ajunctassistance.com is dedicated to helping college adjunct instructors and new college instructors in genera succeed.  In this blog, I will be sharing two types of information.  I will offer advice for improving your skills and effectiveness as a college instructor; and I will provide tips for, putting it quite bluntly, staying out of trouble.  While primarily aimed at college faculty members, my hope is that other administrators will find my postings helpful and contribute their own “lessons learned” for the benefit of all.

I had two main reasons for creating this blog:

1. Most college adjuncts do not have the time to study and learn everything they need to know to become good instructors.  Dozens of excellent books have been written, but even if adjuncts knew which ones to read, they wouldn’t have time.  Furthermore, many are written in “academese” and include both research and theory.  What most adjuncts need is, in the words of Dragnet’s Joe Friday, “just the facts.”
2. Sometimes new instructors run into problems they never anticipated and were not prepared to handle.  I have seen potentially good instructors get tripped up by a variety of issues.  And, sadly, I have seen a couple instructors who were unable to recover from such experiences.  What is worst, however, is that the students suffer.

My goal is to share advice that will help new faculty members avoid the many pitfalls they may encounter and quickly develop into good instructors.  With my own faculty I call these tidbits of advice “Your Dean’s Would-be Words of Wisdom.”  Without compromising confidentialities and with full respect for the rights and privacy of faculty and students alike, I will be doing my best to share some of what I have learned.  I will draw on my own experiences as an adjunct instructor and as a college dean.  I will also interject some of what I have learned through my own doctoral studies in simple, user-friendly terms.

If you find my blog helpful, please consider making a donation to help offset costs.

Thank you!!!

© 2010 Paul A. Hummel, Ed.D.

Revised May 2, 2010