instructor

program coordinator

faculty

retention specialist

instructional aide

SAN-Mateo-County-Community-College-District

Teaching is a great job and joining a faculty can be a rewarding life choice.  Adjuncts in San Mateo are not expected to teach and are not supported as faculty.

Standing in front of a class, delivering instruction, this is one mile of a longer road that is teaching.  The preparation, planning, and design of a class.  The analysis, correction, feedback, and bonding with students—this is before and beyond instruction.  Adjuncts in San Mateo are paid only for hours we stand and deliver instruction.  Other contributions that make instruction teaching are not recognized.  Meaning adjuncts are either not expected to teach or expected to do so on their own dime.

This district uses adjunct as an adjective when calling adjunct faculty to contribute to the team (be team players), when it's about sacrifice.  Teams pull together but they also take care of each other. Adjuncts are forgotten when needing support.  We buy our own computers, provide our own office space, even pay out of pocket to print exams or pay for teaching materials.  Adjunct (adj) faculty become adjuncts (n) when denied support and security reserved for "real faculty" (a phrase and distinction said to my face).  The team we are asked to support, does not support us.

Next month, faculty will enjoy celebration, camaraderie, and then take a deserved paid break.  Adjuncts will receive neither break nor holiday card.  We get a holiday pink slip—fired the week before Christmas (every year).  Adjuncts spend the last of the year unemployed, stretched thin, and forgotten—but still grading final exams.  Forgotten until more sacrifices are needed. 

Adjunct faculty are not faculty.  Adjuncts are faculty adjacent.

Planning, organizing, directing, and controlling the IT desktop, labs and server support. Including strategic planning of computer operations, systems, network and database administration.
Manage, training, supervise and evaluating the work of computer support technicians, media, and electronic technicians involved in diagnosis, repair, configuration, installation and maintenance of workstations and audio-visual equipment.
Planning, coordinating and allocating technology support resources, services and day-to-day activities.
Conferring with administrative, academic and classified staff regarding computer support requests and department needs, resolution of issues, and provision of technical assistance.
Ensuring the reliable and efficient operation of all workstations, audio-visual equipment, and security systems.
Assist in development of District and College policies and procedures for budget allocation, minimum technology standards, equipment replacement strategy, based on College and State-wide fiscal environment
Computer and Server hardware and software purchases; and, a variety of other related duties as assigned

Great students but curriculum and vision for the colleges is absent.  Lack of full-time faculty means there is no continuity or connection in programs.  Pay is among the lowest of the 11 districts in or around the Bay Area while cost of living is the highest.  Deans fill in the gaps, but are overworked, under-qualified, and just trying to get through the semester.  College administrations lasts about three years.  There seems to be one new college president among the three colleges every year.  Deans come and go faster, generally spending most of a year trying to patch together quick wins to trade for an admin position.  We had six deans of science in four years.  Most departments have either one or no full-time faculty.  Adjuncts carry all of the teaching load, have no idea what they’re getting into, and burn out after a few semesters.  Enrollment has been steadily shrinking for a decade and no one is invested enough in the future of the district to try and turn it around.  With the Pandemic things were actually better (extra funding and flexibility helped keep people longer) but now the squeeze is coming back and the revolving door is speeding up.

The load just keeps going up each year and the bar keeps dropping.  They constantly shift you from one class to another, so you're always rebuilding classes for different students, with different subjects, and in entirely new modes.  Administrations solution was to hire  instructional designers.   But those only know how to create software manuals and HR training videos.  None have ever taught a college class or helped anyone learn anything more complicated than a cash register.  They just interview you then say "good idea" periodically.  Or offer to show you what buttons to push on some new gizmo or software.  Eventually you just give up and read the PowerPoints instead of teach the subject.  Students zone out, but they get their grades.  Administration get's their tuition.  You give up on teaching, you focus on facilitating, and you collect a paycheck.   But this isn't why I got into education.  Inflation squeezes more each year with no new contract or salary increase for years at a stretch.  This job is not teaching anymore.  Whatever it has become, it's not worth it.

I do not resent that people working here have no idea what they’re doing.  The pay is the worst in the area while the cost of living is the highest.  The district cannot attract the best or even competent people (on average).  Most will have to learn the job, while doing the job.  What I resent is the campus culture that expects people to have all the answers and frantically “do the job” without learning, experimenting, or trying to grow.  The insecurity, fragility, and bitterness keeps people guarded, risk averse, and only trying to “wait out” their time until retirement.

The worst part of a school, where faculty are not willing to learn, is not stagnation.  The ones who last the longest are the ones who have no where else to go.  They float to the top.  The insecurity of those B players means they only hire C players.  The quality isn’t stuck in place, it’s spiraling to a crash point.  

The first email reminds me that the semester has ended, but I am still responsible for evaluating classes and proposing improvements before Spring.  It lists my deadlines for launching next semesters online resources over the holiday, for providing syllabi and schedules to the department before next semester starts, and then there’s flex days.  All while grading final exams and reporting class grades.  

The email right after directs me to immediately apply for unemployment.  My adjunct contract ended yesterday.  The email reminds me adjuncts have “no reasonable assurance” of future work (even if tentatively scheduled), they therefore become unemployed at each semester's end.

A few years back, there was outrage about corporations planing that their part-time employees would offset low pay by qualifying for food stamps.  How is this different?

A typical day is interesting working with staff, faculty, administrators and serving students.  The most enjoyable part of working in the San Mateo Community College District is the wonderful, committed people and the diverse workforce and student body.  Excellent training is provided to support employees to be the best they can be by learning interpersonal and communications skills to be successful.  I continue to learn more about collaboration and accepting and appreciating different viewpoints towards a common college mission.  In the 11 years I have been with the District, I see the progress that has been made to be an inclusive workplace culture.

Workload is crushing. More faculty I personally know have quit or retired this year than in any of the previous twelve. Instead of the school replacing them, my load is getting heavier. The cap size on my classes has increased (again) and a new district policy requires all faculty to take on additional non-teaching work without additional pay. We are all working out of contract and the district seems unwilling to even consider any new contract proposals or support for overloaded faculty. There is nothing more demoralizing than knowing how to teach well, hearing students in need of what you have to offer, but not being allowed to deliver because poorly scheduled, over-packed classes and endless committee meetings soak up all your energies and hours.

The district is in a race to the bottom. Tuition is now zero and the focus is on cutting costs to make it all balance. Faculty haven’t had a contract in close to two years. Classes are taught almost entirely by temp instructors following a district-wide recipe. My attempts to innovate or differentiate classes have been crushed. The message is, just stick to the script. Tenured faculty are being forced out and pooled adjuncts are now rotated between campuses.  Keeping them generic, disconnected, constantly competing with each other, and more easily replaceable. With a new dual enrollment model the idea is to embed instructors at high school campuses. Some adjuncts may end up never visiting any college during their 18 week gig.

Last week, the district promised a college which cares about the community and its students.  Those students are taught almost entirely by part-time adjuncts like me who cannot afford to live here.

Most adjuncts I know commute over an hour each way.  The district doesn't provide health care, a living wage, or even a promise of employment for more than four months at a time.  We work for at least two different districts and it's hard to see being a part of this community as even a future possibility.

The promise that this community will be our priority and its students will receive special care and mentorship?  Who is writing these promises?  Why should people expect they be kept when the only people students meet each day are just passing through?

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Instructor 106 salaries reported	$120 per hour
Program coordinator 24 salaries reported	$81,161 per year
Faculty 9 salaries reported	$95,685 per year
Retention specialist 8 salaries reported	$84,168 per year
Instructional aide 7 salaries reported	$57,663 per year

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