By Jonathan Stankiewicz
When you walk into the English Department and see that the number of faculty mailboxes for part-time faculty seems to outweigh the number of full-time faculty two-to-one you may not think there is a problem there.
Budget restrictions and the need to make sure certain courses are being taught each semester proves that the increase in part-time (PT) hires on campus is needed.
What is not thought about in the increase of PT faculty is how it affects CCSU’s Faculty Senate or shared governance on campus.
The Faculty Senate works as a decision making body in activities in programs and classrooms and works in an advisory role in matters of shared governance related to the university, accordding to the CCSU Faculty Handbook. The Senate then delegates the decision making to standing committees on campus, whose members are elected by the faculty.
The model CCSU uses allows for representation of departments in every academic school, plus representation from other AAUP units, such as part-time faculty, and even non-AAUP administrative faculty.
“The Senate is very, very important,” said Secretary Burlin Barr of the English department. Barr stressed that the campus doesn’t run like a business and the Senate helps to keep it that way. The committees do things that need to get done for a university and the role of the Senate is to be a funnel for all committees to report to, said Barr. The Senate is where the administration and faculty mesh.
Faculty should have a say in this administration and the Faculty Senate is the voice for faculty and non-union members, said Faculty Senate Vice President James Mulrooney of the biomolecular science department. Mulrooney compared the Faculty Senate to the student’s version, SGA, but added that only the issues are different. They try to see the whole story and make decisions based of what they are told, said Mulrooney. Some faculty maybe more focused on their career: teaching, creative activity or research, and finally service, down on the bottom of the list, said Mulrooney.
The National AAUP statement on the Relationship of Faculty Governance to Academic Freedom says that: “A good governance system is no guarantee that academic freedom will flourish.” Faculty governance is simply a structure that allows for faculty to have their say and that faculty members must be willing to participate. “Faculty members must accept their share of faculty responsibilities for the governance of their institution. If they do not, authority will drift away from them, since someone must exercise it, and if members of the faculty do not, others will,” adds the statement.
In the last four years thanks to budget concerns there has been a real shift; on the one hand it’s very hard to argue for tenure track lines in a budget crisis, but on the other hand the ratio is changing and that, over time is very hard for faculty governance, said Barr on his concern for the number of both PT hires and emergency hires.
Faculty Senate President Candace Barrington feels uncomfortable at times letting them serve; she feels guilty. PT faculty don’t get paid for service and frankly don’t have the time, said Barrington.
New, young faculty are vulnerable especially if you’re not tenured, said Mulrooney. He doesn’t think it’s true, but Barrington agrees that faculty can feel that way at times. “They aren’t protected until they get tenure,” said Barrington,“I think departments do themselves and faculty a disservice if they put assistant professors on the Senate.” She knows that not everyone agrees with her on that position, but having been in that position herself she has first hand experience of what it was like.
New faculty are learning how to teach, getting used to being at the school and trying to establish their creative activity so they may not be as inclined to add service to thier plate, said Mulrooney. In addition, PT faculty who teach one to two classes, may have a full-time job or teach part-time at other schools just to make ends meet for themselves.
“Right now, I don’t have a problem, but as we keep using all of these part-timers and these emergency appointments that are not going to be permanent here I may have a problem down the road,” said Mulrooney, who knows that we are living in this situation now and cannot predict the future of hires on campus. Mulrooney admitted that he hadn’t thought about this problem until he was interviewed for this story. Getting new voices on campus, “fresh blood,” is something that CCSU should be thinking about, said Mulrooney.