In Search of Service: Opportunities to Shine in the Adjunct World
by Kelly Lavis
A few weeks ago, I was in the office of one of the professors of my doctoral committee at the University of South Florida. I was very excited; I am a part-time student who has been making the four-hour round trip to USF for more than three long years. I hope to receive my Ph.D. in English within the next two years. This meeting was to begin the preparation for the final phase of my program: compiling my reading list for comps, choosing my dissertation topic, and going over my curriculum vita.
As soon as we started discussing my curriculum vita, my professor noted that the section on service was conspicuously absent. He asked me to describe how I met my service requirements. At first, I was taken aback: what kind of service was he referring to? Did he mean religious service, going to service, or having a service? Then it dawned on me, he meant some type of teaching service. I had spent all of my time at my college providing excellent educational experiences for my students, which included creating progressive, thought-provoking, writing intensive courses at my college., Located in Fort Myers Florida, this small local college is making the transition from a community college to a four-year institution. The emphasis has always been on students. In fact the school boasts that it is a “student centered institution.” As such, it should come as no surprise that my classes are student driven, and that is how I dedicate my time. It also bears mentioning that as an adjunct, I am neither expected to nor required to fulfill any role other than being available for my students. I explained all of this to my professor. Even though I told him that I was an adjunct, the look on his face could only be described as shock mixed with horror, which rapidly settled into annoyance and dismay. Alas.
After he recovered, he stated, “You mean to tell me that you do not participate in any type of service within your college?” I replied in the negative. Then I remembered; I had once written an email to the Dean of Arts and Sciences extolling the necessity and benefits of implementing and maintaining a Writing Center. Eventually we got one. So I perked up and told my professor about, my newly discovered, service-related email. He was not impressed. Crestfallen, I sank back into my uncomfortable seat. We both had to go to class, so I gathered up my things and slunk out of his office.
Walking from his office, all I could think about was how did this happen? How could I be one class away from my Ph.D. comprehensive exams and not know that service was one of the “big three” requirements for tenure? (Wait a minute, to be honest; I have to admit that I didn’t even know there was a “big three.” It turns out the “big three” consist of service, scholarship and teaching. I just thought that as I teacher, I should teach). Well, let’s see. I have been an adjunct professor at the college for over nine years. Up till now, I understood that for adjuncts, service was not a requirement. College administrators did not feel comfortable requiring adjuncts to participate in activities where they do not get compensated. Honestly, I thought adjuncts were like rent-a-cops, only I call them rent-a-profs. Admittedly, this flexibility and freedom is what many adjuncts find so appealing. But, would these same adjuncts embrace or repel new service expectations?
Certainly, other adjuncts with similar goals and educational backgrounds face these same challenges, so how was it that I ended up in this situation? With respect to my postgraduate education and lack of service knowledge, one reason is that I live over one-hundred and fifty miles away from where I take my classes. This means I do not participate in campus events, activities, meetings or information sessions. And finally, as the mother of a six year-old paleontologist, my time is splintered into between motherhood, my course work and teaching. As a group of educators, how are we adjuncts supposed to negotiate these requirements?
However, before we can answer, we need to understand what exactly constitutes service, why is it so important, and where does that leave me and others like me? I had to discover the concept of service means in academia. So Google service I did. It was easy to find universities and colleges that referenced service in their online handbooks. What was interesting was the variety of definitions or expectations for faculty with respect to their obligation of service. For example, the teachers’ handbook from Texas A&M states, “Service encompasses a variety of professionally related activities through which members of the faculty employ their academic expertise for the benefit of the university, the community, and the profession.” From this statement, faculty are expected to take additional roles within their departments, their professions and their community. Arguably, instructors need to help within their departments as a means of helping students achieve their goals, and keeping the department running. What needs further exploration is the way faculty perform service in the community and how that affects the balance between the “big three.”
Let us reflect on the time faculty dedicate to each of the three areas within their institutions. Achieving the right balance of scholarship, teaching and service must be an important consideration for all faculty. Consider how the article, “Balancing the Demands of Teaching, Scholarship, and Service,” by Rob Kelly, addresses the demands placed upon faculty:
It’s important to balance what would be acceptable within the discipline with what is encouraged by the college. In some cases these can be in conflict. I think the college should pay attention to what kinds of things would make sense for a particular discipline and then look at the best ways to help meet the local culture of the college (Kelly, 2008).
What Kelly conveys is the importance of keeping the “big three” in perspective. The way to maintain sanity and still be productive is through balance. However, the bottom line for colleges and universities is that service is required in order to get things done. Department committees are created, and then overseen by experienced faculty, as a means of getting university goals accomplished. Seasoned and experienced faculty are also needed in order to help students graduate and become marketable. For example, many universities have Placement Committees specifically designed to help students with things like interviewing techniques, curriculum vita creation, and student marketability development. Membership on these committees is considered service. Other forms of service include advising, sitting on thesis and dissertation committees and participating in university governance. Different skills in these areas are essential and only seasoned faculty can make the necessary contributions to these service oriented roles. While full-time faculty usually fulfill these roles, institutions need to consider the potential consequences. Adjunct faculty may not have the necessary skills or experience to guide students, and therefore, cannot and should not be expected to contribute to this form of service.
While all of these opportunities for service are necessary and admirable, where does that leave the part-time adjunct professor currently pursuing his or her Ph.D., in hopes of seeking full-time employment, and is not expected to engage in service? For the adjunct professor this exception does more harm than good since service is now important to have in one’s portfolio. As previously stated, I learned that email suggestions for curriculum improvement did not count as service, and I do not consider myself a qualified student mentor. So before I could seek out service, I needed to get the specifics of service as they applied to my set of circumstances. To that end, I contacted one of the deans in the Arts and Sciences department at my college. Dr. K. who was extremely generous with his time and information. Not surprisingly, the requirements for service are varied and may be different depending upon what the college needs and the goals it wishes to achieve.
For instance, our college is currently navigating between two worlds. It is a community college whose board is passionate about becoming a four-year institution. That said, the requirements with respect to service are in flux. When I was hired, the college did not require any of its adjunct faculty to engage in service. The thinking was that the educators should focus on delivering an exceptional educational experience. Administrators obviously felt that adjuncts might revolt if they required them to participate in service without the prospect of advancement or pay. Clearly, the school did not need that problem.
However, with the new goals for the college, Dr. K. believes that change is in the air. He stated that with accreditation looming, the service requirement for adjuncts will be revised. This information translates into adjuncts taking on many of the same responsibilities borne by the full-time faculty. The basis for this reasoning is the college’s emphasis on creating a cohesiveness and uniform campus community. Additionally the administrators want adjuncts’ responsibilities to more closely reflect the educational community at large. While he was hesitant to offer specifics, he implied that adjuncts would have new participation requirements.
I next called my direct supervisor and asked him about the future of adjuncts with respect to service. He pointed out that the evaluation process for determining raises, for full-time faculty, is directly linked to performance in the three pedagogical areas: teaching, scholarship and service while adjuncts are not. Then, he not only reiterated Dr. K.’s assessment on new developments for staff, but offered clarity by giving examples that illustrated what the new requirements might look like for adjuncts. For example, he qualified that forms of service fall into the following standard categories: interdepartmental, professional and community.
Questions like, how will adjuncts fulfill these requirements filtered through my mind. It was during my consideration of these questions that it dawned on me: I do have service in my background, just not in the traditional sense. I have countless hours in service to my community. For example, I served in a homeless soup kitchen. My son and I have donated money so that elementary school students could participate in an “Odyssey of the Mind” competition. For the last two years, I have volunteered well over 250 documented hours at my son’s school; either working in the library, or helping students with reading. Not only that, but at the request of the pre-school director of the local temple, I started a “lecture in literature” series which meets once a month where I teach participants the art of close reading, inquiry and some basic critical theory. I realized that I not only had community service, but that I actually promoted the college through my volunteer literary instruction. I had to find out if my volunteer work counted as service.
I called my director back and prattled on about my community service and asked him to consider whether or not it would satisfy the new requirements. Thankfully, he stated that the college absolutely recognized contributions of time to the community as service. He also believed that volunteering, especially in my field, would merit a line on my curriculum vita in the area of service. But he was quick to remind me that the college, and especially our department, depends on, and must have, help from faculty in order to survive.
I was relieved when my school accepted my community volunteering as service. I was concerned because my service was not conducted within the department. He reminded me that service in the community is valuable as it serves to promote goodwill between the college and the tax payers who support it. I then wondered if there were institutions that do not place as much value on outside service. What can the adjunct professor do? Perhaps different institutions place varying degrees of emphasis on volunteer work and evaluate faculty accordingly. As Paul Hanstedt points out in his article, “Service and the Life of the Small-School Academic,” significant differences exist “between the Research I model and other types of academic institutions—namely, two-year colleges, MA—granting universities, and small liberal arts institutions.” More important, however, is expanding traditional notions of service.
What I propose is institutions explore, expand and adopt different forms of community service as meeting the service requirement. One example is setting up a community “reading night” at the local library. Another idea is to offer literature lectures to residents of assisted living facilities. This particularly appeals to me as I like a captive audience. I envision these lectures to be more than a book club by incorporating some textual analysis and a little bit of theory. I have tried it, and it works remarkably well. The overall benefit of this type of service is that it does not compromise or encroach upon full-time faculty. They are still allowed to contribute their expertise to the department and its students on campus, while at the same time, the adjunct professors contribute their expertise and promote the college outside of campus. Additionally, adjunct faculty have more opportunities to shine. They not only contribute to the community, but they promote a college’s public reputation by providing a much needed and appreciated service.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, one needs to consider the typical adjunct faculty member in order to understand the benefits suggested. Second, the vast majority of adjuncts in my area are parents or retired professors. They may be perfectly pleased with their limited campus exposure. If service becomes a requirement, they may not want to or be able to participate. However, many of these parents and retirees are already performing some type of service in the community. Some read to children, some lecture and volunteer at local retirement communities, some volunteer at the local library, some take pride in educating at-risk mothers in halfway homes and some donate their time to tutor individual students. All of these examples illustrate how adjuncts help people within both the educational and local community. Not only does this service help serve a purpose, it also extends one’s teaching while maximizing the adjuncts particular expertise and skill set.
This valuable contribution called Teaching Service is addressed in Russell Edgerton’s article “The Re-Examination of Faculty Priorities” where he indicates that the role of teaching and service takes on new importance. For example, he notes that Northwestern University is refocusing its emphasis on teaching. He claims that with the advent of embarrassing and unfavorable public scandals, (i.e. sexual harassment, grade inflation, athletic scandals etc) colleges are struggling with lackluster public images. Contributing to the local community just makes good public relations sense:
Conditions have prompted campus leaders…to pay more attention to undergraduate education and to look for ways to nudge their campuses into responding to the needs of their surrounding communities. From here, it’s but a short step to taking on the issue of how to elevate the priority faculty are giving to the functions of teaching and service (Edgerton, 1993).
Further, with guidance and support, adjuncts may come to enjoy and perhaps finally get recognition for their various forms of teaching service.
Edgerton takes a hard look at the role of scholarship in forming the educational environment at a university and the surrounding community, and he posits that scholarship should enhance teachers’ abilities, not overshadow them. In other words, faculty should take responsibility not only to advance “the knowledge base of their fields,” but also to convey that knowledge to others. Teaching and service, therefore should not be considered as afterthoughts, but rather as “expressions of scholarly work."
This idea was further explored in Ernest Lynton’s book, Making the Case for Professional Service: Forum on Faculty Roles &Reward. Lynton’s thesis is that the key to “elevating the status of professional service is to capture evidence of its “scholarship” for review by peers.” He counters detractors by pointing out that professional service can be considered both an intellectually challenging activity and a critical element in fulfilling campus missions. Not only is professional service needed, but, with the proper measures in place, it can be documented and evaluated, thus providing a valuable indicator of faculty performance. In the companion to Making the Case for Professional Service: Forum on Faculty Roles & Reward, Lynton joined forces with Amy Driscoll and penned Making Outreach Visible: A Guide to Documenting Professional Outreach. This guidebook defines and describes the methodology and evaluative processes behind professional outreach. It also discusses the importance of this approach to service from the benefits afforded the university and the teacher.
The concept and practice of college and university outreach through faculty professional service, help both [faculty and the college] meet societal needs and fulfill their institution’s mission through work based on their [faculty’s] scholarly expertise. It points out that professional service by faculty can become a source of innovation and discovery in scholarly theory and methodology; enhance the quality of instruction, especially in professional education; and be intellectually invigorating for faculty themselves. Such work also provides a direct intellectual resource for the institution’s external constituencies (Driscoll and Lynton, 1999).
When these books were written in the late 1990s, they were considered instrumental in stimulating awareness of the need for incorporating expanding views of community service or outreach in the academic evaluative process.
Along these same lines, in 1996, Shelley Park wrote about gender bias in the traditional four-year research institution. Her article “Research, Teaching and Service: Why Shouldn’t Women’s Work Count,” considers the devaluation of service in the university and the disproportionate number of women who get relegated to these service roles. Her point is that the emphasis on scholarship and publishing overshadows the role of teaching and service. She also believes research garners higher importance, especially where promotions are concerned, and that originally institutions of higher learning were supposed to be centers of education that prepared students to contribute to society. I would argue that this is a far more socially conscientious approach to education than that of most four-year universities, which are far more concerned with the “publish or perish” mandate, and where many undergraduate courses are taught by teaching assistants rather than experienced professors.
Park’s claims of gender bias, she offers compelling statistical evidence that supports her premise: white males are given far more opportunities to research and publish than are their female counterparts. Additionally it is usually the female faculty who volunteer to work on committees and to teach. In academia, where promotions are based heavily on what and where one publishes, women cannot compete (Park, 1996). It should also be mentioned that Park points out that women may not seek opportunities to publish. She discusses how women tend to thrive in more nurturing and social roles like teaching and helping within the community. Therefore the problem is not whether or not women “get” to publish, but rather that their teaching and public service be valued on the same level as those who publish. She claims, “In treating teaching and service as undifferentiated activities, the argument for prioritizing research utilizes a technique commonly used to devalue women’s work and, thus, rationalize the unpaid or underpaid status of that work.” When it comes to placing a value, or rather a lack of value, on one’s service, but then automatically rewarding scholarship in the form of raises and promotions, it becomes clear how this imbalance contributes to feelings of isolation and bitterness within departments. In fact, some educational scholars consider service on par with scholarship and that it deserves this consideration when determining faculty evaluations.
Therefore institutions that expand their criteria regarding service benefit the college, their full-time staff and adjuncts. What is novel is that many adjuncts would receive recognition for and fulfill a college’s new service requirements with little additional imposition. The only additional work is documentation. Adjuncts will need to prove their service hours and explain how their service meets the college’s expectations. However, since they are already engaged in the activity, keeping track would not be prohibitive but welcomed.
It is for these reasons that incorporating teaching service makes sense for colleges wishing to alter the current evaluative criteria for adjuncts. Further, it addresses and reconciles the imbalance between institutional expectations of scholarship, service and educating. This approach also presents a viable option for more seasoned and perhaps resistant adjuncts. If they are afforded accolades for service outside of the department they may welcome the change and participate in the new agenda. They would then have the opportunity to take their talents into the community. Community service, now more than ever, plays a vital role for adjunct faculty members. It offers them the freedom to promote the college offsite by acting as its ambassadors.