I have worked as an adjunct writing instructor in Tucson, Arizona, for more than fourteen years. During this time I have had many good, bad, and indifferent experiences, as have most teachers of English. But the most memorable part of being an adjunct is that feeling of being part of the flotsam of academia, serving at the whim of others who may or may not feel any sense of commitment to adjuncts' well being. In fact, there haven't been many statistics about how many we are or how our work conditions compare. I began to perceive this adjunct population as one big, badly kept secret in our academic family. I began to envision many unknown-to-me sisters and brothers whom I wished with all my heart to help.

For this reason I started studying statistical research with a friendly statistician. I set out to do something that could help adjuncts across the country. I wanted to do a longitudinal study based on a survey that would run three or even five years. This study would address attitudes of and about adjunct writing faculty, as well as tease out some of their day-to-day working conditions. When such data are entered into a database, they can be run by region, for example, so that adjuncts can finally go to their bargaining tables with some verifiable idea of what is offered to adjunct writing faculty elsewhere in the country.

I may be getting ahead of myself, as many adjunct writing faculty have not yet taken the important step of forming bargaining units at their institutions. Meanwhile, I hope to use the sponsorship of the Working Class Culture and Pedagogies Special Interest Group of the CCCC conference to disseminate our results. I have also begun to post results on Rich Haswell and Glenn Blalock's CompPile Web site, and Adjunct Advocate magazine carries announcements of our survey's location each summer. I am looking at other journals to promote the survey's visibility, including here at Lore. I hope that all of these efforts to make the survey known to as many writing and English faculty and administrators as possible will eventually assure a broad sampling of opinion to document the attributes of adjunct labor and be useful to adjuncts in their career negotiations.

1. DO THE SURVEY

Here is how to participate in what we hope will be an important data collection. Go to this URL and take the Adjunct Writing Faculty Survey. Your answers to this form will go directly to our database.

Adjunct Survey: http://dakotacom.net/~glomc/forms/Adj04.html

2. NEED IDENTIFIED REPLIES

Please write to me at this address if you are willing to be one of the small "norming" groups of identified respondents. I must give you information on how to do the few extra steps, so e-mail me first.

Gloria McMillan e-mail: glomc@dakotacom.net