How We Got Contracts for Lecturers at the University of Vermont: A Tale of (Qualified) Success

Abstract

I am here to tell the story of the three-year process of getting renewable four-year contracts and other benefits (including sabbatical eligibility) for non-tenure-track and part-time lecturers at the University of Vermont (which?for obscure reasons having to do with the Latin name of the uni versity and two hundred years of custom?we call UVM). As a semi private, semipublic research institution, UVM has no faculty union. Until fall 1996, lecturers had no job security: they were asked to sign nine-month or four-month contracts and often did not know whether they would teach in a given September until July or August. Getting longer-term contracts meant a significant shift in the structure of the base budget for the univer sity, which had paid lecturers using one-time funds every year for decades. Our experience might therefore be instructive for faculties in many kinds of institutions. I contend that we were able to accomplish as much as we did because we recognized that most non-tenure-track and part-time faculty members (whom we call lecturers at UVM) are women and that their bad situa tion?low pay, no job security, no faculty-development support, limited benefits?can be framed as a feminist issue. I acknowledge the serious problems associated with universities' heavy dependence on lecturers to teach undergraduates: I know that administrators view the use of lecturers