During the 2018 APSA Annual Meeting, we organized a group of contingent faculty and other political scientists interested in contingency-related issues to come together under the auspices of APSA’s first-ever Hackathon. The idea for this project originated in APSA’s service committee on the status of contingent faculty, on which Veronica Czastkiewicz serves. The goal of the group’s day-long meeting was to create a list of minimum standards for hiring and retaining contingent faculty, with the hope of generating action by the APSA Council on creating standards for contingent faculty in the profession. Many other professional organizations have adopted similar standards. What follows is a description of the efforts and outcomes of our Hackathon participants.
However, we concluded that every institution, regardless of material or administrative constraints, can work toward improving the status of contingent faculty under the umbrella of three normative values: fairness, voice, and respect.
Initially, we thought of grouping various proposals for elevating and normalizing contingent faculty under concrete topics such as material goods, professional development, and so forth. However, we concluded that every institution, regardless of material or administrative constraints, can work toward improving the status of contingent faculty under the umbrella of three normative values: fairness, voice, and respect.
In determining which specific guidelines to include under the umbrella of fairness, we compared contingent faculty to tenured or tenure-track (TTT) peers. It is our belief that to treat contingent faculty fairly, colleges and universities should:
1. Practice transparency in hiring, firing, and evaluation procedures.Footnote 1
2. Allot equal pay for equal work.Footnote 2
3. Ensure benefits such as health insurance, access to retirement-savings plans, unemployment insurance, and sick leave.Footnote 3
4. Provide office space (i.e., shared or personal), technology (e.g., computers, printers, and email), and libraries and research materials.
5. Ensure access to funds for research grants and conference travel.
6. Offer teaching-assistant support when a course meets student–teacher capacity or if other criteria otherwise would grant this support to TTT faculty.
7. Give preferential consideration after continued service for any of the same upcoming courses.
To give contingent faculty the voice they are due, colleges and universities should:
1. Allow contingent faculty at relevant meetings (with appropriate compensation for their time and service) and grant them voting rights in faculty governance.
2. Invite contingent faculty to participate in relevant faculty and institutional committees (e.g., curriculum, student assessment, and budgetary and program planning), with appropriate compensation.
3. Invite contingent faculty to departmental and college events.Footnote 4
4. Record and make available to the college/university and APSA data showing the number and proportion of contingent faculty.Footnote 5
Finally, the experiences of contingent faculty and our group’s discussion at the Hackathon with regard to respect and dignity were among the liveliest of all discussions. To incorporate this value into the relationship that institutions have with their contingent faculty, we would urge them to:
1. Create and make available hiring and orientation materials.
2. Formalize promotion, parental and other leave procedures, and other informal practices as they relate to employment and promotion.
3. Introduce faculty to the school and department and show them how to access all available resources.Footnote 6
4. Provide for salary increases over time that recognize years of experience and/or service, to include a policy or formula for seniority that may include ranks and be associated with increased levels of job security.
5. Formalize and encourage mentorship within the department or program. This may include:
a. Instituting course-observation procedures for experienced TTT to provide feedback for improvement.
b. Sharing course ideas or materials.
c. Writing letters of recommendation.
In addition to this general list of proposed minimum standards for the employment of contingent faculty in political science, our Hackathon participants identified opportunities to leverage existing infrastructure in other organizations within political science or higher education. These proposals included:
1. Asking college- and university-ranking organizations such as US News and World Report and Princeton Review to request that institutions make available their data on contingency (similar to the data mentioned in footnote 5).Footnote 7
2. APSA should conduct comprehensive and frequent research on the status of contingent faculty in the profession, including survey research that considers the distribution of contingent faculty (i.e., geography and type of contingency) and work conditions (see previous complex variables of fairness, voice, and respect).
3. Professional organizations should increase travel grants and reduce conference and membership fees for contingent faculty. (Contingent faculty are not unemployed, which is a membership category of most organizations; however, the current floor of $30,000 annual income (i.e., APSA) is itself aspirational for many contingent faculty.)
4. Showcasing and promoting best practices or model departmental policies, job advertisement for contingent faculty, and so on by professional organizations in political science.
5. Encouraging student awareness of contingency as it relates to faculty, as well as student participation in demonstrations and other forms of activism in this area.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive list; neither do the proposals represent a floor or ceiling for considering standards for contingency. However, we believe that if APSA truly aspires to represent all political scientists—including those in contingent positions—the Council must consider and move forward with the adoption of a set of standards similar to those outlined here.
