Adjunct Faculty

Adjunct Faculty refers to non-tenure track faculty members who may teach or conduct research to the benefit of the university. Some universities use “adjunct” to refer to lecturers or other faculty members not on a tenure line, but that is not the CSU usage. At SDSU, Adjunct Faculty members are comprised of researchers and volunteer instructors while Lecturers are instructional faculty with no research obligations

Where Data Element Appears

ASIR Public Faculty Data Dashboards and Reports:

• Faculty Workload Reports

See Also

• Lecturer
• Probationary Faculty
• Tenured Faculty

• Tenure Status

Definition Source

"Adjunct Faculty refers to non-tenure track instructional staff serving in a temporary or auxiliary capacity to teach specific courses on a course-by-course basis. Includes both instructional staff who are hired to teach an academic degree-credit course and those hired to teach a developmental or ESL course; whether the latter three categories earn college credit is immaterial. Excludes regular part-time instructional staff (who, unlike adjuncts are not paid on a course-by-course basis), graduate assistants, full-time professional staff of the institution who may teach individual courses (such as a dean or academic advisor), and appointees who teach noncredit courses exclusively."