Characterizing full-time, non-tenure-track teaching faculty in biology

ABSTRACT

Institutions of higher education play a major role in teaching undergraduate students. Historically, most courses have been taught by tenure-track (TT) faculty who may also be responsible for research or scholarly activities. However, a recent shift from “teaching-intensive” TT faculty to “teaching-only” contingent faculty off the tenure track has highlighted the importance of understanding the experiences of contingent faculty. While there have been an increasing number of studies examining the experiences of part-time contingent faculty, few studies have directly surveyed the increasing number of full-time, non-tenure-track (NTT) teaching faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to capture their experiences, nor are we aware of any study that has examined the roles of NTT teaching faculty within one discipline to examine any potential disciplinary differences that may arise across STEM fields. Here, we focus on the experiences of full-time, non-tenure-track faculty in biology whose primary responsibility is teaching. We conducted a random stratified sampling of institutions using the Carnegie classifications to identify potential full-time NTT teaching faculty at over 10% of all institutions in the United States. Our results from surveying these faculty found both positive and negative themes, including (i) NTT teaching faculty being less diverse than the STEM professoriate at large; (ii) NTT teaching faculty reporting mixed feelings on institutional support, identifying a range of opportunities to better support NTT teaching faculty; (iii) NTT teaching faculty often having limited participation in voting for department and institutional matters and reporting mixed feelings of belonging and value; and (iv) NTT teaching faculty having high amounts of autonomy over their teaching but still struggling in key areas. We end with specific implications and recommendations for our field to better support NTT teaching faculty in biology.

INTRODUCTION

Institutions of higher education play a major role in teaching undergraduate students. Historically, most courses have been taught by tenure-track (TT) faculty who may also be responsible for research or scholarly activities (1). However, a recent shift from “teaching-intensive” TT faculty to “teaching-only” contingent faculty off the tenure track has highlighted the importance of understanding the experiences of contingent faculty and how their positions may impact their teaching (1). Contingent faculty can be defined as both part- and full-time faculty who are ineligible for tenure, which includes both adjuncts and full-time non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty. In the United States, colleges and universities have increasingly relied on contingent faculty to cover a higher proportion of the teaching load, with contingent faculty now making up 68% of faculty members in the United States, up from 47% in 1987 (2). This is not caused solely by a rise in the level of overall faculty needed by universities and colleges, as there has been a sharp decline in the number of TT faculty (2). Given the increasing number of contingent faculty, it is critical to understand their experiences within higher education to both leverage positive practices and address inequities if they arise. Examining the experiences of contingent faculty can be challenging, however, due to the widespread variation in the structure and nature of these positions. For example, the term “contingent” faculty encompasses both part-time and full-time faculty, and past work has identified at times divergent experiences, depending on if a faculty member is part time or full time (3–5).

Governing bodies, including the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), have spoken loudly against the creation of these appointments beyond serving as temporary hires (1, 6), as research indicates that a system composed of contingent faculty could have negative consequences for student learning based on systemic inequities that contingent faculty face, such as low pay, instability in contract renewals, and lower campus agency (7–9). Given that this guidance has been largely ignored, AAUP has published several standards attempting to create guidance on the hiring and treatment of contingent faculty (6). For example, AAUP has recommended moving away from adjunct or other temporary-type positions for contingent faculty and instead creating full-time non-tenure-track positions. Many universities and colleges have thus attempted to address these concerns through the creation of full-time NTT appointments that are more stable (i.e., longer contracts), autonomous, and whose titles align more closely with TT faculty. The following section explores past work examining both whom this quickly growing body of faculty comprises and their experiences in higher education.

Past work examining teaching faculty and NTT teaching faculty

Past work has examined the demographic makeup of NTT teaching faculty, in addition to their experiences within the academy. For example, the majority of NTT teaching faculty are women (10, 11), exacerbating an already existing power imbalance in academia, where white men are more often found in leadership positions or positions with stability. Since the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, the challenges of NTT teaching faculty who are women have increased due to higher workloads (12) and the fact that more students are relying on women faculty to support mental health or other academic or environmental needs (13, 14). This burden is even higher for NTT teaching faculty who are women of color, as their intersectional identities create both higher marginalization and experiences with racism (15), and minoritized students are more likely to seek them out for support their needs on campus (16, 17).

NTT teaching faculty also have different experiences than their TT peers in terms of how much they feel like they belong and their feelings of satisfaction within their role. For instance, NTT teaching faculty often report a duality in their experiences, finding satisfaction in their role as educators but having lower self-determination and self-esteem as members of the professoriate (18, 19). Contributing factors include a lack of respect for not conducting research, differences in salary and benefits (20, 21), ambiguity in their role (22), and unclear paths to promotion (23, 24). Additionally, NTT teaching faculty often feel they have little agency in their positions and are often barred from voting and participating in governing bodies (19). The levels of autonomy and respect have direct impacts on NTT teaching faculty job satisfaction, and institutions that offer more support and autonomy create environments that offset the potential negative impacts of being contingent faculty (25–27).

Given that NTT teaching faculty are often hired as instructional faculty, a growing body of literature also looks at their impact on undergraduate teaching, with mixed results (28–30). Past work has identified that many contingent faculty—particularly those who are part time—differ in their approaches to teaching, being less likely to use student-centered approaches in the classroom (3). However, Jaeger and Eagan (31) found both negative and positive results on student retention due to instruction by NTT teaching faculty that largely correlated to how supported NTT teaching faculty were at the institutional level. There are many potential contributing causes to these differences, including differences in teaching load and access to resources for professional development and teaching support (32).

While these studies highlight the difficulties that NTT teaching faculty face and the impact that contingent faculty may have on undergraduate teaching, it is important to further unpack the potential differences that may arise for NTT teaching faculty who are part versus full time, given that there has been in an increase in full time NTT teaching faculty (2). Additionally, different academic environments have distinct cultural norms that can influence sense of belonging and persistence (33). For example, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) environments are notoriously “chilly” to students and faculty with marginalized identities (34, 35). Given that NTT teaching faculty are more likely to hold marginalized identities and positions with less agency and power, it is important to understand the NTT teaching faculty landscape within STEM.

NTT teaching faculty in STEM

Previous research has illuminated the impacts of discipline-specific environments on sense of belonging and feelings of value, especially for those who hold less power and agency based on demographics and/or position within academia. NTT teaching faculty in STEM may face unique challenges, given (i) STEM fields are often research heavy and may feel more pressure to reduce TT faculty teaching loads and (ii) the STEM environment is often unwelcoming for those who hold marginalized identities and/or positions with less institutional power (36–39). However, little research has been done to explore NTT teaching faculty within specific disciplines, with a few notable exceptions (see Meixiong and Golden [40], Rennane et al. [41], and Xu and Ran [42]). It is thus critical to continue to examine the role of NTT teaching faculty in STEM. Additionally, we note that the limited past studies on NTT teaching faculty in STEM have relied heavily on national databases. Few studies have directly surveyed NTT teaching faculty in STEM to capture their experiences. Moreover, we are not aware of any study that has examined the roles of NTT teaching faculty within one discipline to examine potential disciplinary differences that may arise across STEM fields.

While we acknowledge that many non-tenure-track faculty positions exist, including research assistant professors, teaching assistant professors, and adjunct professors, given the nuances of each position and therefore potential differences in experiences, we decided to narrow our focus on the experiences of full-time, non-tenure-track faculty in biology whose primary responsibility is teaching. We do so for several reasons. First, NTT teaching faculty likely teach a larger proportion of undergraduate courses than their tenure-track peers, given the higher teaching loads NTT teaching faculty have. Second, NTT teaching faculty are more likely to teach core, introductory-level courses (43). Given that student experiences in introductory STEM courses play a major role in influencing student persistence in STEM (44), it is important to better understand how NTT teaching faculty positions may influence their teaching and interactions with students. Third, there has been a continuous increase in the number of NTT teaching faculty, and these faculty remain the most common category of full-time non-tenure-track position in the United States, with over twice as many teaching-focused full-time NTT faculty than research-focused full-time NTT faculty (45). We are not aware of any previous work that has characterized NTT teaching faculty specifically in biology or examined their role and how their position impacts their teaching.

Thus, we investigated the following research questions:

1. What are the demographics of full-time, NTT teaching faculty in biology in the United States?

2. How much variation is there in the roles and responsibilities of NTT teaching faculty among institutions?

3. How do NTT teaching faculty describe the policies and procedures regarding their position at institutions and how do these policies impact NTT teaching faculty?

4. How do NTT teaching faculty report their positions impacting their teaching and feelings of belonging?

Positionality

The first author (D.F.) has worked in various staff positions across multiple universities before starting her current position as a TT assistant professor in biology. As a staff member, she often felt a sense of belonging with NTT teaching faculty who could commiserate on the structural and interpersonal power dynamics between TT and NTT/staff. The senior author (J.H.) began his faculty career as an NTT teaching faculty, serving as an instructional assistant professor of biology for 6 years prior to starting his current position as a tenure-track assistant professor 2 years ago. This project was conceived while the author was an NTT teaching faculty, and he was able to draw upon his own experiences being an NTT teaching faculty, as well as his conversations with other NTT teaching faculty at his institution and across the country, when designing this project.

In addition, both authors hold both privileged and marginalized identities, which influences the ways in which the project was constructed, analyzed, and discussed. The first author is a white, cisgender woman who is first generation and queer. The senior author is an Asian American man.

METHODS

Survey development

We developed survey questions following an iterative process. First, we independently brainstormed questions aligned with our research questions, drawing upon our own extensive experiences either serving as an NTT teaching faculty or working with NTT teaching faculty. Next, we iteratively refined these questions to ensure their clarity and to ensure that our questions would allow us to address each of our research questions. We then conducted a cognitive process interview (46) with four NTT teaching faculty (two in biology, one in chemistry, and one in physics) to validate our questions and refined the wording of the questions based on these interviews, ensuring greater clarity of our survey. In addition, during the interviews, we also presented our research questions to the NTT teaching faculty and asked if there were any additional areas where they felt like their position as an NTT teaching faculty would impact their teaching, research, or service, and made changes to the survey accordingly.

Survey deployment

To recruit participants, we utilized a stratified random sampling of all biology departments in the United States using Carnegie Classification, which was previously generated in a study examining biology program learning outcomes (47). In brief, we randomly selected 305 colleges and universities, with even representation among the four basic Carnegie Classifications (doctoral universities, master’s colleges and universities, baccalaureate colleges, and associate’s colleges) and subcategories within each basic classification. This sample represents over 10% of all colleges and universities in the United States listed in the included Carnegie Classification categories (n = 2,817), ensuring that we have broad coverage of institutions and NTT teaching faculty across the United States.

Next, we identified faculty profile listings on the biology department web pages for the selected institutions. Some institutions had multiple departments listed that represented different subspecialities of biology (e.g., molecular and cellular biology and evolution and ecology). For those schools, we attempted to identify which department, if any, housed the undergraduate biology major. If we were unable to determine this (or if there was no general biology major and instead only majors that were specific to subspecialities of biology), we picked one department at random to avoid skewing our sample population. We then identified every faculty member listed on the department web page that may hold an NTT teaching faculty position. We erred on the side of including any person listed on the faculty page whose title indicated that they may be an NTT teaching faculty, given that the survey included a screening question that provided a definition of NTT teaching faculty that met our specific focus for this study. We identified a total of 774 potential NTT teaching faculty across 140 institutions. Potential NTT teaching faculty were then invited via email (and two subsequent reminder emails) to participate in the survey; participation was incentivized with a gift card drawing.

Data analysis

There were a total of 122 unique responses (15.8% response rate). We first cleaned our responses by filtering out five surveys from respondents who did not complete more than 20% of the survey, as well as three who indicated that they were not NTT teaching faculty in biology. Finally, we also removed seven surveys from respondents who indicated they taught less than 50% of the time, given our emphasis on studying teaching-focused NTT faculty, resulting in 107 remaining responses. While 101 out of the 107 completed the entire survey, the remaining six respondents provided substantial responses for multiple sections of the survey and were kept in to include a more diverse sample.

For the five qualitative questions, each author initially independently created codebooks for each question using 20 random responses, representing approximately 20% of the survey responses. Following this, we met to discuss and generated a consensus codebook for each question. Next, we calculated interrater reliability using another random subset of 20 responses. We calculated Cohen’s kappa, a measure of how closely two coders agree on the same code(s) (48, 49); kappa was greater than 0.80 for each question. Given this “near perfect” agreement between the two coders for each question (50), one author (D.F.) coded the remaining responses. Finally, we collaboratively discussed the results. We removed any code that was less than 5% in frequency, given our goals of characterizing broad themes across NTT teaching faculty in biology.

RESULTS

What are the demographics of full-time, NTT teaching faculty in biology in the United States?

Our NTT teaching faculty respondents represented multiple types of institutions (Table S1), with most respondents at a doctoral university (64.6%). The majority held a Ph.D. in biology (77.8%), with approximately an eighth of the respondents indicating that their highest degree was a masters in biology (13.1%) (Table S2). The majority of NTT teaching faculty did not complete a post-doctoral fellowship (52.5%), and of those who did, the majority (35.5%) completed a research-focused post-doctoral fellowship (Table S3). Only 11.9% of NTT teaching faculty completed a post-doctoral fellowship that involved teaching and/or research in science education.

Our sampling found that the majority of NTT teaching faculty identified as women (57.4%, Table S5), were overwhelmingly white (85.7%, Table S6), and were not first-generation students (71.3% continuing generation, Table S7). Additionally, the sample included 13.2% of participants who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (Table S8), and 17.6% of participants disclosed a disability (Table S9).

How much variation is there in the roles and responsibilities of NTT teaching faculty among institutions?

When queried what percentage of time they were contractually expected to spend on research, teaching, and service, the majority of NTT teaching faculty reported spending substantially more time on teaching than research and service, regardless of the institution type (mean of 82.0% for percent time allocated to teaching, SD = 13.8%; Fig. 1). Respondents indicated spending only a small amount of time on research (mean = 3.6%, SD = 7.2%). On average, respondents indicated that they spent 14.7% (SD = 11.9%) of their time on service. Interestingly, 28.3% respondents indicated that their position had research expectations, even if low. There were no significant differences reported between institutions on time spent on teaching, research, and service (one-way analysis of variance, P > 0.05).

Fig 1.

Breakdown of NTT teaching responsibilities across teaching, research, and service among different institution types.

How do NTT teaching faculty describe the policies and procedures regarding their position at institutions and how do these policies impact NTT teaching faculty?

NTT teaching faculty indicated many positive aspects regarding their positions. For instance, the majority indicated that they had a pathway to promotion (66.4%) and that they felt that their position was secure (73.3% of respondents somewhat or strongly agreeing, Table S10). Additionally, NTT teaching faculty indicated that their criteria for promotion were clear and fair (70.5% and 68.4%, respectively; Table S10). However, NTT teaching faculty expressed dissatisfaction around compensation, with a significant portion indicating that they felt they were not provided fair compensation (46.2%, Table S10) and a vast majority indicating that their compensation was not equal to that of TT faculty with the same experience at the same institution (86.7%, Table S10).

When it came to having university resources, the majority of NTT teaching faculty believed that the institution provided sufficient professional resources for support in teaching (64.1%, Table S11) and that they possessed the tools/resources to do their job well (80.2%, Table S11). Additionally, most NTT teaching faculty felt that their teaching load was manageable each semester (66.0%, Table S11).

The majority of NTT teaching faculty reported that they were invited to be present at faculty meetings (90.7%, Table S12); however, there were differences in the ability of NTT teaching faculty to vote during those departmental meetings. Over half (53.3%) reported they could only vote on some decisions, and nearly 7% reported they could not vote at all. For those who could either vote in some cases, the majority reported not being able to vote in areas of promotion (54.8%) or hiring (41.9%, Table S13). Finally, nearly two-thirds of all NTT teaching faculty indicated that their positions are eligible for their institution’s faculty senate; in contrast, only one-fourth of NTT teaching faculty indicated that they were able to serve in leadership positions in their department (Table S12).

How do NTT teaching faculty report their positions impacting their teaching and feelings of belonging?

NTT teaching faculty largely felt that their NTT status did not impact the way they taught their course. For instance, a majority (72.8%) disagreed with the statement that they would teach their course differently if they were TT (Table S14). When faculty were asked how, if at all, their position as an NTT teaching faculty impacted their teaching, most responses were that it made no difference (30.4%) or that it allowed them to focus more on teaching (27.5%). However, many NTT teaching faculty also brought up ways in which their position negatively impacted their teaching, with the most frequent responses including high teaching loads (7.8%), lack of support in opportunities that impacted teaching (6.9%), extra work (6.9%), and lack of consistency in course load (5.9%, Table S15).

NTT teaching faculty also felt that they had as much autonomy over their courses as TT faculty (86.4%, Table S14). When asked in what ways their NTT teaching positions impacted their teaching and feelings of autonomy, a few participants discussed “normal” compromises made when co-teaching a course but indicated that these discussions were not influenced by their NTT role (14.7%, Table S16). A subset of participants responded that being NTT teaching faculty impacted what course they were able to teach (9.8%, Table S16), with some participants describing this as negative (e.g., not being able to teach the courses they wanted to because of their NTT status) and others as positive (e.g., being able to teach niche courses that other TT faculty do not wish to teach).

NTT teaching faculty reported mixed feelings of value and belonging at their institutions. While most (67.0%) felt that students did not treat them differently due to their NTT role, NTT teaching faculty felt that other colleagues in their department treated them differently (55.3%), with nearly half indicating that they were not as equally respected as a TT faculty member (47.5%, Table S18). When rating feelings of value and belonging, a higher percentage of faculty expressed feelings of both value and belonging within their departments than at the institution (Table S18).

When asked to describe how their NTT role impacted feelings of value or respect within their department, the majority (71.9%) indicated at least one way in which they did not feel valued. However, most (56.3%) also described ways in which they felt valued. Participants also mentioned specific reasons why they felt their positions impacted their feelings of being valued (or lack thereof), citing structural differences between the position (17.7%) and lower salary (5.2%, Table S19).

DISCUSSION

Our results provide a first examination of the demographic makeup, the variation in roles and responsibilities, and feelings of value and belonging of NTT teaching faculty in biology in the United States. These results help to both (i) characterize full-time NTT teaching faculty within biology (i.e., demographics and responsibilities) and, at times, (ii) compare their experiences to TT faculty in regard to power, agency, and equity. While we acknowledge that NTT teaching and TT faculty often have different roles and responsibilities and that some of the challenges facing NTT teaching faculty may not be unique to their position, this comparison can be useful when determining practices and policies that either support or undermine feelings of belonging and satisfaction within one’s career. We conclude with implications and recommendations for NTT teaching faculty hiring and retention.

NTT faculty in biology primarily teach at doctoral universities, with few having post-doctoral fellowships that include teaching

Our stratified random sampling across colleges by Carnegie Classifications was designed to capture NTT teaching faculty experiences across diverse institution types. However, we identified that the majority of our respondents were at doctoral-level institutions (64.6%). This may indicate that either doctoral institutions disproportionately employ more NTT teaching faculty to offset the teaching load of research-intensive tenure-track faculty or that, given their size and the likelihood of having larger biology departments, doctoral institutions simply employ more NTT teaching faculty. While we acknowledge that this may bias some of our findings, it is important to note that we also found little difference in responses when looking across institution types, suggesting that regardless of the institution type, NTT teaching faculty in our sample had similar experiences on average.

When we compared our results to Laurence’s (5) profiling of NTT teaching faculty across all disciplines, we found a higher proportion of Ph.D.’s earned among our participants, which may be a result of an academic landscape that is increasingly requiring a Ph.D. at the instructor level (51). Another reason for this skew could be that 2-year colleges often do not require a Ph.D. at the instructor level, and our sample had very few NTT teaching faculty in biology at 2-year colleges. Interestingly, our results revealed that the majority of NTT teaching faculty did not have a post-doctoral fellowship that provided any formal teaching opportunities, aligning with past work that has found that the majority of STEM professionals have never had any formal teaching or even teaching assistantship experience (51). This result, plus the fact that most participants received a Ph.D. in biology (and not biology education or an education-related field), suggests that many NTT teaching faculty may have limited teaching experience prior to starting their positions. Additionally, as many STEM Ph.D.’s are awarded from R1 institutions whose primary focus is on research, this could create a misalignment in preparing NTT teaching faculty for their future roles as instructors (52, 53).

NTT teaching faculty may be less diverse than the STEM professoriate at large

When examining the demographic makeup of our participants, we found far less racial and ethnic diversity than both NTT teaching faculty broadly (45) and within STEM specifically (42, 51), with the majority of our participants (85.7%) identifying as white. Interestingly, these results contrast with AAUP data showing a high proportion of part-time contingent faculty holding historically marginalized races/ethnicities (54). We also found an overrepresentation of women (57.4%) when compared to both NTT teaching faculty across higher education broadly and within STEM fields (42, 45). These differences and the overrepresentation of white women may be due to the identities that white women hold; in STEM, white women are oppressed by their gender but hold privilege through their racial identity. Thus, the privileged racial identity may contribute to the greater representation of white women in our population. However, this overrepresentation occurs in a position that typically holds less institutional power than tenure-track faculty.

NTT teaching faculty spend most of their time on teaching and report mixed feelings on institutional support

Unsurprisingly, all NTT teaching faculty in our sample spent most of their time on teaching. While our sample had slight variations between institution types (such as a higher average research load at associate and baccalaureate colleges), this may be because of the potential low number of NTT teaching faculty in our sample at these institutions (n = 5 and 14, respectively). Nearly 10% of NTT teaching faculty reported high, unmanageable teaching loads or not being able to engage in opportunities that would have otherwise supported their teaching. Despite this, we found nearly a third of our participants had contractual research expectations, which ranged from 5% to 40% of the faculty’s time. While the most commonly reported time expected for research was relatively low at 5%, our results reveal that many universities may still require NTT teaching faculty to maintain active research projects despite their focus on teaching.

In addition, we examined how NTT teaching faculty felt about their positions. Many NTT teaching faculty reported the policies and procedures at their institutions for NTT promotion and advancement as fair and transparent. However, there were still inequities based on pay, with NTT teaching faculty reporting lower salaries than their TT peers. Lower salaries can have many negative impacts including lack of financial stability, increased levels of stress, and lack of engagement in the workplace (55). Klainot-Hess (56) found that NTT faculty who have high job satisfaction were either those who purposely chose NTT faculty positions over tenure or NTT faculty who were not relying on their NTT salary as the primary income of their household, speaking of the strong impacts of salary. While the majority of NTT teaching faculty here reported having lower salaries than TT faculty at the same institution, they did report feeling the university provided adequate resources (including professional development) for them to do their job well and that their teaching loads were often manageable. We believe this is also an important result to highlight, as NTT teaching faculty also need resources to continue to grow within their positions (57).

NTT teaching faculty often have limited participation in voting for department and institutional matters

While many NTT teaching faculty reported being invited to be present at faculty meetings, there was a range of what NTT faculty were allowed to vote on within those meetings. The majority were not allowed to cast votes on tenure, promotion, or hiring matters of TT faculty. Other faculty spoke about how they were sometimes asked for their opinion, but that there was no formal procedure to allow them to cast votes. Other NTT teaching faculty spoke about not being able to vote in curricular matters, their area of expertise. Our participants also reported having limited abilities to serve in leadership positions across the university, though the majority were eligible for faculty senate. Not being able to participate in matters that are their expertise (i.e., curriculum) or have agency in voting on matters that could impact their positions reduces the agency of NTT teaching faculty to play a part in building institutional culture and policies that often directly impact both their day-to-day jobs and their livelihoods.

NTT teaching faculty report mixed feelings of belonging and value

NTT teaching faculty reported higher levels of belonging (70.3%) and feelings of value (69.3%) within their departments than at their institutions (54.5% and 51.5%, respectively). At the institutional level, NTT teaching faculty described a lack of respect from other departments outside their own and how institutional policies impacted their ability to feel valued. Other NTT teaching faculty described how difficult it was to play a part in university-wide decisions, such as decisions on pay, promotion, or class scheduling. NTT teaching faculty also described that they felt “disposable” or “like a number” to the institution. Within departments themselves, NTT teaching faculty often described their sense of value as increasing over time. For example, faculty would describe how their position has more respect than it used to, largely due to older faculty retiring. These shifts in respect could be attributed to the increasing numbers of NTT teaching faculty within departments and/or a larger culture shift of value. Other NTT teaching faculty mentioned that their colleagues were kind and respectful but lacked awareness of the difficulty of their positions and disparities with pay. This dichotomy in illustrated by a participant who described their colleagues as “‘lovely and very supportive’ but [did] not necessarily realize how my work and compensation is different from theirs.”

Out of the 101 NTT teaching faculty who reported feeling valued at their institution or within their departments, 67.3% of participants went on to name specific interactions or polices that lowered their sense of value, including how TT faculty treat them with a lack of respect and that being barred from departmental decisions or leadership positions within the department lowers their sense of value. One participant described how being kept off the promotion decisions for junior faculty felt like disrespect to their expertise in teaching. Other faculty described other slights, such as being listed on the program’s website after all TT faculty or that TT faculty were resistant to introduce them as “Dr.” or “Professor” to other colleagues. These findings mirror other studies that have reported that NTT teaching faculty often feel disrespected and/or marginalized by their peers (56, 58–60) and that these feelings can result in lower job satisfaction and depression over time.

Implications and recommendations

Our work has several implications for the biology education community and biology departments:

• Provide mentored opportunities for early career scientists to teach. First, our results revealed that very few NTT had post-doctoral fellowships that provided any formal teaching opportunities. Given the increasing number of NTT teaching faculty in biology and across STEM, we urge our communities to develop more professional development resources and teaching opportunities for both graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who are interested in pursuing teaching-focused careers. For instance, institutions could develop single-session courses for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to teach, which can promote teaching development for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in a less time-intensive manner (61, 62). Similarly, institutions can expand post-doctoral programs that provide mentorship for both research and teaching (e.g., Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award [IRACDA]); such programs can also promote persistence of underrepresented minorities in STEM, which would also have positive impacts on diversifying the NTT teaching professoriate (63).

• Update institutional policies to promote equity for NTT teaching faculty. Our results reveal that while many NTT teaching faculty feel secure in their positions, a significant portion do not and that there remain many structural barriers that may inhibit NTT teaching faculty from thriving in their careers and the classroom. Our results also indicate that the lack of job security and the decreased protections of the position are leading to unequal service burdens for many NTT teaching faculty and may also impact how they approach their teaching. Thus, we echo the position of the AAUP that all full-time faculty should be on the tenure track (1) and urge colleges and universities to explore ways to convert NTT teaching faculty into tenure-track, teaching-focused positions where teaching faculty will have the academic freedom and protections to pursue student-centered teaching. We acknowledge, however, that not all institutions may be able to offer tenure-track teaching faculty positions in the short term. For those institutions that cannot do so, we urge that they investigate the experiences of NTT teaching faculty at their campus and take steps to promote their equity.

• Invest in programs that promote historically marginalized groups in NTT and the biology professoriate at large. Our results indicate that NTT teaching faculty may be less diverse than the general population and even the STEM professoriate at large with respect to many identities (e.g., gender, sexuality, and first-generation status). Past work has identified numerous benefits in having diverse faculty. For example, diverse faculty expose students to multiple ways of understanding and experiencing the world, which enhance the perspectives and creativity of students (64). Within STEM, diversity within the faculty body also has positive impacts on STEM identity, especially among students who hold marginalized identities (64). Thus, we call on the biology community to explore ways to support historically marginalized groups in pursuing both NTT and tenure-track positions and in supporting these faculty once they have started their positions.

  We also highlight the need to support NTT teaching faculty once they are hired. For instance, many faculty, particularly those from historically marginalized backgrounds, can feel isolated in their roles upon starting (65). These feelings of isolation are likely exacerbated for NTT teaching faculty, given that our results revealed multiple structural issues (e.g., lack of ability to vote in department meetings) due to the NTT position. Beyond updating policies to promote equity for NTT teaching faculty, institutions can also provide learning communities for NTT teaching faculty, compile resources unique to NTT faculty, and offer mentoring specific for NTT faculty.

Limitations and future directions

We acknowledge several limitations of our work. First, as with any national survey, our responses may be subject to response bias, given that not all faculty are equally likely to respond to surveys, and we acknowledge that the generalizability of our results may be limited by our survey’s response rate. Thus, our results may not be representative of NTT teaching faculty perspectives at all institutions. However, we note that our exploratory work is the largest study of NTT faculty in biology we are aware of and consists of identifying NTT teaching faculty at greater than 10% of all colleges and universities in the United States. In addition, both our response rate and number of respondents are consistent with those of other published studies examining faculty in biology and/or STEM via survey instruments (66), suggesting that our results are likely offering an accurate snapshot of the roles, responsibilities, and feelings of NTT teaching faculty in biology.

Second, we also acknowledge that not all departments may list NTT teaching faculty on their department websites and that NTT teaching faculty at some institutions may have titles indistinguishable from that of tenure-track faculty, potentially biasing our data set. We note that our work is meant to be an exploratory survey of full-time NTT teaching faculty in biology, providing the first examination of the demographics, job responsibilities, and feelings of agency and belonging which help generate new insights in how to better support NTT teaching faculty in biology. Future work can build upon our study by examining how specific institutional characteristics may impact NTT faculty experiences and by conducting interviews with full-time NTT teaching faculty in biology, which would allow a more in-depth examination of the experiences of those faculty and enable a broader understanding of how NTT teaching positions impact their feelings of belonging and their teaching.

AFTER EPUB

[This article was published on 10 December 2024 with an error in the Cohen's kappa value. The error was corrected in the current version, posted on 16 December 2024.]

ETHICS APPROVAL

All procedures were approved by the Chapman University Institutional Review Board.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

The following material is available online at https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.00144-24.

Supplemental Tables. jmbe.00144-24-s0001.docx.

Tables 1 through 19.

ASM does not own the copyrights to Supplemental Material that may be linked to, or accessed through, an article. The authors have granted ASM a non-exclusive, world-wide license to publish the Supplemental Material files. Please contact the corresponding author directly for reuse.