Full-time, part-time mentoring is win-win situation

When she was chair of the sociology department at SUNY Farmingdale, Mary Kirby Diaz became aware of problems with employing adjuncts: how to find them, hire them, keep them and provide them with professional development.

She dreamed of a campus program that could serve part-timers. The New York State/UUP Joint Labor/Management Committee funded Diaz $25,000 for her dream, which offers eight full-time faculty $1,000 each to mentor two adjuncts for a year; 33 adjuncts are paid $250 each to be mentored for a semester.

Faculty and adjuncts were paired for an all-day workshop that bathed participants in information about campus and student resources and innovative teaching methods. After that, the full-timers contacted their adjuncts at least four times during the semester. The following semester, the pattern was repeated with two more part-timers.

Through the process of mentoring, full-timers got re-energized from the fresh perspective of adjuncts. The adjuncts, meanwhile, gained a sense of connection to the college community. Some learned they may even be eligible for benefits.

“It heightened campus awareness that we had a high proportion of adjuncts and that adjuncts had special needs,” she said.

So many part-time faculty, Diaz said, teach at various colleges and usually do not have an office — much less a connection to any one campus. “You have to be like the sky hunter, Orion, to find them. You really have to be persistent,” Diaz said.

When the program was completed, she used her grant committee report to successfully convince Farmingdale administrators to keep the program; it’s currently offered on a scaled-down basis. UUP Chapter President Barbara Maertz also now hosts a special brunch for adjuncts every spring.

Diaz also tapped into another grant that is paying adjuncts $250 in extra-service pay to present at professional conferences.

Since there is now some permanency to her dream, Diaz is on to the next one: creating an adjunct development office where part-timers can have phones, computers, bookcases, file cabinets, desks and discourse. “I think adjuncts are a gold mine; we need to understand what treasures we have,” she said.

— Liza Frenette