Smith College Contingent Workers

Building a space for contingent workers at Smith College, the Five Colleges, and beyond that will outlast us.

Who are “contingent” faculty?

“Contingent faculty” are not on the tenure track. They include, but are not limited to, those with the following job titles: visiting assistant professors; lecturers; senior lecturers; salaried, paid-per-course, and short-notice hires; lab instructors; teaching assistants; and postdoctoral fellows. Contingent faculty may or may not be eligible for benefits; they may be part-time or full-time; they may have signed contracts for the 2020-2021 academic year; they may have verbal agreements for employment for the upcoming year; or they may typically be renewed in the summer.

There is a two-tier system of faculty jobs—that is the way of academic employment across the country. The first tier consists of faculty who are on tenure track, which means they have job security, are mentored, and can be promoted. Their jobs can't be terminated or put on hold. The second tier consists of faculty who work on contract: 1 semester, 1 year, or multi-year contracts. Many of these contracts are renewed from year to year, but this is not guaranteed. About 50% of Smith faculty are contingent, which means they do not have long-term job security.

Across the United States, instructors gendered female and from marginalized groups are over-represented as contingent faculty compared to tenured and tenure-track faculty. Smith College is no exception.

At Smith, we are a particularly invisible group of expendable workers. The College has no dedicated listserv for contingent faculty, and provides no faculty development workshops targeted towards contingent faculty, who need to learn to develop their careers in order to find a job elsewhere when their contracts end and are not renewed. Some do not even appear in the faculty directory. The College has not acknowledged our existence and, in fact, some have been reprimanded for making our status known to students or other colleagues.