Sessional Faculty in Canada and Adjunct Faculty in the U.S. Share More Than Just An International Border

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, […]