This paper provides an overview of the literature exploring the realities of contingent faculty at U.S. universities and colleges with a focus on STEM. We focus our review of the literature by exploring the experiences of Latinx/é contingent faculty in STEM and propose a series of conceptual frameworks that can be used to explore the hidden…

Although part-time faculty have long contributed specialized expertise to colleges and universities, their role has shifted away from specialized expertise as they have shouldered an increasing share of day-to-day teaching operations at colleges and universities. Today, part-time faculty provide higher education institutions a flexible workforce…

Academic work has become increasingly fragmented. The horizontal fragmentation of the profession into disciplinary tribes has been accompanied by the increasing participation of student affairs and educational development professionals located outside the academic units but are actively engaged in academic work, such as supporting teaching and…

In academia, there are two different worlds, one inhabited by tenure-track and the other by non-tenure-track faculty. In the first, people encourage faculty to become involved in a series of important reforms that increase student success, completion, and learning. In this first world, people envision faculty simultaneously increasing their…

The nature of the American academic workforce has fundamentally shifted over the past several decades. Whereas full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty were once the norm, more than two-thirds of the professoriate in non-profit postsecondary education is now comprised of non-tenure-track faculty. New hires across all institutional types are now…

In this article, the authors provide a description of the academic climate in New Mexico. Like many other places in the world today, New Mexico is trying to find an identity in an environment that the authors label "increasingly privatized, corporatized, and militarized." New Mexico's higher education salaries are lower than those in…

Discussion of the use of part-time faculty looks at college policies and practices influencing hiring of part-timers, problems emerging from part-time appointments, and policy and structural changes needed to increase the effectiveness of part-time faculty. It is concluded that while the problems cannot be resolved to everyone's satisfaction,…

The myriad duties in academic life make it especially difficult to keep stress under control. Some of the reasons academic careers are so stressful include: competition, low pay and poor working conditions, tight resources, lessened mobility, growth in part-time positions, and high self-expectations. (MLW)

Anecdotal comments by teachers of English as a Second Language at all levels focus on problems in pay equity, working conditions, opportunities for professional development, and part-time teaching assignments. A Washington state survey of adult ESL program administrators echoed many of these problems and also found wide variation in class size.…

Based on an extensive survey of the numbers, salaries, and benefits of part-time and non-tenure-track faculty in ten academic disciplines, a November 2000 report from the Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW) clarified how colleges and universities depend on contingent labor and how inadequately many of these faculty are supported. A group of…

Changes are occurring in college-level English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction. An accrediting body has been created for ESL programs to begin using uniform standards to evaluate varied programs. ESL teachers, many teaching part-time in more than one institution, are eager for better recognition of their profession, which has suffered in…

A study focusing on temporary faculty within the English and mathematics departments at Arizona's three public universities is presented as one of the working papers in a final report of the Arizona Board of Regents' Task Force on Excellence, Efficiency and Competitiveness. Literature on part-time faculty and institutional policies is reviewed,…