Dear Madam or Sir:
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A “professor” who is not improving herself is not a professor. Teaching any college course, including freshman composition, the bread and butter of part-timers in English, requires continual study. This means, at minimum, keeping current in the voluminous literature on the subject and developing the intellectual content of courses.
A full-time part-timer, one who teaches four, five, or six classes per semester, has to design courses, study the course material, write syllabi, plan lessons, teach classes, meet individually with her students, grade papers, and spend hours commuting from one university to another. She may have 80 to 100 students or more. There are part-timers who maintain such a schedule and manage to read a journal article or even write a paper now and then. But they are in the minority.
Loyola University
