Identity and Anonymity

After a discussion with a friend yesterday, I realized that I need to update my blog. I also realized that I left the last blog with a promise of a journey that had yet to start. So, I know it’s time to put away the excuses and begin to walk down the path I promised I would begin. So, the question is: what exactly is an adjunct instructor.

Simply put, an adjunct instructor is a contract employee who only job is to teach his/her subject matter. That is, we prepare the curriculum and execute it. We are not asked to publish, perform administrative tasks related to college infrastructure, or serve on committees. We may perform these tasks at our discretion. I’m hoping to include more of those duties on my list as I become familiar and comfortable with my current position.

Yet, the most interesting tension that has arisen out of my experience as an adjunct thus far is: how should my students address me? Some of my students, mostly likely fresh out of high school, refer to me as Mr. Leff. I’m not completely comfortable with that title, but I understand it creates some separation between the teacher and student. Others, who have been out of school for a while, tend to call me professor. In some ways, I think having a “professor” entitles the student to legitimize his/her education. It’s not just a regular school; this is higher ed. Although I like the title, I’m not sure I’m quite worthy of it. I say this because I have a lot of respect for long journeys full-time, tenured track faculty endured to reach their positions. Additionally, I haven’t subjected myself to the rigor of a doctoral degree. While that confers the letters d and r in front of person’s name, I also think it grants those individuals a flexibility to be considered master teachers, experts in a discipline that I associate with the word professor. I haven’t reached the master teacher or expert status yet. Despite my instinct to simply have my students call me Aaron, I haven’t named or corrected the way in which they should address me. (Except for one e-mail with the salutation hey buddy, but that’s a whole different story.)

To bring this back to the question what is an adjunct, I’m not sure that I can really define it, because I have yet to define exactly what it means to me. Statistically, I know that adjuncts make up 80% of all teaching faculty at my institution. I also know through various discussions with some administrators that given funding for higher ed in this state, community colleges and other public four-year institutions cannot afford to hire enough tenured track faculty cover all the courses the colleges need to offer to meet the demands of the student body due to the full-time benefits afforded those positions. So, the colleges hire contract employees to meet the student demand. Ultimately, I will simply define those who have made a career out of contract instruction as people who have a burning desire to teach.