Part-time instructors make up an increasingly large percentage of college faculty. In English departments, part-time instructors take on the least prestigious and most demanding work--the teaching of writing--for low wages and without job security or professional recognition. This unfair treatment stems from the belief that the study and teaching…

This study focused on what tenured faculty at a school of education presently do and what they could do to enhance the instructional effectiveness of nontenured faculty. Nontenured instructors and assistant professors (N=142) were asked to respond to open-ended statements on the subject. Responses from 47 nontenured faculty members (33%) indicated…

Faculty appointment and tenure practices at 12 liberal arts colleges of the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) were studied, as part of a federally funded project dealing with junior faculty. On the average, about 40 percent of the colleges' faculty were untenured, a proportion close to the national average. This percentage had not changed…

Discusses the issue of hiring part-time faculty to teach college English courses. Describes how the English department at Pennsylvania State University was forced to deal with this problem. (MM)

A new director of composition at Arkansas State University explains how she has had to mentor herself, write and revise herself, read herself into her new bewildering environment, and in short, make her job as easy as possible. Reading the new environment and understanding how faculty members fit into it may be one of the hardest aspects of a new…

Views concerning the participation of nontenure-track faculty in campus governance were surveyed at Towson State University (Maryland). In spring 1985, a questionnaire was sent to all 425 full-time faculty members at the university, and 298 responses were obtained. Only 3% of nontenure-track faculty responded to the questionnaire, compared to 70%…

Learning communities are becoming important components of faculty teaching responsibilities. This study addresses faculty's perceptions of its role as learning community participants. A survey administered in December 1998 to faculty (n=67) at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Central Florida focused on how they viewed…

Factors that influence the length of time between receipt of the doctorate and award of tenure for college faculty were investigated. Data were collected from 293 responses to questionnaires returned by doctoral recipients from Stanford University, Yale University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Respondents had received doctorates…

Among personal memories for one minority instructor in literature is witnessing the civil rights movement, that defining period in which people of African descent broke out of the chrysalis of "Jim Crow" and transformed themselves from "colored" to "Black." In 1995, 1,000,000 Black men once again converged on the…

The possibility that sex differences in geographic mobility patterns underlie some of the sex differences in college faculty career patterns is addressed in this study of career advancement. Two major hypotheses were tested: (1) that women's mobility patterns are different from men's because women are less likely to move and more likely to be…

Reflecting the national trend toward less costly undergraduate education, ranked college faculty at the University of South Florida (USF) have generated steadily decreasing portions of total university instructional full-time equivalence (FTE), going from 72% in 1983 to 57% in 1994, while less costly graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) and…

Drawing from 18 years of experience as an adjunct professor at a community college and 3 years as a non-tenured full-time faculty member, the President of the Faculty Senate of Valencia Community College (VCC) offers a number of personal observations on the ways in which adjunct faculty and faculty senates can address the problems encountered by…

Since the early 1970s the composition of faculty in communication departments and in higher education in general has changed dramatically. A review of the literature shows that increasingly, part-time instructors have come to dominate faculties in roles that have shifted from occasionally offering an outside specialty to regularly replacing…

The academic qualifications, experience, and productivity of nontenure-track and tenured/tenure-track full-time and part-time faculty at a state university are compared, based on the results of a 1985 study. Recommendations concerning working conditions and policy for nontenure-track faculty are also offered. Findings include: almost 87% of…

The role of academic staff and faculty members in college governance was studied at two public universities. The frame of reference was the social contract model, which posits that individuals give up some rights in order to have other rights protected. Documents were analyzed and interviews were conducted with 50 staff: full professors and…