Folio Letters University of Alberta Edmonton, Canada May 30, 1997

Part-time and sessional assignments hurt University

I write concerning the plight of temporary and part-time sessional lecturers hired to teach undergraduate courses in several University departments. I believe the continued informal use of sessional lecturers is detrimental to the University, its students, and particularly to those individuals who fill the temporary positions. Although I appreciate the difficult financial times the University faces and the need for short-term solutions for immediate teaching needs, I think that there are better options than course-by-course sessional assignments for the following reasons:

1. The use of sessional appointments undermines continuity in undergraduate courses. Despite efforts to standardize syllabi, particularly in core courses, individual instructors will necessarily teach different material, limiting the ability of students to make informed course choices and of faculty to build effective ties among related courses.
2. Temporary teaching assignments, whether filled by sessional lecturers or faculty, discourage investment in course content. Instructors appointed to courses they are unlikely to teach again have little incentive to invest heavily in the preparation of lecture notes, auxiliary reading material, laboratory protocols, and exams. Many of the refinements implemented in successive sections of a course are simply not possible.
3. Constraints on availability and dependability stretch the expertise of sessional instructors. Because they draw from a small local pool and are unable to offer or attract secure commitments, departments with ad-hoc assignments may have difficulty finding suitable instructors. This can result in the appointment of lecturers to courses well outside their own areas of expertise, sometimes only days before the course is to begin.
4. Sessional appointments tend to exploit the instructors who fill them. This bold statement stems from three attributes of many sessional arrangements: low per effort pay, inadequate recognition of prior training and career stage, and decreased marketability for future positions. In my own department (Biological Sciences), a new sessional instructor is paid less for teaching an entire lecture course than a beginning M.Sc. student (on a teaching assistantship) responsible for two sections of its lab. But more importantly, the massive first-time effort required of a conscientious teacher in a new course can seldom be repaid through multiple or successive assignments to that course. Part-time sessional instructors also have no job security and no benefits, but they must have a Ph.D. and typically have postdoctoral experience as well.

I encourage departments to develop more equitable arrangements for temporary teaching needs. Courses needing sessional instructors could be combined to create full-time, attractive positions. These positions need not be permanent, but should be long enough (e.g. two-year contracts) to warrant reasonable commitment by both departments and instructors. Such positions have recently been advertised by biology departments at the Universities of Carleton, Northern British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Trent, Winnipeg, and Victoria. Typically, these positions involve heavy teaching loads, but they also reward the expertise of their successful applicants, allowing them to plan a lifestyle and a career accordingly.

Colleen Cassady St. Clair

Killam Postdoctoral Fellow

Department of Biological Sciences

Letters published in the May 30, 1997 edition of Folio.

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