PRINCIPLES FOR THE USE OF ADJUNCT FACULTY [draft policy for 5/18/98 meeting]

While staffing-table faculty whom the College employs on a full-time, multi-year basis have the central role in organizing and delivering its instruction, adjunct faculty also provide essential services in most instructional areas. Among other benefits, use of adjunct faculty permits the College to schedule flexibly, to provide students direct access to working professionals in the fields they wish to enter, to refresh the instructional dialog with new perspectives, and to achieve for each area an appropriate balance of overall faculty effort between direct instruction and other needed faculty work.

However, care is required for the best use of adjunct faculty. The President shall maintain systems which ensure that use of adjunct faculty by the College meets community standards for responsible employment and that it not result in diminished or uneven instructional effectiveness or violate accreditation criteria.

Accordingly:

[1] priority of instructional quality: The foremost consideration in hiring and scheduling all faculty shall be to ensure that instruction systematically meets high standards for effectiveness both in imparting needed skills and in successful student completion of programs. Evaluation systems for adjunct faculty shall take particular care to ensure that the syllabus and skill level covered by tests matches the standards established for the course, and that adjunct faculty are not penalized for maintaining those standards. Results of quality-oriented evaluations based on published criteria shall be used in the scheduling process, in determining workload, and in making plans for improvement of performance where needed.

[2] provision of needed staffing-table faculty: The President shall develop and implement plans to hire the number of staffing-table faculty required to ensure quality and the provision of needed academic support activities throughout each area. These plans shall either ensure that the College's usage of adjunct faculty does not significantly exceed the average level of comparable Texas community colleges or shall demonstrate how the College can fully address the needed tasks and meet accreditation criteria at some higher level of usage.

[3] faculty work assignments: The College shall maintain a clear delineation of duties for adjunct and staffing-table faculty. Standard adjunct-faculty duties relate to areas of direct instruction and the associated section-specific student consultation. The College shall generally rely on staffing-table faculty or on separately-compensated adjunct faculty for further required faculty work, such as subject-area advising, instructional planning, curriculum innovation, program and personnel evaluation, supervision of adjunct faculty, shared-governance responsibilities, and outreach to the communities which supply and receive the College's students. When there are not enough staffing-table faculty in an area to accomplish such work, their efforts shall be augmented by adjunct faculty hired at compensation rates reflecting their professional expertise for these tasks. Adjunct faculty shall not be scheduled for workloads (instruction plus other tasks) which are excessive in combination with their other commitments.

[4] workload priorities: The President shall establish rules by which adjunct faculty members are regularly validated by a faculty review process as eligible teachers for specific courses; this process shall also specify a maximum workload. These rules may also provide for different priority groups, which must be based primarily on assessments of teaching effectiveness. Available sections should, in general, be uniformly distributed among the eligible teachers within each priority group, up to their workload limits.

[5] professional compensation: Adjunct faculty shall be compensated at professional rates for all work expected of them. Appropriate allowances should be made for courses with unusually-high workloads, for difficult-to-staff courses, and for relevant experience both at the College and elsewhere. An additional allowance may be made for adjuncts with high overall workloads who meet standards set by the College for professional development.

[6] long-term relationship: While adjunct employment intrinsically lacks binding mutual long-term commitments, the College shall seek to establish long-term professional relationships with its adjunct faculty by encouraging appropriate professional development, by scheduling early enough that adjunct-faculty names are generally available to students by the beginning of registration, and by accommodating individual adjunct-faculty preferences as to the location and time of work, when feasible. Professional development may be mandated for adjunct faculty and be an element in the adjunct-faculty compensation scales.

[7] new faculty: Special systems for effective orientation, mentoring, and supervision of new faculty shall be maintained. These shall include immediate course evaluations whenever a faculty member has not previously taught a particular course at the College. People working as adjunct faculty shall be frankly informed that adjunct teaching, even if fully successful, is unlikely to lead to full-time employment at this college.

[8] access to instructors: The College shall provide operational support, including voice and electronic mail, sufficient to ensure good student access to adjunct faculty as well as good communication between adjunct faculty and their supervisors.

[9] community/industry connection: The College shall use the connections of adjunct faculty with their other employers and/or community activities to enrich and improve services to students.