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While it may seem obvious to students and administrators that faculty should receive some credit for the overall excellence of PCC, one particular group of faculty is not being treated with the kind of appreciation people would expect.Adjunct faculty make up the majority of instructors here at PCC. Students may not realize it, but how many times have you looked at a syllabus for a class and seen “by appointment only” under the space for “office hours”? That means your professor is a part-timer.

Office hours are just one of the benefits that part-time professors at PCC do not get. And their own personal office spaces? Forget about it. Even full-time professors don’t have it that good here either (you’ve seen it, they stuff two professors into a small room like sardines in a can.)

Instead, adjunct faculty have a small room on the second floor of the C Building that houses just a few desks and computers to do their work. If a student requests a conference with them, they often just meet in the hall, or if they are lucky, an empty classroom.

Some professors try to get creative with their meeting places. During summer intersession, one sociology professor had her students meet her at Maui Wowi across the street from campus for their conference hours. She got points for creativity, but it didn’t mask the fact that it was an inconvenience for both her and the students.

Not only do part-time faculty not have any set time or space for office hours, they also do not get paid for them, unlike other community colleges in the area.

Victor Nebrida, a history professor who also teaches at East Los Angeles College and Glendale Community College, said PCC offers the lowest in benefits and wages for adjuncts compared to other community college districts.

“As an adjunct here at PCC, you’re only paid from the time you walk in the door (of your classroom) until the time you walk out,” he said.

Any time spent in conference with students or doing any other school activities, such as sponsoring a club, he said, was unpaid.

ELAC, on the other hand, offers payment to part-time faculty who take the time to meet with students beyond the time limits of class. Mt. San Antonio College also pays adjunct faculty for attending certain functions.

For a college that lately has been boasting about its “fiscally conservative” past and all the money it has in reserve, it seems odd that PCC is overlooking almost 800 of their faculty members.

The Faculty Association of PCC has recently been pushing for more benefits, including paid office hours, through petitions to the administration and the Board of Trustees sponsored by both faculty members and students.

These requests are not unreasonable. If full-time faculty get paid for office hours, then why shouldn’t part-timers? They perform the same job, the main thing that separates them is the number of units they teach.

It’s not as if the quality of education given by the two groups differ. Ask any student if they think full-time professors teach better than part-time professors and they would probably say that they can’t tell the difference.

Students should pay attention to this issue, because if professors get too frustrated with the system, they could lose their energy to teach. Just like anyone else, they are prone to getting discouraged when they feel their hard work is not being appreciated.

If that happens, and professors stop teaching with the passion and enthusiasm that makes learning so great for students, then it will be us who suffer in the long run.

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