Offering advice about professional development opportunities, shared governance, and health benefits were but some of the practices presented and discussed by Montgomery College and the Dominican University of California, the two winners of the 2022 Delphi Award, at a webinar on Wednesday.
Dr. Carolyn Terry
The annual Delphi Award – sponsored by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the University of Southern California’s Pullias Center for Higher Education – commends and rewards schools giving support to non-tenure-track, contingent and/or adjunct faculty, according to its website.
The webinar, “Institutional Transformation to Support Contingent Faculty,” centered on the efforts of the two schools to improve the experiences of and aid their adjunct faculty.
Representatives of Montgomery College, a Maryland community college, presented the school’s Institute for Part-Time Faculty Engagement Support (IPTFES).
Almost half (40%) of Montgomery’s classes are taught by part-time faculty, said Dr. Carolyn Terry, associate senior vice president for academic affairs at Montgomery. These adjuncts, who teach at multiple institutions, were facing issues of not having their own space, lacking professional development, and job insecurity, Terry said.
IPTFES provides part-time faculty with informative resource guides and staffed resource centers that come with lockers, computers, and copiers/printers. The centers also give these faculty members a place to meet with students outside of class, said Erik Swanson, IPTFES director and former part-time faculty at Montgomery.
The institute also hosts a part-time faculty conference twice a year for professional development and awards their work with annual part-time faculty awards, Swanson said. Terry added that Montgomery also offered three part-time faculty a year a fully paid semester-long fellowship so that they can pursue a scholarly project.
