The Classroom Is the Mission

In this episode of The Adjunct Files, John and Maggie welcome Dr. Clay Motley, FGCU's new Associate Provost for Faculty Success and Academic Resources. Dr. Motley discusses his new role, his vision for supporting faculty across their professional lifecycle, and why the classroom remains "the most sacred space" at the university. The conversation explores how adjunct faculty contribute to FGCU's mission, the challenges of onboarding and supporting instructors, and the importance of creating stronger connections between adjunct faculty and their departments.

The discussion also looks toward the future of higher education, including the growing role of Canvas, digital learning, artificial intelligence, and professional development. Dr. Motley shares his thoughts on why adjunct faculty representation in Faculty Senate matters, how shared governance benefits the university, and why the voices of those teaching nearly 20% of FGCU's courses deserve to be heard. Whether you're an adjunct faculty member, department leader, or simply interested in the future of teaching and learning, this conversation offers both practical insights and a hopeful vision for faculty success 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/

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, 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?

Doing great.

Although, it's a short time before the semester starts.

It is.

So, hold on, here we go.

I know, wrapping up, some would be planning for fall.

A lot of things happening.

Lots of change.

And talking about change, we've got someone who is going to be a master of change in so

many ways here.

Our guest, Dr. Clay Motley, he's held several roles here at FGCU.

But Clay, please introduce yourself.

Okay, I'm Clay Motley.

I am the Associate Provost for Faculty Success and Academic Resources.

I just started that June 1.

Congratulations.

What does that mean?

You know, you do whatever your boss tells you to do.

Well, that's true.

But duties as a sign.

But then really, I would say the two halves of it, one half is sort of the professional

life cycle of a faculty member in the sense of hiring the promotion and evaluations.

Kind of, you know, not doing them, of course, but really trying to make as good and robust

of a process as possible.

So going all the way to the emeritus process and, you know, how that's done, it's at the

end of someone's career.

So it's like the life cycle of a butterfly.

Right.

You know, Bill Reynolds in the Lucas Center, he reports to me, Dave Hager, Digital Learning

Sports.

So you're the boss of my boss.

Right.

So be on your best behavior, John.

So, you know, of course, the Lucas Center for Faculty Development, you know, so that

sort of career support, professional development, it could be classroom, scholarship, and

you know, all manner of things that the Lucas Center is connected with.

Digital learning, of course, you know, with the pedagogical support of, you know, primarily

Canvas, but not exclusively, both for in-person and asynchronous classes.

The other part is the academic resources, which is classroom space, salary for hiring

faculty, you know, really any thing that would be considered a resource space, time,

funding that goes to this sort of academic mission of the university.

Those are things that I, you know, don't control, but have, you know, really it's my

responsibility to be knowledgeable and watchful of those things and to work with decision-makers,

whether that's Provost, Deans, department chairs to kind of make sure that we're using our

resources as wisely as possible because they're not unlimited and use them in ways that are

focused on the, you know, the mission of the university, which ultimately is about, you know,

students and making sure students are retained and graduated and are smarter, wiser people when

they get their diploma. Yes, that is what we hope. That's all I got to do. That's it.

What are the other areas that report to you? So you said digital learning and the Lucas Center.

Digital learning, the Lucas Center, and then some staff in the Provost office. So really,

in some ways, there's not as many direct reports as maybe I've been used to working with.

It's really more focusing on, you know, I would say, you know, there's a lot of

meetings with, you know, what I would just consider academic peers, you know, folks that are involved

in these different things and kind of working with them to, you know, to achieve what we want

to achieve. There's not as many like direct reports on this. Very nice. Must be a nice change of face.

Right. I don't know. Well, we were talking earlier about his previous experience.

He said at one time he had 22 direct reports. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah.

From your perspective in this new role, which we're glad that you're in it. Thank you. Okay.

How do you see adjunct faculty fitting into the whole picture here? We do know, I think,

that about 20% of our courses are taught by adjunct faculty, whether they're staff, adjunct,

professionals in the field, and then come and teach in addition, or retired, or emeritus

professors that come back to adjunct. Where do you see the greatest opportunities for us

in those roles to contribute to the success of this university? Yeah. I mean, adjuncts are

so important, not just numerically, but also, I mean, if you think about the mission of the

university, really the classroom is the most sacred space. I mean, that's where the work of

the university goes on. And if you're a student sitting in a classroom that is, you're supposed

to be learning whatever the course material is, you don't necessarily know or care who that

person is that's teaching you what their status is. Right. You don't maybe know if they are a full

professor and some famous person in their field, or if they're someone that got a call

on Wednesday afternoon saying, this semester starts on Monday. Yeah. Can you can you be here

teaching on money? The mission is the same regardless of who that person is in front of the class,

or online, or whatever. And so, I think because of that, we have to do everything we can to ensure

that the person teaching that class, in this case, if we say that they're an adjunct,

has the appropriate preparation and kind of support. So, their ability to teach students

is as fully realized as possible.

I mean, you all know, I mean, there are some inherent barriers to that, because of sometimes the quick

turnaround between, oh, we need another section of this, or Dr. So-and-so just went on FMLA,

and then we need someone who might get pulled in at the last minute,

there's just certain barriers, but there are things we can do like having

candida shells to where if you're pulled in at the last minute, you're not trying to reinvent

everything right off the bat. It can say, hey, okay, you're going to be teaching composition too next

week. Here are some of the basics, 80% of it's done for you, and now you bring in your own

expertise and kind of point of view on the other 20%. And then just sometimes the communications

of how do you turn in a textbook order? Or is there a standard textbook for a particular course,

or do you get to choose? And if so, how do you do it? And turning in your syllabus, and now we

have simple syllabus. Which is good in a way, because a lot of it's set up, but again, there's a learning

curve. It's different when in the olden days when it's like my syllabus lived in a word document,

and the only thing I had to do was like upload it to canvas or email it to a chair or whatever.

Now there's another system that you have to deal with. Again, I think that does make it a little

easier because it's like 80% of your syllabus can be set, and then you just have to come in and

personalize a little bit. But in all the boilerplate stuff, you don't have to go and find and bring in.

But having as efficient of an onboarding as you can, I think is really important.

I would say the communication and really the invitation to be as much as possible,

given the limitations of the position, kind of seen as part of the endeavor of the department.

Because you're teaching a departmental class, the department owns it, and therefore you are

contributing in it. Whether that is a meeting, you don't have to always, maybe it wouldn't be

appropriate for an adjunct to vote on a promotion. But having them included as appropriate to

certain events and certain... Especially the social stuff, but also just the information issues.

I've really advocated, Dr. Matley, for at least once a semester, having just a Zoom or Teams meeting

for the department chair or someone in the department to just ask the adjuncts,

how you doing and what's going on and what do you need as far as support to just have at least

one semester just at their time, probably in the evening, just to have that. Because most,

I think, of our adjunct faculty are pretty well on the edges of the department in terms of a lot

of the other things that are going on. I'm happy. I'm not in the middle of a department meeting all

the time. There are benefits. There are real benefits to not being stuck in a lot of this stuff.

But even just updates. Here's the minutes from this afternoon's meeting. Let us know if you

have questions. This is kind of what's going on. It would be interesting. I mean, we could get

this information, but I don't think anyone ever has. But it would be very interesting to find out

how many adjuncts are repeat instructors. What's the longevity of someone? They come in and they're

teaching American national government and maybe they teach one section for a decade. We have plenty

like that. We have quite a few that have been here like 17 years. At least I'm hoping. I think

my teaching has improved every year I've been here. I'm hoping we have different reward mechanisms

in the future to keep and retain adjuncts. If someone were to be

involved in teaching a particular course for a long period of time, then there would be the

professional development improvement of their pedagogy. Sometimes when someone's pulled in at

the last minute or they're not connected to the department or they don't have the right preparation,

then sometimes the results in the classroom aren't what you want. If you have that stability,

then some of those risks aren't there. That's what we're hoping for.

What are some of the most effective ways universities can help adjuncts feel

both connected, valued, and supported? I think we've entered some of that.

Yeah, I think with the information, communication, the onboarding, the inclusion,

those are the main things. Is that something that,

Gwynette, I know your role is new, but is that something that you are collaborating with

Deans and chairs on just to have a more standard, like this is the bare minimum that everybody needs?

Not right now. Again, I've just started. It's fortunate actually that we're doing this

when I'm so new in this particular position. We'll interview you again in a year.

And hold you accountable for all those nice things you said. But I think this is good to help

keep this more on a front burner as some of these things are developing. I can tell you

that I've been on Deans Council for a long time and other leadership groups, and rarely is

that kind of communication and onboarding with adjuncts talked about.

And I'm not throwing anyone under the bus. I mean, as a form of a million things you have on here.

Everything's a priority. I'll just, from as a former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences,

personally, I never talked to chairs like, oh, what are you doing to help?

Onboard. When adjunct instructors came up, it was typically in

sometimes emergency situations, or we would monitor how much of a course was being taught by adjuncts,

because we would see that as a sign that maybe we needed to hire more faculty in that area.

I'll give you an example. I won't name the course, but there's an important gen ed course that

this is probably about three years old. Almost 70% of the seats were taught by adjuncts.

Yeah, and it's a large gen ed class. Because what was happening, there were some new

state mandates as far as gen ed, and so therefore there was increased demand.

But the department wasn't getting resources to hire new faculty, so they were forced to go

find people that could teach this class. A lot of the people were actually graduates of their

program, one of their master's programs, and they were working full time in the region.

And so they were like, I'll do it, but I'll do it if I can teach it online.

So they were forced to, we need to offer enough seats. This person won't or can't teach it in person,

so we're going to do it asynchronous. So you had almost 70% of the large,

we're talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of seats, were taught by adjuncts

often online, because these people were working all the time. And so again, that's not saying

that inherently an online class is bad, inherently an adjunct taught class is bad, but when you're

being forced to offer more seats, you're not given good resources.

And however, it takes a lot more work to teach well online.

It even takes a lot of work to teach well. I mean, and that is one of the issues is very few

higher education individuals have a degree in education. And so we come in as experts in our field,

but not in teaching. So as a dean, it was more, oh my god, we need another class here. Or

how many people, how many seats are being taught by adjuncts? And maybe like, okay, that helps me

argue to, as a dean, argue to the provost and say, this is why I need another faculty member in this.

Right. But there weren't a lot of, I would say, pedagogical conversations or system type

conversations of what's your process? Okay, you hire a lot of adjuncts during the year.

What's your process for onboarding, communicating, making sure they have the right information,

the right resources that honestly wasn't done by me? And I don't think it was done by, you know,

a lot of colleges. And it makes sense. I understand.

But I am your position. I know. I'm ready to have like, we know there are some best practices

that are being done here in different departments and different areas. I would hope to broaden across

the university. Well, one thing with this position being new, and then, you know, Billy Gunnell's,

you know, he was hired at the same time, which will be interviewing him on this podcast.

Yep. So he is associate provost, student success in academic innovation or something.

Yeah. Somewhere in that ballpark. So what these two new positions are doing is really

increasing the bandwidth of the provost's office. You know, so it's, you know, there's only so much

that a singular provost can do. Right. You know, and so, you know, often it's a victory to have time

to eat something in between classes. Right. And actually that was it Thursday. I was in a

teams meeting and I turned off my camera just so I could eat left over spaghetti. Because it was

like, if I don't eat right now, I won't eat until after five o'clock, you know, because I was like,

it's, I'm like, sorry, dude, it's turned off my camera. So it's even worse as the actual provost,

right? As far as time commends. And so these positions are not just, I would say, helping the

provost with some of the responsibilities, but also really growing the bandwidth and the capacity

for the provost's office to do things. And so I think the work you all are doing and the subject

of this podcast is something that the provost's office has probably had a harder time to focus on

because that bandwidth was reduced. Whereas now there with the two new positions, there's,

increased ability to look at, you know, adjuncts in gateway classes, adjuncts and online classes,

adjuncts just generally, and really encouraging colleges to get more deliberate in ways that

there hasn't really been the time or capacity to do that in the past. Makes sense.

So as we know, higher education is changing rapidly from technology and AI to enrollment trends,

workforce demands, all the fun things. What do you think adjunct faculty should be paying

attention to over the next five years? You know, one thing that comes to mind is the

growth of digital learning, you know, with all the different tools that are available in Canvas

and kind of in the Canvas constellation or whatever you want to call it. Because, you know, we have

a lot of full-time faculty that teach, you know, all the time that aren't up to speed

necessarily where they could be when someone comes to digital learning in Canvas. And,

and, you know, increasingly most of the course lives in Canvas. Yeah. You know, it like used to

be back when I taught more, you know, Canvas was I took, you know, I took role in Canvas.

I uploaded some course materials. Occasionally there was some, you know, an exam or something,

but it was, it was really minimal. It was just sort of like, it really, I mostly used it for

grade book and attendance. Right. Now it's about it. Now I think students expect so much more to live,

you know, the grading, the, you know, video, supplemental instruction, all the assignments,

everything, everything set completely up by day one. So when they get on there, the whole course is

kind of already this, this well-oiled machine, certain percentage of faculty, whether they're

adjunct or full-time struggle with keeping up with that, because that's not how they themselves

learned. That's not how they were taught, you know, if they were ever taught to teach.

It's like a whole other aspect of teaching. Yeah. It's a completely different

environment, medium of teaching that is really great, but it's something that we're not typically

native to. And so it takes a lot of professional development to, and times sometimes working with

digital learning to kind of have your course designed in a way. So in one sense, it's on the

department, as I mentioned earlier, to maybe do some of that, that canvas development for courses

where adjuncts typically teach. So they're not having to reinvent everything. But also, I think

there's a little bit of, of responsibility on the part of the adjunct instructor to sort of be

familiar with how those things, what they are, how they're changing, because it really, you know,

because it's tech-based, it changes fairly quickly. And so what you maybe, if you taught that class

two years ago and you're teaching it now, there may be a whole different set of things. What is

lockdown browser? What is a plus plus attendance? Oh, it's a QR code, a code, and I can enter it too.

That was new to everybody last fall. I know. It's actually less than a year that we've been

using that, because I had people contacting the Dean's office saying, well, how do you want me

to take attendance? I'm like in the tab. And then they were like, no, like that was brand new for

everyone, adjuncts are not. And so it's constantly evolving. So I think making sure that they're up

to speed on that. And then with AI, I think it is in two months from now, it'll be different.

Yeah. And so students use it a little bit. How in the world, it's so hard to keep up.

I will say this. This is a conversation I have pretty frequently about AI. And you know,

it's always going to cause some problems in the classroom. But the more faculty are used to using

it, then I think the less anxiety will be and the more they can pedagogically weave it into the

classroom in ways that are intentional. When we went from there was no AI, and then all of a sudden,

within a couple of months, it was like, there's this chat GPT thing they can tell you everything.

I remember sitting in an emergency meeting of like, what do we do about this? And they were like,

let's make a survey to see what faculty, you know, and I got on chat GPT. And while we were having

the conversation, I asked it to make a survey for faculty about the use of AI. And I'm like,

here it is. And people were like, they're like, we're screwed.

Like, it can do that. And so, but now most people I talk to are using AI in some form

professionally, right? And let alone personally making a recipes, which I did this weekend.

It was a really good recipe. And I haven't tried that yet.

Oh, yeah. You could use it for your real life, John.

Yeah. I had it. I asked it about a Vietnamese chicken curry. And I asked about certain ingredients.

Yeah. And it was delicious. It was so good. And I even had the recipe. I made it in a word

document and I had it make it with a Vietnamese theme. So it's like, I had like, little like red

and yellow, little ribbons around it and stuff. Anyway, so the more people use AI,

in the personal life, but then also a lot professionally, I think it stops becoming this

scary thing out there that these kids are using. Right. And it becomes this

tool or this medium that a lot of people are familiar with. So you can integrate it. And again,

there's always going to be challenges because it can do certain things that maybe you want a

student to do on their own. Right. Well, the idea of critical thinking, the ability to

actually problem solve on their own to an extent, knowing how to solve issues and work

through them. That's been an issue with or without AI quite a while, but trying to now understand,

they'll be using AI to some extent. So how do you still get them to think deeply and critically?

Yeah. I mean, you know, I was teaching, you know, I was a full-time faculty member teaching one

or two composition classes a semester when people sort of freaking out like,

oh my god, they're just going to Google everything. Right. And you know, like,

what are we going to do in composition when they can just go out and find anything and we don't

really know what they're looking at? And so there's always been a sort of technological curve,

so to speak, that where students are ahead of. Yeah. Sometimes. So to answer the question about

like, I think really using and learning about digital learning canvas, things of that nature,

and then just being familiar with AI. So you know what your students are, what they can access,

and thinking about the pedagogical implications and uses. I mean, there are some folks that have

really done, you know, and I'm not even talking about like computer software. I'm talking people

and teaching literature classes and things have done a lot of really cool stuff, you know, with AI

that actually makes their classes and somebody's more engaging. Yeah. But you have to know how to do

that and you can't know that unless you become comfortable with it. Right.

I'm not even a digital native from, you know, I'm so old that I sent one email as an undergraduate

and I had a bar. I didn't have to borrow an email account. Well, that's something.

Clay. I was like, do you have email? And he's like, yeah, I was like, can I use it to email?

I didn't have a computer. I never had a computer. I didn't until I got until I got into my masters.

Is it just not even in my master's? Was it typewriting or just hand-fry? It was a typewriter word

processor that had a correctable ribbon. That is it. That is it. Mine was a word processor.

It was a typewriter word processor that had a little hard disk that you could save things on.

But then it was time to print. You had to print a page and then put a new piece of paper in there,

print a page. So there was a little screen that you could type on. Yeah. But you and save it,

but then wait, you actually had to print like a typewriter. Yeah. And it was like huge.

So you really had to manage your time. You can submit something before the deadline.

It was crazy. I can remember staying up all night and like worrying about

how long it would take me to print this thing before I could run the class to turn it in.

Oh my gosh. That was late to class. It was not. It was not easy. I could not produce a

good looking manuscript. The first, there were all sorts of like white out on it and stuff.

It was like, thankfully they didn't grade that hard on that type of stuff,

just on the content and whether it was footnoted properly. But trying to even figure out the foot

notes at the bottom of the page. Yeah. Where do you start? Because you had to figure all that stuff

out. And then getting out finally in my first position, I got a little, what is it, 256?

What was that like floppy disk that you had to put the floppy disk into IBM, whatever,

with a cathode ray orange, one color, or green or orange. And then you put the disk in,

you start the program, you pull that disk out, you have to put another disk in to copy anything on

while it's because it could not store anything hardly. I think it was like 64K or something was

the most. And you had a note MS DOS coding. So going from there to where now it's like,

It's all in your hand. That little device there called a smartphone is smarter than all the

computers that NASA had to land a man on the moon. Yeah. That's insane. So it's a lot. It's a lot

to take in for adjunct faculty. They're doing an amazing job in our community, working full-time.

And then come here, teaching is a big challenge, a wonderful outlet, but a big challenge because

it's something totally different than what they're used to. It's kind of like if someone called me

on Wednesday and said, Hey, on Monday, we need you to be a banker. Or on Monday, we need you to

be a fireman or we need you to whatever the question is. It's like, I may have a background

that qualifies me to do that to a degree, not in a lesson of full-time person, but

you're still stepping out of your professional expertise and comfort zone into an environment.

We were talking about how joking about how you might be an expert in a field, but you've never

been taught how to teach. You may have the academic knowledge or the professional experience to step

into the classroom and be credentialed to teach that particular class, but maybe you haven't

ever thought about your pedagogy and you haven't thought about it in five years or ten years.

You don't know what pedagogy is. Because in your masters and doctoral programs, both you,

did you guys have courses on how to teach? No, well, I had undergraduate, I was going to be a teacher,

but I got out of it. But like at the masters, it's not usually in the curriculum.

We had a doctoral level, we had a class that was so I taught composition, we had a class for

graduate assistants who were teaching composition and it was with kind of the composition director.

And you took it during your first semester, and then I don't think you did it again. So there was a

little bit of pedagogical oversight, but nothing.

So

lots of leadership roles here. How many you've been here since how?

I'm in my 11th year. I've been here I think 11 years. 11 years in seven different roles.

Okay. At least we know you don't get bored.

Wow, lots of shifts. Just a minute time to move in and then.

So for adjunct faculty who'd like to grow professionally in the teaching profession,

let's say, what advice would you give them?

I mean, well, one's a question for you and that like with your role in connection with the

Lucas Center, how much Lucas Center programming would be accessible to adjunct faculty?

All of it supposedly, but much of it's taught during the day. And so I'm creating a new course

that's just going to be totally in canvas on demand when they want to do it called what I wish

my professors knew. And it's going to be very student focused with student centered videos,

etc. And I'll be talking about transparent teaching and all these things. So all the digital learning

materials are totally accessible. Anything that the Lucas Center does is available to adjunct faculty.

But I think the caveat is things like course design academy are taught during the day.

And you know, like for a week or whatever. And so you have to have the time to do that.

The podcast is one of the examples of I think they can get a boost and some ideas from and

they can listen to it wherever they are. But we're working on that.

Right. Yeah. So I would say taking advantage of what's accessible through the Lucas Center is a big one.

You know, the digital learning folks, and again, that's not just online. It's canvas and any sort of

digital pedagogy. And they're all teachers. Yeah. And they're all educators. And they're able to do,

you know, a lot, you know, virtual, you know, appointments, you know, remote appointments,

you don't have to come to campus. So, so all of those resources through digital learning,

you know, an adjunct instructor could, you know, could access. But it's whether they really know

that they can't. Right. Right. We're working on it. Just to kind of wrap up our conversation today,

here at FGCU, we recently added adjunct faculty senators to the faculty senate.

And I believe this is we are one of the first institutions in the state of Florida.

We are the first. So with that being said, why is it important that adjunct faculty have a voice

in shared governance? And what do you hope the participation will bring the university?

Sure. That's great that we're the first in Florida. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. Tell all your friends.

Right. You know, as I was saying at the beginning, you know, the most important thing we do

at the university takes place in the classroom, you know, whether that's bricks and mortar classroom,

or whether that's virtual classroom. And adjuncts are a big part of that. But the position has some

inherent idiosyncrasies that are different from day to day life in the department life and a full

time faculty member. And so I think it is very easy for departments, faculty, senate, whatever,

to design processes and make decisions that sometimes might not work as well for adjunct

faculty. And I'll give you an example from from arts and sciences. You know, there were sometimes

discussions of, oh, we should do this and all the colleges can do these things. And I would be

sitting there in arts and sciences thinking, well, no, that works if you have 25 faculty.

Right. Like that's smaller than one of our departments. You know, like, like we've got 250

faculty, 10 departments, 37 programs. So sometimes an idea might be just fine,

but it wasn't scalable for like something the size of CVS. So I would often sometimes kind of have to

say, no, no, no, no, no, that's not going to work. Or this isn't a good idea for for me. It might work

for you, but I can't do that. So I think that's similar in in when you talk about shared governance

is when decisions are being made that affect faculty that affect teaching, that affect, you know,

just life on campus. It's very easy when you live in a full time faculty world to make assumptions

about things that work for full time faculty. Whereas if you have the adjunct voice represented

or perspective represented, sometimes you can say, well, that might work really well for you,

but that's going to cause so many problems for the 20% of the classes that are taught by adjuncts

or whatever the case may be. And yeah, those things have come up this last year. Thankfully,

I've been at a faculty senate as just a guest, but it's like a simple syllabus. Wait a minute,

45 days in advance. Well, what if you're not we get four to five days? Yeah, yeah, four to five

days, right? Or, you know, I'll remember that. Or we can't like, yeah, or we don't have access

to canvas because or your email or your emails or whatever. And it's like, what I love is I have

seen people are becoming more aware, thinking a little more about how that does impact. Yeah,

it's not, you know, it's not someone who is willfully thwarting, you know, adjuncts, it's just sometimes

if you don't live that, you don't know it and you don't think about it. And therefore,

having that that representation, I think keeps the perspective and sometimes the lived experience

and impact that some of these decisions have on adjuncts. So I think that's important. You know,

the one thing is that there is a different relationship to the university in the sense that, you know,

you may teach one class for 10 years, or maybe you come in for one semester and you're never back.

Right. So keeping that, keeping that rudeness in mind, you know, I think, but from a let's make

sure the decisions that we make are the processes we set up, the systems we have work for people

that teach a significant percentage of our courses, that needs to be thought of. And sometimes it's

easy to lose that perspective when you don't have that perspective shared with you in a deliberate

fashion. And I think the type of share of governance you described is creating that deliberate sharing

of perspective is really important. Yeah, I think it's more the voice than the vote. But to actually

have a voice where they could speak instead of as a guest, right, after all the senators, now they

are so they can really contribute fully to it. I think it makes just a lot of sense. I don't

because we are impacting the success of this universe. Absolutely. So let's be included.

Yeah. So, you know, to kind of what we began with with my title, I mean, if you think about faculty

success and academic resources, adjuncts are a part of both of that. Yeah. Right. The faculty

success of the person who's assigned to teach class, whether they're permanent or doing it for

semester, and then the academic resources and the sense of resources that go to support

all faculty, but then also how do we wisely use our resources, whether that's through digital

learning, professional development, hiring a faculty. So I think there's a lot of overlap

with my position and this sort of the professional situation of adjuncts. So this has been a really

good conversation. Yeah, Dr. Malley, it's always fun to talk to you. You too. Whether it's about

blues, jazz, right? Rock and roll, literature, you name it. It's always been a pleasure. And

I'm looking forward to seeing how your position blooms and develops and really enhances this

university and the students' success here. Yeah, thank you. I'm looking forward to learning a lot

this year, just kind of less than the learning curve. So it's like, you know, I can remember in

CAS being so excited to go into my second all college meeting to kind of be like, okay,

like, I know how these things work. I kind of feel like I've got some context and now I can,

you know, have a little bit of, you know, I wasn't afraid for someone to admit I didn't know something,

but at least I knew enough to where I could be like, you know, like, if they ask me a question,

I couldn't answer, I had the confidence to be like, I don't know, but we can figure we can work this

out. Whereas like the year one was kind of like, I hope no one asked me something that's

don't look at me. It's difficult, you know, and that being scared of having a difficult question

lessened every year. Yeah. And it's like, with everything being new, we're just like stressed

about, you know, making sure you don't mess up learning everything, you're doing a job, you know,

that's expected of you. And so that's fun. And I'm looking forward to doing that. But also,

I'm kind of looking forward to like having gone through this one academic year. So it's like,

okay, like, I know what it's like to work with faculty senate. I know what it's like when

something comes up with, you know, CBA, I know, you know, and you know, I've got some of that

experience, but not in this particular position. So I'm looking forward to learning, but I'm looking

forward to learning like curved kind of, yeah, lessening just a little bit. Well, let us know

anyways that we can help. Yeah, if there's things that I need to know or hear about or be aware of,

you know, definitely reach out and, you know, okay, that's what I'm there for.

This has been fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Top that gunnels. All right. Bye bye, now. Bye, y'all.

The music for Atchunk Nation was composed, performed and produced by James Husney.