Demand grows for full-time faculty

By Nicole LaPrade

Although some department heads and university administrators are pleased by a recent increase in part-time faculty salaries, they say the addition of more full-time, tenured-track faculty should be equally as important.

The Board of Trustees approved the operating budget for the 2006-07 school year on Jan. 20, and allocated $800,000 for increased compensation for part-time faculty members.

But according to some officials, greater job security and the addition of more full-time faculty would increase quality of education for students by making professors more accessible.

"We will probably gradually add additional full-time faculty and rely less on part-time faculty or adjunct," Associate Vice President for Finance Harry Fong said. "That will definitely improve the quality to the students because you'll have access to full-time faculty who'll be here all the time. Adjunct, they come and they go."

According to Fong, some factors -- including the gradual increase in class sizes in recent years -- have led to a heavy reliance on academic year lecturers, rather than tenured and tenure-track professors.

English department Chair Phyllis Brown was "excited" by the pay increase for part-time faculty, but hopes that more benefits and job security will also come.

"The increase in pay will certainly help, but one of the things colleagues in my department are very eager to do is to work with the administration to provide more job security for the academic year lecturers. That will make an even greater difference," she said.

Fong said that in planning the budget each year, the budget committee looks at data comparing Santa Clara on tuition, faculty salaries and benefits, and educational quality to other private universities nationwide, such as Loyola Maramount University and University of Notre Dame.

Brown said that in recent years, her department has lost a couple of lecturers who had been at Santa Clara for a few years because they were not offered more job security -- in the form of greater benefits and increased compensation.

"This is something that we're working with the administration on and the administration is really hearing what we're saying," Brown said.

"Over the last two years, it's been done in increments, the benefits for academic year lecturers have steadily increased," Brown said, citing examples such as extended family leave, which was made available to part-time faculty in 2004.

Contact Nicole LaPrade at (408) 554-4546 or nlaprade@scu.edu.