Teaching advice and support for new and adjunct faculty (panel session): experiences, policies, and strategies

The demand for computer science faculty is growing rapidly, along with the demand for seats in computer science courses. The problem of finding, recruiting, and retaining computer science faculty may have reached crisis proportions[1]. Meeting this demand means an influx of new faculty, including perhaps nontraditional faculty such as adjuncts from industry, emeriti, graduate students, or faculty from other disciplines. Such diversity is valuable but brings its own challenges. One of these is acclimating new faculty, particularly those from different academic or industrial environments, to the norms, practices, and expectations of a particular school and department. These may vary considerably among institutions, and some may be subtle and unrecognized, not always identified in existing orientation materials. For the new faculty's experience to be successful (for themselves, for their students, and for the institution), we must identify these issues. But we must also make that information available in an effective form: A comprehensive “policies and procedures” manual may be left unread amid the more immediate demands of meeting the first class or starting a research program. Experienced colleagues will have some answers, at least idiosyncratic ones, and likely are willing to share them when they have a free moment; even so, the new instructor may hesitate to call on the same person too often. The panelists will describe their experiences as new or adjunct faculty or as those orienting such faculty; thereafter, we will solicit experiences from the audience. We expect to generate and disseminate a list of teaching issues new faculty must address and a range of strategies for helping those faculty address them. This could serve as a “Prototype FAQ,” one that institutions (or their new-faculty coordinators) could adapt to local practices.