About Us

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Journalism

The adjuncts simply are woefully underpaid. In my decade of work at the Journalism School, where I teach documentary filmmaking in the masters program, I don’t think any of us have received regular raises. The longer we work, the less we make relative to inflation. And we always hear the program is cash poor. An Ivy League School where the program I advise in charges in excess of $100 K per student doesn’t have enough money. 

A few months ago I was at Austin Community College in Texas for a lecture. My friend who invited me to talk to her class made more than I do teaching at CU. I love my colleagues and the opportunity to teach at Columbia. My immediate heads are wonderful and inspire me. But this institution needs to do much better. 

Lecturer, Department of Art History and Archaeology

I’ve taught one of the Core courses, Art Humanities, at Columbia for more than 10 years, as both a part-time adjunct and a full-time lecturer.  As an adjunct, while equally experienced, my compensation per course did not match what full-time lecturers are paid.   I had no access to benefits and no guarantee that I would receive an offer to teach more than one semester at a time.  I strongly believe that unionizing would help adjuncts negotiate to achieve fairness in compensation, access to benefits and job security. 

Lecturer, Department of Chemistry

I have been at Columbia for about 6 years and for a majority of the time felt isolated in the university and my department. This was exacerbated during the pandemic. During this time I had little say in how and when to teach my class. I knew that my potential and expertise was not being appreciated by Columbia. Last semester, I was assigned to teach a few classes for a  graduate course and then this semester, suddenly I was no longer assigned to this course. No explanation was provided on why I was not offered this course and subsequently my compensation for this semester is lower. It truly feels as if the university does not care about the faculty that conduct the majority of instruction for the university.

Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Division of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health 

As an adjunct lecturer and longtime public health practitioner and researcher, I’ve worked with Columbia faculty, fellows, and students to learn and teach about how different vulnerabilities to major urban environmental health risks, such as from climate change and air pollution, are shaped by socioeconomic and racial inequities. Often, these vulnerabilities are mediated through factors in the physical environment, especially housing quality, affordability, and location. I am fortunate enough to afford to live in the city Columbia shares with many neighbors who struggle to afford housing, as do many contingent and junior tenure track faculty.  I support my contingent faculty colleagues in organizing to secure competitive wages and benefits, and I believe that Columbia should do more to ensure that its faculty housing is allocated according to need.  A fair, transparent, and accountable policy for providing the benefit of below market faculty housing will improve living and working conditions for contingent faculty and reduce the strain on already tight affordable housing supply in neighboring communities.

Lecturer, School of Law

I have been a contingent faculty member at Columbia Law School for two years. I created a course while I was a student seeking more experiential opportunities in labor and employment law. I came to CLS to learn how to improve working conditions for all workers and it is both fitting and unexpected that I am now advocating for those improvements at the University itself. Contingent faculty provide essential educational services for Columbia’s students without which Columbia, in its current model, could not realistically educate all students enrolled. Contingent faculty are also, however, denied a living wage, benefits, and job security. Columbia has the resources to more fairly compensate and value all of its teachers – we just need a union to level the playing field and obtain them.

Lecturer, School of Social Work

I have held an appointment in the Department of Practicum Education as an External Supervisor for over 10 years now. I work remotely, mostly online. This current academic year, 2023-2024, is the first we have ever received a pay increase from the school, despite years of asking and organizing. The increase was 3.5% with no clear path forward in regards to regular reviews and increases. This is unacceptable. Our roles are required for the students’ practicum experience, and without us students would not be able to meet the requirements.

Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of Journalism

Twice each year, I await the invitation to teach a class at the Journalism School. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been an adjunct professor here since 1999 or that I receive strong student evaluations. Adjuncts have no job security. They can be reappointed or not, without explanation and — if they are rehired — without raises for years on end. 

I have loved teaching, but this is a fundamentally inequitable system. I don’t need health insurance (if you teach long enough, eventually you become Medicare eligible) but younger colleagues who do need it cannot buy into the university health plan. We cannot qualify for a retirement benefit. We have no safeguards or procedures if we feel unfairly treated. Yet contingent faculty across the street at Barnard, with their union contract, do have such benefits and more. 

I support a union for non-tenure track faculty, here and across the campus, because we contribute so substantially to the education Columbia provides its students, yet have so little ability to shape or protect our work lives.

Adjunct Scholar, SIPA

I got my PhD here in the ‘90s. I’ve spent my career here; I like teaching here, I love my students, my colleagues. It’s from my experience at Columbia that I can say that unionizing would be great for faculty, and excellent for our students, too. 

I teach first year courses in SIPA that are part of the core curriculum. Because I’m lumpenprofesoriat, I’m not around for the next semester. Students ask me to write recommendations, which I do because I care for them. So I might spend 20 hours a semester writing recommendations for which I am not compensated. 

On top of my teaching duties and my unpaid work writing recommendations, I’m also a thesis advisor for a brilliant student. He came to me because I have a specific expertise in areas he wants to research. I agreed to advise him, but it would have been reasonable for me to say no, since I’m not being paid for it, and I don’t even know if I’ll be around next semester. Under our current conditions, our students are potentially losing out on finding experts in their research fields to oversee their thesis work.

I want certainty for our teaching. If I get awards for teaching my classes, I want to be assured that I’ll be teaching them again next year. I need to be able to plan my life, because as it is, I need to make certain negotiations around my time and income. Columbia, as an employer, benefits from placing non-tenure track faculty in constant precarity—we need a union to be able to meet them on an even playing field, at the bargaining table.

Associate, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Since 2013, I’ve worked with student writers one on one as a writing center consultant. Freshmen through PhD students come to us to think through all different aspects of their writing, and we help them develop as writers. I love that this is a teaching position that allows me to tailor my efforts to individual student needs, giving them the kind of support they can’t get in the classroom alone. It is hard, though, having little control over how much I’m paid. For ten years in a row, we at the writing center received no raise at all. The cost of living in New York City went up, but our compensation did not. And we had no idea when it would. I look around and I see many, many talented and dedicated contingent faculty in the same precarious position. I am unionizing with my fellow contingent faculty because we need to be able to bargain collectively for a contract that grants us the stability that not only we – but the students we teach – deserve.

Lecturer, School of Law

I’ve been a contingent faculty member at Columbia Law School for over 15 years. It’s a privilege, an honor, and one of the main delights of my work life to share the learning experience with Columbia Law students. And yet, I have received little by way of raises since the year I started. It would be important for Columbia to reciprocate its appreciation by offering compensation that truly reflects the value of what we give to Columbia students and to the Law School. I hope and expect that a union contract would bring greater fairness to the relationship.

Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science

I come from South Africa, where labor rights were hard-fought for as part of the anti-apartheid struggle – these rights are now entrenched in the constitutional order. Having worked in South Africa as a tenured Associate Professor of Law for 12 years, it has been unnerving to experience the US academic caste system where, as a Senior Lecturer, I have no tenure prospects, nor any prospect of promotion or improvement of my salary or working conditions. For these reasons, and because I think all systems are improved by greater equity and accountability, I support the movement to unionize the non-TT faculty at Columbia.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Visual Arts, School of the Arts

As an adjunct instructor in MFA Visual Arts at CU’s School of the Arts, I love working with the artists of tomorrow.  In my classes, we talk about our roles as humans and our responsibility towards the earth, each other, and past and future generations. Unionizing for me is not just about collective bargaining for competitive wages and benefits,  annual scheduling instead of last minute contracts, or compensation if our courses are canceled. It is about dignity, respect, and acknowledging our mutual responsibility and the essential role of contingent faculty at CU. Columbia staff, student workers, postdocs, and Barnard contingent faculty have unionized—let’s join them now, and help protect future generations of CU teachers and students. 

Lecturer, Department of Philosophy and the Core

I’ve been teaching at Columbia since 2022 in the Department of Philosophy and the Core program.  Education can only be valued at Columbia if educators are valued. As a contingent faculty member, I am cut off from the decisions that shape whether I can serve our students. I joined CFCU (Contingent Faculty of Columbia University) because, having been a union member in graduate school, I miss the security, stability and fairness awarded by a union contract.

A few months ago I was at Austin Community College in Texas for a lecture. My friend who invited me to talk to her class made more than I do teaching at CU. I love my colleagues and the opportunity to teach at Columbia. My immediate heads are wonderful and inspire me. But this institution needs to do much better. 

SIPA

I’ve been teaching at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs for more than twelve years. I love my students — they come from all over the world, with rich work and life experience, and earnestly want to make the world a better place. My class, “Writing on Policy,” is informed by my own decades of work experience, and there is always a long wait list to get in. Students in professional schools benefit from having professors like me who are still working in our industries, and they know it. However, the model must be made to work better for teachers.  At Columbia, my pay is low compared to what I enjoy downtown as a unionized adjunct at NYU, and compared to what unionized adjuncts at Barnard receive just across campus. At Columbia, we also lack health or retirement benefits or reappointment rights. The latter has serious implications for our academic freedom; for example, I have often wanted to speak out in defense of student anti-war protesters on campus, or to opine on university policies, but I have refrained because I don’t want to lose my job. I don’t sign petitions on Columbia matters. I’m even careful about what I say in the classroom, sometimes failing to model full intellectual and civic participation for the students. I’m sure I’m not alone. Contingent faculty like me have so much to contribute, and we could be a stronger voice on campus issues. But first we need a union and a good contract. 

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Film, School of the Arts

I have taught writing in Columbia’s MFA program for Film & TV on-and-off for the last four years.  When I was hired, the head of the department told me, “The money is comically low, but it’s a meaningful experience, and you’re giving back to the next generation.”  At first I agreed — I enjoyed the students and felt that we were all getting a lot out of our interactions.  As the semester went on, however, my resentment started to build.  The hours are not insignificant.  Teaching one class requires 10-12 hours of work per week, including classroom time, office hours, reading student work, composing feedback, reading and watching their other projects upon request, and managing the constant stream of emails and texts.  This would all be fine if it were an actual job.  But Columbia presents it as a charitable contribution that the faculty member is supposed to make to Columbia, an institution with a nearly 14 BILLION dollar endowment that charges students an exorbitant tuition to work with “top professionals in the field” like me.  I have worked on EMMY and OSCAR nominated projects.  While I don’t expect that teaching one class will sustain me financially, I do expect it to pay more than what I earned as an office temp in the ’90’s. Oddly, teaching at Columbia does not.  

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Creative Writing, School of the Arts

I am an adjunct assistant professor in the Columbia University School of the Arts where I teach creative writing workshops and seminars to MFA graduate students. In addition to being an alum of the College (’08) and SOA (’13), I have taught and/or advised at SOA for half of a decade. I love this work and I love my students, but it is financially, personally, and professionally destabilizing. Semester after semester, I never know whether I will be hired back. Though I carve out time for Columbia, it does not carve out a commitment to me. I support two children, and live with my partner and mother in order to maintain affordable rent in New York City. We need contracts most of all, and we need benefits, and we need higher pay. 

Lecturer, Department of Music

I’ve taught the music component of Columbia’s Core Curriculum since 2015, including as both a part-time adjunct and a full-time lecturer. I support unionization because I know it’s the only way for non-tenure-track faculty like me to earn our fair share—a dignified living wage. As an adjunct, I made so little money that I had to move in with family. Now as a lecturer, I earn enough to live on my own but am severely rent-burdened, allocating almost half of my income for rent. A union-won contract for Columbia’s adjuncts and lecturers, like the one recently negotiated by non-tenure-track faculty at Barnard, could not only raise our minimum pay but guarantee yearly raises at a transparent and fair rate—one commensurate with the skyrocketing cost of housing in NYC. 

Lecturer, Sustainability Science, School of Professional Studies

Lecturer, Department of English

I am a lecturer in the University Writing Program with a three year, non-renewable contract. While I enjoy working with my colleagues and students, it is hard, both in terms of financial stability and professional pride, to know that no matter how hard I work, I will be let go after three years. I find myself struggling to balance teaching, advising, attending meetings, participating in professional development and engaging in grant writing, all while also remaining on the job market and holding down a second, half-time job for a CUNY school so that I can live on my own and so that I have something lined up after my Columbia contract expires. Unionization would offer lecturers the chance to negotiate for stable, less-predatory employment which doesn’t require them to immediately begin looking for another job after getting hired, and which compensates them fairly, such that they can (at least) meet NYCs cost of living without working over 60 hours a week.