Posted by Oleh Sydor on February 10, 19102 at 08:19:02:
Dear Colleagues,
I recently filled out an application for a full-time position at College of DuPage. I was most disturbed
by this question that I found in the section called 'Academic Training' :
"Total years of FULL-TIME CONTRACTED teaching experience" ( Emphasis mine )...
There is no other provision offered, such as "Other teaching experience". Thus, since adjuncts' teaching
experience is neither "full-time" nor "contracted", we are deprived of the ability
to provide information which would certainly be germane in describing our qualifications. This seems to
summarily disqualify adjuncts. It doesn't seem to matter that someone may have been teaching for
many years consistently at maximum adjunct load -- if we're not full-time, then all those years don't
matter. Is this another way of telling us, "adjuncts need not apply" ? If the only kind of teaching that
counts is "full-time contracted", then no matter how many years we teach, our experience amounts to
"ZERO". That puts us in the same category as graduates fresh out of school.
However, such graduates are generally far younger than experienced adjuncts, so it's no guess who's
at an advantage there. So, if all our teaching experience counts for nothing, then adjunct teaching must
be some kind of internship, training period, or apprenticeship. But I know of no other industry or field
that mandates that an apprenticeship must last indefinitely. And generally, in most fields, the journeyman
eventually has the opportunity to advance from his / her current position - they are not expected to remain
a journeyman in perpetuity. The part-time life seems to be full of such Catch-22's ... I wonder if Franz
Kafka was an adjunct ?