Adjunct Faculty in the Sciences

The Jan./Feb. 2002 issue of the Adjunct Advocate seems to have discovered many scientists in adjunct appointments and launched a campaign against their exploitation. But nowhere in the issue did I note a definition of "adjunct," whose divergent uses include short-term or part-time appointments, unsalaried courtesy appointments, appointments in Department A of tenured professors in Department B who teach courses of interest to A, and yet other uses. One article speaks confidently of an adjunct scientist who spends between 50 and 70 hours a week on research and "presumably teaches as well" -- or, presumably, does not.

Surely, a magazine with the name Adjunct Advocate should know, and explain to its readers, exactly for whom it is advocating.

The issue equates fundamentally different academic employment scenes in the humanities and sciences. In the humanities, the primary cleavage is between a) full-time, tenure-track faculty who teach and engage in scholarship and b) insecure, full- or part-time nontenure-track teaching faculty. A comprehensive term for the latter segment is faculty with "contingent" appointments.

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