Siena's adjunct professors press for more pay

PHOTOGRAPHER: Marc Schultz

Siena College adjunct and visiting faculty were in front of the college on Route 9.

Adjunct and visiting faculty at Siena College are pressing administrators to boost their wages and guarantee greater stability as the faculty members negotiate a contract with the school.

The negotations have dragged on since the contingent faculty members voted to unionize in June 2015. Representatives of the contingent faculty union said the per-course pay for adjunct faculty members and part-time professors who teach one or two courses is the last major sticking point.

“The big thing right now is wages for adjunct faculty because they are not fair at all, not even close,” said Amy Santos, an adjunct professor of business and mathematics and a member of the union’s neogtiating team.

The union represents 120 adjuncts and 40 visiting faculty, professors who teach a full-time course load but are only granted contracts one year at a time. The union and its members argue adjuncts and visiting professors need greater stability and better pay — calls that have been echoed across the country as colleges have become more reliant on part-time teaching in recent years.

At Siena, more than 35 percent of all faculty members are part-time, according to the federal College Navigator school listings.

The union representatives and college officials continued negotiations Monday afternoon, the 21st such meeting, according to the union. Some of the faculty members and supporters held a rally at the college on Monday.

In a released statement, the college administration said they were “making progress” toward contracts with the adjunct and visiting faculty members. They plan to meet weekly this month.

College officials have agreed to raise the adjunct pay by over 30 percent to around $3,300 per course. But the faculty members are pushing for an even bigger boost, asking for per-course pay of over $4,600.

Across the country, adjunct and other contingent faculty make a fraction of what their tenured collegues do. The average annual total pay for part-time faculty members teaching at a single school was just over $20,500, according to the annual report of the American Association of University Professors. Part-time faculty who teach on a per-course basis at a single school make an average of just over $7,000. Full-time professors make around $80,000 on average.

While some adjunct faculty members have other jobs and professions, some adjuncts bounce between multiple colleges as they try to piece together enough money to live on.

Elaina Frulla, a 2007 Siena graduate, worked as an adjunct at both Siena and the University at Albany from 2009 until last year, when she got a visiting faculty position at Siena. But even with the visiting professor position, Frulla doesn’t have the job security and scheduling certainity as other full-time employees.

“I would like security for the time being,” she said.

Union representatives said college officials agreed to concessions that would guarantee contingent faculty multi-year commitments, but those details aren’t final until entire contracts are agreed to.

Some of the part-time professors said long-term scheduling and planning is nearly impossible when they have to wait until weeks before the start of the school year to know for sure if they will have sections to teach. Frulla recalled having a pair of classes taken away from her over the winter break because another professor was returning. After that professor didn’t come back after all, she ended up teaching the courses.

“We never have as many full-time professors as we need; we always have adjunct and visiting [faculty],” said Chantelle Thauvete, a visiting professor of English literature at Siena. “It doesn’t seem short term.”

Thauvete has been teaching at Siena for three years and said she loves the school and its students. But she said those students aren’t being served as well as they could by a system that leaves adjuncts in limbo.

“One of the things your adviser warns you is not to take this job,” said Thauvete, who has a doctorate in English literature from McMaster University in Canada, referring to an adjunct position. “But I have to because I have to eat.”