The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) passed a resolution on professional standards for instruction during its annual business meeting on March 22.  The resolution--the result of a yearlong effort by a coalition of caucus and special interest groups--focuses primarily on bettering the acceptable standards for the use of part-time faculty.

"The reason the resolution received such overwhelming support was because it was presented to so many groups prior to the conference," says Steve Parks, associate professor in the Department of English at Temple University.  "As a result, many people were able to stand up and speak in favor of it at the [business] meeting."

Shortly after the 2002 CCCC convention, a debate took shape regarding the extent to which part-time and adjunct faculty were being utilized at institutions--especially in English courses.  Consequently, the CCCC began writing a resolution aimed at halting the abuse of part-time faculty and campaigning for its support.

"Over the last 15 years, there have been several attempts to address this issue and to bring it to people’s attention, yet, the problem has continued to get worse," says Ira Shor, a professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate School. 

The overwhelming passage of the resolution marks a move in the right direction for part-time faculty, Shor says.  The resolution states that "the professional standard for writing positions should be full-time lines equivalent in salary and benefits to other full-time academic positions" and stipulates 20 percent as the maximum acceptable level of part-time faculty in any department or program.

The AFT has taken the lead on this issue.  In July 2002, the union published Standards of Good Practice in the Employment of Part-time/Adjunct Faculty, a set of guidelines developed by AFT's part-time and full-time faculty union leaders.

"We still see ourselves as being in the opening stages of this project, but hopefully, using our resolution as a framework, it will evolve to include other organizations," says Micah Taylor Robertson, a professor in the English Department at Ohio University.  [Brooke Boeglin]

[April 21, 2003]