Sunday, March 30, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Although they teach more than half the courses at Community College of Southern Nevada, part-time faculty members say they're treated like second-class citizens.
Although the adjunct faculty teaches 52 percent of the courses, some say they are "economically expedient" and not considered integral members of the campus.
They point out that they:
* Have no representation on the Faculty Senate.
* Have only one "tiny" office to serve 512 people.
* Receive no benefits.
* Are paid in three installments over the course of a semester.
* Cannot accrue seniority.
* Cannot seek union representation.
* Can be fired at a moment's notice.
* Are frequently not included in department meetings or discussions.
* Are paid at a rate so low that a University and Community College System report admits they must genuinely be inspired by a "joy of teaching."
"Second-class citizens is what we call ourselves," says Ute Gacs, a CCSN adjunct professor.
She speaks for the adjuncts who hope to become full-time professors and who have resolved to make less money teaching at the college than pursuing other jobs.
Gacs, who is teaching anthropology and a German course at CCSN this semester, previously taught at Western Nevada Community College in Carson City for five years.
She says she is well aware of her provisional status since an "adjunct," by definition, is a nonessential component. But she says that shouldn't stop the college from making concessions so adjuncts feel more welcome on campus. She says the lack of attention to part-time faculty could lead to trouble at an institution touting its educational prowess.
The steady stream of adjuncts filling the CCSN halls has made it difficult to evaluate their teaching ability, and administrators admit there are plenty of cracks for poorly suited adjuncts to fall through.
"I have encouraged the department chairs to include the adjuncts as professional members of the campus and in some areas that has been done well and in other areas not so well," says Robert Silverman, vice president for academic affairs.
One adjunct, who asked not to be named, says she has been teaching at CCSN for two years and has yet to receive one classroom evaluation. Nor has she ever been invited to regularly held meetings in her department. Student evaluations are forwarded to departments for review at the end of every semester, but Gacs says she has never been consulted about her reviews or given an opportunity to go over them.
There is no campus policy on the rights of adjuncts, so treatment varies dramatically from department to department.
"The (CCSN) president goes around bragging about the quality of education, but how can you have quality when you have all these people who don't have a commitment to the campus?" asks another adjunct who declined to be named because she is seeking a full-time position.
Though she's aware of the boasts of CCSN President Richard Moore, she concedes she wouldn't recognize him if he passed her in the hall.
The community college is advertising about 45 full-time positions in hopes the Legislature will approve Gov. Bob Miller's recommendations to support the tremendous growth in the student enrollments at CCSN by adding as many as 100 new faculty. The Legislature is expected to settle on an amount by July, so the positions have no closing dates for applications and are all said to be contingent on legislative approval.
Moore says the college is only budgeted to accept the equivalent of 7,500 full-time students (each taking about five courses). But this semester the college has a student population equal to 10,600 full-time students.
Figures are related in full-time ratios because although the college currently has an all-time high enrollment of 26,701 students this spring, most are taking only one or two classes.
Moore used class registration fees to pay for more adjunct faculty, now that they are maxed out on state funding for professors. State funding would allow the college to have full-time professors teaching 60 percent of the courses and enough adjuncts to make up the difference. But recent mass hirings have skewed that ratio to the point that full-time employees teach less than 48 percent of the courses at CCSN.
Money is a factor. An adjunct is paid $525 per credit to teach a course ($1,575 for a typical three-credit course) while professors are paid an average of $37,459 per year. (UNLV adjuncts earn $1,950 for a three-credit course.)
The 1995 Legislature allocated $900,000 to enhance adjunct salaries, said university system Budget Director Larry Eardley. But that money has failed to trickle down to the instructors on most campuses because the college presidents were given discretion on how to spend the money.
For the cost of a full-time professor teaching a full load of five courses, you could hire adjuncts to teach at least 20 classes.
Few will argue that you'd be sacrificing quality for quantity in the long run.
Royse Smith, a tenured political science professor at the college and chairman-elect of the Faculty Senate, says that, by nature, adjuncts are not screened as closely, because "we don't have to live with these people forever. They are economically expedient."
"We've made some mistakes in hiring," Smith says. "You do when you have to deal with that many people, but we're doing a good job. We have one or two bad apples and we will eventually find them."
He says adjuncts are vital to a community college campus where salary bases are lower than at universities, classes are typically larger and there is a greater demand from introductory courses, especially in math and English.
As for adjuncts becoming members of the Faculty Senate and having a stronger voice in policy and decision-making, Smith says: "They simply are not eligible. (Richard) Moore would like to see them vote in the senate, but their (adjuncts') interests and ours (full-time professors') are vastly different."
He says the biggest difference is that no one can truly "defend" adjuncts because they are at the mercy of the department chair for whom they work. Adjuncts are contracted on a semester-to-semester basis. Rather than being fired, they are simply not rehired.
Although their predicament is not unique to Nevada or CCSN, that doesn't mean it's fair, Gacs says. Part-time work rarely comes with job security. However, part-time workers are vital to a college, she says.
According to the preliminary results of a study of students who did not re-register last fall, 88 percent felt they had above-average instruction.
Frank DePuma, a research analyst in the college's office of institutional analysis and planning, refused to release the results of a previous study, but admits that the level of satisfaction was lower. The first study was done by phone and tallied more than 1,500 responses. The second was done by mail and resulted in 600 responses from 8,000 surveys.
Gacs is surprised that more students don't speak up about the level of instruction.
She laments that some adjuncts have had their room assignments and class schedules changed without notice, have been denied requests for stationery, frequently can't get requests for classroom supplies filled and often have difficulty getting textbooks ahead of time so they can read them and develop course syllabi.
"Our only recourse is to have a big mouth, like I do. You complain and complain and complain and occasionally something gets done," says Gacs, a CCSN adjunct professor for four years.
The college once sought to shut down the office maintained for use by adjunct professors, but she waged a campaign to keep it open.
All in all, Silverman, CCSN's vice president for academic affairs, says: "Adjuncts are not a problem. They are an advantage."
They are most beneficial in classes that are clearly career oriented, such as culinary, gaming and computers, and they offer students a chance to meet and learn from trained working professionals and network with people who can influence hiring, he says.
He has proposed plans to change the organizational structure of departments to ease the load of deans, particularly in the realm of evaluating adjuncts and full-time professors.
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