On Thursday, March 27, Annemarie Bean, a visiting associate professor in the African American Studies Program, was informed that her tentatively one-year teaching position at the University would not be extended to a second year, a possibility that was stated in her contract.

This came as a surprise to Bean, who specializes in performance studies and race. Her courses were always popular, she doubled the enrollment capacity of several classes and she received no negative or critical feedback from her colleagues in the African American Studies Program. Furthermore, Bean had been given, at her request, a letter that promised notification of the rehiring decision in “early 2008.”

“I requested the letter because I knew that the job market would be evaporated by spring,” she said, explaining that if she’d been told she wasn’t being rehired earlier on in the semester, she would have been able to conduct a job search.

As “early 2008” passed by with no decision from the University, Bean started asking if anything could be done to expedite her rehiring evaluation process.

“Because I had not heard from the Program regarding my rehire for a second year by mid-March, Dean [of the Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Programs Don] Moon suggested I write a self evaluation to aid the senior faculty in my pedagogical and organization progress, as well as to inform the faculty about my involvement with senior thesis writers and prospective AFAM majors,” she said.

Bean received no feedback regarding her self-evaluation, and is still unclear about the specifics regarding the decision not to rehire her.

She is currently evaluating her options for the upcoming academic year. Colleges are reluctant to hire near-senior faculty like Bean, who has more than ten years of teaching experience, and visiting positions they require higher salaries. This, combined with economic responsibilities due to that fact that she is a single mother of two children, has forced Bean to consider filing for unemployment.

Bean, like many other visiting professors on campus, does not have a home institution to which she can return.

“It is a misperception that we have job security at another institution,” said Mandi Isaacs Jackson, another visiting professor of African American Studies, explaining that a more appropriate title would be “contingent faculty.”

An increased reliance on visiting faculty is a national trend, and is not particular to the University. According to a National Center for Education Statistics study, the number of non tenure-track faculty rose 7.4 percent from 2003 to 2005, while the number of tenure-track faculty increased by only 1.9 percent.

With many qualified professors seeking a limited number of professorial jobs, universities can easily find people to fill the lower-paying short-term positions. Jackson is concerned that universities’ reliance on contingent faculty bodes poorly for students hoping to find engaging and intellectually challenging professors with whom they can form longer-term relationships.

“I’m just frustrated by this revolving door that seems to be happening in regards to visiting professors at Wes,” said Stephanie Quainoo ’10. “I can honestly say that I’ve rarely been as engaged and motivated in a class as I have been in a visiting professor’s class, and it’s really hard to cope with their leaving, considering that sometimes you would like this professor to become your thesis advisor or mentor you in another capacity, and you lose out on that as well.”

Of the 33 new faculty for the 2007-2008 academic year, 17 were visiting professors. And of the visiting professors, only one—Dana Ioana Casetti, a visiting professor in the astronomy department—was in the math and natural sciences academic division.

Vice President for Academic Affairs Joe Bruno acknowledges that having visiting professors may create a sense of discontinuity in students’ overall academic experience, but says these professors play a vital role at the University.

“This is a longstanding practice, the aim of which is addressing course access demands in various areas,” he said. “Faculty openings arise at various times in the year, sometimes with very short notice. At the same time, [tenure-track] faculty searches … usually take a full academic year. We often hire visitors to provide courses while we search.”

Although visiting professor positions are temporary, some return for tenure-track jobs.

“Visitors often become candidates in the tenure-track search and their effectiveness as visitors certainly factors into the evaluation of their candidacy,” Bruno said.

But according to Jackson, who is at the University on a one-year contract, the process in which departments and administrators evaluate visiting faculty’s “effectiveness as visitors” and opportunity for rehire is lacking in transparency. She said that there was no clear timeline, no classroom observations and no feedback from colleagues.

Such was the case for Bean, who said that her contract stated that her fall end-of-semester student evaluations would be the sole measure that her rehiring would be based.

“I needed at least 85 percent of my students to rate my teaching and my class as either ’outstanding’ or ’good’,” she said, explaining that she calculated her own scores after getting her evaluations back, and missed the 85 percent mark by only several percentage points.

Bruno, however, said that other things are taken into consideration.

“Visitors are hired to provide excellent teaching, so it would be a mistake to ignore teaching evaluations,” he said. “But we ask department and program chairs to consider a visitor’s overall work with students and his or her broader contributions to the department or program when making a recommendation.”

Bean still hasn’t been given an official reason for the University’s decision not to rehire her. Over the phone, Chair of the African American Studies Department Gayle Pemberton told Bean that she was not rehired because she scored too low in the “student effort” category, in which students indicate how much work they put into the class.

“I’m really confused,” Bean said. “I’m not sure if it was that I scored slightly lower than 85 percent on the student evaluations, or the students’ effort aspect. I honestly don’t know because I haven’t received anything in writing. I don’t know how I failed.”

Assistant Professor of African American Studies Gina Ulysse would not speak to The Argus about Bean.

Démian Pritchard, visiting professor of English, along with several other professors, believes that hinging rehire decisions on student evaluations is problematic.

“I think that basing rehire decisions solely on student evaluations is a problem, especially when you are considering teachers who teach emotionally charged subjects, like racial politics, gender and/or sexuality issues,” Pritchard said. “These topics are often felt as deeply personal by students. Indeed, there have been several studies that have come out across the nation warning against putting too much weight on student evaluations, especially in tenure decisions for professors who teach Ethnic Studies, or Women’s Studies, for example. Student voices do absolutely need to be heard, but, as a collective of input about a teacher.”

Jackson said that visiting professors face serious threats to academic freedom—the ability to teach about controversial things, to teach experimentally, to take controversial positions—because they risk endangering a rehiring.

“It’s repressive,” she said. “You have to be careful about what you say in class if your student evaluations determine whether or not you get rehired. Maybe you’ll assign less reading, be less challenging, stop encouraging students to confront difficult issues. Is that a good education? I don’t think so.”

Unlike Jackson, Pritchard doesn’t feel that her academic freedoms have been squelched, but suspects that this is due, in large part, to the fact that she is a tenured professor at another school: Southern Connecticut State University.

“I think I can be brave precisely because I have another job,” she said. “I think I might feel differently if my mortgage or rent or insurance were dependent upon me getting a second year here.”