Organizational pressures influence the restructuring of the academic workforce. This chapter describes the key factors associated with increased hiring of contingent faculty.

As the non-tenure-track (NTT) cohort of writing faculty grows, departments and programs need to provide equitable working conditions for all faculty, including reasonable workloads and protections against unnecessary changes; access to shared governance and curricular decisions; transparent and fair hiring, evaluation, and renewal processes;…

The Academic WorkForce Survey has been conducted every two years since 1986. Between March and June 2018, researchers contacted 797 physics and astronomy departments (including 39 astronomy-only departments) that award a bachelor's degree or higher in physics or astronomy. Responses were received from 720 institutions, a 90% response rate. This…

In any academic department, faculty members retire or leave for a variety of reasons, and new faculty members are hired to replace departing faculty or fill newly created positions. This report focuses on departures, retirements, recruitments, and new hires in physics and astronomy departments. In our Academic Workforce Surveys, we collect the…

Guided by Hagedorn's (2000) theory of faculty job satisfaction, mindful of social and organizational structures of higher education, and acknowledging recent changes in the academic labor market, this study examines satisfaction for approximately 30,000 tenured and tenure-track faculty members in 100 US colleges and universities. Findings revealed…

Accreditation demonstrates an institution's commitment to quality academic experiences for their students and consistent institutional development. This chapter discusses the role of contingent faculty in the accreditation process.

This study utilized scholarly personal narratives to explore the experiences and perceptions of four Black women who served as full-time contingent faculty members in higher education and student affairs graduate preparation programs. Authors drew upon Black feminist thought and intersectionality to frame this study. Specifically, authors extended…

This article examines the costs faculty pay to gain status and security in the academy. Academics receive salaries for their work, but also "pay taxes" in order to maintain a positive trajectory toward the ultimate "prize"--promotion and tenure (PT). The psychology of narrative method is used to examine the articulation of the…

This study explores how time and experience affect an academic librarian's perception of tenure. Researchers surveyed 846 librarians at ARL institutions, reporting on institutions that offer both tenure and faculty status for their academic librarians or neither. The survey reported how librarians rated tenure's benefit to patrons, its effect in…

This study retrospectively examines the emergence and development of a new class of full-time non-tenure track employees in a large land grant research university in the U.S., which created the employment category in 1980. We employ cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to explore how this class of employees became institutionalized within…

This chapter presents a study that explores how faculty composition at independent colleges and universities in the United States has shifted from minimal representation of contingent faculty members in the past to a greater representation presently and the disproportionate expectations and roles placed on these faculty members. Based on the…

Since the 1980s, as composition has grown as a scholarly field, the composition job market has grown correspondingly in both size and complexity. Specifically, over the fourteen years since academic year (AY) 2000-2001, ads seeking expertise in composition and rhetoric have consistently made up 30 percent or more of all job ads placed in the…

This dissertation is in response to Garrett's (2014) dissertation on "A Quantitative Study of Higher Education Faculty Self-Assessments of Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPaCK) and Technology Training" which has been the inspiration and guide throughout the design of this study. The purpose is to assess the…

The current mixed-method study examined the emotions experienced by pretenure faculty regarding teaching and research, specifically their emotion frequency, antecedents, and relationships with perceived success. Interviews with 11 faculty identified 46 discrete emotions with the most common being enjoyment, frustration, excitement, happiness, and…

The shift to online learning that occurred in March of 2020 created an unprecedented period of intense work for faculty and sessional instructors at the postsecondary level. This shift necessitated courses be adapted under short timelines, new technology be integrated into course design, and teaching strategies and assessment methods be adapted…