Non Tenured College Teaching

For the last three years of my career, I taught business classes at a small university in East TN.  I only had a master's degree so I could not teach graduate classes, and my 42 years of experience in management did not make any difference to accrediting agencies.

I got paid full time and my 9 month contract was spread out over 12 months.  I got paid extra for teaching in summer school.  I was hired on a non-tenure basis which means I had no employment protection, nor did I have to spend time trying to get articles published.

The requirement at this university was to have 12 hours in the classroom each week and 6 hours in the office and be on at least one committee that took less than two hours of your time each week.  These committees met once a month.  

SO...  I worked only 20 hours each week and got paid for 40 hours...  but this was only because I was not on a tenure track.  That extra time would have been used to do research for publishing.

The university was less than 2 miles from where my wife and I were living at the time.  So, I could go home for lunch if I wanted to.

When I was doing my office hours very few students came to see me so I spent that time working on my lesson plans for the next class or grading papers.

At this particular school and in this particular business department, everyone put in their hours Monday through Thursday and Friday morning.  At 1pm, all faculty except for the Dean and secretary would leave for the weekend unless they had a committee meeting.

We had three weeks off for Christmas but had to put in our 20 hours during both the fall and spring breaks where students had no classes.  That was a small price to pay.

The stress level for a job like this was next to nothing...  and, during those three years, I was wishing I had made this transition earlier in my career, but it was an excellent way to END IT.