Table of Contents | Next Article - L. Smith

At the request of Vera Zdravkovich, vice president for Instruction, the Adjunct Faculty Committee surveyed members of the adjunct faculty to collect information that would assist the college in developing new initiatives that would serve adjunct faculty more comprehensively.

As part of this, the survey also sought to determine the kind of content that would be most useful to include in a prospective adjunct faculty newsletter.

Respondents were asked to address the following three questions:

1. Please rate how challenging each of these instructional activities is for you.
2. Please rate how helpful the following topics would be as discussions in the adjunct faculty newsletter.
3. Please rate how helpful the following topics would be as regular features in the adjunct faculty newsletter:

Respondents answered by indicating the level of challenge or helpfulness they associated with ten concerns or topics listed under each of the questions. They also specified "Other" concerns under each question. Since the most useful percentages were associated with challenge levels 3 and 4 for all three questions, levels 1 and 2 are not reported here. Not all ten items are listed—only the ones that provided the most useful data for determining newsletter content.

Adjunct Faculty Survey: Summary of Responses

 

TABLE 2
Please rate how challenging each of the following instructional activities are for you: 1 – Not al all Challenging 2 – Not Very Challenging 3 – Somewhat Challenging 4 – Very Challenging
Items in Rank Order for "Very Helpful"	No. of Responses to 3 & 4	Level of Challenge (%)
		3 – Somewhat	4 - Very
Developing a new course and getting it approved	16	17	58
	54		58
Using technology in the classroom	29	31
	47		51
Creating a Web page for your class	25	27
	41		44
Managing disparate student levels	34	37
	40		43
Using Visuals	41	44
	31		33
Incorporating cultural diversity	38	41
	30		32

The survey form also requested information about the respondents’ primary occupation, research and/or publishing in his or her field, course development, committee or team service, and teaching division. Among the thirty-one respondents who listed teaching as their primary occupation, most teach at PGCC and several are training consultants, while others teach on the secondary level. Among the six retired instructors were a physicist and a former federal government employee. Included in the list of diverse primary occupations: attorney; executive director; forensic chemist; illustrator; judge; musician/composer; naval officer; nutrition consultant; police officer; psychologist; psychotherapist; registered nurse; statistician; training director; writer/editor, and many others.

Forms were mailed to 380 adjunct faculty members and a total of 93 survey forms were returned, representing an above-average response rate of more that 20 percent. Thanks goes to Sue Gillett in the Instruction Office, Tamela Heath Hawley and Pat Diehl in the Office of Planning and Institutional Research, for their technical assistance with this project. Thanks also to the adjunct faculty members who filled out and returned the survey by the May 14 deadline. Your participation was greatly appreciated.

Additional details about survey results will be printed in a future issue of The Adjuncts’ Perspectives. For further information you may contact me at:  E-mail brinkley@gp.cc.md.us  Phone: Extension 4351

The Instructional Area Newsletter, Volume 17, No. 1

Fall 2001