Part-time Faculty and Librarians: Testimonials

"I dearly love teaching, but by May I found myself wondering why in the world I expend so much of myself for such little recompense; when I did the math, it just didn't make sense. But I did sign on for another fall and winter. So when I heard about this movement to unionize, I decided that I would have to make time in my life to assist with a long overdue effort. Let's hope it gets us somewhere. Please spread the word where you think it will do the most good." Marilyn Noble

"If only this had come a year earlier for me! In May I informed UNB that I would no longer teach courses through my department. I asked to be taken off the Fall schedule and they have since replaced my courses with another instructor. I taught courses at UNB for thirteen years (for several of those years a colleague and I single-handedly taught all 800 first year students), was nominated for teaching awards a number of times (although as P-T, I was ineligible to win), and I will really, really (I can't say that enough) miss the students -- many of whom were P-T learners and so much fun." Carla Gunn

"My first teaching assignment was in the very compressed trial-by-fire of summer session. Since then, I've had to recreate it for various forms of distance delivery: as a combination of videoconferences and face-to-face sessions in another province (so I had to develop a parallel series of guest speakers in that province), and then by audioteleconference (which poses its own constraints in terms of the kinds of learning activities that can be incorporated). Is it any wonder that when I was approached about converting it to yet another format (WebCT), I refused? If I were paid for course development and redevelopment, this wouldn't be such a big deal. But I've already developed this one course three times!" Part-time faculty member, Fredericton

"I've had some of my regular, long-standing courses taken away from me and given to graduate students who would have to teach them without stipend as part of their graduate studies requirement. Does that sound fair to you?" Part-time faculty member, Fredericton

"I put two of my courses up on the Web and taught them for five years until I finally threw in the towel. All the thanks I got was a couple of e-mails from front-line (i.e. lower level) employees at the College of Extended Learning; no one farther up the food chain or in my host faculty seemed to even notice that I had left. I should add up how much money my courses made for UNB!" Part-time faculty member, Fredericton

"The new course that I developed was added late to the official roster (through no fault of mine) and if I hadn't undertaken my own promotion of it, it probably wouldn't have have attracted the break-even number of students. And of course if it hadn't run, I wouldn't have been paid for any of that development time! Sure makes this a one-sided gamble, doesn't it?" Part-time faculty member, Fredericton

"I really care about my students, and they know that. Sometimes they have weighty issues (academic and personal) that they want to discuss with me, and without an office, there's no privacy to do that. Hanging around in the classroom after class just doesn't afford the confidential setting that some of these conversations require." Part-time faculty member, Fredericton

"We part-time instructors teach because we're hooked on learning. We teach to the needs we see in our students. When we're teaching, we don't always think about health benefits, we don't think about salary, we don't think about seniority, we don't even think about brushing our teeth; we think about our students and about how to help them learn. We love what we do, and we're very good at it. That's why we keep doing it again and again. But more and more of us are burning out and packing it in, because we've been giving so much for so little for so long." Part-time faculty member, Fredericton