| Abstract | Half of adjuncts, according to the Coalition on the Academic Workforce’s (CAW) 2012 report, “A Portrait of Part-Time Faculty Members,” make less than $35,000 a year. Two-thirds of adjuncts make less than $45,000 (14). As scholars like the contributors to the book of Moving a Mountain: Transforming the Role of Contingent Faculty in Composition Studies and Higher Education (2001) describe, the roles contingent faculty play in higher education often fluctuate on a semester-to-semester basis for their employment often with few or no health benefits. While higher pay and access to healthcare are arguably the most impactful ways to stop exploitation, writing studies and other disciplines are not making much headway and must seek ways to work with contingent faculty to better contingent faculty’s working conditions. Writing studies must find a way to create conditions that include contingent faculty—conditions that work to help them advance their career interests—and professional development is one way we can become more inclusive. From there, we can work our way up to the most important, yet most difficult issues like those of pay and healthcare. Cox et al. in “The Indianapolis Resolution” call for professional development for all faculty and because professional development is often readily available for non-contingent faculty, this dissertation identities, through a survey and interviews, concrete interventions and activism, including professional development, that can improve the working conditions of contingent faculty. My research asks contingent faculty what they identify as valuable opportunities for professional development to provide suggestions for better inclusion of contingent faculty in their teaching departments and teaching institutions. |
