If you’re reading this, chances are you are all that plus a bag of chips in your field of expertise.  You’re a subject matter expert and well-respected in your area.  You have a number of years experience in your specific discipline and you feel as though you have something to give back to college students hungry to gain the knowledge you have.  You’re going to continue your full-time job in your field, but you’ve been thinking about or have been asked to consider teaching at a local college or university.  The problem is that your degree isn’t in teaching.  You’re an expert in Management or Marketing or Chemistry or Nursing, but you’ve never taught before.  Now what?

Welcome to my world.  As a nontraditional adult learner, I didn’t enter college until I was 31 years old.  I had always been a lifelong learner, but not in any formal degree-seeking sort of way.  After just a few short semesters in my undergraduate program, I realized that I wanted to pursue a graduate degree specifically with the goal of teaching at the postsecondary level.  Partly it was because I had encountered a few instructors who couldn’t teach their ways out of wet paper bags and I thought, “Heck, even I could do a better job than that!”  But mostly it was because I knew that I had a gift for teaching and training.  I had an ability to explain things in plain, simple, down-to-earth terms utilizing current relevant examples.  All I needed was the degree.  Two degrees and four years later, I was given my first opportunity to teach a college course in October of 2000.  That first class was exhilarating and eight years later I am still energized by and learn from the students in every class that I teach.

Let’s start with an understanding of just exactly what it means to be an adjunct instructor.

Adjunct instructors are to teaching what temporary clerical workers are to businesses. These are not full-time or permanent positions. As an adjunct, you are asked to teach on an as-needed basis. If this were a medical position, they would call it p.r.n. (as the occasion arises; as needed). There is generally no guarantee of how many classes you will teach in a given semester or even during a calendar year. Many times too, there are restrictions on the number of courses or semester hours that an instructor can teach annually on an adjunct basis. Adjunct instructors are considered part-time instructors who do not qualify for benefits, tenure, or ranks such as Assistant Professor, Professor, et al. The popularity of hiring adjunct faculty as opposed to full-time professors has increased in recent years. This is due to the increased demand by nontraditional adult learners (adults working full time while attending college, generally working during the day and taking classes at night) seeking college degrees. Today’s college students want their instructors to have hands-on, real life experience in the area in which they teach as opposed to being an “egghead” or scholar who teaches a subject without benefit of actually ever having worked in the field he/she teaches. Today’s college instructors are specialists in their fields, not generalists who think they can teach any and every subject under the sun.

What qualifies someone to teach at the postsecondary (college or university) level? This varies from school to school and is influenced by accrediting bodies, but in general terms, the qualifications are as follows:

Instructor should hold a degree one level above the level at which he/she will be teaching. Teaching at the Associate level requires a Bachelor Degree; teaching at the Baccalaureate level requires a Master Degree, etc.

Instructor should have a degree in the subject area in which he/she will be teaching or have a minimum number of credit hours in that discipline. The number of credit hours varies by institution and I’ve seen it anywhere from 12 credit hours to 18 credit hours. Most schools require that these be credits at your highest level of degree attained.

While no university that I’ve ever encountered has any specific personality type requirements, there are certainly some personality types or traits that make more successful teachers than others. If you’ve taken Personality Type Indicator assessments such as Myers-Briggs, DISC, Personality Plus, or others, you know your basic personality type. Extroverts generally, but not always, make better instructors because they are decisive, not afraid of confrontation, and feed off of the energy of an “audience.”

            You’re still reading, so I must not have scared you off yet and you’re still interested in occasionally teaching at the postsecondary level, so now you want to know how to get one of those jobs, right? 

            First, you should know that most colleges and universities have what they call an “incest rule.”  What that means is that if your highest degree attained is from their school, you can’t teach for their school. The theory behind this is that if you gained all of your knowledge from XYZ University and then turned around and taught for XYZ University, then XYZ University students would not get outside perspectives, or benefit from the research and scholarship of other universities. 

            As we previously discussed, schools are looking for someone with a minimum of an earned degree at the appropriate level from an accredited college or university as well as the appropriate credit hours in a given discipline.  What they also desire is for the instructor to have a minimum of three years of real-world experience in the discipline in which they teach.  For example, if you’ve never worked in Human Resources or handled HR functions, don’t ask to teach Human Resource courses.  Additionally, what schools are looking for is someone who has prior teaching experience.  “But I can’t get teaching experience unless somebody let’s me do it and nobody will let me do it until I’ve already got experience doing it.”  Is that what you’re thinking?  I hear you.  It seems like a Catch .22 situation doesn’t it?  It doesn’t have to be.  Sometimes the community colleges or career schools will give you your first chance teaching at the postsecondary level if you have any type of prior teaching experience.  When I talk about teaching experience, I’m talking about teaching adults, not children or teenagers.  Have you ever taught a bible study to adults?  Did you teach an adult education class?  Have you facilitated training classes at your workplace?  That’s teaching experience! 

            You wouldn’t believe some of the resumes’ I’ve received and things I’ve heard over the years while hiring hundreds of adjunct faculty members.  While interviewing potential faculty candidates and asking them what courses they want to teach, I’ve heard the response “I can teach anything” way too many times.  I always wanted to ask, “Really?  Your degree is in English, but you’re comfortable teaching Quantum Physics?”  If they were to reply “Yes” then I’d know I was in trouble!  I will never forget this one man who insisted that he wanted to teach Economics.  He was already teaching at the university where I was a Director and he taught management classes, which fit with his experience and degree.  Our requirement at that school mandated that the instructor must have 18 graduate credit hours in a discipline to teach in that discipline.  We were really struggling to find Economics instructors, so we were willing to bend that rule somewhat to require a total of 18 hours, combining undergraduate and graduate hours in a discipline in order to teach that subject.  Review of his college transcripts indicated he had only 3 undergraduate credit hours in Economics, so I thanked him for his interest but told him that I couldn’t approve him to teach that subject.  He said, “I KNOW I have 18 hours in Economics and I want to teach it.”  I had to make copies of his transcripts and show them to him to get him to calm down and accept the fact that he wouldn’t be teaching Economics for us. 

            Look around and see what schools are near you.  Where I live, there are 25 colleges or universities within 14 miles of my house, allowing plenty of opportunities to find work teaching.  Add Distance Education to the mix and the possibilities are endless.  A note of caution though – don’t attempt or expect to teach Online until you’ve taught on-ground for three or more years.  Just like any other job, teaching takes practice and moving to the online environment requires that you first master the face-to-face environment. 

My earned degrees include an Associate of Science in Business Administration, a Bachelor of Business Administration with double majors in Marketing and Management, an MBA, and I'm finish up a Master of Arts in Management & Leadership this December. Although I have completed the coursework for my Doctor of Education degree (specializing in Leadership), I haven’t yet defended my dissertation, so that makes me A.B.D.(all but dissertation). But for lack of funds, I would continue with my education and pursue a Doctor of Business Administration and a Juris Doctorate. I have taught at many levels spanning from career education diplomas to graduate degrees. Although I primarily teach Marketing and Management courses, I have also taught the following courses:

Graduate Level

• Staffing and Selection – On Campus
• Managing Human Resources – Online and On Campus
• Group Dynamics and Change – Online and On Campus

• Advanced Marketing Management – Online and On Campus

• Managerial Communications – On Campus
• Strategic Human Resources – On Campus

Undergraduate Level

• Advertising & Promotion (both pure campus and hybrid on-campus/online)
• Principles of Marketing (both pure campus and hybrid on-campus/online)
• Consumer Behavior (both pure campus and hybrid on-campus/online)
• Personal Selling – On Campus
• Marketing Research – On Campus
• Strategies in Marketing Management – Online and On Campus
• Introduction to American Business – On Campus

• Management: Theory, Practice, and Application - On Campus
• Public Relations – Online and On Campus
• Organizational Behavior – Online and On Campus
• Critical Thinking: Strategies in Decision Making – Online and On Campus
• Sales Management – Online
• MGT480 Strategic Planning
• MKT208 Principles of Marketing

Having taught as an adjunct faculty member for six universities on bricks-and-mortar campuses and five universities through online delivery systems (distance learning), I’ve learned that sometimes colleges will contract with an adjunct instructor, hand them a textbook, point them toward a classroom and say, “Good luck.”

I’ve been on the other side as well. I have worked in higher education administration for five years in positions of Dean and Director and hired over 500 adjunct instructors.

If you’ve never taught before, you can really be at a loss knowing how to plan lessons, how to construct a syllabus, how to manage the classroom, and so on.

Hopefully this article will provide you with some answers to a lot of those questions you have about teaching at the postsecondary level and help you navigate landing an adjunct contract or help you in fulfilling an adjunct contract.