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In our newest “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:
Does anyone have advice for finding adjunct work local to a specific geographical location?
I’m not personally aware of any resources for this aside from job boards such as HigherEdJobs or visiting colleges and universities’ HR pages directly. But I’m not very plugged in on this.
Do any readers have any helpful tips?
Be in touch with department chairs. Nothing beats this. Do not wait for job listings. Reach out, in enthusiastic and friendly terms, explaining that you are in the area, that you have X, Y, Z expertise, and letting them know you’d be available to teach if they need lecturer coverage.
Fwiw, last year I tried to get local adjunct gigs, before getting an offer for my current job. I applied for adjunct gigs that were advertised on job boards and also reached out via email to chairs of local community colleges. No success with both strategies.
A very simple thing to do is e-mailing a department chair and asking if they need classes taught. I have done this and been successful.
Getting an adjuncting gig is surprisingly easy or can be depending on the school.
Googling “[name of specific institution] jobs” will probably show you the jobs pages for specific schools, and you can do that for every school in an area. Larger schools with a continual need for adjuncts will likely have a job listing that stays open and that they pull candidates from as needed. If you’re open to online teaching you don’t need to limit yourself to a particular town, although at my institution you’d still need to live in our state.
I don’t think it would be out of place to email the chairs of particular iplaces to ask if they’re in need of adjuncts and if so how to apply.
Cold-emailing department chairs with your CV sounds crazy, but can be surprisingly effective in some cases. This strategy of course won’t work for full-time positions, but chairs are sometimes in the position of needing to cover a course on short notice but not knowing local folks to contact. In at least one case, I know that my chair would have been very relieved to receive such an email, and would have seriously considered the candidate.
You could contact chairs of philosophy departments in the region you want adjunct work in. Of course, it helps if you have already met them before at a conference or something (networking is key). See if there are public talks or seminar series that you can go to at the department to introduce yourself.
Big state schools often need adjuncts for service classes (medical ethics, logic, etc). Philosophy department often need adjuncts for specialty classes, like philosophy of law (especially good if you also hold a JD). So if you demonstrate that you could teach a class that the department has a need for, it would make finding adjunct gigs easier. SLAC need VAPs all the time to cover sabbaticals, but those are usually advertised ahead of time in the usual places.
My impression is that most per-course adjuncting is not advertised. Your best bet is to email the department chair at colleges in the region with your c.v. and a brief (one page) description of your teaching experience and areas of teaching competence. This could lead to a phone call or interview, to an offer to teach a class (or several), or to being entirely ghosted. Good luck! Sometimes getting one course and being successful with it can turn into getting offered more courses in future semesters.
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