Adjunct Faculty Satisfaction Study

Improved Essays
TCMI has a small core of full-time faculty members and a dedicated group of long-time adjunct faculty members. Faculty members, including both full-time and adjuncts at Haus Edelweiss and adjunct faculty in the distant settings, reported close communication and collaboration among faculty members. Many of the adjunct faculty have been teaching with TCMI for a number of years; they bring the applied expertise that is a hallmark of the programs. For this reason, their suggestions about course additions and revisions are welcomed. One example of this is the recent development of courses related to Islam and World Religions, suggested by TCMI faculty teaching on campuses in majority Muslim countries. The faculty report that they have recently completed …show more content…
Nearly 70% of the adjunct faculty have been with TCMI for 5-9 years; most (70%) teach one or two courses a year. Their satisfaction was generally slightly lower than that of full-time faculty. Within that range, they reported lower levels of satisfaction with professional development. individual suggestions in the comments point to the need to make sure course expectations and structure are completely communicated before the class starts. They gave some of their lowest ratings to items indicating that they had adequate professional development to improve as teachers, and to the usefulness of the evaluation system to help them improve or for the courses to be improved. Like the full-time faculty, they express an interest in learning to better use the available technology and in online teaching. They also express interest in other teaching-improvement faculty development opportunities. There is evidence of some desire for enhanced faculty development among adjunct faculty. The evidence indicates that TCMI has opportunities for professional development in the areas listed above.

The hybrid course model used at TCMI makes faculty very accessible for face-to-face interaction during the mentorship period at the end of each course. Students and faculty report spending many hours outside the classroom on individual consultations. In the Open Forum settings, both students and faculty report satisfaction with their ability to interact in a timely way. The general standard reported by faculty is that a response should come within a week, but students and faculty alike reported that the usual response time is much shorter, being measured in hours or a day or

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