Evaluating Adjunct Faculty

by Richard Lyons IN THE INCREASINGLY competitive, accountability-conscious environment of higher education, all of us are seeking cost-effective ways of improving our institutional effectiveness. Assuming your institution, division, or department employs a significant number of part-time instructors, I would encourage you to invest time at the end of this academic year to analyze your process for evaluating their performance. If, like so many, your process is limited to administering student ratings, I encourage you to consider adopting a more comprehensive system that provides an array of short- and long-term benefits, including: • Attracting more qualified applicants for your adjunct faculty positions; • Clarifying each instructor's strengths and limitations, enabling a more effective course match; • Providing feedback that contributes to growth in teaching skills; • Identifying potential problems early in their teaching, while easily manageable; • Reducing turnover of effective instructors; • Improving student retention and program/degree completion rates. Managers of any process realize there are three points at which evaluation is required: prior to its beginning, concurrent with its operation, and following its production. W. Edwards Deming, the late Total Quality Management guru, built his reputation largely upon shifting managers' focus away from scrutinizing mistakes made during or following the completion of a process, to redesigning and continually improving processes, including the use of higher quality "raw materials." Through this approach costs are drastically decreased and customer satisfaction improved. His principles are well suited to the decisions we make regarding the staffing of our classes. As we assess more precisely at the outset, we will likely foster a reputation that attracts more qualified applicants for part-time teaching positions. Davenport University, a rapidly expanding institution serving both traditional and nontraditional learners at campuses throughout Michigan and Northern Indiana, relies on employed professionals to deliver industry-current business, computer science and health care programs. Much of its success is attributable to its Faculty Assessment Process, a half-day evaluation of qualified potential instructors, installed in 1994 to foster increased quality in its instructional programs. The process includes: a one-on-one interview with an assessor, writing an essay response to a teaching-related situation, a demonstration of classroom facilitation skills, participating in a group solution of a classroom-focused case problem, and a written critique of a student paper. Conducted several times per year, these activities have enabled Davenport to staff its classrooms with more qualified instructors, increase ratings by its students, and achieve higher program completion rates. Bestselling author, consultant, and former Professor Kenneth Blanchard is renowned for calling feedback "the breakfast of champions" for today's knowledge-based employees. Early in anyone's development within a new arena, feedback has been demonstrated repeatedly to be the single greatest motivator of productivity growth. It's no different in teaching. While typically well grounded in their discipline areas, most new part-time instructors tend to teach only as they have been taught, often through extended lecture and ineffectively focused discussions. An administrator's or (less threatening) mentor's observation and feedback early in a new instructor's teaching provides insights that can spur further self-initiated development of teaching skills, and provide information upon which improved assignments can be made in subsequent terms. Should observations not be possible, the least we should do is recommend strongly that each adjunct instructor elicit informal feedback from students several times during the term. The most logical points would be at the end of the first class meeting, immediately following the first exam, and at midterm--mileposts where dropouts most frequently occur. One especially effective and convenient method of such evaluation is to ask students to respond anonymously to several open-ended questions, e.g. "what have you enjoyed most about the course, up to this point?" or "discuss one improvement in the course that would enhance your learning." Research indicates that the majority of new part-time instructors begin their initial teaching assignments with little or no instruction in the craft of teaching. When that's the case, should we really be surprised when new instructors stumble in interpreting policy through their previously held paradigms, or make insensitive statements that lead to student complaints that require time-consuming interventions by instructional leaders? There is no substitute for training prior to, or concurrent with, the first course assignment. In addition, an early teaching observation or student feedback exercise would likely provide specific information upon which the new instructor could make invaluable "mid-course corrections" prior to formal evaluations. Having achieved great success with its Faculty Assessment Process, Davenport University realizes it cannot rest on its laurels. Continuing to grow the institution within its highly competitive market, instructional leaders are now refining measures to provide ongoing feedback and training to their adjunct instructors, fostering further improvements in overall instructional effectiveness. In competitive higher education markets, the most effective part-time instructors can choose between a number of options to create their desired "teaching load." By not providing our critical adjunct instructors with regular feedback and fostering the fullest potential in their teaching performance, we invite them to seek employment where they will receive better support. Institutions that provide regular, meaningful feedback -- both individual and collective -- build loyalty, increased job satisfaction, and long-term relationships. In the process, we instructional leaders increase the overall effectiveness of our faculty, reduce turnover and thus interviews of replacement instructors, and free up our time for loftier issues. In recent years, state legislatures, boards of trustees, economic development entities, taxpayer groups, and an array of other stakeholders have become increasingly vocal about the need for our institutions to retain students until their graduation. While they see this as getting more return on their investment of taxes or gifts, some traditionalists within our institutions choose to see this as intrusion, and perhaps as a demand to "lower the bar" of our expectations. This need not be the case. If we rise above the fray to examine other arenas of society, e.g. government at all levels, business, etc., we will see that higher education is not being expected to do more than increasingly active citizens are expecting of others. Since adjunct instructors are shouldering a larger portion of instructional duties at most institutions, it is critical to our student retention and degree completion success to equip them with the resources required for success. Providing an ongoing evaluation/feedback process is a fundamental component of that commitment.