by Christopher Cumo

Eileen Lohka taught French seven years at the University of Calgary as a sessional, what U.S. residents would call an adjunct. She followed her husband, a biologist, to the university and could not find full-time work in a one-university town, though her schedule was no less frenetic for being part-time. Several preparations, grading papers and exams, and advising students all devour her time. "I never close my door and therefore spend a lot of time with students, mine and others," she says.

Lohka knows how readily administrators take her for granted. They have no incentive to hire her full-time because she already teaches for the university, allowing them instead to lure someone with a different specialty. Like any adjunct, she can recite the litany of poor pay, no benefits, and no job security, a system Lohka works to improve as a member of the Board of Directors of the University of Calgary Faculty Association and of the Committee on Contract Academic Staff of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.

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