However, Kristen was able to put me in touch with Susan Miller-Cochran at North Carolina State University. (Needless to say, given the first post for this blog, I was amused by this irony.) Once I contacted Professor Miller-Cochran, she explained that NCSU’s First-Year Writing Program started the current policy of funding attendance at CCCCs two years ago. Funds are available for full-time faculty, part-time faculty, and graduate students—and what’s more, funding is available for attendees even if they aren’t presenting (though at a lower level.)

  This policy was started by Nancy Penrose, who preceded Miller-Cochran as Director of the First-Year Writing Program. Miller-Cochran noted, ” She and I both felt that having teachers in our program participate in Cs (either through presenting or just attending) would strengthen the quality of teaching in our program and help our teachers join professional conversations in the field. Since teaching is their sole obligation (as opposed to the research obligation that tenure-track faculty have), I think it’s appropriate to fund them to attend the conference—participation in these conversations enriches teaching and learning in the program.”

  An impressive and enlightened sentiment.

  As far as where the money for this program comes from, several sources come together. Some of it comes from the First-Year Writing Program Trust Fund, which gets its money through donations (including from faculty members who donate textbook royalties!) and sales of an anthology of student writing. Some funds come from NCSU’s Center for Teaching and Learning.

  When asked if what effect this support had on adjunct retention, Miller-Cochran said, “I don’t know that this decision has retained more faculty, although I can say that we’ve had far less turnover in the last two years than we used to have. We’ve also argued for longer contracts, higher salaries, and lower course caps, though—and I think all of these things together help faculty feel more valued.”

  Speaking as an adjunct, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that yes, this sort of generous treatment is likely related to the lower turnover. I’d also like to note that it is a pleasure to hear of such systematic institutional change. NCSU was always a good place to teach; now it sounds like it might serve as a model for ethical professional action. Bravo!

  Tags: CCCCs, Greg Beatty, Kristen Suchor, MLA, Nancy Penrose, NCTE, North Carolina State University, Professional Equity Project, Susan Miller-Cochran

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