Mark Shelton is a temporary instructor in the philosophy and religion department, but do not let his title fool you. He has been at Central Michigan University for the last seven years and knows firsthand the meaning of the term.

"Temporaries come in so many different types and they're such a fracturing of why, "temporaries," are used in various sorts of places," Shelton said. "That here's no clear solution to what is being done."

Nationwide, contingent, adjunct, or as CMU coins the term, "temporary faculty," are increasingly making careers out of a position that was designed to exist for just a short time.

At CMU, full-time temporaries have increased by 27.5 percent from 2003 to 2008, based on data kept by faculty personnel services. Last semester, temporary faculty such as Shelton made up 20.9 percent of the 1,042 total faculty on campus.

Shelton said this narrow set of temporaries at CMU has experienced a consistent series of annual reappointments.

"As the professional associations would say, this is not a staffing gap that you're filling on a temporary basis," he said. "There is no real tendency to let these people go, yet they're strung along."

John Curtis, American Association of University Professors director of research and public policy, said this increase in full-time temporaries is troublesome for the faculty, administrators and students alike.

"What you end up with is a faculty work force that is not in a position to question the authority," he said. "In many cases, they can be dismissed or technically non-renewed at the end of an academic year. They really have no (job) security."

Temporaries can, under contract, carry more class loads than their tenured and tenure-track colleagues and can do so for less money, Shelton said.

English chairwoman Marcy Taylor said the temporaries in her department have been at CMU for a average of five to 10 years.

"So they're not really temporary faculty in that sense. They are permanent adjuncts with yearly contracts," she said. "It really was designed to alleviate maybe an opening you fill on a semester basis or if you have an enrollment increase that you did not anticipate. It was not intended to be a permanent position."

Temporary or adjunct?

Not all temporaries at CMU and nationwide are stuck in reoccurring appointments.

Bob Martin, associate vice provost of faculty personnel services, said an adjunct receiving a subsequent string of yearly appointments falls under the actual definition of a adjunct faculty member.

Because of this, he said temporary systems are still used as intended.

"Most of our temporary faculty are indeed temporary," Martin said. "They are of indeed part-time, and frankly, there is a component of coming and going to their employment."

Some temporaries simply travel to and from institutions, maybe even instructing at multiple locations.

Thomas Masterson, interim dean of the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow College of Health Professions, said he once started as an "academic gypsy" and instructed temporarily at a few other schools before he landed a tenure-track position.

"The nice part about doing it is it allows you to teach classes and gives you a leg up on another candidates in the pool," Masterson said. "Most of my friends went to two or three different institutions in the 1990s."

No excuses

There is no particular excuse for how the temporary system is handled, Shelton said, and despite the continued support of reappointments, there are serious drawbacks to the way the administration treats these positions.

"It really is a case that seems more out of out right exploitation in the most obvious sense of the term because they know they can get by with it financially and so they're doing it," he said. "It wouldn't cost them that much money to rectify it. So yes, they're making money by doing this."

A crucial disadvantage to temporary positions, Shelton said, is the lack of opportunity they have to do professional research through CMU, because it is not in a temporary job description.

Having received his terminal degree from Harvard University, he said temporaries have just as much interest and ability to conduct research as regular faculty. In order to progress professionally, he said, he would be expected to produce research material, despite the fact there is little time to do so.

"Yes, one can keep the job as far as CMU is concerned without doing research," Shelton said. "But, at the academic level people are generally interested in this kind of work because they are interested in doing work in their field, not merely teaching courses." Masterson said temporaries that do research on the side of instruction might have access to available university labs, among other things.

"If somebody came up to me for a $500 (research) grant, I'd seriously consider it," Masterson said.

Temporaries in health professions are treated as equals among tenured and tenure-track faculty, he said, and their instructional responsibilities are no different because temporaries teach whatever their expertise is.

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