“We See You”: How Salt Lake CC Is Rethinking Adjunct Support

In this episode of The Adjunct Files, John and Maggie are joined by Alia Criddle and Kristin Morley from Salt Lake Community College’s Faculty Teaching and Learning Center. Fresh from the 50th POD Network Conference, they share how SLCC is building a comprehensive, paid professional development pathway for adjunct faculty—from orientation through an Adjunct Faculty Institute.

The conversation explores compensation for professional development, mentoring models, classroom outreach, community building, and why investing in adjunct faculty is ultimately an investment in student success. This episode offers a concrete, hopeful model for institutions serious about teaching quality, equity, and belonging.

Theme music composed, performed and produced by James Husni.

Adjunct Nation is a collaborative podcast under the auspices of The Lucas Center for Faculty Development at FGCU. You can learn more by clicking on this link:

https://www.fgcu.edu/lucascenter/

Transcript

Welcome to the Adjunct Files.
We're a growing, diverse community who face challenging work in an ever-changing, higher
education landscape.
Your co-hosts for this podcast are with you in this.
I'm John Roth.
Adjuncts since 2015 and now a coordinator for Adjunct Faculty at Florida Gulf Coast University.
I'm Maggie Hohne, Adjunct since 2022 and currently work in the Office of First-Year Seminars.
Together we hope to have conversations to empower, support, and elevate Adjunct faculty.
This conversation today is one to do just that.
Welcome back to the Adjunct Files.
Maggie, how are you today?
I'm living the dream.
How are you, John?
So week one, week two, where are we in limbo?
I don't know, but spring semester has started.
Yes, I've gone from one student enrolled in my class to 15.
So I'm very excited with the Adjunct period.
Wow, that's a lot of Adjuncts or ads.
No drops.
All right.
So I have some new friendly faces, which is nice.
Fantastic.
Again, the Pod Network conference that I went to back in November, Maggie, I hope you can
go to the next one.
It's in Baltimore, which, you know, not bad, but...
At least we're in the same time zone.
Yeah, that was better because San Diego was jet lag city and beautiful San Diego.
Yes, of course.
Of course.
But anyways, at San Diego, I met a couple of leaders in professional development for
from Salt Lake Community College, Alia and Kristin.
They did a wonderful enlightening breakout session on Adjunct Faculty Support.
And they are our guests today all the way from Utah.
Welcome ladies.
Welcome.
Please introduce yourselves.
I have Alia Criddle.
My name is Kristin Morley.

But I get to go first.
And you are like the boss, aren't you?
I guess.
It's something I wanted to do.
I'm the director of faculty development here at the Faculty Teaching and Learning
Center at Salt Community College, but very new to the tools.
I'm not kidding about it.
I had such much to do all the time.
I've been a math faculty at, like, for about 20 years.
So this is my new fun job.
So how large is Salt Lake Community College?
You're going to ask me that.
Give me a second and I'll find out.
This is great.
I always have to look at that, but I just cannot stay in my head.
But we have almost 50,000 students.
50,000?
I think they're following all that.
28.
Yes, see, it's big.
We have like seven campuses negative.
I'm going to get all my facts wrong.
Do you oversee all the campuses?
This is one system.
And we are joined with Salt Lake Technical College.
All of that.
Wear everything.
Oh, man.
My jaw is on the floor.
I didn't see you can't see me, but...
Yes.
Well, Alia, thanks for being here and taking some time from the craziness of the beginning
of a semester when probably many adjunct faculty are panicking at this moment.
Oh, for sure.
We had an email.
So our semester started two days ago and the president sent an email that day and talked
about that they were hiring right now.
Now after the semester started that they're hiring, lots and lots of adjuncts trying to
open more sections.
Oh.
So probably some of them don't even know to panic yet and will have a class tomorrow to
teach.
Yeah, and they can't get into the learning management system and they have no idea what
the syllabus is or the learning course learning objectives or anything, right?
Yeah, so we had new faculty orientation for adjunct faculty last week.
They haven't had all that.
I know folks did.
And we'll send them the recording after the fact, but it'll be hard for them to be ready
for the first day when they just have a class for the first day.
Oh, my goodness.
My goodness.
And Kristen, tell us a little about yourself.
Yes.
Thanks for having us on, John and Maggie.
My name is Kristen Morley and I am the assistant director here at Salt Lake Community College
in the Faculty Teaching and Learning Center.
And I came to Salt Lake Community College about 15 or 17 years ago, something like that
as an adjunct faculty.
And so I was in that role and then they had an opening in the Teaching and Learning Center
for an adjunct faculty to work.
And so that's how I stepped into educational development.
And ever since then I've always kind of pushed and prodded the leadership to consider adjunct
faculty and their role in professional development or how they can participate in
professional development and why that's a good idea for the college.
How many adjuncts do you all have?
I know it sounds like a lot more all of a sudden after two days.
We think we have somewhere around 800 to 1100.
I know that's kind of a big number, but it depends on how you count them and who is
actually teaching that semester versus who only teaches once a year.
So it's a little bit difficult to count, but we're in the hundreds probably close to a
thousand.
Okay.
Yeah, about twice as many as we have.
Yeah.
How big is your team?
Is it just the two of you for all of those adjuncts?
We do have one opening in our office, but it's more of a coordinator position.
And then we have an administrative assistant.
So yeah, it's a small team and which is why we kind of tried to really think about adjunct
faculty professional development and how to systemize it across the college so that then
who those that are really on the front lines with adjuncts that are, you know, there are
so few things that coordinators within the academic department can really work with the
adjunct faculty because we just can't get around to all of them.
That's a good question because culture shift takes a long time.
And right, Alia, and I have a feeling that there's not
not active resistance, but just unconsciously resistant because look, there's too many things
going on already.
I cannot add another thing.
And how do you expect me?
I'm trying to work with our full-time faculty.
You do have a lot of full-time faculty too, correct?
Yeah, I'm around 333 and 40.
We have 44 new full-time faculty this year and the letter on Monday also.
Okay.
The bill prior to some more.
So about 300, 350 full-time and then a thousand adjunct faculty.
Yes, teaching, you know, 50,000.
You know, it's like work.
That seems like the classes have to be pretty large sized or you have a lot of people teaching
overloads or something or what?
Because the classes are nowhere near university sizes.
We actually do teach, come on classes.
I just definitely teach about half of our classes and that's annual enrollment.
So, I'm quite that many.
Although I looked at the 38,000 in fall semester.
38,000.
But that's still twice as many.
So we are at number one.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
I know we actually are really great at small class sizes.
So you're not going to find a lot of, there's a couple of auditoriums on campus.
They don't get used to class.
Right.
So we actually really try hard to work very closely with our students.
But yeah, about half of the teaching that happens is provided by adjunct faculty.
And we do have a lot of our full-time faculty teaching over the classes.
So there's just a lot happening around here.
Yeah.
Let me have all the career and technical programs and transfer programs.
Higher Ed's in a unique position right now.
It feels like we're trying to get so much done with limited resources financially so
that we then strap a lot of people with more than one job and or overloads and or
all these things to make it really work.
Here we have about a thousand faculty total.
Five hundred and sixty, fifty full-time and about 430 adjuncts in a given semester.
Okay.
We only have sixteen thousand six hundred students.
So less than half of what you have.
So that's why I was just scratching at the ratios and numbers how that works.
Yeah.
Part of that's the load, right?
So at our community college, our faculty teach a five five load.
Oh, a five five load.
We're both in faculty too.
Yeah.
So that's where you're getting along the workforce and are responsible for service primarily to
the college and community that kind of committee service and are responsible for professional
development.
So they don't have a research component although many faculty do.
Okay.
Research but that's not a required component and the bulk of our evaluation system for
both my faculty is based on their teaching or teaching college.
Okay.
So five five load account for what you're seeing there.
That makes a little more sense.
Okay.
Now we're getting higher.
Okay.
So a difficulty in getting to our adjunct faculty when you're looking at one associate
dean who has maybe thirty full time faculty in the department and 80 adjunct faculty in
the department like that supervision mode just makes it really difficult for that position
to be thinking about the professional development of their part-time faculty.
Yeah.
Well I love getting to everything else that they're involved in.
So really to make a cultural change we have to provide a lot of support to our staff
or overseeing our adjunct faculty.
If my mind is not all jello at this point in time in the semester I recall just this
five five staged approach if I'm not mistaken that you all presented of how you bring from
orientation all the way to kind of higher levels of professional development and get
this Maggie.
They pay the adjunct faculty to attend any professional development.
I love that.
Let's do that here.
So can you can you to share back and forth on how how that looks what the levels are
how it's developed and the whole compensation package to because that's just fascinating
to us on our end.
Yes.
Yeah sure I can speak to that.
So over the years we've thought deeply about okay what does an adjunct faculty really need
as far as professional development what what would help our students make sure that they
are receiving the same quality of education whether it be from a full-time faculty member
or an adjunct faculty member because we don't want our students really I mean they shouldn't
know the difference.
Exactly.
They don't know that they don't know the meaning of the difference anyway so they should not
have a different experience whether they take a class from a full-time faculty member or
an adjunct faculty member.
So what we have done over the years is thought about what do adjunct faculty need in order
to give our students that same experience.
And so last summer we I mean over the years we've kind of thought about this and listed
like these are the professional development trainings that would benefit them.
The last summer we actually built this five step pathway is what we call it a professional
development pathway and the five steps are not necessarily like a certain semester or
a certain year it's just this is the progression one would go through.
And so the first step is the orientation we we know that giving adjunct faculty a quality
orientation helps them start on the right foot as far as being aware of the college and the
policies and the practices that we do and what's expected.
And so that's the first step and that means a whole year even to make sure that they go
to orientation and then that they take what we have as an Intro to Community College teaching
course and that's a short three hour course.
So that's level one we also want them to watch someone else teach in their department so
that they see what good quality teaching looks like.
So that's all part of level one and then and it goes from there so level two might
be we want to make sure that they get the correct LMS training.
Level three may be that they then get better pedagogy training specific trainings and
we list different trainings that we would like them to go through.
And then level four and five are more specific I guess programs where we they're called the
we call it the adjunct faculty Institute and they are selected by their department to
participate.
Can you go into a little more detail on that institute?
That institute we've asked every department to send one adjunct faculty member to participate
and it's a year long institute they come to a two hour meeting where we see them dinner
and they come each month and we focus on specific pedagogy they share pedagogy that they are
a technique that they're using in their classroom so it's not only us training them so to speak
they're also sharing their experience with each other.
So it's like a faculty learning community I guess.
It is.
Awesome.
So how do you get the full time I meet seriously I know this out how do you get full time faculty
members to take on adjuncts as mentees.
We did that but we also offer them a site in Florida doing it.
But in our college like mentoring adjunct faculty is part of the responsibility of full
time faculty I think we'd manage it without paying that but we want to recognize their
time and so we think it I think it's around $200 a semester to do this mentoring and then
we get a little more accountability sometimes and we see them a couple of times a year to
food always works doesn't it.
It works.
So this payment system I think that's kind of a game changer.
What do you think Maggie?
People love money.
Well it's just also it's kind of respect and honoring time.
Absolutely.
Can you share how that came about and how did you find the funding for that too because
that could add up.
Yes absolutely.
So I can speak to that because I've been in the office for a while so it was interesting
it came about when the Affordable Care Act came out and it defined more the working hours
of part time workers just across the board.
Oh is it fair labor standards act I believe is the one that defines like what a part time
worker looks like and how many hours they can work when that came about in connection
with the Affordable Care Act.
Our institution read that very cautiously and said if because the Fair Labor Standards
Act reads that if an adjunct faculty does something that pertains to their job they
need to be paid for it cannot be volunteer.
So for instance if they go to a department meeting they need to be paid for it if they
do work so that and so we read it very cautiously very and so what happened is as we saw that
mean.
I would say conscientiously.
Yeah conscientiously.
And we're kind of proud of that over the years we realized that we were one of the
few institutions reading it that yeah.
Yeah.
And but then we kind of I think turned and said well we're going to wear this as a badge
and this is what we are a badge of honor and this is what we're willing to do to help
take care of our adjunct faculty and that is and I think it goes it speaks that we also
need them to be professionally developed.
And so if we're teaching college and we need them to be well prepared then we probably
need to give them some incentive to be well prepared and so then the payment came or stayed
and remade.
So they don't get rich off it I think right now we're at $31.29 an hour.
So you go to a one hour workshop you know you just maybe bought yourself a dinner not
even you and a significant other but you bought yourself a dinner base.
So what we do is we then offer that for any professional development but as you know through
that through the Affordable Care Act and the first labor standards act part time workers
are limited to the number of hours they can work and so we need to make sure that we're
staying within those hours both their teaching and their professional development and anything
else they're doing for the college if they're doing a special project or something for the
college it's got to remain in that part time hours and so they get approval from their
department to participate in this they don't just show up there's a in the registration
system there's an approval process so that someone is watching to make sure those hours
don't they don't go over the hour load.
Now where did we get the money?
Yeah how much how much how much does that run each year for y'all and yeah.
I would say like this around the mid teens two thousand teens we were around eighty
to a hundred thousand dollars a year that we that we were given for this fund.
It's creeped up I mean this year alone we hit two hundred and fifty five on it now
we two hundred fifty five thousand we do we are seeing that it's not getting used as much
as we thought it would which is interesting if you want to send some are where it will.
Yeah.
Please let us know.
I think I think one of the things I said at the POD conference is and I'm just going
to keep reiterating it as we are a community college that is traditionally not funded
as well as four year universities and so if we can find the money y'all can find the
money.
I want that on the teacher.
Yeah it really does it's almost kind of a platform I've been standing on lately and
I think it's just you've got to realize that if teaching is important at your university
or your college you've got to have people well prepared and most professors are not
trained in teaching and so they give a great lecture but they do not that does not necessarily
make you a great teacher and I don't even know if I find your value.
Christian I don't know if I'd even say they all know how to give a great lecture okay let's
just be honest not everybody's a public speaker so doesn't mean you can't be a great teacher
you know but yeah if you never had the opportunity before.
You've never done a lot of speaking fascinating this is that's such a mind blowing shift here
I don't know hopefully we might get there in some form.
But to what they're saying like they said they are a community college they're not a
university but with the amount of adjuncts like students are still going therefore quality
education.
So it's a disservice to the institution and the students if adjuncts aren't prepared
going into the classroom.
But isn't that true of any place though if adjuncts aren't prepared to get into the
classroom?
Absolutely absolutely.
FGCU.
And I like to mention that it's not just a wild idea it's respectful and it's hey we hired
you to be a professional teacher yeah that's why we hired I didn't talk to you over that
and I think it's just such a sign of I mean ultimately it's the provost and the president
deciding we're going to support this and I think that choosing to fund it that way and
this is not you know less than eight hours of magic for the whole year you know this
isn't huge but it's signaling with where they're putting their budget that teaching well and
that supporting our employees is that like if this is value that we want you to do well
that your job that we're going to help you with that training and I think that's a message
that I love that our institution cares about that.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It speaks to the goals of the institution if you want to graduate students you have
to have successful students and successful students come from well trained faculty and
so it really does speak to those metrics that institutions really are using to measure
their success rate by what's our graduation rate what's our persistence rate things like
that.
You too are talking to logically right now I just don't know.
We might have to cut the podcast here.
Sorry.
It's okay.
I think there are other ways if I'm not sure if I'm not sure if I'm not sure if I'm
not sure.
I think there are other ways if I remember you talking at this conference there are
some other ways that you show both connection community respect for adjunct faculty were
you the ones that would go and visit them in their classrooms.
Yeah.
We have an adjunct faculty solo for part time so we have an adjunct faculty member working
in our office with Kristen.
Yeah, they've been out visiting 101.
Would that come to your question?
Tell us what that's like.
I mean, just the logistics of it first
is that adjunct faculty fellow has to take the class schedule
and really just break it down, OK, at this campus
during this time that we're going to go,
who teaches during this time?
And so then she gets a list of who's
teaching during that time.
Well, we do leave an email or send an email the day before
that says, hey, we're going to be in your area.
We're not there to assess any teaching.
We're just there to drop by.
We try to make it right before our class starts
or at the end of class as they're leaving.
So we can just go in, let them know.
We're from the Faculty Teaching and Learning Center.
We often have a little treat with us
that shows appreciation.
Thank you for your efforts here.
And then we often bring with us a flyer
that here are some of our upcoming professional development
offerings.
Did you know you get paid to attend these
if you have available hours?
It's a way for us to contact and reach out
to these adjunct faculty.
And many of them, I hate to say, don't
have any other contact with anyone at the institution
besides something like that.
Because they're not required department meetings
or to meet with their departments in any way.
So this is a great way to build community, even if it's just
one by one, one at a time.
Are the adjunct faculty still invited
to those department meetings and have that opportunity as well?
Or are they just running parallel to the department?
Grain of the nature of their role is very different.
But how does that work?
In general, they are certainly not required to attend
very much often or not, even having opportunity
for a variety of reasons.
At least one department I know they're always welcome to attend.
But with the understanding that they won't
be compensated for that time.
And they have to attend virtually.
The literal physical space is going to be an issue.
But other departments are just not invited at all
to those meetings.
And I agree, like it's outside of their responsibility a lot.
But you can see that disconnection.
If policy decisions or directions are happening,
they're not part of those conversations necessarily.
There's other good things that we have involvement
in adjunct faculty in some of the creature processes
and the faculty association.
So there's some end points.
But at the department level, it's
going to be actually how their AD is managing that.
But certainly, we don't have funding in us.
And it's a great deal to all of these.
But the opportunity they help it to something else.
Getting back to that food, though, those treats you were in.
It never do you notice it, a theme?
Yeah.
But yeah, so when you talk, what are you talking about?
Let's see.
What have we brought?
We've been purchased the Altoid Mint from Amazon.
And we put a sticker on it that said,
thank you for your commitment to our students.
Mints.
And yes, yes.
So we did that.
We've got some chocolates this year that we're giving them.
Again, I think they're kind of taken back, like, who are you?
And why are you bringing me this?
Or it's, how did you find me?
It's been a, it's been.
Yeah, how did you find me?
Yes.
And I think it really just is a great way for the institution
to say, we see you, you matter.
You're teaching our students.
It's important for you to know you're
part of this institution.
I love it.
I mean, we've probably seen since last spring,
200 maybe since last spring.
That's still.
I know, that's a lot.
But you can see it's a whole year.
And we maybe hit 25%.
25%.
Yeah.
So it's a big problem about impact, though, right?
Because yes, they expressed, thanks for coming.
They often had questions that they needed an answer to.
Or they're like, oh, can you tell me this?
And because we have people there,
it's a Christian and our adjunct professor with LTM
with more contact point.
Or they would get a follow up email like, oh,
could you help me with this?
And so they're getting some support frequently
right there in the moment.
And so again, you're definitely helping them.
And they're teaching and also helping with that community
building that we think is really important.
MUSIC
What culture shifts have you noticed taking place
with some of these changes?
With the professional development being compensated,
with just the recognition that you're doing and showing
care and trying to create community.
Have you noticed some shifts?
I'll say in the short run, we'll sometimes
see someone sign up for one of our professional development
offerings that we just met in their classroom.
So for instance, they're like, oh, we can go to these.
Then we'll see that they sign up for something.
Overall, over the last 10 years, I think
that we say, and what we hear from adjunct faculty,
I think adjunct faculty that work at our institution
say they are more involved in our institution
than any other institution they work for.
So I think overall, they feel cared for.
They feel like they're going to get their needs met.
Now, if you ask them, do you feel a part of the institution?
We still have the results of surveys.
Still say, no, I don't feel part of the institution.
I mean, that's still coming up as a problem.
But I think when we hear from our adjunct,
they will say, this is the best.
I was oriented best to this institution
and any other institution I teach for.
Or I get to go to professional development
at this institution, whereas others, I don't.
So I think they feel more a part of it.
And we need that because we're a community college,
so we pay the least of these other institutions out there.
And so I think it's important that they feel
a part of an institution because that might be the only way
we get to keep them.
And I think people stay.
It's interesting.
People stay where they know they belong.
And if you know you belong somewhere,
sometimes money doesn't always speak loud.
This all reminds me of we're looking
at doing some research here at FGCU on our adjunct faculty
and how they feel either a sense of teaching confidence,
of belonging, commitment, and respect from the institution.
So I'd be really curious to have your surveys just
to see what you've asked and to learn from that.
In studying kind of researching the background,
looking up just some theory on job satisfaction,
I've found ERG is kind of a model of existence, which
is the pay issues and working conditions.
R is the relatedness.
This is all that community stuff you've been talking about.
And G is the growth, which is the professional development.
And I think the theory says sometimes the existence
of that part is the weakest of the three.
But if you're related, you've got people
that you're connected to and care about you
and you care about them.
And you've got the growth opportunities.
The E doesn't matter as much.
I think you're living that out to an extent.
Does that?
Yeah, I would agree.
I would like to, in fact, I'm going
to ask you to send me that research, John, on ERG,
or at least that, because I think that is what's happening.
I think the relatedness and the growth
is what is keeping adjunct happy at Salt Lake Community College.
And the opportunity just to get to teach.
I mean, let's be honest, just to teach
such a wonderful profession.
But as far as their relationship with others
at the institution, I think the R and the G
relatedness and growth probably are making a difference there.
When you're talking about that, it really
makes me think about that Agile Faculty Institute.
We always talk about it because it's
small group of faculty we get to work with.
I like, well, it costs a lot to do this versus a small group.
But so I think we have to do both.
We have to try and reach everybody at some level.
But that group of faculty, for example, last year's cohort,
a huge percentage of them after a year of Agile faculty here
working with us in the Institute, a huge percentage
of them landed full-time jobs, either here or other institutions.
Oh, wow.
We have a lot of them who are here at Flick this year,
either in permanent or in one year assignment at Salt
High Faculty.
And at date, they do a connected.
They had growth.
They had the core at their preparing for this application
season as they're coming to us and getting support
and working with each other throughout.
You saw their skills increase, their connectedness increase,
and you're seeing the success in their lives.
But even if they got a permanent position elsewhere,
we still do that as a success from that from that Institute,
we're able to help them.
So yeah, I think there's ways we can have an impact
by doing more than just that compensation.
Maggie, you realize why I wanted these two on the podcast?
Yes, they're fantastic.
I know.
Well, I'm just thinking, too, even having
those smaller intentional groups, that's not, I mean,
Grana, you do want to reach everybody,
but having those groups, they become your champions then.
And they almost help spread the word.
And they're like, hey, you should really go do this.
And they start just kind of recommending and funneling
other adjuncts to you all.
Yeah, let me tell you kind of what a dream we have.
Oh, please.
Had roughly around 20 adjunct faculty
Institute participants last year.
And by the end of the year, it was kind of like,
it's wrapping up.
And we're all like, we don't want this to end.
And they didn't want it to end.
And I said, how about we run what we call adjunct faculty
Institute, too?
And so what that group did, those that could participate,
and we have nine or 10 that can participate,
have come again for a second year.
They don't have quite so much homework,
so we don't pay quite as much as we did with the first year.
But they are dining deeper into pedagogy.
And they are now practicing techniques
in front of each other.
So we do this once a month.
So these nine people practice these techniques
in front of each other.
And my goal is, if the then these nine or 10,
they go back and they're all from a different department,
mainly.
They're all going to go back to their department.
So like you said, Maggie, they become the champion.
But they also can deliver professional development
within their own departments.
Because back to Ali and I being the only educational
developers here, we can't get to all departments.
So then they can then work with adjunct faculty
within their own departments.
Frankly, they could work with full-time faculty also.
Because they have become fairly well-schooled in pedagogy
and can then use those resources in their own department.
So that's the big dream, is that we create this train
the trainer, I guess, in a way.
I love that.
Yeah.
And too, that could also almost be another opportunity
for them to get compensated as well if they did host
those trainings, like departments and things like that,
just for a little more buy-in.
For sure.
And then it also does this buy-in thing with the department.
Because our associate deans are seeing the flexible training
with the adjunct faculty, who has now got really good skills
and they're committed.
And they're getting all of the deans
to know this person well.
And it helps them want to send more faculty.
It helps them want to use the adjunct faculty
in their department.
So it just really helps them to do some of that culture shift.
We also, we do not have a tiered adjunct faculty pay system.
So all adjunct faculty at our institution
get paid exactly the same, whether they have a doctorate
degree or don't, whether they worked here one year or 20
years.
And so that is one of the ideas in the future
is that this five-step professional development
plan would help us be able to do.
Would come with a little tier step to you.
Right.
We want to build a system so they could do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And for the fact that it rewards their longevity,
their loyalty, their commitment to the institution.
And also, they get to be better teachers over time.
That's kind of a long-term goal I have.
I don't know if our institution has that long-term goal.
But I think if we're serious about really
wanting good classroom instruction,
higher rates of student retention, student success,
graduation rates going up, et cetera, right?
I think these just seem logical.
If we invest in our students, we also
need to invest in the people teaching those students.
Well, and adjunct faculty working conditions
are student learning conditions.
Beyond what you just shared, what's next?
Or what do you hope for?
I will say one of the things that troubles us
is the number of adjuncts we hire every year
seems to be quite a large number.
So in other words, we can't figure out if it's this.
We need to do some research on this.
Do we have a bulk of adjuncts that are adjunct faculty that
are staying with us?
And there's this portion that just keeps rotating?
Or so that's some research we need to do.
With that kind of assignment, you've always got turnover.
It's kind of a gig.
Yeah, and there are seasons in life
where being an adjunct works.
And then times that, I mean, so there's
going to be some turnover.
But yeah, the question is why.
I would like to know where.
And in what departments?
Like, yeah, we need all that research here, too.
It's good stuff to think through.
Oh, I don't think it's helpful for the institution
to be spending that much money on turnover.
No.
And I think what's interesting is, and I don't know,
I think it's invisible turnover in a way,
because the same amount of money is
going in every semester to pay adjuncts,
because they're, like I said, we don't have a tiered system.
And so it doesn't matter if someone has been here one year
and stopped, or if they've been here 20, on paper,
it will look the same.
And so I think that's something we need to also take
a look at, like, what is it costing our institution
to keep hiring, and hiring, and hiring, and hiring,
and not financially, because it appears to look the same.
But what are we actually moving by having a new instructor
in the classroom, so many new instructors every semester?
And how can we better prepare them?
Well, I'm even thinking about, you said,
you all need to open up all these new sections
and need to staff them.
And the semester's already started.
So then my question is, well, what's our enrollment management
plan?
Like, what are ways or little bumps in the system
that we can be proactive moving forward so we're not saying,
hey, we need 500 new adjuncts for this upcoming Monday on week two.
Or whatever it is.
Or when a person was hired and how long they stay,
if the turnover might be the fact that they had a difficult start
to the semester and said, you know, that was just rough.
I don't know if I want to do that again.
Who knows?
Until we survey, we have no idea, right?
But I hope a dream is more participation.
We are very well funded this year to support the first several steps
on this pathway that we have lots of funding for Agit
or supervisors on board of encouraging members to get there.
And, you know, and thinking if we're hitting the right training
point that they can see the value of that.
This has been just a wonderful conversation.
I agree.
And both encouraging to us, right?
But also challenging.
Like a good challenge.
We have some work to do here.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
You are a model for what we would like to do.
Isn't that great?
How fun is that?
I know.
And anyways, we can collaborate.
I think I'm all in with you too.
So that would be good.
We would love that.
Yeah.
Wonderful.
Hopefully you'll be at the next pod in Baltimore.
I know you'll have the long flight this time.
Yeah.
To the cold, the jet lag.
And to the cold and to the jet lag.
Cold and early.
Yeah.
I know.
Want, want.
It's Baltimore.
I guess it's OK.
We don't have seasons in Florida.
So I'm excited for anything.
Although today is a little chilly.
What was it?
Right.
It was a low of 61 today.
Yeah.
So for the 28 this morning.
Yeah.
I know.
Well, thank you so much, you two are gems.
And we really appreciated the conversation.
It's really started a brainstorm here, I think.
And some ideas for the future.
Maybe we'll have to do it again.
Thank you so much for the good night.
We love that.
That more.
In six months, we should do a where are we now?
Yeah.
In six months.
How did it go?
How was the semester?
What are we ready for in the fall?
Exactly.
Well, thanks so much.
We got to get going here.
Blessings on everything that you're doing in Salt Lake.
And all what?
Seven different locations, was it?
Six main campuses.
Are they distance apart that you have to deal with?
What is the taking of the hair in 40 minutes?
Yeah.
Wow.
OK.
Oh, OK.
Good for you.
We have one campus, right?
Well, we're going to start a second up at Babcock.
We are.
Yes.
OK.
Well, thanks so much.
Have a great rest of your day.
We appreciate it.
Bye bye.
Bye y'all.
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The music composed, performed and produced by James Husney.
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