The Adjunct Track

How to Be One of the Gang When You're Not

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By Jill Carroll

I've heard a common complaint from my fellow adjuncts lately. Many of them, it seems, have made peace in some way with the low pay, the lack of respect, the lack of job stability -- the dominant facts of adjunct life. What many adjuncts can't seem to accept, however, is the lack of social interaction with their colleagues, especially the full-timers.

The close relationships you form with co-workers are one of the perks of any good job. In academe, relationships with other faculty members can be intellectually rich and one of the most satisfying aspects of the job.

Adjuncts have a tougher time forging such relationships simply because of the nature of the work. We aren't on campus much, so we aren't around to develop contacts. We come to campus to teach our classes, hold office hours, take care of other course administration duties, and then dash off to teach other classes at other campuses. We are truly decentralized in our academic careers, and this doesn't lend itself to developing relationships with colleagues.

Another problem is that adjuncts generally are not involved in running the university. We don't sit on committees and boards -- one of the ways in which full-time faculty members rub shoulders with one another on a regular basis. Through these meetings, professors work together, discuss ideas, fight for things, get things done. Adjuncts are out of this loop.

And then there is the adjunct image problem -- we are perceived to be not as "scholarly" as our full-time peers; in fact, often we are not considered their "peers" at all. This perception is very complicated, but I find that it's generally rooted in one of four factors. First, many adjuncts don't have a body of scholarly work that compares to their full-time colleagues. The fact that this comes from teaching too much and not receiving research support from hiring institutions doesn't stop other colleagues from holding this against us.

And it leads to the second perception problem for adjuncts: prejudice on the part of full-timers. We are adjuncts, they say, because we are second-rate scholars -- "See? You haven't published very much" -- and the full-timers, then, don't give us the time of day. Third, many full-timers have an elitist attitude in general. In their view, research and the research faculty simply are categorically superior to teaching and the teaching faculty. Adjuncts, obviously, are the biggest chunk of the teaching faculty. Finally, because of this blowoff, many full-timers are simply ignorant of the scholarship that adjuncts do manage to produce despite the lack of support. Because adjuncts are "out of the loop" in so many other ways, their scholarly achievements often go unrecognized.

All these and more are the common obstacles we adjuncts face in developing relationships with full-time colleagues. What can we do about it?

To start, we can try to be on campus more. This seems impossible most of the time, I know, because we are hustling here and there trying to make a living. But most of us could squeeze in a few more strategic hours of time on campus each semester. For example, you might choose to do some reading or light grading in a visible area of your department's office suite. After a while, introduce yourself to the full-timers who come through. Strike up a conversation. See where it goes.

Try to attend a lecture or presentation that professors in your department or division will attend. It's good to attend high-profile lectures anyway, but you can get more mileage out of them if you hook up with full-time colleagues at the wine-and-cheese (or cookies-and-punch) reception afterward. Or, choose to eat lunch or have a coffee at the on-campus faculty dining area, if your institution has one. One of my institutions has "The Faculty Club," a "membership only" lunch place. I paid the one-time fee of $35 and joined precisely so that I could eat lunch there a few times a semester and hook up with full-time colleagues. Most often, I pack my own lunch, but the few times I've chosen to eat at the Faculty Club have paid off. Through those lunches, I insert myself into "the scene," which then opens the door to other less time-consuming and expensive correspondence (e-mail messages, notes, etc.).

Adjuncts might also consider attending the occasional department meeting or general faculty meeting. I know, I know -- I can already hear the boos on this suggestion. Furthermore, the boos are coming from my own head! One of the perks of adjunct teaching, I'm convinced, is that we never have to attend those god-awful, fifth-ring-of-hell faculty meetings. But you might show your face once or twice a semester, especially if they are discussing an issue of particular relevance to adjuncts. Short of attending the actual meetings, you might review the minutes (if you don't get them in your box, get them from your department administrator) and then contact the full-time faculty member involved in a particular issue. Or skip the faculty meetings altogether and volunteer to help in some way with a conference or colloquium your department is sponsoring.

My point here is to look for ways to insert yourself into the nuts and bolts of university administration in a way that doesn't take much time and doesn't involve your actually doing anything, but nevertheless gets you "in the mix." Of course, you could do something, if invited. Adjuncts should beware such invitations. I've seen part-timers get burned on this a million times: You persuade them to let you serve on a committee, you work hard -- at tremendous time expense to you -- in the hopes that they'll reward you with full-time employment, and then you end up not only staying at the adjunct level, but losing a class or your entire appointment the next semester, a plight adjuncts face all the time.

The trick here is to remember that colleges are not obligated to reward you in any way for extra service. You are, in fact, stepping outside your job description. However, if in the process you develop collegial relations with the full-timers, those connections may very well serve you in the future. And university service looks good on a CV. So, take the plunge into limited university service with a view toward building relationships. Just be careful.

When it comes to scholarship, adjuncts should blow their own horns about their work. Most colleges and universities have some sort of campus newsletter in which faculty accomplishments are announced. Make sure your lecture, presentation, article, book, or conference paper gets submitted as a news item to these publications. Submit it yourself, or send the information to your immediate supervisor or dean to submit for you. I know so many adjuncts who neglect this very important aspect of self-promotion simply because it takes a little bit of time (only a few minutes, though) or because they live too much on the fringes of their universities to even be aware of the newsletters. They just toss them into the trash along with the other junk mail in their boxes.

While it's true that some full-time faculty members toss these newsletters, too, many others do read these notices to track their own accomplishments or those of their colleagues on the path to tenure. Why shouldn't we adjuncts have our accomplishments heralded as well? It would go a long way toward alleviating the prejudice some full-timers have toward us. And a news item like this simply gets you noticed. The point here is to "see and be seen."

Being "one of the gang" has a psychological component. If you believe you don't belong, or are bitter about your adjunct status and wear that bitterness on your sleeve, you won't belong. Why? Because you will have defeated yourself before even giving others a chance to defeat you and your bitterness will undermine whatever attractiveness you may have.

So act like you are one of the gang, even if the gang is not so sure about it. Chances are, your positive energy and actions will turn a few of them around. Remember, full-time faculty members need friends, too. They need infusions of energy and light from new relationships. You may be just the colleague that brings that spark to their worklife.