Last spring we welcomed the part-time career and academic counselors and librarians into the CLC-AFO. One small change that was made is that the “Teaching Preference Form” (TPF) became the “Adjunct Preference Form” (APF) in order to accommodate our new colleagues.
When completing your APF, your CLC-AFO officers suggest the following:
1. Be as flexible as possible with days, times, and locations. Several divisions have large concentrations of GFO adjuncts now, and cannot possibly honor everyone’s request for “Tuesday/Thursday” back to back!
2. List all courses that you are qualified to teach, are interested in teaching and/or have taught before. These should be in descending order.
3. Department Chairs change, administrators come and go. The new person may not know us as well as his/her predecessor did. Use the “Comment” box to make special requests or to clearly state what you’d really like to teach.
4. Watch for an e-mail confirmation from your Division that your APF has been received. When you receive it, save it to a specially created folder. If you do not receive the confirmation, contact your Division immediately.
5. Print a hard copy of your APF.
Please note that the College’s obligation to GFO adjuncts is one 3 credit hour course. And it need not be the first one listed on your APF. As long as they have made a “good faith offer” that reflects what was on your APF, they’ve met their obligation under the Union contract.
Many of us have full time jobs, teach part-time at other colleges or have other commitments that put real constraints upon when, where and what we can teach for CLC. This is understandable. However, our divisions/departments sometimes face funding shortages or low enrollment which reduces the number of classes being offered for the next semester. We adjuncts rarely know this until we get that dreaded phone call or e-mail informing us that our class has been cancelled. And it makes it difficult for our department chairs to offer us a re-assignment if we’ve listed only one course.
Moral of the story: try to make your preferences as broad as possible in order to maximize the chances of getting an assignment or reassignment.