Vicious Circle

I had an epiphany today.  It occurred to me that as an adjunct professor I actually have something in common with corporate CEOs: Employment and pay aren’t necessarily tied to job performance.

The first week of classes went very well.  Three sections full and about half a dozen students seeking to add each of the other two.  I met with my last section of the week yesterday afternoon and went to my office to catch up on administrative work.  Opening my email I saw that the top message was from Matt, my department chair at Snowflake College.  The subject was simply titled “spring” [sic].

The message wasn’t what I expected to read.

From: Matt (chair@snowflake.edu)
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 1:50 PM
To: Unassuming Scholar (scholar@snowflake.edu)
Subject: spring

Hello,

I hope that all is going well.  I am working on the schedule for next semester and was wondering which Quartz City section you prefer - day or night.

Things had been going well—until now.  As happens so often when I get messages from administrators and chairs my heart leaped into my throat. 

Here’s a little background so you will understand my problem.  I teach at two institutions on three different campuses.  Snowflake is a multi-campus institution covering a large geographical area.  I live more than eighty miles from the main campus where Matt and the other profs in my department work.  For the last several years I have been the sole instructor in my subject at my “home” campus in Treetop, a resort town in the mountains, and at the Quartz City campus in the foothills roughly sixty miles away.

Although I am the least senior part-timer in my department, even after nearly a decade of employment, no one based at the main campus is willing to make the long drive into the hills to take sections at Quartz City and Treetop thus giving me a de facto monopoly.

Or so I thought.

From: Unassuming Scholar (scholar@snowflake.edu)
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 2:01 PM
To: Matt (chair@snowflake.edu)
Subject: Re: spring

Hello Matt...Is there someone else teaching at Quartz City next semester?

The answer came a few minutes later:

From: Matt (chair@snowflake.edu)
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 2:05 PM
To: Unassuming Scholar (scholar@snowflake.edu)
Subject: Re: spring

We are in the process of looking at adding some part time faculty and Quartz City would be an option.  In the past we have had two folks up the hill, which gives us some safety should we lose and instructor and it gives students so [sic] diversity.

I was puzzled and slightly disturbed by that last comment.  I told myself that he meant giving students a choice of instructor rather than being stuck with just me but it didn’t help.

I pondered my options, staring at the computer screen momentarily paralyzed with anxiety.  I remembered a remark the Quartz City campus executive dean (not to be confused with the Executive Dean from Hell at the Treetop campus) made last week during a faculty in-service meeting.  She said that the demographics of the Quartz City area were changing and that Quartz City was transitioning from a predominantly evening campus to a day campus. 

I replied:

From: Unassuming Scholar (scholar@snowflake.edu)
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 2:27 PM
To: Matt (chair@snowflake.edu)
Subject: Re: spring

I understand the reasoning, though I clearly would prefer both QC sections.  Treetop has me tentatively scheduled for TR 4:00-5:20, which means it probably won't make enrollment.

If I have to make a choice the TR 12:30-1:50 section would be the best fit.

The next volley landed in my inbox shortly thereafter:

From: Matt (chair@snowflake.edu)
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 2:50 PM
To: Unassuming Scholar (scholar@snowflake.edu)
Subject: Re: spring

Hi,

Interesting.  Patty sent a rollover indicating that it was taught 2:30-3:50 last Spring.  I imagine that they will cling to that section (regardless of the time) to the bitter end in Spring - they do not want to lose course offerings entirely.

We will list the night course as staff and see what develops; we might need you to take it on in the end.  It all depends.  But I hope to clear up the uncertainty as soon as possible.

Best wishes

Yep, clearing up the uncertainty would be pretty frickin’ great.  Going over the message a second time I found myself wondering about Matt’s odd practice of omitting his correspondent’s name from the salutation and his own from the closing.  I was also confused by the lack of precision.  Was “it” a section at Quartz City or Treetop?  “It” didn’t match the schedule I’d been on at either campus any time lately.  The Executive Dean from Hell’s administrative assistant at Treetop is named Patti, so maybe that’s the campus he meant.

From: Unassuming Scholar (scholar@snowflake.edu)
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 3:01 PM
To: Matt (chair@snowflake.edu)
Subject: Re: spring

Hi Matt,

Last spring I taught a Monday evening section at Treetop.  Believe it or not, that class filled and ran a wait list.  This semester, nothing.   I don't know if it's scheduling or just the fickle nature of student demand on a small campus.

If you are referring to QC, all the TR afternoon sections I've taught there from Fall 2012 forward have met at 12:30.

I'll try to keep my dance card open Weds. evenings just in case.

Thanks,

Unassuming Scholar

I sat slumped in my desk chair, utterly deflated.  It’s been a day and I still feel this way. 

I honestly don’t understand why the department chair wants to scale back my workload.  For all the heartburn I’ve had with Treetop’s EDFH, my department has been great to work with.  Unlike Verdant Fields, my other institution, adjuncts participate in scheduled department meetings and our input is solicited on student learning outcomes for each course we offer, whether our institutional objectives are being met, best teaching practices, etc.  It’s all very collegial and an exception to the norm for part-timers elsewhere.  Until yesterday I honestly (and I guess naively) believed I was a valued member of the team.

It can’t be my performance.  It just can’t.  My last classroom evaluation was a year ago and it went swimmingly.  Matt solicited the students’ input while I was out of the room, which was provided along with the very positive write up of the visit.  Not a single negative comment from the class.  I even got an “attaboy” note from our associate dean.

That’s why the decision hurts so much.  I know I complain a lot in these pages about lazy, entitled students and self-interested administrators but I thoroughly enjoy the act of teaching.  Sure, I have my off days like anyone.  But when I’m in the “zone,” when the students are engaged by what I’m saying and every single one of them is hanging on my every word, it’s the best feeling in the world.  It is the closest experience I have to love in my life and it is painful to me when any of it is taken away.

Now I’m on tenterhooks awaiting my fate.  Treetop will continue to toy with me, and Snowflake’s part-time seniority system is the only thing keeping me on staff.  Not that EDFT wouldn’t jump at the chance to show me the door.  The funny thing is that she doesn’t know me well even though she’s been in her position for nearly seven years.  I got on great with her predecessor, but EDFH and I have never even had a proper conversation.   The only conclusion I’ve come to is she formed an immediate and irrational dislike of me at first sight.  One factor in her dislike is that I think my appearance and manner clash with her idiosyncratic vision for the campus.  The executive deanship at Treetop campus is a platform for EDFH’s vanity and she wants nothing or no one to contradict her viewpoint.  Unless I can outlast her, which I doubt, I’m basically screwed.

I still haven’t heard about spring term from Daniel, my department chair at Verdant Fields Community College which is located in a neighboring state 35 miles from Treetop.  The pay at VFCC is uniformly lousy with no seniority or benefits.  But Daniel has consistently assigned me the maximum allowable three sections per semester for years.  (Another plus of VFCC is that the support staff in every single office and department I’ve encountered have been without fail friendly and helpful toward part-timers.)  But Daniel warned me over the summer that he might not be able to offer me three sections for spring.  Our former academic dean is from our department and he returned to the classroom this year, reducing the number of sections available for part-time faculty.  That reasoning I can understand even though I still wish to have three sections.  Besides, the ex-dean is an established authority in his field…and he is a great guy to boot.

Meanwhile I’m trying to calm my nerves.  I worked with a much smaller teaching load for years and still got by financially.  My oldest son is an adult now and I’m not paying support, which eases some of my money problems.  I’ve built up my savings the last two years.  I tell myself it could be worse.

And that is the problem, particularly at Snowflake.  A smaller load slows my accrual of further seniority and salary step increases.  Snowflake faculty participate in our state’s public school teacher retirement fund which requires the equivalent of five years’ full-time employment to vest.  Fewer classes mean I have to work more years to be eligible for retirement.  (By contrast VFCC is in a Right-to-Work state.  It’s “retirement” system consists of mandatory contributions to a 457 fund.)

I do not know how much longer I can keep at this.  I have a small pension from my earlier career but the income stream doesn’t cover even my modest lifestyle.  My younger son, to whom I am obliged to pay a monthly allowance while attending college, turns 22 in a little more than five years ending my financial responsibility for my family.  I had hoped to have enough money put together by then to retire from teaching and moving to an expat-friendly country such as Mexico or Belize to live.

That looks much less likely now.  Course load reductions can send a part-timer into a vicious spiral.  As his teaching income shrinks, the adjunct has to look for supplemental income or give up teaching altogether to stay afloat.  The thought of leaving the classroom is hateful to me.   It is an integral part of my identity, and I am too old to begin again at something else.  I don’t want to do anything else.  This is my calling.

If only the people I work for understood this.  Unfortunately for me I am only another wheel in the machine to them.   

I guess that’s what I am.  Expendable.

I think I will crawl into a bottle of bourbon this weekend.  There doesn’t seem to be much else left to do.

© 2015 The Unassuming Scholar