Temporary faculty members can be an overlooked portion of the Iowa State teaching staff, and some people are trying to change that.

Heimir Geirsson, assistant professor of philosophy, was a temporary assistant professor last year.

He said temporary faculty members can work at a college or university for one to five years at a time.

“You have a job for a year, and it can be renewed for up to five years depending on your performance and depending on what the department needs,” he said.

Since temporary and part-time faculty members often travel around in search of permanent positions, they are known as “academic gypsies.”

“What temporary faculty has to face constantly is they have to find permanent jobs, and that takes quite a bit of energy, and that makes it difficult to set up a life with any kind of stability,” he said. “Life on the road is almost expected now in academia.”

Geirsson said he helped create a survey on temporary faculty for the ISU chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

The results of the survey can be reached at www.public.iastate.edu/~aaup/temp-pt,%20results.htm.

Geirsson said there are about 250 temporary faculty members at ISU each semester, which is almost one-fifth of the total teaching faculty.

How fairly these faculty members are treated varies from department to department, he said.

“It seems each department has a lot of control on how temporary and part-time faculty are treated — if they’re welcomed, if they’re treated as other faculty,” Geirsson said.

Geirsson said he believes temporary faculty members are treated well in the philosophy department. However, he doesn’t think it is appropriate that temporary faculty are not given voices in the Faculty Senate.

Frank Hummer, temporary assistant professor of mathematics, said some temporary faculty members are interested in the possibility of getting ISU and other universities to transform temporary faculty into a permanent faculty, “creating a new rank of faculty, in effect.”

“Temporary faculty are seeking to become permanent employees of the university and continue teaching, but with greater job security and pay,” Hummer said.

“The number of temporary faculty hired around the country is on the rise, and that is as a result of universities not wanting to abide by the things that are demanded of them by the tenure system,” he said.

Hummer said that after speaking with several temporary and full-time faculty members, he believes the two groups can work together to reach their goals.

“I have had some fears that tenure-track faculty may perceive temporary faculty as weakening their own bargaining positions, but now I’m finding that our interests do not conflict as I had feared they might,” he said.

Hummer said the AAUP has a committee on part-time and non-tenure-track faculty.

The committee has produced a standard stating its position.

“Compensation for part-time employment should be the corresponding fraction for a full-time position having qualitatively similar responsibilities and qualifications,” according to the committee’s standard.

“Compensation should include such essential fringe benefits as health insurance, life insurance and retirement contributions.”

Geirsson said he does not think temporary and part-time faculty members should receive the same salaries as tenure-track professors.

“The pay of temporary faculty is always lower than the pay for permanent faculty, and it should be lower because temporary faculty are paid for teaching only, but permanent faculty have to do a lot of service work, serve on committees; some of their time is supposed to be spent on research,” he said.

He said the payment of temporary faculty varies greatly.

“If they teach less than a full-course load, they may get paid by course, which is not very much,” Geirsson said. “Or if they teach full-time, they may get as much as 70 percent of what an entry-level [tenure-track] professor would get.”

Hummer said the current role of temporary employees is very uncertain.

“It seems clear to me that the university does not even know what its own policies are regarding temporary and part-time faculty,” he said, “and my experience has been that there are no rules; they don’t know what they are and they make it up as they go.”