My department has a new chair and I would like a bit of advice. Some background: I reentered academia after some years outside of it in a “real” career. (I know, I know, but I am feeling much better now.) I’ve been an adjunct at the same small school for over four years and have done/taught anything and everything they asked and have even done a fair amount of “service” activities. I got along great with my old chair (OC), who even bragged to our new dean that I published more than the rest of the department. They have even told me that I am first in line for a fulltime job in another year when one TT proffie retires.* So far, so good. I like the school. I like (most of) my coworkers and (most of) my students. My concern, however, is that I don’t know the new chair (NC). It’s a tiny department, but NC was on sabbatical and we’ve only crossed paths a couple of times in four years. Actually, NC is the only member of my department I don’t know, which, given the size of the department, is a bit like Gilligan finding that he’s really fuzzy on who this “Mr. Howell” person is after several seasons.
So, any advice on the care and feeding of a new chair for an ambitious adjunct? I’m a bit older than NC and I certainly learned a lot about the care and feeding of new bosses in my previous life, but I feel the need to do a little brain-picking, just to make sure I’ve covered my bases.** OC liked my regular email updates, as I learned early to keep bosses just enough in the loop that they don’t get blind-sided, but not so much that you add to their work. Should I continue this with NC or not? Ask for a short “meet and greet” sit-down? Just keep my head down and do my damn job until they get their sea-legs as chair? Trust that OC will sing my praises to NC?
* yes, yes, I know, that and $1.50 will get me a soda from the machine, if it’s working.
** or insert your own favorite cliché here. My personal favorite is “having my ducks in a row.”
Again with the Duck!
ReplyDeleteI'd go with the brief meet-n-greet. It's what a chair owes you, and you can see then if he/she is a regular updates kind of a person or a don't contact me unless the building's on fire kind of perosn.
ReplyDeleteI agree -- see what they think -- make sure they know your face, but that you aren't a hassle. Let them know that you're flexible, reliable and will be invisible until they need you to take over someone's course in the middle of the semester.
ReplyDeleteAlso, ask some of the basic questions like when scheduling adjuncts will probably happen and if they prefer chocolate or flowers :).
I've always gone on the assumption that departments strongly prefer adjuncts who are as close as possible to invisible: take whatever schedule they're offered, turn in grades on time, don't provoke student complaints. In the departments for which I've worked, positive visibility would take the form of showing up for workshops, etc., and maybe, yes, volunteering for a bit of service (but not expecting anything in return). But basically, when it relies heavily on adjunct labor, a department wants to be able to forget about the adjuncts as much as possible.
ReplyDeleteBut it sounds like you're in a smaller department, with fewer adjuncts (or maybe you're the only one). So, maybe a brief meeting, at NC's convenience, is in order.
Also -- if you'd like a full-time, TT job, start a job search. There are definitely exceptions, but full-time, TT jobs almost always have to be filled by a national search (or at least something that appears to be one), and, with a very few exceptions (which usually involve the spouses of faculty already on the TT, and the trend in those cases seems to be more toward creating a TT job without a search, usually in response to an outside offer -- a more honest approach), departments rarely end up hiring their own contingent faculty. Somehow, the person you know is never quite as appealing as the one you don't (and a junior faculty member who's already publishing more than the senior members of his department may or may not be regarded as a plus. Are you also publishing as much as or more than NC, despite his recent sabbaticals? If so, I'd be cautious about mentioning it). I'd get a nice letter of recommendation from OC, and start applying. If they really want to keep you, that might encourage them to move a bit more quickly. More likely, you'll find a better job elsewhere (and if they really, really want you, they can do a search and hire you back in a few years).
Tenured Radical did an "advice to adjuncts" post earlier this year that received a good deal of pushback, from both commenters and other bloggers. The one piece of advice that everybody *did* agree with: don't believe anybody, inside or outside the department, who tells you that a non-TT job can be a "foot in the door" toward a TT one in the same department.
Here's the current link to the original post from Tenured Radical: http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2011/04/are-you-getting-your-adjunct-on-few-dos/ . Comments seem to have disappeared in the course of TR's recent move to the Chronicle, but googling the title of the post will yield lots of comment from the blogsphere.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback.
ReplyDeleteFYI, my spouse's career is here, so any job more than an hour away is a no-go. I have continued to look in my metropolitan area. The OC has also written a very nice LoR.
There are more adjuncts than fulltimers and they range all over the map from ABD to retirees, those who are so odd* they will never get a fulltime job and those who would make a nice fulltime addition to a department if there were jobs.
Seriously, one sells quack medical devices on the side.
"There are more adjuncts than fulltimers and they range all over the map from ABD to retirees, those who are so odd* they will never get a fulltime job and those who would make a nice fulltime addition to a department if there were jobs."
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, the new shape of academia. I was interested to see Ancillary Adjunct (above) mention that hiring departments actually seemed to be checking hir out; in my experience, that isn't always the case. Or maybe they're just doing a good job of appearing to do so (put file in drawer for 10 days; have low-level employee google a bit; extend hiring offer if said search doesn't turn up any recent convictions for high-profile crimes. Actually, I know that my own department does far better than that, even for part-timers, but as the ratio of full-timers to part-timers goes down, the vetting process presumably has to get a bit less stringent, too, lest the full-timers end up doing nothing but vetting part-timers. Or maybe that's what we're heading for, or, in some places, where we already are: the only function of full-timers is to hire and supervise the part-timers)
I sympathize with the geographical-limitations issue. I'm still trying to figure out how good a job it would take to persuade me to give up the other components of what is, overall, a pretty decent life in a place I like reasonably well. At the moment, I don't think I'd qualify for that good a job, so I'm not even looking. Still, the advent of the new chair might be a good moment to think about what you're giving to the department free of charge, and why, and whether that time might be better spent in some other way.
Speaking as a department chair of a small department: don't come off as needy. Absolutely stop in and say hello. I appreciate getting faces with names as soon as possible. It certainly sounds as if you've got good life experience, so let it be your guide. And most importantly, in regards to the really critical issues, ask the chair for guidance. Don't fall into the trap of dissecting it with other adjuncts and in the process making it a bigger issue than it needs to be.
ReplyDeleteSome good comments, thanks. I remember what my wife, who is a middle manager, tells me, "I like employees who solve problems, not ones that create them."
ReplyDeleteActually, if it wasn't for the low pay and the low status, I'd like being an adjunct. I certainly have time to research and write!