The goal of the Committee on the Status of Contingent Faculty in the Profession is to bring attention to issues that impact contingent faculty in the discipline and to determine how APSA can best engage and support them.

Committee Members

Term expiring August 2025

Jonathan Ring, University of Tennessee

Deborah Toscano, Delgado Community College and U of New Orleans

Term expiring August 2024

Michael Widmeier, Webster University

Term expiring August 2023

John Holder, Winthrop University (co-chair)

Isaac Kamola, Trinity College (co-chair)

Our committee has accomplished 7 goals during its first 3 years (2016-2019):

• Organized a panel at APSA Annual Meetings (2017-2019). See titles below.
• Completed a polling of contingent faculty in political science and analyzed the result, thanks to committee member Peter Francia, in collaboration with the East Carolina University Center for Survey Research. See the summary results of the survey here.
• Drafted guidelines for an APSA "principled position" on the status of contingent faculty in the profession, which were developed during the 2018 APSA Diversity & Inclusion Hackathon and through further discussions. The APSA Council has reviewed the document and sent back for further discussion.
• Contributed a Spotlight feature (8 short articles) in PS, Political Science and Politics, July 2019.
• Developed working connections with other APSA status committees, on current and future panels, and receptions at the Annual Meeting.
• Allocated financial resources for the committee's current and future activities.
• Recruited outstanding candidates for all vacancies on the committee.

Roundtables at APSA Annual Meetings

• Adjuncts: Lived Experiences and Policy Changes in Academia (2017)
• Confronting the Elephant in the Room: Departments of Political Science and their Contingent Faculty (2018)
• Debate on "Diversity": Does Contingent Faculty Represent a New "Diversity" Category? (Saturday, Aug 31, 2019, 2:00pm)