Columbia’s new full-time hires for the year seemed to focus on non-tenure track faculty.

This year, Columbia hired 46 new full-time faculty members, 28 of which are non-tenure track. Also, 17 of those 28 were former adjunct faculty who moved into lectureships.

Steve Kapelke, provost and senior vice-president, said the college is in favor of hiring more lecturers. He said they offer instructional flexibility, which allows the college to hire the lecturers on a short-term basis-something tenure track faculty does not offer-in order to fill specialty niches, such as Fundamentals of Art and Design and the First Year Writing program.

“Commonly in higher education, lectureships and lecturers provide you with a little more instructional flexibility than you might have with other kinds of full-time faculty positions,” Kapelke said.

A study conducted by the American Association of University Professors showed that the use of contingent faculty, adjunct and full-time non-tenure track, has increased over the past 30 years. From 1975 to 2005 the number of full-time non-tenure track faculty nationwide has increased 7 percent.

Joe Berry, contingent faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and expert on the hiring practices of contingent faculty, said flexibility is only one reason why colleges have hired more lectureships. It’s also to save money-non-tenure faculty have a predetermined cap on their salary-and to divide up labor control.

“By creating permanent multiple tiers of faculty [full-time tenure, full-time non-tenure and adjunct] they divide up faculty labor control,” Berry said. “It’s hard for the faculty to come together as a whole.”

Berry said the “divide and conquer” practice of higher institutions was introduced in the 1970s when faculty began forming unions. However, full-time non-tenure track is better for educational purposes than adjunct faculty, he said.

“Our working conditions are your learning conditions,” Berry said. “Anything that makes it more stable is good [for both parties].”

However, Berry said lecturers are less protected than full-time tenure, who have a long-term contract, and adjunct faculty, who have union protection, because of the lack of secure employment, which could negatively affect the classroom.

At Columbia, the full-time non-tenure track faculty members currently don’t have a union, Kapelke said.

“If you [as a lecturer] don’t have security of employment, they can let you go for whatever reason,” Berry said. “If you’re in that kind of insecure setting in the classroom you don’t have academic freedom to teach your students. You’re constantly looking over your shoulder hoping you don’t say the wrong thing.”

Berry said faculties have begun to pay more attention to the growth of contingent faculty.

A spring 2008 P-Fac newsletter stated that the college was hiring more lecturers and phasing out adjuncts in the English Department. Jean Petrolle, former director of First Year Writing, and Ken Daley, chair of the English Department, said the policy claim was false. The department isn’t phasing out adjuncts.

Daley said the English Department hired six new full-time faculty members. Four are full-time non-tenure track, two are former adjuncts, and two are full-time tenure track faculty members.

The number of non-tenure faculty in English has more than doubled, according to Jennie Fauls, assistant director of First Year Writing. Last year the department had three lectureships, and this year there are seven.

Lecturers and full-time faculty members have different responsibilities, Mark Lloyd, associate vice president of Communications and Marketing, said. Lecturers teach four classes per semester, whereas full-time faculty members teach three.

However, full-time faculty members have more out-of-the-classroom duties than lecturers, such as student advisement and committee meetings. Daley said the lecturer’s only job at the college is to teach.

According to Petrolle, the Modern Language Association requests that First Year Writing Programs at the college level be taught by full-time faculty. Colleges, such as University of Illinois at Chicago, have full-time lecturers teaching their First Year Writing Program.

Tom Moss, associate director of the First Year Writing program at UIC, said the college strives to hire full-time faculty, non-tenure track, to teach these courses. He said they make up approximately 50 percent of his staff; the other 50 are teaching assistants.

Daley said his department has no intention of following UIC’s example. He said it may be ideal to have full-time tenure track teaching the course, but not at Columbia because of the variety of people they have teaching the courses. Currently, graduate students, full-time tenure, full-time non-tenure and adjuncts are teaching in the First Year Writing Program.

“We’re not striving to do what UIC does,” Daley said. “It just won’t happen here.”