Unfortunately, although you adjunct instructors and professors teach in nearly every department across campus, and are thus a crucial and devoted part of the faculty, you face a broad array of challenges at Notre Dame. The categories of inquiry in a recent survey conducted by the Modern Language Association about pay and treatment of part-time and non-tenure-track faculty members in English and Foreign Language departments in the U.S. and Canada suggest areas of concern for adjunct faculty here and elsewhere. These include salary, benefits, basic office support, opportunities for professional development, participation in department meetings and decision making, and advance notice of teaching assignments.

Unfortunately, Notre Dame's treatment of adjunct faculty members, particularly in the humanities and sciences, is seriously lacking in many of these areas. If you are an adjunct faculty member here, you have no job security from year to year, sometimes not even from semester to semester, regardless of the length of your service here. You cannot expect any regular salary increases and you may not even earn a living wage. You most likely do not receive health or retirement benefits or have any paid opportunities to participate in professional conferences. You may have a wonderful working relationship with your department chair and have good relationships with your other colleagues. Others of you, however, may not be invited to participate in departmental meetings and may be essentially invisible to some of your tenure-track colleagues. In worst cases, other faculty members might treat you with condescension or hostility. You may be given several weeks' notice about the courses you will teach, allowing you to prepare in a thorough and unrushed manner, but you may also be given last-minute teaching assignments. Some semesters your course load could also change at the last minute, which impacts your income, since you are paid on a per-course basis.

Amazingly, even though you may teach a higher course load than any other member of your department, you may not even have a welcoming, accessible space in which to meet your students, nor a campus phone number at which they can reach you. And, although you may have been frustrated by some or all of these conditions, you have probably been loathe to address them, fearing that your lack of job security would make you too vulnerable to dismissal.

Notre Dame is committed to increasing the number of tenure-track positions in many departments. Such a commitment could put an important dent in the number of 'underemployed' Ph.D.'s who are in non-tenure-track jobs but would prefer to be on the tenure track. Nevertheless, such a laudable commitment to the 'bigger picture' must not be allowed to obscure the impact of hiring policies on the lives and livelihoods of those adjunct faculty members who already serve the university and its students. Any new hiring policies or goals should co-exist with a commitment to fair and humane treatment of existing adjunct and part-time faculty.

WATCH's Subcommittee on Adjunct Issues is currently attempting to establish a clearer picture of adjunct 'life' at Notre Dame so that we can more effectively address its problems and challenges.

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