The Adjunct Files
Adjunct faculty are a growing majority in higher education, shaping student experiences while navigating the challenges of contingent employment. As adjuncts at a regional public university, we know firsthand the realities, rewards, and roadblocks that come with the role. That’s why we’re here—to boost your mood and pedagogy with insightful dialogues on current challenges, practical strategies, and pathways forward for you and your students.
The Adjunct Files
Inside Faculty Senate: Why Adjunct Voices Matter
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What exactly does Faculty Senate do, and why should adjunct faculty care? In this episode of The Adjunct Files, John and Maggie sit down with Dr. Derek Lura, President of the FGCU Faculty Senate, for a candid conversation about shared governance, university decision-making, and the evolving role of adjunct faculty within the institution.
The discussion explores FGCU's historic decision to become the first university in Florida's State University System to include adjunct faculty senators in its shared governance model. Dr. Lura shares his perspective on faculty representation, communication across the university, the challenges and opportunities facing higher education, and why adjunct faculty play a critical role in FGCU's future. Whether you're curious about how decisions are made, how your voice can be heard, or how to become more connected to the university community, this episode offers an insightful look behind the scenes of leadership at FGCU.
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/
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, adjunct 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.
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Adjunct Files.
John, how are you?
It's the summer of doing well.
We have a great guest.
We do.
Yes.
He knows how to organize.
Let me tell you, Dr. Derek Lura is the Faculty Senate President.
Thank you so much for being with us, Dr. Lura, during the summer.
Thanks for having me.
Glad to be here.
Yeah.
How long have you been here at FGCU and what's your position and then how did you ever get
involved in Faculty Senate?
I know you definitely weren't busy already.
We're all busy, right?
Exactly.
I'm here to FGCU in 2013 and I started as an assistant professor in bioengineering and
I'm still in bioengineering but I've worked my way up through the ranks so assistant to
associate the full and I think it got involved with Faculty Senate maybe eight years ago.
I don't remember exactly how long ago but then when B.J. decided to go into being an
out of unit member, he was no longer as well as serve as the Senate Vice President and
so we knew we had some conversations and they thought that might be a good fit for the position
and so I put my name in the hat and kind of worked out.
I'd say, yeah.
I like doing it.
You know, it's a nice way to represent the faculty and to advocate for things that we
think are important.
Exactly.
So, yeah.
And so after the end of that, you know, I talked with Lindsay and decided I wanted to
try my hand at being president.
And, you know, I think it's going pretty well so far.
I think so.
He's very level headed.
Very much so.
Yeah.
Which I appreciate because...
Faculty, you're passionate.
They can be and it's like hurting cat bit.
Would you say?
Yeah.
I'm going to always start with the assumption that there's a good chance that I'm wrong
about something, right?
So I never like to assume that the decision that I've made or the decision that I think
is correct is right.
And I think that that helps because then when someone has an objection to something,
you're more likely to say, oh, okay, well, what is your perspective on that?
Like, why do you think this is a bad idea?
And that leads to, I think, a better, a more constructive discussion than, you know, if
you assume you're right about something, then you're assuming that everyone else is wrong,
right?
Yeah.
So that's the way I like to start from at least if we can.
Was it always your goal?
Do you be president of faculty, someone present?
Oh, no.
No.
And I started here in 2013, if I wanted to be faculty and president, that's a never,
like, no, there's nowhere on my radar at all, right?
Like I don't have any interest in that.
So what changed?
What was that shift?
Well, as I get to learn more about what was happening across the institution, right,
things that I saw that were happening that, you know, oh, maybe I don't really disagree
with that or what is the reason for this decision being made and then the potential to advocate
for things that I think are important for the institution and for our students, different
things that you guys had, the adjunct faculty that we just had elected to serve.
Which we'll talk about.
That's what we're sure we'll talk about.
Yeah.
But, you know, that's just one of the issues where, you know, hey, why aren't we doing
this, right?
What is the reason that there is not a, I mean, we have the staff advisory council,
right?
We have the faculty senate, we have these mechanisms for people to share and provide
their input on issues.
You know, and John, I think you had the idea, well, why don't we have more involvement
of the adjunct faculty?
And you know, as we talked about that, we just couldn't find a reason for why not, right?
Right.
And if you can't find a reason why not, then you can kind of assume that the counter positive
is true, right?
That this is something you should be doing.
Yeah.
And if it's not, we'll find out.
Well, and we will.
But I think we've got two really good senators for this fall.
Oh, yeah.
I think that, no, I was really excited to see the slate of candidates that came out that
were interested in being on the faculty senate from the adjunct faculty.
Do we have six or seven?
I can't remember, but it was quite a few.
Yeah.
And all people that you know, it's like, oh man, these are great people.
Yeah.
I think they're really going to contribute to the discussion.
And they're going to help to facilitate communication to an audience that maybe doesn't feel like
they're getting communicated to as frequently as they should.
Right.
And that's one of the main roles of faculty senate is to serve as a, you know, a channel
for effective communication.
Great.
And that is one of the areas I think that some people might be a little confused as to
how an organization like university works.
So many adjunct faculty might hear the term of shared governance, but not fully understand
how that actually happens.
How would you explain the role of faculty senate and why it matters from day to day
life at a university?
Yeah.
I mean, faculty senate serves a lot of different roles.
One of the main things that is really important for faculty is the curriculum.
And so we have a set of teams both in the units and then across the entire university
that are responsible for viewing changes to the curriculum, changes to curse warning outcomes,
which courses are in which programs, which programs could approve.
And there's a process that has to go through for those changes to kind of get codified.
And the faculty kind of have ownership of that process.
And so faculty senate participates in that.
The whole senate doesn't typically get involved in kind of the details of the day to day
for that.
But if there's a complex or there's concern, there's always the opportunity to elevate
that, right, and to have a larger discussion.
And then there's also things like the calendar, which the faculty is very involved in.
And really the majority of it is just communication of these are the different things that are
happening across campus.
And we're telling you about these now, so we can get your feedback.
And then that becomes a process to provide information to cabinet, to the president,
to the provost, to the decision makers.
And the board of trustees, you're on the board of trustees.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, as a faculty senate president, you know, I serve on the trustees.
You have a vote.
I have a vote.
Yeah.
No, it's a it's a big board.
So I'm pretty firmly convinced that I could vote no one, everything.
And it would make a huge difference.
But it still counts.
You know, it's I think it's a bog to a certain extent.
And I'm of the opinion that if everyone is always voting yes on everything, your process
is inefficient, right?
Because if yes is the obvious answer, you didn't really need to have a debate.
All right.
And if you didn't need to have a debate, you're not making a decision.
You're just you're saying that this is the right answer, right?
Well, okay, if everyone says yes, then it's the right answer.
No one is assuming that they're wrong in that situation, right?
Right.
No one is assuming that they're wrong.
Are you really testing the hypothesis of what you are?
You're bringing more.
Such a scientist.
This is good.
No, that's good.
But you see my point.
Yeah, absolutely.
If the answer is yes, you don't need to have a deliberation about it, right?
So if it's, you know, we don't need to vote on what one plus one is.
It's two.
We all agree that it's two because we've taken basic arithmetic.
We know that this is a verifiable fact.
There's no reason to vote on that, right?
So there's kind of that level of things.
But there's one answer here.
We know that the answer is, or we all agree that the answer, it doesn't need to be on
the agenda, right?
But there are things where, you know, what's better apples versus oranges?
That's more subjective, right?
It's not really an easy thing to compare the differences between those two.
And I think that's where you want to make a choice.
And that's where you want to have a more democratic process, where you're getting feedback from
everybody and say, okay, well, we if we have to pick between one, we're going to have
a better outcome than let's see what the majority of people think.
And then we can have a debate and be able to make the argument, says, don't play one
that's better than the other.
And that process will probably result in a better outcome than if you just have one
person pick, you know, A versus B. And so that's where I think, you know, faculty
senate is really important is bringing in that deliver the process on those decisions
that don't have a clear answer.
And are those faculty senate meetings open for any faculty member?
So anyone can attend them.
They're open meetings.
Anyone can attend faculty.
Not everyone gets to vote.
And if there is a discussion, then the faculty senators are the first that kind of get to
participate in that discussion.
And then guests are invited to participate if there's time after the discussion and each
agenda item has a certain amount of time.
So we typically give 15 minutes for each item that is on the agenda.
And then if we need to, we will extend time and we do frequently extend time for agenda
items.
You know, we also say sometimes that we have 10 things on the agenda.
You know, we've extended time twice already.
We need to move on.
And so there is some potential for, you know, someone's opinion did not get presented.
But most of the time everyone gets to talk.
Adjuncts if you're ever on campus on Fridays.
Yeah.
Stop by the meeting.
Every other Friday.
So again, we can look on the faculty senate.
Right.
That's right for the meeting dates.
And we're revising some of those things now.
But you know, come in and have a bagel.
They have food.
They have food.
And it's usually a good group.
I have been going the last year or so.
Because we haven't had a faculty representation up until now.
And so just to kind of see what's going on, be kind of that liaison.
Is that what kind of initiated that conversation with Dr. Laura to have adjunct representation?
Because I think there's some other institutions outside of the state of Florida.
Outside of the state of Florida.
Outside of the state of Florida.
That have adjuncts and letters.
But how did you two kind of have that dialogue?
Because I know that faculty are passionate.
They have.
And you all have a lot of control over things.
So how did that?
So when Dr. Rhodes, Lindsey Rhodes, was president, I had talked to her about it at that time.
Because I had seen the fact that in my opinion, we were kind of on the margins in terms of
input.
Okay.
We might get things communicated to us, but not necessarily any feedback loop the other
way.
And so I had brought up and I didn't want to rock the boat too much.
Believe it or not.
What?
Not at first.
No.
And we had talked, we never got anywhere exactly.
She had, she didn't want to have another standing report.
Which I totally, yeah.
There's enough of that already.
And so I said, that's fine.
But she had thought maybe in some subcommittees, we could include some adjunct faculty in
some of those.
But that's about where it ended.
And then Dr. Laura was elected.
You were the vice president.
I was the vice president.
Yeah.
Which is a great transition.
And then I don't know.
We just started talking and I had brought it up again.
But I think there's something to be said that we needed a voice somewhere.
No, I think, you know, so the fact that the adjunct faculty is a large constituency or
a large VCU, right?
And I mean, I think from, somewhat from a political standpoint, it's valuable, at least
from my perspective, for faculty senate to represent those adjunct faculty.
Because then it helps us to say like, look, when we're saying something, we're making
a recommendation.
We're speaking for all of the faculty.
Correct.
Including the adjunct faculty.
And we've got their feedback on this issue.
And so if I'm meeting with the president of the provost and, you know, and I've heard
from the adjunct faculty, I can say that, you know, they agree or they disagree with
this thing that we're suggesting that you do or don't do.
And without them in the room and part of that conversation, I wouldn't feel comfortable
saying that this is something that the adjunct faculty support or don't support.
Right.
We're teaching about 20% of the courses in a given year.
And so that's, you know, it's a significant portion.
I mean, we just got the numbers.
20% of gateway courses are taught by adjunct faculty.
That's not even including all the upper levels.
No.
Yeah.
And those are critical classes for our performance-based metrics, right?
Right.
So if you want to do something that's going to change, you know, how those courses operate
from a curricular standpoint, you know, we should have people in the, in that conversation.
And then again, I'll go back to my previous conversation is that, you know, I could be
wrong about that.
And then, you know, maybe this is a mistake, but we'll find out.
Find out, right.
Yeah.
It's not irreversible.
No, it's not.
It's, it's, it's always a little bit harder to undo something than it is to do it, which
is why we tend to have these kind of creep and things like that.
But it is the same amount legislatively effort to undo it as it is to do it.
Right.
It's just there's tend to be less motivation for people to take things away than there
is to add things.
Right.
So if it ends up being an actual problem, then we can discuss that.
I don't think so.
I don't think it will be.
No, especially with the two that we have.
At least to start out, we've got some great adjunct senators.
So we have become now the first in the state university system to have adjunct faculty
senators in the shared governance model.
Derek, it wouldn't have happened if without your leadership, I will tell you that and
not to blame you for it.
I tried to do that, but you were open to the idea and you did propose it and you did do
a poll and saw there was at least enough support for the idea.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I'm willing to take the blame or the credit if you will want to ascribe
that to me.
Although I'm also willing to suggest that, you know, look, it's not my, it would have
happened.
I think it could have happened without me.
I don't think there's anything special about me that facilitated this to happen.
A similar person under similar circumstances would have behaved similarly.
Potentially.
Potentially.
And if not, then we got to go back to the idea of if they wouldn't have, then, you
know, what's wrong with me.
But no, I think it makes sense.
I think it makes sense that for the institution, I think it makes sense for the adjunct faculty
to have the representation.
And I don't think it's a small change.
I don't think it's as ground earth shattering, right?
It's going to be, you know, it's two individuals that can't like you on the board of trustees.
Yeah.
They're on the faculty Senate.
They cannot really change the outcome.
How many senators are there?
I think we'll have 43.
With these two new additions?
With these two new ones.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So, yeah.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, you know, it's a relatively small percentage from the standpoint of what
does faculty Senate actually do?
Right?
Most of what we're doing is making recommendations.
Right.
And I think for those recommendations to carry weight, there has to be a broad set of,
instead of inputs to those conversations.
So, we kind of understand what the pros and cons of different changes are.
We're consistently concused of, oh, well, you forgot to include feedback from such and
such a group.
Oh, really?
I mean, you'll maybe it's nursing or maybe it's engineering or maybe it's, you know,
it's a discipline inside of one of the units that maybe does not have a senator who's present.
It's like, okay, well, we do our best to try and get input from everybody.
And even before we had adjunct faculty in faculty Senate, we still wanted their input.
Right.
And one of the reasons that, you know, we try and meet on a somewhat regular basis to discuss
things that are important to adjunct faculty.
Right.
The two of us have met monthly for a while.
Yeah.
I think we skipped a couple of months.
We have no.
We try to.
We try to.
We try to.
We try to.
The summer is the summer.
Yeah.
Well, this could be a meeting, right?
Let's give you a meeting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we have an institutional or an institutionalized set of communications or a channel that exists.
So how do you see adjunct faculty's role in the University of Life?
Here at FGCU, hypothetically, over the next.
Like more broadly or faculty Senate specifically?
We'll do both.
Five years.
We'll start in faculty Senate and then broadly.
Because I'm sure a lot of the change in discussions you all will be having now will come to fruition
by then.
Yeah.
I mean, so in faculty Senate, I see it more along the lines of how you look.
Here's an agenda item, right?
We're going to.
Let's take the no credit policy, right?
As an example, which is one that was discussed last year in faculty Senate.
Could you explain that a little bit?
So that was a policy that the University was considering to have certain classes, primarily
gateway classes, where if the students didn't do well in those classes, they could choose
or there was a process that automatically dictated that they would just not get credit
for those classes and it wouldn't impact their GPA.
That policy ultimately has not been enacted at the institution.
So just to be clear to all our listeners, this is not a policy that is going to currently
impact any students and I don't know what the long term of the mutation of that was,
but there was a large discussion and a lot of faculty thinking, well, this is going to
lead to grade inflation with the students because now we're getting rid of a bunch of
those forming grades and then kind of another group of faculty said, well, this is good
for students because it's going to help us to retain more students because those ones
that maybe would have dropped out will maybe stick around for the second, third year and
they'll do better because they've matured as the function of being older and having more
experience.
It's kind of like having a mulligan.
Yeah, it's kind of like having a mulligan.
Do you know what that is?
You don't know what a mulligan is?
It's a golf term for like, oops.
Oh.
Yeah, which I don't think is something they actually use if you play golf professionally.
Like that's not a real thing.
I do not play golf.
This is like, you know, I'm not good at golf.
I'm not good at golf.
I like golf, but I'm not good at it and I don't play very often.
But it's for people like me who just, you know, they want to do over.
And we actually have had this discussion several times, you know, throughout the course
of the time I've been in Faculty Senate more broadly.
And this policy with a slight bit of finagling has come up a couple of times.
And it never quite makes it past the finish line to being adopted.
And I think for good reasons.
Say we're bringing a policy like that to Faculty Senate, right?
We're bringing that for discussion because when it's being considered by the administration
or is it something that we think is appropriate or some combination thereof?
And if there are people who just want to say like, you know, oh, this is a bad idea for
these reasons.
Well, the edge, in fact, I think, again, have a perspective where this is a bad idea for
reasons that maybe the instructors and the regular professors and the staff, the administrators,
are not necessarily seeing, right?
So, you know, oh, this is going to be bad because of, you know, the way the scheduling
occurs in the evening, and it's not going to work for evening classes and, you know,
a lot of the adjunct faculty teach evening classes.
And so again, you have that perspective of assuming that maybe your assumptions are not
good, right?
And having those people there helps to facilitate that discussion.
And so that's one of the reasons why I think it's important to have them at the table.
Absolutely.
And I think too, you all, even before this became official, when we implemented Simple
Syllabus, I feel like there's a lot of communication because 45 days in advance.
Some adjuncts don't even know if they're teaching until three days before the semester starts.
Right.
We're still working out some of those kinks, I think.
But at least I was there and...
Right.
But if you weren't.
Well, but I even noticed like Mary and City and others who were involved in that process
started thinking through.
And I think there's been coming awareness of this group over the last few years.
You've got a contingent group of hundreds of people that are, it thinks impact them
differently.
Yeah.
So...
And I think there's also the communication aspect of that too, right?
Where you feel like things are being done to you.
Well, we agree.
Things are being done to you.
Yeah.
That's why I know.
That's right.
Well, like the Simple Syllabus in the 45 day, you know, that was something that kind of
flows down from things that passed at the Board of Governors, right?
Right.
Regulations around where you're allowed to do.
So it's not like the University decided that, oh, we have to do this for our sake.
We have to do it to comply with the regulations.
Right.
So even if we don't like it, and there are, I think there are good things about Simple
Syllabus and there's good things about having more advanced notice for the students, you
know, but it takes effort and time and you have limited amounts of effort.
Right.
And you don't always...
Yeah.
Well, I didn't get that email because I'm not working there right now.
So when I log back in in six months, when I'm re-hired to teach, I'll get through my
thousands of emails and figure out what's going on.
Yeah, I know that can happen.
That's a separate issue that probably we should talk more about.
We'll add it to the list.
We've been asking the question of, you know, when should faculty, adjunct faculty included,
right?
Get and lose access to things like their email and their accounts, where currently if a faculty
goes on leave for some reason, like like medical leave, right, they lose access to email.
It's like, okay, well, that's our primary medication.
Right.
You know, I get that you don't want people to work while they're on medical leave, but
you're going to make a lot of people jump through a lot of hoops to maintain a lot of
communication with that person.
That and also students don't know.
And if they are asking for a letter of recommendation to somebody who's not...
Yeah.
And then they think that the faculty member is being totally unresponsive.
Or it'll say if you go to email them, because I have this a lot with grad assistants who
teach for us and they don't teach in summer, it's like this email is no longer affiliated.
And then I'm like, what happened to them?
I thought they're teaching my class in the fall and is like, oh, no, they're just not
official until even the 22nd.
Those are the types of things that do come up and I think get solved through the Senate
process.
At least made aware to the administration that maybe we need to figure this out.
Yeah.
Well, then sometimes it's just, you know, that's something we want to do, but we can't for
XY and Z reasons.
Right.
But at least then we are communicated back.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now we understand why it's not happening and I can communicate that it's not that we don't
want to, but because of state law, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or cost.
Or it's always a concern, right?
Or all right.
I think the second half of your question though, how do we, the perspective on adjunct faculty
more broadly?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The next five to 10 years.
Yeah.
So right now, I mean, you just brought up budget and we know right now adjuncts are teaching
20% of just the lower level gateway courses.
Yeah.
So where do you see them in their role in five to 10 years?
Long term, you know, I think I think I think that's actually bringing them into the institution.
And that value comes in two ways.
One of them, I think is great.
One of them makes me not so great.
Right.
So I think the one that is great is they have a much more diverse set of experiences than
your typical academic faculty like myself who went straight from graduate school to,
you know, teaching an institution of higher education.
I did, you know, other things kind of here and there outside of that, but, you know,
never had a long term career outside of academia.
Whereas most of our adjunct faculty, they do have careers outside of, you know, their,
their graduate work and their academic work.
And so they bring that experience to the institution and to the students, which I think
is extremely valuable from a, just a benefit standpoint.
But the other half of value is cost, right?
And then the, a lot of the value that the adjunct faculty bring is that they bring us
that great experience at a very low cost, which is great for our students because it helps
save money for the institution.
But I don't know that it's necessarily great for all of the adjunct faculty.
For some of the adjunct faculty, you know, it matters less, right?
They don't necessarily need the money.
Right.
They like having something in exchange for their effort and, you know, it's, you know,
they can use it for vacations or whatever.
But I think we also have a population of adjunct faculty that do need the money.
Right.
I would like to, you know, not expand the total number of adjunct faculty at FGCU, at least
in areas where people are doing this because they need money or because they want a career
in academia, right?
If you want a career in academia, I don't think adjunct faculty is the best way forward
for you, right?
Interesting.
Well, there's no path.
Right.
Right.
Now, it might be good on your CV, your resume.
That's something you just like experience.
But not necessarily for here.
And so it could be that you could then just say, hey, I've taught these courses and you
apply for a full-time position elsewhere.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I don't think it's good for the institution to just rely on adjunct faculty to, to, to
balance the budget.
Yeah.
And that's my standpoint, right?
Is that I think that, look, you want to have a certain percentage of adjunct faculty
because can you have people in the area that have the expertise and bringing them in and
keeping them engaged with the institution is extremely valuable, right?
But then you're getting a certain number of instructors, you know, whose core mission
is really just teaching classes and they're really good at teaching the classes that they
teach, right?
And then you have the professor or a line, people who are, you know, have a mixture of
teaching and research, right?
Or they're, you know, they're trying at least to stay kind of at the cutting edge of whatever
it is, the area that they're working in.
And they're helping to bring that kind of academic research piece back to the students.
You know, and there's a continuum there, right?
You know, there's adjunct faculty that participate in research and there's instructors that participate
in research.
And there is the faculty that are really, really engaged in the scholarship of teaching,
right?
And so I don't want to say that just because you're a professor, you know, you should
be primarily focused on research or just because you're an instructor means you should
only focus on teaching, right?
But there are roles, I think for a reason and, you know, I see an adjunct faculty member
teaching four classes, you know, a semester, I'm like, you should be an instructor, right?
Right.
Well, they don't let us.
But then that comes back to that's not on them, right?
So then how do you have those conversations with like the units, the departments, I don't
even know how you pick which areas get which lines and if you have a consistent need for
faculty in a specific area, right?
You should not be filling that with that.
Right.
Especially if you're having to really work to try and find those adjunct faculty, right?
Mm hmm.
Because I worry that then that bleeds you more towards the, you know, the people who are
not necessarily looking to do this because they have the expertise and they have the
time and you're pushing people who are maybe, you know, they're an instructor at FSW and
they're coming, they're adjuncting because they can make a little bit of extra money
and they're not necessarily being paid enough at FSW as an instructor.
And so they're picking up these extra time and, you know, I believe that everyone has
a certain amount of time that they can dedicate to something and that the more full your plate
is the less well of a job you do at each other.
Right.
And at the same time, I think, I don't see adjunct faculty going away here.
No, I mean, again, I think they're, they're, they're, and I don't know, I'm not trying
to say that there's a who's who that people can't do the things they want to do or that
an adjunct faculty should never be allowed to teach more than three classes a semester.
Well, but HR will not allow it because then it kind of gets pulled on that full time.
And then all of a sudden is like, yeah, that's not.
Then the state's like, yeah.
Yeah.
So three is the max.
Okay.
But again, I think my point, you know, is that you, we should have as an institution,
we should know which classes should be taught by which types of faculty, right?
And that we should try and predict what the demand is and we should try and make sure
we have an appropriate representation of instructors and professor oral faculty and adjunct faculty
to meet those needs, right?
Yeah.
Is that a conversation being had like at the upper levels?
It's a conversation that's being had constantly, right?
I mean, part of it is budget, right?
Right.
If you can put in, but part of it is just like, you know, we lost a person in this department.
We have to hire a new person.
You know, that's going to take a year, a year and a half to go through the process of hiring
a new faculty member.
And we need an adjunct faculty or a temporary faculty member to fill in either position.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you know, things change and things happen last minute and you have to find a way of
making that manage it.
But I think we are running a little too lean at FGCU in terms of we don't have a lot of
extra bandwidth to allow for, you know, we need an extra section of this or whatever
it is.
And part of that is, you know, a budgetary constraint.
Yep.
Right.
I think that we could do a little bit better job of making sure that we have enough bandwidth
that we're not scrambling quite as much as we do.
That's a whole conversation there.
I think, Derek, I don't know.
How to do that.
I do see across the institution in my little perspective, which isn't much.
I feel like everybody's doing at least two jobs.
Yeah.
For the price of one.
And that's, you know, staff who are also adjuncts and others who like the department
shrunk.
And now we have to spread it a little thin and everybody's on overloads.
Almost everybody's doing more than.
And I don't know how we get to a place of resilience and sustainability from that starting
point.
Yeah.
Well, so one of the things that I'm trying to accomplish at Faculty Senate is try and
say, okay, what are our processes?
Can we take what we're doing and we can we make it just easier for everybody by changing
how we're doing things to make them more efficient?
So, you know, as an example, one of the things that we're trying to implement right now is
that we currently have a faculty Senate website and we have a faculty Senate teams.
Can we set it up a SharePoint site, which automatically updates based off when things
are posted to the teams?
So, now we don't have an extra website we have to maintain, right?
And that's just less effort overall.
Can we try and structure and a lot of the units already do this, right?
But they have a curriculum team and then the chair of that unit level curriculum team serves
on the university curriculum team.
If you have a structure like that, you don't need to essentially elect another representative
because they're already kind of, there's an institutional tie there, right?
Can we institutionalize some of these kind of more informal or ad hoc positions so that
way we're not spending time to try and re-up, you know, every time we need to do something,
you know, so if we can better define some of the processes, we can make those things better.
Then also advocating for things like, you know, can we make sure that people have access to
their email?
I don't know.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I don't know if the percentages are going to change anytime soon in terms
of how many adjuncts we have.
But I think what I'm hoping is that the adjuncts we do have are better supported, better connected,
better communicated with and from, that makes sense, and feel like more part of the community
overall.
And I think that will help the bottom line of student success.
Yeah.
And I 100% agree, you know, one of the things that I would like to see our adjunct get more
involved is all the things on campus that are not their classes, right?
So, you know, is it coming to basketball games, going to, you know, an orchestra, is it mentoring
students on kind of a more one-on-one basis, you know, in an area of interest that are
getting involved in research, right?
Or maybe part of the IRB, the broccoli road band.
That's like way which one?
Not institutional review board, but yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But things like that, right?
Helping to develop a sense of community.
Because I see the adjunct faculty as they are members of the community first and then
their faculty, maybe first and second, it's not the best way.
Maybe an A, B, right?
Like they're primary.
Yeah.
You know, they're here.
They're members of the community.
They have a lot of times a lot of connections outside of the institution, right?
Whereas people like me, I have a very strong connection to the institution and lose her
ties to the community because I'm here all the time.
Yes, you are.
But if you're not here all the time, you're inherently somewhere else.
And so you have a strong tie with that other place that you're coming from, whether it's
a business like Arthrex or Lee Health or where it is they're coming in from.
Even just, you know, their retirement community where they have connections with people that
students should be networking with, right?
You know, so taking more of our students out in the community and bringing more of the
community into FGCU, you know, kind of going for that FGCU effect, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
Any other suggestions you would have on how to connect the sometimes disconnected or the
feeling of disconnection that adjunct faculty might have to an institution?
Any other suggestions you can think of?
Especially those who come in to teach those night classes, exclusively online.
Yeah.
I would say look for the things that you like, right?
Okay.
You know, you like basketball, come to a basketball game, right?
You like tennis, you like hockey, you like golf, you like, you know, you like forensic
sciences, right?
You know, go to those areas that are of high affinity to you.
They're probably, and again, you probably are engaged with those things outside of FGCU.
Try and find a way to make a connection between things you really enjoy and FGCU.
Because I'm reasonably confident that that thing that you're really passionate about
has some presence here on campus and you could elevate the presence of that thing.
You know, maybe it's accounting, right?
Maybe it's engineering, maybe it's, you know, violin, right?
Well, we have all those things here, right?
Right.
So if you're really into violin, you know, go to the concerts or, you know, find a violin
major and, you know, maybe you don't know how to play violin, you can't teach them how
to play violin, but you can find that student and you can bring them to, you know, your
community to play, to get experience, right?
And, you know, that's got to be a huge value to that student.
Yeah.
And it's, you know, even if it is something that you like and that you enjoy and it turns
out, well, that is going to be positive, reinforcement, we can do it again.
And that's where we want, right?
Good things to lead to good times to lead to more good things, right?
Right.
So I love that.
How do you, do you have any advice on adjuncts who want to get more involved in their unit
or department level?
Because there are those low stakes things like going to the games, coming to the faculty
senate meetings just to observe and you have the end of your thing, but at the smaller
level, do you have any advice?
My advice is, you know, people will engage as much as you engage with them.
So, you know, if you're not being invited to your department meeting, it's probably not
because they don't want you there.
It's probably because they assume you don't want to come, right?
Or they're, you're trying to be mindful of the fact that, you know, you're not getting
paid for anything.
You're not getting paid.
Right.
So if you want to go, just, you know, tell your supervisor, your other faculty member,
it's going to, hey, I'd like to, I'd like to participate in this discussion.
I'd like to be there.
I'm sure, you know, or at least I'm highly confident.
And I want to say I'm sure that's taking it back to our previous discussion, but I'm
confident that they would be glad to have you there.
Just try it out.
You know, if you want, if you want, you don't have to.
If you have the time in your interest.
But if you want, connect with your department, just to a department chair or somebody else
and just say, hey, there's a very high probability to go to the department meeting and we board
out in your mind, you never go again.
Yeah.
But, again, you may also go and find out, like, you know, other having discussion about
what equipment do we purchase for the labs?
And, you know, I've worked with, you know, this equipment or this manufacturer or the
supplier, whatever, and then your feedback is really valuable.
And maybe, you know, because you were in place at that, you enjoyed going to that meeting.
Yeah.
You want to go again, right?
So, again, the thing I had said previously, right?
You know, if you want, if you think you want to try something, try it.
If you're bored, I guarantee there is something that you can do here at FGCU that will be
of benefit to yourself or the students of the community, right?
There's plenty of work to go around.
Yeah.
That is very true.
And we love it when people volunteer to do word for free.
Oh, of course.
If you could speak directly to every adjunct faculty member here, which, like, I know,
only like 500 or 350, I don't need, we don't even know at times.
I don't know, that's how it is.
We're working on it.
It's a moving number.
I think it was 430 last year that were active sometime during the year.
So it's more than that, probably.
Yeah.
But it's always a moving number.
What would you want them to know about their value, their voice, and their place here?
And the first thing I would say is thank you, right?
I think the vast majority of our adjunct faculty are providing a great value to our institution.
And I think for the most part, they're probably not as compensated as well as they should
be.
But so thank you for participating and being engaged, right?
And I don't want to any of the things I'm saying to say, like, you should do more.
What I'm trying to say is, like, if you want to do more, right?
Or if you have the time, we appreciate all the things that you do.
And we're always willing to take more.
And if you feel like you're not being appreciated or you're not getting the support you need,
how does it know?
Right?
Like, come to me, come to your department chair, come to your dean, come to whoever,
and just come to your senators.
Come to your senators and just tell us what the problems are.
I'm not saying that we can fix it.
But if we don't know where the problems are or how well distributed the problems are,
right?
It makes it hard for us to solve them.
So if everyone is really upset about something, it's going to get solved much more quickly
than one person being upset about something.
So, and I do think Emily and Jessica, our two senators, have talked about having kind
of like a office hours or a time.
Yeah, or like coffee hour, drop in, drop in, tell us how things are going.
We will definitely publish those in the future so that there is more of this going on.
Yeah, if you can't make it on Fridays, right?
Yeah.
You know, and I would say even if you want to come to Faculty Senate, don't feel like
you have to come for the whole thing, right?
You can come at nine o'clock, have a bagel and then leave at nine fifteen before the
actual meeting even starts.
But you could use that time to have a coffee and to talk to your senator and to say, oh,
hey, I saw this thing is on the agenda later.
I don't want to say over the whole meeting, but, you know, can you follow up with me afterwards?
Yeah.
Or can you make sure that this point gets set?
And that is as valuable as anything else, right?
Because you still have that communication piece that we're really relying on Faculty
Senate for.
And also to you all post your minutes to the website as well, right?
We do.
And the agendas.
Yeah.
If you can't make it, but every other Friday, all that information will be there.
And we're trying to find ways of making that information a little bit easier to access
so that way, you know, people want to put it on their calendars.
They can just hit a button when it's on their calendar.
And that, you know, the agendas and things like that are kind of tied with that.
So that way you don't have to remember, oh, I got to go to the Faculty Senate website and
I got to come this button and I click on this button and I click on this button and I click
this button.
I don't want to figure that out yet.
Not right.
Okay.
I'll reach out.
If you sack models, they're paid after Faculty Senate.
So once I see updates, I'm like, how did you do this?
Well, part of this is that, you know, we have the 88 compliance thing.
Yes.
So we have to move a lot of things off of the website.
And so we're moving it to our SharePoint site, which is behind the single sign on, which
hopefully, which is the consideration I had thought about, but hopefully won't be a concern
for adjunct faculty trying to get into their, especially if they don't have that.
Yeah.
That's an email that's in their barrier.
That's it.
So that's one thing that we should probably consider.
But since they're behind single sign on, then there's less scrutiny of 88 compliance
with some of those.
Most of our agendas and things like that, they're, they're 88 compliant from a qualitative
standpoint.
But every once in a while, there's a table or there's a image that doesn't have the
right thing.
And so just going through and making sure that they're all 80 compliant is another thing
that we don't want to have to do.
Especially in retrospect for the years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But that being said, I do want as much of our documents as possible, at least moving forward
to be 80 compliant, but they need to be 80 compliant as part of the design of the document.
Correct.
Thank you so much for your time.
This has been great.
Yeah.
We've been in there hours.
We've been sitting chat.
We could.
But maybe not in here somewhere else.
Maybe we'll do like a year-end recap.
We'll bring the senators in and you in and we can talk about how it went the first year.
The president and our two senators and then just say, tell us how it's been going and
maybe maybe an extra microphone though.
We can get one.
Oh.
We've done it with like six people.
We've done it with six people.
They'll plug it.
He's going to audio jack here.
You're going to play in a jack.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It'll be good.
But thank you so much.
This is awesome.
And I know I learned a lot.
Yeah.
Good.
It's good.
But this coming year is rewarding for you as far as president, both at the Board of Trustees.
When you go to the Board of Governors, when you are dealing with actual Senate itself,
administration, you're like this.
You're in between a lot of different groups here.
Listen, we're going to have a good time this year.
You know why?
Because if you're not having a good time, you're not doing it right.
Fair enough.
Right.
You're doing class.
You're not enjoying yourself.
Students are enjoying it.
Right.
I say that every day.
Like if you're miserable, change something because I'm sure the students are awesome.
Right.
If you have to pull up chat GPT and have it give you suggestions, right?
Yes.
I find it's very good just to bounce ideas off of the internet.
I don't like most of the things it gives back to me, but it still makes me think.
It makes me think from there.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Well, this is great.
I think it's a valuable podcast for our adjuncts to absorb.
Absolutely.
And we hope to hear from you all.
Thank you, Dr. Laura, President Laura.
Yeah.
Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, you all.
I got it on my favorites and my favorites.
Awesome.
Excellent.
Thank you for that.
And we'll talk to you next time.
Bye, y'all.
Bye.
Bye.
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Bye.
Buffett's
Parent leaving page blog at end of mission.
Okay.
Thank you.
