Institutions have grown increasingly dependent on adjunct faculty over the last few decades, and scholars of color are ever present among this group.
Dr. Ansley Abraham and Dr. Anthony DePass started their academic careers as part-time adjunct instructors, as many young scholars find they must.
Abraham was an adjunct for a little more than a year. “I got out of it because teaching wasn’t where I wanted to go. I was more interested in research and policy,” explains the sociologist, who has directed a program for minority doctoral scholars at the Southern Regional Education Board since 1993.
DePass started teaching at Long Island University-Brooklyn as an adjunct before completing his Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology and moving to the tenure track. Since 2002, he has been assistant vice president for faculty research development at LIU-Brooklyn, while retaining his tenured appointment as an associate professor.
Unlike Abraham and DePass, many aspiring scholars get stuck in part-time jobs as faculty adjuncts, whose numbers have been proliferating as colleges and universities of every description cope with financial constraints. Other young scholars wind up in professional support positions, without responsibilities for instruction or research.
Several recent studies examining campus employment patterns over the last 10, 20 or 30 years show an increasing dependence on adjuncts and a large expansion of support staff, the latter driven by the need to comply with government regulations, provide information technology services and meet student demand for creature comforts on campus. Among the part-time instructors, the presence of scholars of color has been growing the fastest.
The growth of professional support personnel has siphoned off some minority scholars frustrated in their pursuit of tenuretrack positions, particularly in the life sciences, says DePass, who chairs the minority affairs committee at his institution. A large number of minorities, particularly women, wind up in science-related support positions that do not involve teaching or conducting research and rarely lead to regular faculty positions, he explains.
