Adjunct faculty and graduate student instructors at George Mason report concerns over low pay, limited job security and heavy workloads. (Detra Bell / Fourth Estate)

Adjunct professors and graduate assistants speak out against university treatment

BY LORENZO IRAHETA-LEON, STAFF WRITER

A growing number of adjunct professors and graduate student instructors at George Mason are voicing dissatisfaction with their treatment by the university’s administration. 

janet e. dandridge, co-chair of the George Mason Provost’s Office Adjunct Faculty Committee and adjunct faculty in the School of Art, spoke on issues faced by the faculty. 

“The vast majority of complaints that are shared with me are about not being paid on time, being underpaid, not having benefits, unexpected workloads and having classes cancelled up to one week prior to the beginning of the semester,” she said.

At Mason, adjunct professors are hired on a semester-by-semester contractual basis, with no guarantee of renewal, limited access to benefits and no job security compared to their full-time counterparts. 

dandridge said “An adjunct who’s been working 23 years, teaching the same courses, has to sign a contract each semester for those same courses. It’s ridiculous,”

“Adjuncts are a unique bunch in the university. Usually, we are working full-time in our professions, and sharing real-world, real-time knowledge with students, which is invaluable.” she added.

For the majority of adjunct faculty in public Virginia universities, their income primarily comes from their professional work while also teaching at different schools. 

“I really want to emphasize that adjunct faculty contracts are per semester, they are three to four months long, you’re turning around every three to four months without knowing you’ll have a job,” dandridge said. 

When discussing issues that faculty face at Mason, dandridge highlighted primary university-wide shortcomings. According to her, the university does not provide adjunct faculty with a clear orientation to faculty resources upon being hired, pathways to share grievances and processes for resolving those grievances.   

“You are working in a university where you don’t have a voice. Who do you go to when leadership says this is an issue that you have to discuss with leadership? Aren’t you leadership? If there is no path, how do you resolve the problems you’re having?” dandridge said. 

George Mason has representative bodies for non-tenure faculty members, including the Adjunct Faculty Committee and the Graduate and Professional Student Association. 

Drew Leisner, a graduate student in the College of Science, said “We haven’t had the opportunity to talk to anyone higher than that in the administration. I know [that’s what] the graduate student government GAPSA is for, but I actually served on that a few years ago and I don’t really think it was very effective in that role.”

According to GAPSA, its purpose is to serve as a body for graduate and professional students to voice issues, advocate for the greater good and to create a stronger graduate community.

“We’ve met with the leadership in our department [who say] a lot about ‘oh we’ll make sure this will never happen again,’ and we were then able to get in touch with one or two people from the college who just then deflected all the blame back onto our department.” Leisner said. 

Graduate students’ primary pursuit is an advanced degree and a focus on research, but they often also have to teach classes in order to support their academic pursuits. They have been facing issues similar to the adjuncts’ issues, with the two groups’ complaints often overlapping. 

Peter McEachern, a PhD student in the Psychology department, said, “We’re expendable … we are expected to shoulder far more work than anyone realistically can. We do it because we have to, many of us are here because we are passionate about what we do and what we study.”

Adjunct professors have voiced similar complaints about overworking while also touching on the financial issues they face. 

“I love teaching, but just have to do so much of it that I can never really do as good of a job as I would like. Same with the research, my workload is just so insane that I can’t give my best to anything,” McEachern said. 

Mason’s stipend level is low compared to other public Va. institutions and Northern Virginia’s high cost of living,, especially for adjuncts and graduate and professional students. 

“I live in Arlington, so this is the highest cost of living area in the whole state, but as far as I’m aware, the average stipend level at George Mason is the lowest average stipend level for any public school in Virginia,” Leisner said.

The faculty’s financial struggles have brought up comparisons to Mason’s recent staffing and budget deliberations. 

“I went to the Board of Visitors meeting and Mason’s strategy to weather their budgetary issues was to stop hiring staff and to replace full-time staff that departed with part-time staff, while increasing enrollment,” McEachern said. “So basically just massively increase the work that we’re doing.” 

“We have a very well paid administration, but we have some of the biggest gaps in staffing for any public university in Virginia,” Leisner said. “I think there is definitely [space for] the administration to look at the budget and there are some holes that can be filled.”

George Mason’s administration did not respond to the Fourth Estate’s request for comment. 

The American Association of University Professors held a community town hall on state workers’ collective bargaining rights Feb. 28. The town hall centered around Mason’s and Va.’s collective bargaining bills SB378 and HB1263. 

The bills would lift the ban on public sector collective bargaining while excluding home care workers and higher education faculty. The two bills passed the Va. General Assembly, establishing statewide collective bargaining for public sector employees. 

As higher education faculty are currently excluded from the bills, university workers remain feeling underrepresented in their work. 

“I have a terminal degree in my field — I have 25 plus years of experience — I have been diligently and tirelessly doing what I can to help my students holistically,” dandridge said.

“I care about my colleagues and the experience we have, and what I want is [for the administration] to understand that I’ve invested so much time in what I do to get to pick where I can teach people effectively and the university is taking advantage of me,” she emphasized. 

“The Mason motto is ‘Altogether Different’, but it is not. It should say Mason is not altogether different; Mason is like any other exploitative institution,” dandridge said. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: janet e. dandridge requested her name to be uncapitalized.