Crafting a Stable Career in Adjunct Teaching

Adjunct professors can reclaim their narrative in academia by proactively advocating for their needs and securing better working conditions. This episode explores key strategies on how to ask the right questions that can lead to improved stability, pay, and ultimately an enriching teaching experience. 

• The vulnerabilities adjuncts face in academia 
• The transformative power of asking targeted questions 
• Importance of understanding asynchronous teaching and its impact 
• Strategies for negotiating salary and payment structure 
• Essential inquiries about course loads and institutional support 
• Navigating online teaching expectations and resources 
• Future employment paths and advancement opportunities 
• Benefits, professional development, and adjunct networks 
• Proactive hacks to optimize adjunct positions 
• Conclusion on the importance of self-advocacy in academia

Until next time, keep grading, keep growing, and keep making a difference in your students' lives.

Dr. Rutledge

Chapters

• 0:00 Empowering Adjunct Professors Through Advocacy
• 8:29 Maximizing Adjunct Teaching Opportunities
• 9:50 Beat Adjunct Anxiety by Being Proactive
• 14:29 Document Everything

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to Grading Papers, the podcast dedicated to supporting and empowering adjunct professors. I'm your host, dr Randi Adida Rutledge, a 14-year adjunct professor, and I am thrilled to embark on this journey with you. Today, we are flipping the script on the vulnerabilities of adjunct professors. Instead of talking about the problems, we're giving you solutions. How? By showing you how to be your own best advocate, starting from the interview process. Adjunct professors often feel powerless in their roles low pay, no benefits, unstable schedules but what if I told you that many of these problems could be managed, if not prevented, by asking the right questions up front? Today, we're diving into the proactive strategies you can use to negotiate better conditions, protect yourself from unexpected pitfalls and maximize your opportunities as an adjunct professor. The power of asking the right questions. Why adjuncts need to be proactive. Unlike full-time faculty, you know adjuncts don't automatically get protections and benefits. You have to advocate for yourself. Many adjunct professors don't realize they have the right to ask questions before accepting any contract. That's where the power is. You have to be proactive. Being proactive isn't just about the money. It's about stability, workload and professional growth. You got to shift your mindset. Adjuncting isn't just about taking whatever you can get. It's about finding the right fit for your career, your finances, your work-life balance. Did you hear what I said? The right fit.

Speaker 1: 1:52

The interview process is your first opportunity, and sometimes the only opportunity and chance, to get the clarity that you need. Before signing on, think about it. I got to tell you. I remember I was so happy just to get the clarity that you need. Before signing on, think about it. I got to tell you. I remember I was so happy just to get an adjunct position and I've taught at over 30 schools. But this one time, doing it so long, I'm just like OK, do I have any questions? I asked a few questions, but I don't ask enough questions. So here I go, I'm accepting this position. It's for 15 weeks this time and they give me the fee because I'm not really teaching face-to-face, I'm not teaching online, I'm just doing asynchronous work.

Speaker 1: 2:38

So what is asynchronous work? Asynchronous is when you sign up to take and teach a class, you're not really teaching it, you're just fielding emails. You might be doing attendance and then you're grading papers. But now you know, before you start teaching the course, you can take a look in your learning management system and then you can see oh, I got 10 students. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, as long as I get 10 students, I still have my class. It's not canceled. Let me put a pin right there Oftentimes in the adjunct world, if you don't get the required requisite of students, your class is canceled.

Speaker 1: 3:14

So you don't get that money, you don't teach, and you could have been teaching somewhere else. I had 10 students. I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to get this money. And it was just like twenty five or twenty eight hundred, maybe twenty five hundred or whatever. It was 15 weeks. I'm teaching asynchronous. So how hard can it be? Oh, let me tell you how hard it can be when you get twenty eight students. Twenty eight students, I'm teaching data science, big data course. That is four assignments every week plus discussion times, 28 for 15 weeks. Right, you're laughing, you're laughing. I hear you laughing through this microphone.

Speaker 1: 3:53

Now, when I got my first check, it was $250. So I'm saying to myself, wow, they're paying me for training. So I emailed the director and I say, hey, you know, I got this $250. I didn't really know what it's for and I'm thinking it's for the training that I took through their learning management, all the onboarding and all that. I could be so lucky, right? She says, oh no, in the email we take the money that we give you and we break it up so you get a check every week. You know what I wanted to slap my own self? Because here I am, you know, making an assumption that the money I was going to get, you know I'd get. They break it in half and give me half one time and half another, and and, buddy, they broke it down in 15 weeks and I worked and worked, and worked. I'm talking about from my nine to five. I worked in the evenings till two o'clock in the mornings, monday through Friday. Then my Saturday was gone, my Sunday was gone. And you know what? This school I haven't taught at that school since I taught one time. But this school was the reason why I created Easy Adjunct, the intelligent applications that assist adjuncts so they can regain 50 to 75% of their time back.

Speaker 1: 5:11

I'm going to tell you again you have to ask the right questions In the interview is the only time that you get a chance to get clarity before you sign on. So when you think about the questions you have to ask before accepting an adjunct position, salary and payment structure, I got that 2,500, or whatever it was. I didn't know. It was gonna be broken up into 15 weeks and $250. I felt like a fool. I'm telling you. I was working 20 to 40 hours a week for that school and I had two other schools. It was ridiculous. So you have to ask questions like how much is the per course pay, when and how will I be paid? And why does that matter? Some schools pay per semester or they pay biweekly or at the end of the course and you need to know the schedule before you commit, right.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Another question you want to ask is all about the course load and scheduling. How many courses will I be guaranteed per semester? That word guaranteed is interesting because, remember, adjuncts get no guarantees. Can I teach across multiple departments? Now, it's pretty good when you can get in a school and you have the credentials, 18 credit hours and a subject matter, that in multiple subject areas that you can teach at that same university. It makes it so much easier. But why does this matter? Some schools cancel classes at the last minute due to low enrollment I was speaking about that earlier leaving you without pay because you you've taken your time, you're going to do it and you might have already prepped the course, and if you're at a school that requires you to create the course, you may have already created that course before you even Teach the course and now the course is canceled. Right, ask for a written confirmation of guaranteed courses, if you can. If you can get that, that's a leg up for you.

Speaker 1: 7:19

So then, another area you might want to think about is institutional support and resources. Right, a question you could ask is will I have access to office space, printing and library resources? Now, this could be important. If you are a adjunct that teaches face to face, of course you want to have some office space where you can go in and keep your your materials and keep your books and all of your information. You could do printing, especially if you have to hand out things to the students I've done that on my own dime before and I didn't know it didn't ask the right questions and also the library resources. So why does this matter? Some adjuncts aren't even giving an email access, office space or tech support. You need that, and knowing this in advance helps you to avoid frustration and that's adjuncts. I think we all wear a hat that says frustrated because you love to do this thing and then all the roadblocks you have to go through just to do it. It's very interesting. It is what I call a dichotomy.

Speaker 1: 8:29

So then the online teaching expectations. A question you could ask am I expected to create my own course materials or are they provided? You want to ask that upfront because if you are getting $2,500 to $4,000 and you have to create that course, think about it. That's your intellectual capital, your property, that you've created this course and you've given it to the college or the university and they own it. That's different from if you're an adjunct and you've signed up to create a course and you can sometimes get between $5,000 and $10,000 just for that, then you could get the money for teaching it and that is the way some universities have it. You got to find those universities, you need to find them out and then when you do, it's a better situation for you. So when you ask that question, why does it matter? Because if you have to build that course from scratch without any additional pay, that's a major time investment. So then another area you might wanna look at is grading and workload expectation, and this right here I'm putting air quotes all over my head because this is where we have the most anxiety, right?

Speaker 1: 9:52

A question you could ask is how many students per class? How many students are in the class? Again, before I started that course that I was telling you earlier about, it was 15 weeks. It was only 10 students in that course. They were gonna give me 25 or $2,800. But by the time the course started it was only 10 students in that course. They were going to give me twenty five or twenty eight hundred dollars, but by the time the course started it was 28 students. Four assignments per week for 15 weeks, and these were coding assignments. That's different than writing assignments. When you're reading essays, you can right click on that and let the computer read that to you. No, I got to figure these things out because no one gave me the answer key to your coding. You got to do the coding, put the coding in the environment, see what the output is, to make sure students are doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Speaker 1: 10:42

It's a time drain for you and you want to make sure that you understand what's going on there. And you want to make sure that you understand what's going on there, right? No-transcript. No, there aren't any grading assistants. And no, there aren't any auto grading tools. At least I've taught for 14 years, I haven't had any. And again, that's the reason why I created easyadjunctcom, with the various apps that I have to help you create courses, to help you with your courses, your discussions, your assignments, your announcements, quizzes, everything. If there's no auto grading, why does that matter? Because more students equal, more grading and without support, this can be a time draining, nightmare, and, might I add, nightmare it is.

Speaker 1: 11:38

Another question you could ask is around future employment and advancement. What is the path to more stable or full-time employment here? You want to know that up front, because if you're just somebody who's coming in filling in because another adjunct is on on leave or whatever, and you're just going to be here for that one time, you need to know that because then, if that's all it's going to be, you can come out and say well, thank you for the opportunity, but I'm looking for a long range relationship. So why does this matter? Some schools never promote adjuncts to full-time roles and some schools never, ever, look at you as more than in the pool I'm going to pull you one time every year. So it's better to know this upfront. Then, when you think about your benefits and your perks, even if it's unofficial. You want to know, so you want to ask questions. Are there faculty discount? Are there professional development funds that I could use? Are there any other perks for adjuncts? Why would this matter? Some schools offer free tuition or discounted tuition, like if you wanted to go back and you wanted to pick up maybe another course or two, because you're real close to 18 hours in another subject. Some schools give you gym access or small stipends, but you won't know this unless you ask.

Speaker 1: 13:05

There are things like these proactive adjunct hacks that help you make the most of your position. When you get a position, one of the things that you can do is you can stack your contracts. If you stack your contracts, a way to do this is to apply at multiple schools and schedule strategically to avoid last minute cancellations hurting your income, especially if you're depending on this income. Right, you want to make sure that you create an online presence. Please do on LinkedIn or academiaedu and highlight multiple institution experience to increase your credibility. You could even get a reference from some of the program directors that you work for, or you might even put some of the reviews that you got from students. Another way to make the most of your position is to join adjunct networks and unions.

Speaker 1: 14:01

You can get support from other adjuncts and they can provide inside information on which schools treat adjuncts well. It's almost like being in college and students tell other students when to take a certain course and what instructor to take it with, because they're going to get the best out of that and probably good grades, or the instructor teaches well, or maybe they give you references or whatever. But another hack is you want to document everything, right, document everything, save your emails, create a folder for your adjunct positions and then, within that folder, break it out into schools and break it out even further, so you'll be able to go straight where you need to go to get the information you need to get. If you need to bring it up in case you have to show an email for a question that you got answered, you have to show a contract, you need to show your pay stubs and if there's any issues with payments or disputes over course assignments, you want to make sure you have that information and so you want to negotiate for extras.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Sometimes adjuncts feel so vulnerable because of just the name. Adjunct makes you feel like you're just not supposed to get anything, and I don't feel like that. I got a different mindset. I negotiate and I ask all the time. And if I've been teaching for that school for some time, a couple of years, I will ask for another grand in salary. I mean, what can you? What could they say? They could say no, or they can say yes, which they have, and I've been very grateful for that. Can say yes, which they have, and I've been very grateful for that. So you want to negotiate, even if you can't negotiate for salary. Ask for extra perks like professional development funds or teaching, a preferred schedule or seeing if you could teach another course in a different area, asking if it'd be okay, especially if you have two master's degrees.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Adjuncting doesn't have to be a never ending struggle. By being proactive, asking the right questions and knowing your worth that is key. Know your worth you can create a teaching experience that works for you, not against you. What's the best question you've ever asked in an adjunct interview? Let us know on social media or send us a voice memo for a future episode. Adjuncts need a voice. If no one is giving it to them, let's create it together. Join me on Grading Papers, where adjuncts get real about what it takes to survive in academia. We thank you for tuning in to Grading Papers. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with your colleagues and friends. Until next time, keep grading, keep growing and keep making a difference in your students' lives.