Adjunct Faculty Voices

"This book is a lucid analysis of the adjunct faculty crisis. It adds to the literature by updating the taxonomy of adjuncts in useful ways, but it is not just an academic exercise. Finally, a book that gives voice to contingent faculty themselves, their struggles and their accomplishments. The 4 areas for improvement identified—identification/ recruitment, community, equity, and development—are followed up with replicable models. A remarkable work, appealing to both adjunct faculty and administrators!"

Michele DiPietro, Executive Director, Faculty Development and Recognition, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

Kennesaw State University

"With research findings on the status of adjunct faculty in U.S. higher education, first-hand accounts of the contingent faculty experience, and emphasis on the importance of engaging these faculty fully in the academic community, the editors of Adjunct Faculty Voices bring these 'invisible' part-time educators into clear view. Adjunct Faculty Voices is a welcome addition to the growing body of research on contingent faculty, and recommended reading for full-time faculty and administrators whose departments and institutions rely on adjunct faculty."

Cynthia Wilson, Vice President for Learning and Chief Impact Officer

League for Innovation in the Community College

"Authentic community is essential to professionalism and professional development. However, neither is possible where members of the community are ignored or mistreated. This book is an important step to rebuilding the community necessary to ensure that contingent faculty can effectively ensure quality and equality in higher education."

Maria Maisto, President/ED, New Faculty Majority: The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity and the NFM Foundation

“A strength of Adjunct Voices is the array of best practices the editors chose to showcase. The specific initiatives that have been implemented are drawn from across a range of institution types, including teaching-oriented universities, research universities, and community colleges. The cases are sensitive to and underscore the importance of organizational context as a factor in administrators’ willingness to invest resources. At colleges able to draw from a far larger pool of potential instructors, convincing cash-strapped administrators to fund robust adjunct development can be more challenging but, as examples in the book demonstrate, not impossible.

Adjunct Voices will be a useful volume for administrators, faculty leaders, and individual adjuncts seeking to establish professionalized working conditions for part-time instructors. Institutions could directly apply the best practices identified in the book, as well as leverage its themes to inform a survey of non-tenure track faculty to ascertain interest in existing and potential professional development opportunities on their own campuses. Adjuncts themselves can draw from the experiences of others to create their own networks and communities on campus as well as advance their personal professional development. Most significantly, Adjunct Voices serves an important function by bringing to the forefront the stories and needs of a faculty group that is typically marginalized but essential to higher education.”

Teachers College Record

From the Foreword:

“Throughout [Adjunct Faculty Voices] there is a common return to the idea that community needs to be restored to the professoriate. The authors outline an ambitious agenda of work for academic leaders to truly reinvent higher education so that adjuncts are treated as professionals, embraced as part of the faculty community, and moving from the margins, to be at the center where they belong."

Adrianna Kezar, PhD, Professor, USC, Co-director Pullias Center and Director Delphi Project