Tuesday, July 08, 2008

WPA-Denver: Adjunct Training, or the Lack Thereof

While in Denver, I heard several conversations where people discussed mentoring and training their graduate students.  That’s great, I thought.  Mentoring helped me—especially in terms of dealing with students—but I’m an adjunct now.  I am not a grad student.

There’s a big difference between being a grad student and being an adjunct.  As a grad student, you are intellectually subordinate in many ways to the tenured folks, your guides, because you are their student.  This is not to say that you cannot engage in free and challenging thinking, but there is no way to remove the power relationship of grades and passing/denying the thesis.  I regard this power relationship as a vital dynamic tension in learning, and it is one that must be negotiated—it cannot simply be removed.  No matter, that power dynamic is there for graduate students.

As adjuncts, we are not intellectually subordinate to tenured folks.  While many tenureds regard adjuncts as intellectually or professionally inferior, this does not necessarily make it so.  Why?  Because we are employees first and foremost.  We are subordinate in terms of labor and in terms of our lack of protections.  In many cases, we are not even invited to participate with members of our department as peers or colleagues.  Rarely are adjuncts hired for their publications or contributions to the scholarly discussion or our research.  We are there, largely, to make sure that sections of composition get covered.  In some of the best situations, our ideas and suggestions are solicited in shaping the various composition and writing programs, but even that is rare.  Normally such decisions are left for full-timers or the tenured.  Additionally, adjuncts are virtually never a part of the English Department.  If they are, their presence is usually a token—and being a token is, in many ways, more insulting than being blatantly excluded.

Thus, while adjuncts do possess more intellectual freedom to read, write, think, and do as they will with their scholarly work than graduate students, adjuncts are generally left out of the academic and pedagogical conversations that happen at universities.  That is, we are rarely invited to discuss these things with NTTs, FTs, or others on the staff.  Not to worry, however, because some of the most powerful exchanges I have had on pedagogy have come from discussions over coffee, beer, or in the car on the way to work with adjuncts.  As adjuncts our intellectual growth relies upon our independence and our community.

Of course these conditions do not apply everywhere, but no rule ever does.  The point is that in some ways graduate students have a position of privilege over adjuncts—access to and participation in an intellectual discussion with their mentors/guides/bosses, and yet as students they may not be able to fully express themselves in those conversations due to power relationships.  Adjuncts are rarely even invited or permitted to participate in these discussions.  We are not subordinated; we are excluded.  Full-timer: “Who are you?  And why do you think I should listen to you?”

Segue back to training and mentoring for graduate students and adjuncts.  Graduate students often receive mentoring.  They should—they are teachers in training.  It is important to remember that graduate students often reflect the hopes, dreams, reputations, and status markers of faculty and departments.  As such, and given the general good that mentors and teachers wish for their students, it is easy to see why focusing resources on grad students is such an important thing.  But as soon as students graduate, that link and support is often severed.

Ironically, many of those graduate students become adjuncts.  But the mentoring is gone.  The technical support is gone.  The questions are left unanswered.  E-mails are ignored.  So much for being a member of a vibrant intellectual community; often the only folks who will converse with you are adjuncts—if you can find them and if they have time to visit with you.  Not only that, but whereas we once felt like valued members of the community as graduate students, as adjuncts a lot of people simply will not listen.  And if they will not listen to you, how are you going to get your questions answered?

You work, that’s how.  And you get used to the silence.  And you develop on your own with few to no mentors or guidance.  And you keep asking questions.

Given the current machinery set up to generate large pools of adjuncts, it behooves graduate students to get as much training as possible while they still have the resources and access to their mentors and peers.  Similarly, it would be wise and ethical for programs to discourage dependent relationships with graduate students; rather, professors ought to work as best as they can to encourage independent and courageous scholars who are willing and able to go out there and get the information they want and need on their own.  As adjuncting is in the future of a large number of current graduate students, the sooner folks get started the better.  Get as much preparation as you can.

Of course, I would love to learn, see, and know about programs that actively spend time nurturing their adjuncts.  It would be great to hear about adjuncts receiving compensation as they are brought up to speed on each institution’s resources, requirements, and software.  But, I think it is unlikely.  Mastering each school’s technology and software and maze is yet more shadow work dumped on adjuncts—and we do it because we need the money.  Rather than stumbling and struggling on our own, it would be nice if a more official, compensated structure were given to our training.  For, unlike graduate students, adjuncts have often not been on the campuses where they teach and they are not familiar with the local philosophies, power structures, and cultures.  Even when you have attended the institution where you first start to teach, that does not mean you can grasp the intricacies of bureaucracies and paperwork.

Every institution is unique, and it requires time to learn how to negotiate the maze.  Misunderstandings can lead to everything from delayed paychecks to the loss of a position.  With so much at stake in the career of the adjunct, and subsequently the balance and quality of education of the adjunct’s students, it is a disservice to the adjuncts and their students that most institutions invest little to no time in orienting, training, or supporting their adjuncts.

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