GRCC Faculty Voices

This should be an easy list of things to fix.  Comments on what you think…

• Imagine if you had private office space where you could meet with students.
• Imagine if your name was in the college directory so that students could find you.
• Imagine if your name, not the ubiquitous Professor Staff, was put on your classes.
• Imagine if your official title was “adjunct professor” instead of lowly “instructor.”
• Imagine if you had a private phone or, for some of you, a phone at all to take and make student calls.
• Imagine if you were assigned classes for more than one semester at a time – students could take you (or avoid you!) on purpose.
• Imagine if you were told, other than “there aren’t enough classes” or “enrollment is down,” why you weren’t assigned a class.
• Imagine if you received your first pay before the middle of October.  (This year is something of a fluke, if you will.)
• Imagine if the college didn’t contest your unemployment compensation claim.
• Imagine your academic integrity and rigor if you made a mistake, even a major one, without having to worry that student complaints would cost you your job.
• Imagine if you didn’t feel pressured to substitute for a colleague, or pressured to have a certain colleague substitute for you, or pressured to obtain a substitute at all.  (By contract, you’re not required to obtain a substitute, and the college is required to pay you if you substitute.)
• Imagine that, if you developed a course, you had the right to teach it or at least be paid for developing it.
• Imagine that you didn’t have to worry about losing your job when a new department head takes over or your department head has an issue with you that has nothing to do with student success.
• Imagine that no one said that GRCC has an adjunct problem.  (I’ve used that phrase, and for that I apologize.)
• Imagine that no one said your poverty-level pay was above average.