The Highways and Byways of Faculty Work

Temple University

There is a moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy’s journey is briefly interrupted. Lulled by a field of poppies into a much-needed nap, she pauses by the wayside for only a moment before her intrepid comrades—with the help of the powerful Glinda—break the spell that has beset her. “Curses! Somebody’s always helping that girl!” the watching villain exclaims. Not everyone is so lucky. On the journey toward academe’s Emerald City of full professorship, there are opportunities for pitfalls and pratfalls, and sometimes (as Dorothy discovers) it’s clear that someone is pulling strings. Without helpful colleagues and benevolent leaders, the journey might well be impossible. At the same time, the clearest pathways are not the only pathways, and full professor status is not the only destination. Contingent faculty, and the many women who fill the contingent ranks, know this. It is time for the rest of academia to recognize it as well, and to modify the maps accordingly.

Women in particular could benefit from a new atlas. As Judy Touchton and her coauthors suggest in A Measure of Equity: Women’s Progress in Higher Education, women’s concentration in contingent faculty roles impacts their opportunities both to advance through faculty ranks and to succeed in their current positions. In the current model, if women are to achieve equity in the professoriate, they must first step onto the road toward tenure. But as the report relates, both women and men are more likely than ever to traverse non-tenure-track pathways—and even more women than men travel in the frequently solitary steps of lecturer, instructor, and adjunct positions. Their isolation is detrimental to everyone: themselves, their students, and the colleagues and institutions who miss out on the benefits of their considerable talents.

Seeking to build more connectors between women’s divergent roads, this issue’s authors examine the “non-tenure track” and find avenues still under construction. Asking why contingent status affects women disproportionately, Ashley Finley explores the correlation between gender and a range of status-dependent factors, such as discipline and institutional type. Noreen O’Connor dispatches the myths shading one epic pathway: that of adjunct work as the family-friendly “mommy track.” Responding to the voices of non-tenure-track faculty, Inger Bergom and Jean Waltman describe contingency’s benefits and drawbacks; they, along with Judith Gappa and Andrea Trice, identify specific recommendations to make faculty work—and the academy at large—more equitable for those on the journey. Finally, Judith White examines the consequences for academia when the pathway to positional leadership circumnavigates the contingent pool.

When Dorothy sets out, she has the great fortune to find a clear pathway and a band of comrades with widely varying talents. Not everyone—and certainly not every woman faculty member—is so fortunate. Luckily, more than one pathway exists, and more inroads and alternative footpaths are always under development. The task now is to pave these paths evenly and network them carefully, so all routes are free of potholes and detours don’t lead to dead ends. The costs of not doing so are visited not only on the academy and its current professoriate, but also on students, who are traveling their own journeys. Inequitable practices and unfriendly cultures will hardly entice them to make academe their destination. An introduction to equitable institutions should be part of every student’s liberal education. This issue of On Campus with Women suggests some alternative routes for achieving that.