THE
PART-TIMER
If I should die, think only this of me:
That you would not know I passed,
As Acadia’s flag was not at half-mast…
These lines have been going through my head after a chance encounter with a part-time instructor (and poet) at Acadia, expressing, I guess, the sense that being a part-timer is a marginal and tenuous existence. But all this might change. At least, that is my impression after a round of interviews across campus.
Part time faculty joined the faculty union with the 9th collective agreement. While the 10th collective agreement limited part time instructors to teaching one six-hour credit course per year, this limitation was removed with the 11th collective agreement. As a result, there has been an explosion in the number of part-time faculty at Acadia. There are approximately 54 people teaching the equivalent of 67 six-hour credit courses on a part-time basis at Acadia this year. Today the average part-time instructor is teaching the equivalent 1.24 six hour courses, indicating an increase in teaching loads since 2003.
There will be different points of view on the desirability of these developments. However, part-time lecturers interviewed for this article generally attest to a change of climate since the part-timers were absorbed into the union. Also, many full-time faculty members have supported the idea that part-time instructors should have their working conditions and benefits clearly defined in the contract and not subject to arbitrary decisions in different units, departments, and faculties. In general terms, the change of attitude can be summed up as the full integration of part-time instructors into the faculty body.
Presently, the status of part-timers appears only as appendices to the collective agreement. Integration requires tying the part-time faculty to the normal concerns of the collective agreement, such as job security, working conditions, and funding for research and professional development.
Job security includes questions of precedence or seniority, as well as benefits. Presently there are no standard procedures ensuring that a part-time lecturer teaching a course will be re-hired for that position. Normally, they are. But the procedures need to be defined.
Part-timers lack decent pay, which is particularly unfair to those who have been employed teaching courses over many years. Integration in this area of concern involves tying part-timers to the salary grid. This will be a complex and difficult issue to resolve. Arguments can be made that hours taught by part-timers should be equated with teaching experience on the normal salary grid.
Part-timers lack job security. Certain schools in Canada, such as York, have introduced conversion of part-time faculty to tenure track position, with a standardized measurement that equates teaching experience and research to the PhD requirement. While viewed as a radical innovation by some, from the perspective of many part-timers this would simply involve a recognition that universities have in effect created a new corps of academics with teaching, service, and research records, yet without any chance of the kind of job security associated with tenure, not to mention benefits, such as health care or pensions.
Some part-timers have been teaching for years, even decades, without this type of integration. Others are beginning their careers, with hopes of attaining tenure track positions by the normal route. Yet, teaching part-time takes a toll, particularly in the area of research. Thus, there have been discussions about how to make sufficient funds available for research, as well as professional development, that in some way is standardized to fit the basic model for full-time faculty.
These are difficult issues, requiring serious discussion. But as always, it is the little things that can really rankle: library privileges and e-mail, both of which are unceremoniously cut-off when the brief term contract expires. This hardly facilitates the pursuit of research, not to mention things like course preparations and sustaining a meaningful dialogue with students. E-mails asking for letters of reference during months when lecturers are not teaching receive no reply – no fault of the instructors. Library privileges are also suspended during the summer months when, logically, part-timers are attempting to do some research. Surely, it is at such moments that part-timers must reflect on their impermanence. But do not lose hope – poets, scholars, mathematicians, and others – it seems Acadia is in the vanguard of Canadian institutions attempting to integrate, assimilate, and fully pay-up the hard pressed part-time academic.
Jamie Whidden