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.
