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Russell Mickler, Principal Consultant, has over 17 years of professional experience leading and managing IT organizations.
My Story on Adjunct Teaching
Written on May 11, 2007
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>Since this isn’t really a school related email; I
>won’t be graduating until ~December but I
>wanted to ask how you got started teaching for
>Devry.
Sure!
>I think it may be something I would enjoy doing.
>I rarely see job openings available for teaching
>on their website but know that classes
>fill up so quickly they must need people for this field.
Yes, and not just DeVry/Keller, but tons of traditional university systems and for-profit institutions like Apollo and Career Education Corporation (CEC). There is a very large market for adjuncts right now.
>I wanted to ask. Do you know how “in need” they
>may be of teachers and what their requirements
>may be? I know I should probably direct this to
>the school and if you would rather not answer until
>after semester or never I’ll certainly understand.
Sure, I can give you my impression.
I’ve been doing adjunct teaching – contract-based teaching – since 1996. I applied to an ad in the paper for a contract teaching position with a vocational college in Wilsonville, OR, to teach a DOS 6.22 class. I had my bachelor’s degree and I was a Netware Certified tech and MCP at the time, so my qualifications passed muster. I loved the experience. It was fun – and challenging – to stand up in front of a bunch of people and deliver a lesson plan.
I took on more teaching opportunities at Pioneer Pacific College and the University of Oregon, where my MCSE credential now opened a lot of doors. In 1999, I was on the verge of completing my graduate program, and I applied for onground adjunct teaching with the University of Phoenix; I taught grad and undergrad tech curriculum for them exclusively for many years.
In 2004, I saw an ad that DeVry/Keller had opened up a facility in Portland.
I made a call, talked to the dean, and received an interview. I started teaching grad work for them in 2004 onground and I’ve been teaching for them onground ever since; I’m presently teaching an IS535 class onground.
It was around 2004, too, that I expanded my horizons. I applied for an adjunct instructor position with Colorado Tech University and began teaching online courses. I asked the same of DeVry, channeling through the onground dean to talk to the right people, and began teaching for DeVry/Keller online, too. And since 2004, I’ve been designing classes for both CTU and DeVry, which introduces a new set of challenges and skillsets.
Since 1996, I’ve been teaching adjunct without a real break. Eh, I love to teach (grin) and it’s just a major part of my life. I teach for about four university systems right now but that goes up and down based on what the market is doing.
Universally, these are the things you’ll need to be a successful adjunct candidate:
1. At least five years of stable work experience in your field, preferably as a manager or higher level of responsibility.
2. A bachelor’s degree at minimum; a master’s degree to teach undergraduate and a small sliver of graduate; a Ph.D. if you want to teach exclusively graduate.
3. Teaching experience helps and gives you a competitive edge, but I wouldn’t say it’s absolutely required. Being able to say that you understand lesson plans, rubrics, that you’ve had face time on the stage with a bunch of students, and know how to grade papers… this all helps. However, in today’s market, I think most schools are willing to take a chance on talent, to give them the experience they need in this area.
Contract teaching (adjunct) is an attractive option to for-profit and traditional university systems. You can cap the cost of an instructor through the contract without promise of tenure nor all of the messy direct and indirect benefits offered to employees. Adjuncts are often just as qualified (if not more qualified if you look at real-world experience) as the tenured professor, and can relate to employees in continuing adult education programs better (in my opinion) than someone whose been away from the workforce for a while.
Adjunct teaching is very rewarding because you meet all kinds of people and backgrounds, new ways of doing things, new ideas being explored in other companies. It can give you insight into your own career and technical problems just by involving yourself in the curriculum with the students. If you love tech, and you love to talk about tech, then adjunct teaching tech can be a lot of fun.
However, it’s very time consuming and the hourly rate would probably make you laugh, particularly once you start out; adjuncts with more experience command higher rates on the contract, particularly PhD’s, which are more versatile to the university. Typically it’s a 5.5 week to 8-week engagement and you aren’t paid all of the funds up-front; instead, you wait to be paid until after the 8 weeks, or, some schools pay you a 1/3′rd now, 2/3′rds after the end of the course. This means heavily financial management on your part. You’re a contractor being paid on a 1099 (usually), so you must factor in the management of your own taxes. Plus, if you factor in Net/30, you’re not being paid for up to 90 days of the beginning of the class.
A typical contract for an undergrad course could run a new adjunct instructor $1,200. Based on the dire necessity for your talent, you could see $1,300-$1,400. If you’ve taught before, $1,500; and if you’re a PhD, $1,600.
A typical contract for a grad course could run a new adjunct $1,600. Necessity, $1,800. Sometimes, stipends and other incentives are allowed, $1,900. Experience, $2,100. PhD, $2,400.
I typically run about 4-6 classes at a time, mostly online through CEC and Keller, although I do onground teaching. I know of adjuncts that just do 1 class a quarter; I know those who run up to eight courses at a time, full-time. The online environment allows me to maximize time and
minimize my expenses, so it’s a better ROI for me. Some instructors hate teaching in front of the box – it’s a preference thing – but I enjoy it, yet I don’t want to totally lose my onground skillset so I’ll intentionally teach for Phoenix or Keller onground throughout the year.
It’s rough when you first start out. You’ll be learning how to do things, learning the curriculum, reading the text, figuring out the process, sapping a bunch of time. Plus, students: helping them with homework, fielding email and phone calls – sometimes at whacky hours and on weekends. This will reduce your margin at first. You’ll spend, probably, at least 15-20 hours/course; you can do the math to see the hourly rate, and it’s not all that spectacular.
However, once you get the groove – you know what to do, what to expect, what you’re going to lecture on, or the focus of discussions, the content of the course, the textbook, all of the policies and procedures… then you can easily begin to whack that down maybe 3-5 hours/week per class (especially online as much of your content is electronic and “copyable”).
So, in the first couple of years, you’re gaining experience and learning the ropes, getting used to performing (grin), and getting used to the process – managing your finances, balancing work and family time, getting used to paying taxes and benefits differently than “normal”. Sometimes, I see new instructors burn out, be uncomfortable with managing their own financial affairs, find that they can’t juggle work and family, that they’ve no “free” time of their own because they’re always on call. This happens. And they don’t move on.
But, for those others, what you see are economies of scale effect where they take on more contracts with more institutions, learning how to market themselves, balance their engagements, and make a fairly good scaleable income. Myself, I use teaching as a stable portion of my company’s revenue model that can be expanded and contracted based on other demands on my time.
Oh, and did I mention that you’re awarded incredible education discounts on software and hardware (grin)? Check out journeyed.com. An _excellent_ benefit for being a teacher!
In any case, in Google, just do a search on “adjunct teaching”. The rest is up to you. You’ll find that there is plentiful opportunity and I think DeVry is in that list, but there’s also others… when you’re ready, just contact me and I can put you in touch with a dean or two.