Organizing the Academic Underclass: The Experience at Indiana State University in National Perspective: The Profession

Vol. Ill, no. 1 September 2001 A*v HISTORICALLY SPEAKING Organizing theAcademic Underclass: TheExperience at Indiana State University in NationalPerspective THE PROFESSION by RichardSchneirov J-revor Leffler, who has a master's in FineArtsfrom Indiana State University, is currently employedat three diffèrent universities and is responsiblefor the equivalent ofseven classes each semester. ISUpays him $1,800per class; Ivy Tech (a community college)pays him $1,000per class; while Vincennes Universitypays $1,500per class. With his round-robin schedule, heputs 500 milesper week on his car. Leffler reports, "I am working most every waking hour on some aspect ofmyjobs with almost no timeforpersonal orprofessionalpursuits outside ofteaching which will eventually limit me in obtainingfull-time employment, as I have little to no time to create art andseek exhibition opportunities, grants, etc. " When he told one regular faculty member how many courses he was teaching, Leffler was told that he must be making "more money than the President ofIndiana State University. " Marty Mertens was a microbiologist for fifteen years in the private sector before she fell in love with the humanities. In 1 992 she received a master's degree from ISU. Even before she finished her degree she began work as an adjunct faculty member. For the last ten years she has taught on campus and in the university's prison program, including the Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary. Though she enjoys teaching in the prison program because the inmates a 2002 Conference Preliminary Program, Registration Materials, and Book Exhibit Information Inside May 16-18, 2002 Atlanta, Georgia 'Historical Reconstructions» are so eager to learn, like other adjuncts in that program she is also very dissatisfied . Prison teaching is dangerous (teachers are told that if taken hostage neither they nor the prisoner will get out alive); isolating (they have little or no contact with other instructors or even their department chairs); and frustrating (they are paid less for prison courses than for on-campus courses). Early in her career, after Mertens complained that her students had no books after half the semester was over, she was let go from the prison program for two years and was rehired only when a new director was appointed. For the past ten continuedon page 7 !PROFESSION ¡ontmutdfrmpagi years Mertens has averaged four courses per semester but is still paid by the course and hired on a semester-bysemester basis. She would have liked to devote her life to teaching but low pay forced her and her husband to develop a greenhouse business which supplies 80 percent ofher yearly income. Ralph Leek earned a doctorate in European history from the University of California at Irvine and came with his wife to Indiana State when she was hired on a tenure track line in the Foreign Language Department. For two years Leek taught three courses per semester—a normal load for full-time faculty—at a yearly salary of$14,500; then he was upgraded to a full-time contract at four courses per semester at roughly S18,500. His income supplied a small but crucial part of what was required to support his wife and nineyear -old son. But in 2000, after more than four consecutive years ofservice, better than adequate teaching evaluations , and a manuscript accepted for publication, he fell afoul ofthe department chair and was let go without being given a reason. Leek did not receive notice of non-reappointment— even though the decision was made in early February—until mid-June, a violation ofAAUP (American Association of University Professors) policy; but the university rebuffed national AAUP efforts to intervene on his behalf. Leek eventually found a job with National University in San Diego, where he now lives and works apart from his family. In the past twenty-five years the percentage of faculty employed offthe tenure track in two- and four-year institutions of higher education in the United States has exploded. In 1975, 43 percent ofall faculty were either part-time or full-time temporary employees; that percentage rose to 57 percent in 1993; today approximately 61 percent ofAmerican faculty are off the tenure track. The percentage of part-timers is highest in the community colleges, where approximately twothirds ofall employees are...