A resolution to increase the number of tenure-track faculty positions at Sacramento State will be brought before the Faculty Senate today.

“The resolution will be asking the president to develop a plan to bring back the number of full-time faculty to a level where it was three to four years ago,” said Faculty Senate chair and journalism professor Michael Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald said the university has saved money by hiring temporary part-time lecturers to replace retired full-time, or “tenure-track,” faculty members.

The Budget Taskforce report released in March showed that Sac State saved more than $1.5 million between the academic years 2005-06 and 2006-07 when it hired 17.8 percent more lecturers while tenure-track faculty dropped 2.4 percent.

However, some people believe the monetary savings comes at a huge cost to the university.

Otis Scott, the dean of the College of Social Science and Interdisciplinary Studies, said though an increase of students in certain majors and departments may be met by an increase in lecturers, it does not address added duties on full-time faculty.

“Lecturers have a very structured and finite role,” Scott said. “We don’t have expectations of (lecturers) to do any academic advising.”

Scott said because the “lion’s share of academic advising goes to full-time faculty members,” a lot of added responsibility, besides instructional, falls on the few tenure-track faculty members a department has.

“If you have fewer junior faculty members, you have fewer faculty to serve as advisers,” Scott said, noting that many senior faculty become committee or department chairs.

Scott said faculty advisers then must spend less time or have more frequent but shorter meetings with individual students in order to be able to serve more.

Others, like Fitzgerald and Assistant Professor Jason Gieger, said the commitment of being a full-time professor just can’t be matched by a part-time lecturer.

Gieger believes lecturers, because of their temporary status from semester to semester, are marginalized and have no real incentive to be committed to the students or university community.

“They can be invested in the students and in their classes, but to the university, they’re expendable. Consequently, what reason would they have to be committed?” Gieger said.

Gieger said he sympathized with the hardships lecturers endured, including having fewer benefits and building no tenure regardless of how many semesters worked at Sac State.

“It’s an exploitive situation that invites them not to be committed because of their marginal status,” Gieger said.

Fitzgerald agreed that full-time faculty would naturally be more committed to students and the university, especially in cases where lecturers choose to be part-time because they have other job responsibilities and goals.

“Full-time faculty have dedicated their professional lives to this university, whereas for a part-time faculty member, it’s really just something they’re doing in addition to other things they already have,” he said.

For Gieger, the cost-saving practice of hiring part-time lecturers over full-time tenured faculty has global ramifications.

“It goes toward the creation of an unstable and detached university community,” he said. “It makes me feel like the priorities at the university are directed someplace other than instruction and the creation of a university community.”

Marilen Bugarin can be reached at [email protected]