This has nothing to do with our blog, but I figured I'd tell you guys since you are the most likely to relate.
I just got an email from someone at CCBC offering me an adjunct faculty position to teach 2 GIS short courses in spring.
#1: What is adjunct faculty? It's the people who aren't real faculty, right? No PhD, etc?
#2: What is a short course?
I haven't replied yet since this email is totally out of the blue. Weird.
2 comments:
Do it! Adjunct faculty are essentially contractual workers--you get paid by the course and don't receive employee benefits, but sometimes adjunct faculty go on to be FT faculty. It doesn't have anything to do with educational level--there are PhDs teaching courses as adjuncts, and lots of non-PhDs as FT faculty. Sometimes adjunct faculty are hired to teach a particular class once and sometimes (preferably) they come back again and again to teach. Biggest problem with adjunct faculty is the transition to teaching--most adjunct faculty are very skilled in their profession and often have teaching experience, but not necessarily in the classroom, so there's a steep learning curve for skills like student evaluation and curriculum implementation.
A short course is one that doesn't go the whole semester. Sometimes it's a short term (like January term), sometimes a particular skill for job training that doesn't take a full semester to teach (like continuing education has classes that start in the middle of the semester and only meet for six or eight weeks or whatever it takes to teach the skill) and sometimes it's as much time as a regular class but taught intensely over a short period of time (summer courses are like this). The first two versions are generally non-credit courses and the last is a credit course. First two are usually enrichment courses/general interest or job training, and the last is a credit course for a degree program.
So I talked to the CCBC guy last night and I am going to meet with him next week. In the short term, he is looking for someone to teach 2 courses--each one has 2 separate sessions--and neither one is out of my league as far as what I know just off the top of my head. For the long term, CCBC is starting an associates in GIS this fall and he'll be wanting instructors for that as well. So I figure I'll meet him and most likely give it a shot. The classes are split between the Essex campus and the Catonsville campus.
Post a Comment