Example Letter For Adjunct Faculty: Fill & Download for Free

There are no ethical constraints on a former client, though you might want to keep your past therapy work in a special place in your mind and heart, to refer back to from time to time. Having a social relationship with a past therapist might interfere with that.As to the therapist. . .yes, it can be ethical. Here are some fictionalized examples from my own experience.A fellow psychologist named Craig came to see me for smoking cessation. I had a standardized program, three individual sessions, plus a referral to a weekly support group in the community. About ten years later I was interviewing a psychologist for a job at our clinic. The guy looked familiar. He said “Remember me? I took your stop smoking course. I haven’t smoked since.” It was Craig, older, with a beard. I remembered him, but nothing specific about him. VERDICT: I could hire Craig, and become friends with him if that worked out, no problem, assuming it was OK with Craig. It was. I hired him and we’re still friends.A teacher named Sally with multiple back surgeries was seeing me for hypnotherapy-based pain management. We’d had a few sessions about five years before, with good results. We both showed up at a book study group a mutual friend had started for her Facebook contacts. The book was Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. I pretended not to recognize Sally until our eyes met and I gave her a little raised eyebrow salute and a quick smile nobody else would notice. She came over and hugged me and announced “This guy cured my back pain!” VERDICT: I could stay in the book group. We lingered after the session and talked about our “relationship.” As it turned out, Sally and I did become friends, and still exchange emails once a month or so. VERDICT: No problem.Dan had been diagnosed at various times with BPD, Dependent Personality Disorder, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. He’d seen me weekly for a couple of years, and had gotten a better handle on his emotions and managing relationships, which had often become dependent, and then ended in rage and disappointment. He idealized me, and became somewhat obsessed with me. When Dan moved to another state for work, I helped arrange a referral. We spent many sessions setting clear boundaries and limits on future contact with me, as he prepared for the transition to his new therapist.A year later I was asked to teach a basic counseling course at the University, as adjunct faculty. When I walked into the classroom, Dan was in the front row, grinning. He said “I’ve been watching the catalogues to see if you’d be teaching, and I came back up to audit your course! I got laid off and I’m looking for a job back here!”VERDICT: This was one of the tougher ethical situations I’ve ever had, and reviewing all the issues would take a long chapter in a book. Basically I couldn’t think of anything to do without making matters worse, so I did nothing. Dan stayed. Almost immediately he began asking lengthy questions that started “When you were my therapist. . .” I’d smile, shrug and say something like “Therapists have to go for a full memory wipe after every therapy. It’s an ethical thing. I have zero recall of any past clients, though I’m sure they were all wonderful.”I treated Dan like any other audit student, and this upset him greatly. After the first week of class Dan wrote me a rageful 11 page snailmail letter, with a copy to the dean, accusing me of crimes of abandonment, rejection, and disrespect. He never contacted me again after that.

If the postdoc is indeed very familiar with your research and can very favorably and with concrete examples write about your research abilities and relevant character virtues, that should in most cases indeed be your best choice.Some places in the world may accept letters just from professors, but that is likely to be stated somewhere in the application instructions.My institution, Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, normally accepts letters only from people who have obtained at least the level of education the applicant is applying for. That is, for PhD application all the recommendation letters need to come from people who have a PhD, and that was made clear to me in the online application process. I think this is the most reasonable approach (the person may judge if the candidate has what it takes to get a PhD only if the person has gotten a PhD themselves) and it is probably followed by most academic institutions in the world. The other requirement was that the person writes about the candidate’s ability to do research - which is equally reasonable, as this is an institution where most PhD students don’t teach; teaching universities often prefer that at least one letter also tells about the candidate’s ability to teach.So, professors, postdocs, PhD-holding staff scientists, PhD-holding adjuncts and PhD-holding industrial researchers would all have been equally eligible to write my letters for PhD application, as long as I had done research with them. In my case, none of my 3 letters came from a person who could use the title Prof., all used Dr. - two were assistant professors in countries where assistant professors can’t use Prof. (although both were independent research group leaders), and the third was something slightly below that (independently supervising just MSc students as myself) - and there was no problem about that. I could have also gotten letters from a professor emeritus, a full professor department head and a vice-dean of the faculty, but these letters would have been much less appreciated because they didn’t directly supervise me doing research.

I have adjuncted at four different institutions (sometimes 3 simultaneously). Here’s what I learnedPeople have different reasons for ending up adjuncting. Many are PhDs trying to get tenure-track work but can’t because (a) there aren’t enough positions (I’ll get back to this) or (b) because they are not willing to move to another state or country to get a tenure-track job because they want to be with their spouse / relatives. Some are ABDs trying to get part-time teaching experience so that they don’t suck at teaching when they go on the real academic job market. Others are “career adjuncts” - they have a PhD but have adjuncted for 10 or 20 years or more. They didn’t plan it that way. But there are also adjuncts who are teaching college without a PhD after having had other careers and this is a second career or a retirement career for them.The financial situation of adjuncts varies tremendously. A person without children who is a “career adjunct” teaching a heavy (4–4) courseload at $5000/course is making $40,000. That may be enough to live on comfortably if s/he has health insurance through a spouse or through a decent healthcare exchange program. But for adjuncts who have children or eldercare responsibilities $40,000 without subsidized health insurance is a nightmare, hence the food stamps and prostitution. Also, in many places adjuncts can be paid as little as $2500/course. A lot of adjuncts are financially between those two extremes.What benefit an adjunct derives from his/her low-paying adjunct job varies tremendously. Some are there because they feel there is nothing else they know how to do and they can’t afford to not work and they are depressed as hell. Some are there because adjuncting is a lifeline for them — they have retired from other jobs or followed spouses to new places or are new parents and adjuncting provides an intellectual and social community, not to mention a schedule and a reason to get out of bed in the morning. For others adjuncting is a form of gaining experience and job training and keeping their foot in the door while they hope for something better.How students experience adjuncts depends on the kind of adjunct. Many adjuncts are fabulous teachers — they aren’t rewarded for research and aren’t given time for research and are desperate to attract students so they work their butts off to give students the very best. Many adjuncts are newish teachers (just finished or finishing their PhD programs) which can be both good and bad — it often means they really do want to “make good” and are not yet cynical and have a real enthusiasm for their subject. They may also make some typical new mistakes, like assigning readings that are too hard or taking too long to grade because they are really investing themselves in providing extensive feedback for all assignments. Some adjuncts aren’t good teachers at all, they are very set in their ways and have no reason to put in extra work because they won’t get paid for it. They should have retired years ago but the university continues to keep them because their labor is so cheap. Many many adjuncts, who teach to make ends meet, have no time and are absolutely exhausted, not only because they have heavy workloads (or are putting in a lot of extra effort for their students’ sake) but because they have to commute between multiple universities. (I am a super cautious driver who never had an accident in her life — until I fell asleep at the wheel while commuting. Thank God no one was hurt except me. that scared me straight and my family and I decided to take a financial hit so that I would never be in that position again. ) That’s bad because they don’t have more time to give to students or to their departments that regular faculty have. A regular assistant professor knows that part of his/her job is writing letters of recommendation, meeting with students or members of the community who take a particular interest in their work, providing useful feedback on the work of other members of the department, and serving as mentors. Many adjuncts would love to do that but don’t have time and receive zero compensation for that kind of work.Back to the question of why there are so few tenure-track jobs, despite an obvious need to have courses taught. In part this is because it is so much easier for departments to get administrative permission to hire adjuncts. For a tenure-track job, a department needs to secure a “tenure line” - a commitment from the administration that often involves securing a specific pool of funding, often 10 years worth of salary for the new hire. Departments apply for that line very very far in advance, but they need a teacher NOW, and can’t wait for two years for a dean or provost to vote up or down only to have that administrator move on to another university before they can finish what they started. But securing $5000 for a specific course to get taught next semester? That’s much easier. Another reason for not hiring more tenure-track faculty is that regular faculty can influence each other’s work in a way that adjuncts don’t. If you are a professor, and other professors in your department vote to require that, say, all department majors have to meet a specific requirement, but you think that requirement is counter-productive, then you’ll come in conflict and need to negotiate with your fellow faculty. Keeping the number of fellow faculty small allows you to focus negotiations among a small group of people. If all your adjuncts became regular faculty, then you would have more people with whom to clash and to negotiate. Finally, another reason to prefer adjuncts is if you are a department chair who is unsure of what the future holds for your department. If you are worried about having the right ratio of faculty to students it’s easier to respond in the short term by hiring adjuncts. Or, if you are a department chair who wants to prove to the administration that there is an audience for a new tenure-track position, you might hire an adjunct for that position to build a case. So, for example, I was hired by a history department to adjunct teach Middle East history in one college to prove to the dean that there were students hungry for such courses, so that the dean would be inclined to put up the money for a real hire. Finally, after 18 months, we convinced the dean — only for that dean to move to a different position and the next one to say “well, I prefer that Middle East be taught through the political science department”. So that was a bust.Hope this was useful.