Koehler said adjunct faculty are hired to fill in places where there are vacancies in the departments and offer students more flexibility in scheduling. They are contracted to teach one or more courses for a given semester with no obligation by the university to continue employment, he said. Patrick Nuss, an adjunct professor in e-business, said he sees the benefit of both regular faculty and adjunct faculty. I can bring practical applications of the business world to students. Adjunct professors who do work in the field in which they teach also have the advantage of providing contacts for students, Nuss said.
Teaching is secondary.
However, maintaining outside jobs also means that they are not available for departmental meetings and events, said Ronald Watson, chairman of the art and art history department. Yet he said one of the biggest advantages of hiring adjunct professors is allowing for more classes to be taught. He said his department has had to turn away a lot of freshmen because they haven't had enough resources for everyone who wants to take the classes. Ideally, only about 10 percent of classes would be taught by adjunct faculty, Koehler said. Koehler said that to move to the next level that Chancellor Michael Ferrari keeps talking about, the university will have to hire more full-time faculty.