Adjunct Issues Unresolved at Webster U.
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Lack of office space, class over-enrollment and unbalanced salaries are a few of many concerns that still plague adjunct faculty at Webster University in Missouri, some adjuncts said. A task force established in February 2006 to address these concerns has completed its work, said Faculty Senate President Bill Lynch, a professor in the theatre and dance department.
“The task force worked diligently and completed a report with recommendations that were turned in to Academic Affairs in June,” Lynch said. “To the best of my knowledge, they are reviewing the recommendations in a thorough fashion.”
Chair of the Conservatory of Theatre Arts Dottie Englis, a member of the committee, said she hopes the administration will have finished reviewing the report by January.
“The entire group, both administrators and faculty, were working to make recommendations that would be transparent and fair,” Englis said. “At present, it sits with the administration and we have had no official reaction to our recommendations as of yet.”
Bill Hall, a history, politics and international relations adjunct professor, said although he is not familiar with this particular task force, he does not believe that they are an effective method of bringing about change.
“While I know that task forces can serve some usual purposes, task forces are usually a way for the powers that be to sweep something under the rug, or to put perfume on an odor,” he said. “More often than not, they prolong the inevitable and they’re used as a crutch by leaders as justification for not making a decision and getting on with it.”
Hall, who also teaches at Washington University, Ranken Technical College in St. Louis and Southwestern Illinois College in Belleville, Ill., said Webster requires a minimum of seven students in a class for an adjunct to get full pay, whereas other universities with which he is involved only require three or four students.
“While I understand that there is an economic calculation in terms of what’s fair, I also know that regardless of whether you have three or four students or whether you have 25 students, it requires preparation,” Hall said. “I would never give less than my full effort because I had fewer students. Students pay money and they expect quality education.”
Senior Danielle Schroeder, a management major, said she has not noticed much of a difference between full-time and adjunct faculty in their teaching.
“I do know that teachers who have a full-time job (outside teaching) bring experience to the classroom,” she said. “It helps bring perspective.”
Hall said he is often asked to accept students beyond the enrollment limit set for a class.
“There is a disparity when you have less of a standard and you’re docked for pay, but that same standard doesn’t apply when you let more students enroll,” he said.
Hall said an adjunct’s pay depends on how long he or she has worked at Webster. After seven or eight years, adjuncts reach a payment maximum, even when they continue to teach longer. He also said adjuncts who teach semester-long courses receive an additional $500 that does not apply to teachers of eight-week courses.
James Brasfield, former Faculty Senate president, said the task force successfully addressed all these salary issues.
However, Margaret Morrison, an adjunct in the business department, said salary issues will always exist because adjuncts are hired to keep the pay scale low.
“For most adjuncts, the salary is not what draws you to (teaching), because you know going into it that it’s not going to be a huge amount of money,” she said.
Morrison is also an adjunct at St. Louis Community College at Meramec and Wildwood as well as Fontbonne University.
“I’m satisfied with the way that I’ve been treated everywhere that I’ve taught,” she said. “I’ve been doing this for 21 to 25 years, so obviously I feel personally satisfied and content, otherwise I wouldn’t keep doing it.”
Kathleen Simmons, an adjunct in the psychology department at Webster’s Geneva, Switzerland campus, is in her second term as a visiting professor to Webster’s St. Louis campus. She said she is respected here as a visiting adjunct but does not receive the same level of respect as an adjunct in Geneva.
“I think that there is a distinct lack of recognition of faculty as a whole,” she said. “The kind of support and services that would help adjuncts do a better job of teaching are not provided. We don’t get sufficient support; we don’t have offices; we don’t have facilities to meet students. Being a squeaky wheel and complaining might find you with fewer courses and squeezed out.”
She said she feels much freer to voice her concerns in St. Louis than in Geneva.
“If you want to challenge authority, you better be willing to risk it,” she said. “I would come here and understand that I wouldn’t risk anything professionally by challenging the authority, but it’s not the same in Geneva.”
Simmons said the university’s system is economically driven.
“If Webster wants to survive, it has to hire people without any benefits,” she said. “The regulations in each country will drive some of the rules on campus. For example, at the Thailand campus, you’re hired for a year even if you’re adjunct because it’s Thai law; you know you have job security for a year. You don’t have that same privilege in Switzerland because the rules are different.”
The task force’s recommendations apply to all of the university’s adjunct professors, not just those who teach on the St. Louis campus, Brasfield said. Aside from salary concerns, Brasfield said the committee also addressed the development needs of adjunct faculty as well as schedule management and class size.”
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