THE UNION REPRESENTING part-time professors at Emerson College and the school recently reached an agreement to raise salaries by 15 to 20 percent, and help pay for the health insurance of some long-time adjuncts.The agreement is seen as a victory by union activists, who hope it will inspire part-time professors at other colleges to organize.

“We all thought of this as a template for other colleges, and we’ve already had people contacting us with questions about various provisions,” said Barbara Gottfried, a women’s studies instructor at Boston University who advised the Emerson union on behalf of the American Association of University Professors.

Adjunct professors represent almost half of the instructors in higher education in the U.S., and their ranks grew by more than 35 percent between 1998 and 2001, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Education.

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