If you’ve read this blog for a while, then you know that two of my part-time gigs are being an Adjunct Professor at the local college as well as an Online Instructor at a well-known all-online college. However, for the time being I think that my tenure as an Adjunct Professor at the local college has been effectively put on hold. The college released their course schedules through the end of next spring (i.e. the end of the spring 2012 semester) and I’m not listed to teach any classes. It’s sort of sad because I really enjoyed teaching the undergraduates in the face-to-face setting, but I still have my online courses at the other college (more on that in a minute).
Couldn't find a good picture online, so this is a picture of my home office. Where the magic happens!
The first question that some folks might ask is, “Why? What happened?” Okay, I guess that’s two questions. The answer to these questions is actually pretty simple. First, the local college changed their general education requirements to require only one social science class instead of two. Personally, I think that this is a mistake on the college’s part because if there was ever a time in our history that we needed to promote greater understanding of political aspects of our society – it’s now! In any event, I teach introductory courses in the Political Science department. This change in the general education requirements led to less demand for introductory courses from the college’s incoming Freshmen (and all students) and, ultimately, led to the department assigning less teaching assignments to the adjuncts.
I don’t feel down about this, though (and you shouldn’t either!). I’m cool with the arrangement. Look, I want the local college (to which I am a donor) to run and operate as efficiently as possible. If that means that the college has to put a few of us adjuncts on the academic equivalent of the “reserve list,” then so be it. That’s the way the process in these institutions is supposed to work – when there is more demand, then they need more hands on deck; when there is less demand, then less instructors are needed. I’m cool with it.
Plus, my teaching obligations at the all-online college have been steadily picking up since I started with them last year. For an example of how these teaching assignments have been increasing – I started at the all-online college teaching one class with 4 or 5 students in it. Over the last year, I’ve been asked to teach a variety of courses from nonprofit management to foundations of leadership and I now routinely get assigned 20+ student classes each “semester” (I put “semester” in quotes because at this college, each month begins a new semester and thus I can be assigned a new class with new students each month).
The online teaching assignments take up a great deal of my free time, but I’m fine with putting in the time because all of the income I earn from this teaching will go directly towards my tax obligation remaining student loan debt.
So there’s a brief update on where I’m at with two of my side gigs. Don’t despair – I’m cool with all of it!
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