Since I started this thread, I'll end it. The posts were very interesting 
and looked at the part time faculty experience from some interesting 
viewpoints. Not surprisingly, the poor pay was brought up and for those 
who are making a living this way, it is a serious issue.

There is a new book coming out on college costs: "Higher 
Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids and 
What We Can Do About It" by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus. From 
the summary overview in the July 11, 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://chronicle.com/article/Are-Colleges-Worth-the-Price/66234/
(ee also: http://highereducationquestionmark.com/ )

is this regarding adjuncts/part time facutly and  how to improve the value 
on investment for a college education:

"End exploitation of adjuncts. It is immoral and unseemly to have a person 
teaching the same course as an ensconced faculty member but for one-sixth 
of the pay of his or her tenured colleague down the hall. Adjuncts should 
receive the same per-course compensation as an assistant professor, 
including health insurance and other benefits. Most adjuncts are committed 
teachers who were overproduced by Ph.D. factories, more politely called 
graduate schools. Finding money to eradicate that outcast group should 
have highest priority higher, certainly, than building a mega-athletic 
complex or a new campus in Abu Dhabi."

It was reading this that made me write my post to this list. The authors 
then point to MIT as being a model institution in how part time faculty 
are compensated.

Although the current system of use of adjuncts and part time teachers 
works for some in LIS, there may be others who were afraid to even post to the list because they did not 
want to seem as if they were complaining.

June Lester, has done work on part time and adjunct faculty in LIS (Use of Adjunct and Part-time Faculty 
in ALA-Accredited Master's. Programs, 2007; unpublished document)  ... and 
I am sure there are other reports, articles, documents, addressing this.

Two general works from the AAUP to consult about part time faculty are:

Who Are the Part-Time Faculty? 
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2009/JA/Feat/monk.htm

Contingent Faculty:
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issues/contingent/

And the blog New Faculty Majority: 
http://thenewfacultymajority.blogspot.com/

And there is an upcoming conference: Coalition of Contingent Academic 
Labor (COCAL), in Quebec City, August 13-15, 2010. I don't know if LIS 
Education will be represented but I do hope so.

Thanks for contributing to this thread regarding your experiences as a 
part time faculty member in LIS.

Please note: (this post is in no way part of any appointed, elected, or 
employed role I may have in any of the institutions that I am associated 
with. The interest in posting is personal and does not represent an 
organization, association, or institution to which I belong)

lp
Lorna Peterson
University at Buffalo
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