Friday, July 6, 2012

Kinney, "Fellowship for the Ring," in WPA, 2009

Summary: Kinney explores full-time non-tenure-track positions with a mix of personal narrative and theory. When she was ABD, she landed a full-time three-year position at Grand Valley State University in Michigan that provide most of the pay and many of the benefits of a tenure-track position, including office space, professional-development support, and the same teaching load as a tenure-track faculty member. (The college also had many full-time Affiliate Faculty--adjunct--positions that offered renewable contracts, good pay, and good benefits.) She argues that these positions offered a good alternative to the standard tenure-track, and that they greatly improved the lot of non-tenure-track faculty at GVSU. She credits much of her good experience to the independent nature of the GVSU writing program, which had recently separated from the English department. The good non-tenure positions allowed the writing program to hire composition specialists and people who wanted to teach writing and to retain them and help them develop professionally.

Response: I am glad to read this article. This is a hot issue, and one that has been discussed at my college. Kinney makes compelling arguments about how such positions greatly improve the lot of (currently) adjunct faculty. And she does address concerns about how such positions might serve as a disincentive for administration to hire more tenure-track faculty. This article didn't settle the issue for me, but Kinney is a strong, articulate advocate. Plus, she focuses on GVSU, which is in my state and which my son and father just visited for an excellent summer program.

Uses: How do we improve things for non-tenure-track faculty?

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