The Neighbors

"Oh, Canada"

by Sandy Farran

Allison Dube is the kind of professor who greets students by name even though his classes often have more than 100 people. He regularly extends his office hours and provides his home number so students can reach him at any time, and he uses words like “magical,” “joy”, “adventure” and even “love” when describing the “amazing journey” he takes with each new class. By his own admission he “sounds like a Hallmark card.” It would be easy to dismiss it as rhetoric if it weren’t for the fact that his students express similar sentiments when describing Dube in course evaluations: “I would take a course from Dr. Dube even if I was assured a failing grade,” says one student. “My vocabulary does not contain adjectives positive enough to describe Dr. Dube’s teaching,” says another. The 55-year-old University of Calgary political science lecturer has won three student-nominated Excellence in Teaching Awards.

And yet Dube doesn’t have a full-time faculty position at Calgary, known as tenure or tenure-track status. He probably never will, although he would desperately love this appointment. He is a part-time instructor—also known as a sessional lecturer, contingent faculty or contract academic staff—who is paid on a per-course basis. His pay is low: $6,150 per three-credit or half course. Last year, he made just over $26,000, about a quarter of what a professor his age at Calgary makes. He also has no job security, no pension and few benefits. He is part of a large and growing group of academics who refer to themselves as “the invisible faculty.”

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First Person

On Competition

by Laura Yeager

The same part-timer has won “Adjunct of the Year” two years in a row. He’s good, but you know you’re just as good as he is. He has the edge because he wears a clean, pressed shirt and a tie every day. He looks efficient, capable and smart. You wear peasant skirts and black shirts, and sometimes let your grey roots show. The students love him, but the students love you, too. He’s your competition.

Let’s face it. No matter how good you are, someone is always better. If you’ve won the Pulitzer Prize, someone else has won the Nobel Prize.

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The Union Army

Eastern Michigan U. Part-Timers Fight For Union

Posted: February 16th, 2010

In Oct. of 2000 an agreement between Eastern Michigan University and the EMU chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) was approved by the EMU Board of Regents in a special meeting, according to a 2001 EMU press release.

Now, nine years later, the adjunct lecturers of EMU are fighting to form their own union and obtain a similar agreement with the university.

Part-time lecturers at EMU filed for a representation election with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC) in December of 2009.

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