To the Department

The institution bears the major responsibility for the overall integration of part-time faculty, yet it is the individual department’s responsibility to ensure the consistency and quality of programming. Institutional agendas and departmental goals, while parallel in the abstract sense, are usually divergent in the practical aspects of implementation. Departments are separate and semiautonomous cultural and professional entities, with their own sets of values and practices. Standards and practices often are informed more directly by outside accrediting and professional organizations than by internal institutional agendas. Part-time faculty are often caught in the middle of these conflicting interests. As the 1997 Statement from the Conference on the Growing Use of Part-Time and Adjunct Faculty suggests,

The immediate cost savings that institutions realize from widespread use of part-time appointments to staff introductory courses are often offset by the lack of program coherence and reduced faculty involvement with students and student learning. The frequently inadequate facilities accessible to part-time faculty members, coupled with the inadequate professional support they often receive, create structural impediments that put even the most talented teachers at a severe disadvantage. The limited contractual and time commitments of part-time employment mean that temporary faculty members do their work apart from the structures through which the curriculum, department, and institution are sustained and renewed. Academic programs require high levels of permanent faculty involvement through department and college governance to maintain and renew curricula that offer students high-quality educational opportunities. … A heavy reliance on part-time faculty appointments … overburdens permanent faculty members with tasks … [related to]temporary faculty members who are disconnected from … these functions. ¹