Academia is structured to withstand the ever-changing landscape of education and social justice. However, constant rearrangement of this structure tears apart the roles and responsibilities of faculty members. Faculty members play varied roles within the university based on their term position—tenure or short-term—in their departments.
Academia is structured to withstand the ever-changing landscape of education and social justice. However, constant rearrangement of this structure tears apart the roles and responsibilities of faculty members. Faculty members play varied roles within the university based on their term position—tenure or short-term—in their departments.
A tenure-track faculty member has a completely different role to play than that of a faculty member hired on a short-term contract. The three foundational stances of a tenure-track faculty are: research, teaching and serving.
As a tenure-track faculty member, one has to be involved in varied research projects and at the same time teach courses. The serving role comes into view when the faculty serves in the advising committee for the doctoral and master’s students, as well as serving the community on various projects based on individual research interests.
There may be two broad reasons why a faculty member joins as a short-term contract faculty. One, he or she isn’t finding a full-time teaching job within the university; or two, he or she has a full-time job elsewhere but still wants to be connected with teaching as an individual passion.
Now, the question arises: How does a university or a particular department keep a balance between the myriad of roles and responsibilities of the faculty members? The real balance between the departmental policy and the organizational culture of the department may determine and influence the relative roles of every faculty member. However, once hired as short term faculty, the person doesn’t have much say in the departmental policies and practices.
Stephanie Stokamer, who has worked as a short-term faculty member in various universities including in PSU’s Graduate School of Education, said that there are several challenges to work on a contractual basis. “The prime challenge is that the pay is not right. Also, there is no access to the institutional resources.”
Stokamer thinks that it’s not lucrative to teach on a short-term contract. She has a full-time job at Pacific University as a director of the Center for Civic Engagement. “Even though I do face several challenges as a part time-faculty, for me, connecting to teaching at PSU is for my passion to teach besides my administrative responsibilities at Pacific,” Stokamer said.
Stokamer has been associated with PSU for about 12 years, first as a master’s student, then as a part-time faculty and a doctoral student. She said her reasons for being a part-time faculty member have changed over time. Before, it was the sheer need to have a job. Now, it’s out of passion. But in both the scenarios, she has a limited role to play in the policies and practices of the department.
A tenure-track faculty member has more responsibilities to undertake, which may or may not be given to contract-term faculty members who may also not be involved in the updates related to any departmental research or faculty meetings; however, this does depend upon the individual relationship with the department’s senior authority. The hierarchical roles and the political hegemony within the department define the individual roles of every faculty member.
In addition, the PSU chapter of Association of the American Professors came to the conclusion that there are very few women of color faculty members within the university, which adds another layer to the question of why PSU can’t hire full-time faculty including women of color when it can spend money on the university’s infrastructure.
So, why can’t PSU hire more full-time faculty members to build itself as a research-oriented university just like other tier I universities? Regarding just such a challenge, a recent Vanguard editorial titled “A real fixer upper” [Oct. 27, 2011] claimed that if PSU could spend money on the buildings to be aligned with the philosophy of sustainability, then PSU can invest money on full-time or tenure-track faculty as well.
It’s the time to add more tenure-track faculty and promote PSU’s philosophical statement, “Let Knowledge Serve the City.” This will add more benefit to the university as a whole and also would be beneficial for the students themselves. Students would have more opportunities to be involved in the various research projects. All it takes is a gentle nudge to promote the unwavering power of higher education in students’ life.
