Equity, sessional faculty, and sociological research

For all sociologists do to help students recognize various forms of oppression and the ways systems of the same might be dismantled, at a disciplinary level, sociology remains complicit in reproducing the same kind of inequities many of us purport to oppose. That should not be surprising—decades of research emphasizes the way norms are internalized and the ways individuals can participate in producing an outcome without agreeing with it. Here, I want to expose a particular equity issue in the discipline, and offer a potential solution. A substantial number of sociologists are positioned as peripheral participants in the discipline—employed to transmit the discipline's knowledge and social capital to students, but practically, if not explicitly, excluded from shaping the discipline itself through the production and publication of sociological research. As much as post-secondary institutions claim to pursue teaching excellence, and however sincere they are in these commitments, in contemporary academic environments, research and the publication of research are essential to the construction of legitimate academic identities (Archer, 2008; Gonzales & Terosky, 2016; Kreber, 2010). Although there is little information about sessional faculty specifically in sociology, what is available about these positions across the academy paints a rather bleak picture. The number of faculty in this type of position appears to be increasing relative to the number of faculty in secure tenured and tenure-track positions (Foster & Birdsell-Bauer, 2018). Social sciences employ sessional faculty more frequently than other disciplines (Bauder, 2006). The demographics of sessional faculty raise further equity concerns. Women, as well as Indigenous and otherwise racialized people, are more likely to occupy this type of position (CAUT,2018). Essentially, the groups sociology generally recognizes as having legitimate grievances around both symbolic recognition and material redistribution is over-represented among sessional faculty. These positions tend to be compensated at lower rates than more securely employed faculty (CAUT, 2018), as well as less predictable and secure (Bauder, 2006). Beyond concerns about who occupies these positions and their compensation, sessional faculty's exclusion from activities which are central to the production of the discipline also represent a form of inequity. In practice, sessional faculty convey sociological knowledge through teaching, but are less active in shaping that corpus of knowledge through research and publication. This is rarely an explicit prohibition, but has meaningful consequences, nevertheless. Christy and Etienne (2021), for example, argue that Canadian graduate programs marginalize the contributions of Black scholars by excluding their work from the syllabi of required courses, and Black students by offering them less mentoring and support than White students. I would argue that the effects of experiences of devaluation and a lack of affirmation from the discipline on the value of one's work are likely to persist after the completion of a PhD as well. Dotson (2012) argues that the organization of conference sessions in philosophy discourage the participation of minorities (both demographically and in relation to “minority” perspectives), and there is no obvious reason to suggest that sociology is immune to similar effects. Pragmatic concerns can also deter sessional faculty from the production of sociological research. First of all, it is not part of what they are paid to do. Sessional contracts explicitly state that there is no expectation these faculty members participate in service, university governance, or research. From a labor relations perspective, this ensures that sessional faculty are not asked to take on tasks which might benefit the institution without being compensated for them. However, research activities are also likely to benefit the careers of individual faculty members, and so barriers to participation in these activities can contribute to reproducing inequities. There are few tenured and tenure-track faculty in Canada who would accept teaching four courses a term. Sessional faculty may do so because teaching four courses can offer them a degree of economic security, although it is likely to “cost” them time engaging with their own research. Outside of the realities of the institutions where they work, sessional faculty may also encounter other pragmatic barriers to engaging in research activities: they are likely to move more frequently for work, encounter higher psychological costs related to the uncertainty of their employment, and may need to engage in other paid employment which is not necessarily responsive to the requirements of producing sociological research.1 Sessional faculty being excluded from the production of sociological research has consequences for the discipline as a whole. The qualitative methodological literature insists that a researcher's choice of topic and approach are deeply personal; people occupying different social locations are likely to ask different research questions, as well as draw different conclusions from the same data (e.g., emphasize different elements, identify different connections, etc.) (Charmaz, 2004; Clark & Scharf, 2007; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that sessional faculty in sociology might ask different research questions, and emphasize different elements in their analysis, than tenured and tenure-track faculty, owing both to demographic differences between the two groups, and the different employment experiences within the academy. The discipline is impoverished by the absence of contributions from sessional faculty, because no sociologist can read, or cite, research that was never completed in the first place. Aside from the barriers discussed above, sessional faculty are also hampered by a mismatch between their particular needs and the supports available in the research ecosystem. Some post-secondary institutions in Canada will not support their sessional faculty in applying for Tri-Council research funds. Even where sessional faculty are permitted to apply for such funds, they may be unable to access institutional resources supporting tenured and tenure-track faculty in their applications (e.g., research services officers and application review services, the potential of paid leave to prepare applications, etc.). There are also policies in the research environment which appear neutral, but contribute to reproducing existing inequalities. For example, recipients of Tri-Council research funding must abide by the funding body's rules regarding allowable expenses. Although they apply to all applicants, these policies presume a tenured or tenure-track applicant in ways which can disadvantage sessional faculty. The budget for a SSHRC funded project may include a research assistant's salary and course release for faculty investigators. These policies work well for tenured and tenure-track faculty, as they account for the fact that research requires time on the part of the researcher, and that people who assist with the research should be compensated for their time. The budget for a SHHRC funded project may not include a stipend or salary for the primary investigator. This complicates sessional faculty's participation in research, because they can only rarely access something akin to the course release mechanism tenured and tenure-track faculty use to carve out time for their research (it should be noted that this mechanism essentially shifts teaching responsibilities onto sessional faculty). Pursuing research funding under these conditions is a difficult decision for sessional faculty because, without being too flippant, if sessional faculty don't teach, they don't eat. Their academic institutions do not offer them stable salaries which would continue to pay their living expenses whether their time is spent teaching or researching. Therefore, even if they are successful in getting Tri-Council funding, sessional faculty are in a different position in terms of being able to use these funds, because they are less likely to have the economic stability that allows them to devote such time to their research.2 There will be sessional faculty members in Canada who are not interested in doing more research. Some may be professionals in related fields who teach one or two classes a year. Others may occupy sessional positions for a year or two near the end of graduate school, or shortly thereafter, before moving on to other work, either within or outside of the academy. However, it is naïve to assume that no sessional faculty member has any interest in expanding their research program. Even a rudimentary understanding that graduate school socializes students into academic environments, and that academic environments prioritize research output as a measure of success, should be enough to determine that at least some sessional faculty are likely interested in research. The demographic profile of sessional faculty combined with the various ways they are discouraged from participating in sociological research, indicates that some action is necessary if sociology is serious about commitments to equity within the discipline. The above is not a lament about an unchangeable situation, but an argument for the necessity of acting to improve the situation. I propose that the discipline ought to create an avenue of research funding which meets the needs of sessional faculty. Below, I outline my intention and justification for such a solution and a rudimentary analysis of the financial resources necessary for such a project. Some of the needs of sessional faculty in research funding are likely to be material. This research funding should therefore, expand the scope of expenses allowed in project budgets, to include items such as childcare and living expenses. Another possible category of allowable expenses would be tools and services which alleviate a researcher's domestic responsibilities (which are also likely to accrue disproportionately to the equity-seeking groups over-represented among sessional faculty). This is the strategy taken by the Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Foundation in the stipends it offers to women pursuing graduate studies or post-doctoral fellowships in Germany in an attempt to close the gendered achievement gap among researchers in natural sciences (https://cnv-stiftung.de/en/goals). There is obviously some work to be done in creating guidelines around the scope of such expenses and how they might fit in project budgets more generally, but including them could offer sociologists without the stability of salaries independent of their teaching load more ability to benefit from research support funds. For a broader discussion of the ways expanding allowable expenses in this way might have a disproportionate effect on women, see Caroline Cirado Perez's (2019) chapter, The Long Friday. This chapter focuses specifically on women's experiences, but traces an argument which could be applied to intersectional identities beyond gender. Research funding might also be a mechanism for sessional faculty to reach their desired career trajectories. It is often difficult for individuals to move from sessional positions to more secure, tenure-track employment. In general, being appointed to a tenure-track appointment requires demonstration of research productivity, or at the very least, early indications of such. Publishing research is a central means of establishing one's reputation as a scholar, and obviously, providing research grants to sessional faculty is likely to lead to their publishing more of their research. However, receiving research funding can also indicate the value of a scholar's contribution to their discipline, even before the research is complete. Postings for tenure-track positions frequently ask for candidates with a track record of receiving external funding to support their work. In part, this aims to ensure that the institution will not be required to completely fund a faculty member's research program. External funding can also be used to indicate, particularly to those less familiar with a specific sub-field, that the applicant's work is regarded as high quality by their peers. Excluding sessional faculty, either explicitly or implicitly, from accessing research funding then functions to deprive them of two markers of “quality” in the academic job market by creating additional barriers both to publishing their work and having a track record demonstrating that the discipline considers their work worth doing. The idea of academic merit being communicated through being granted research funds is also why self-funding small research projects is not an adequate substitute for access to research funds for sessional faculty—aside from disparities in who can and cannot fund their own research projects, self-funded projects, regardless of how many publications result, leave an academic in a qualitatively weaker position when they are compared to someone with the same number of publications and adjudicated research funding. The design of a program to grant research funds to sessional faculty should account for the way such grants might help in establishing applicant's scholarly reputations. Hosting the funding competition within a national body, such as the Canadian Sociological Association, and incorporating peer review in the adjudication process would help convey to hiring committees, and recipients themselves, that research done by sessional faculty has been deemed worthwhile by other members of the discipline. The need for funding to convey esteem in the discipline as well as offer material support for the project is my reason for arguing for a competition open to all sessional faculty in sociology. Targeting research funding to a more specific group, such as women working as sessional faculty, or BIPOC sessional faculty, ignores the many ways that marginalized statuses intersect. Sessional faculty are likely to face forms of inequity due to statuses they occupy and the way those statuses intersect, but my goal in this case it to reduce the marginalization they experience as a result of their employment situation. Research funds targeted to sessional faculty broadly offers an opportunity for individuals in these employment conditions to build Cvs that communicate the kind of academic merit which is useful in the pursuit of both more stable employment and further research funding. It may be that the conceptualization of scholarly merit itself requires revision. In her discussion of why academic departments and environments often make such slow progress towards equity, Posselt (2020) argues that signifiers of merit used in academia can be both exclusionary based on implicit assumptions about who “belongs” in academic fields shaped by historical patterns which are, overall, patriarchal, sexist, racist and colonialist. There are many arguments against measuring the overall quality of academics through their participation in research, and this is not the place to discuss them. Research funding for sessional faculty in this form is necessary because shifting academic cultures’ definitions of merit is an enormous, far-reaching project. Since Posselt argues that changes perceived to be imposed on individual academics are more prone to failure, my sense is that changing the conception of merit in the academy is likely better accomplished through the creation of avenues for groups which have been historically excluded from defining merit to participate in academia more fully and eventually occupy positions where they are able to shift definitions of merit. A program of research funds which meets the needs of sessional faculty could be seen as a “small win.” In arguing for the need to reframe social issues in order to address them, Karl Weick (1984) defines a small win as “a concrete, complete, implemented outcome of moderate importance. By itself, one small win may seem unimportant. A series of wins at small but significant tasks, however, reveals a pattern that may attract allies, deter opponents, and lower resistance to subsequent proposals” (p. 43). Research funding targeted to the needs of sessional faculty will most certainly not resolve all the equity issues in sociology. It is, however, a manageable step which could begin contributing to that outcome in the relatively near future. Equity in the discipline is not a purely abstract question. There are, right now, sociologists whose employment situations do not offer them the kind of economic stability and research support for their work to flourish. Offering one such person the funds necessary to build a research profile that facilitates movement to a more secure position, within or outside the academy, does some good. Funding such an endeavor through an endowment compounds such effects over time—an endowment produces not “one such award” but “one such award, every year.” As an endowment grows, there is also potential to offer awards with a larger monetary value, or a larger number of awards, or both. Over time, this can make real, if slow, progress at making sociology more equitable as a discipline. It is tempting to say that the above is an excellent, if not practicable, idea because it would demand too much funding and resources to execute. I intend to argue that this need not be the case. Below, I have sketched out the math of establishing an endowment to support research by sessional faculty, held by a local community foundation, and adjudicated by the Canadian Sociological Association. Community foundations exist for exactly this kind of project, with the caveat that they can only grant funds to registered charities. Regardless, my understanding is that the Canadian Sociological Association is currently pursuing this designation for other reasons. The minimum endowment size for most community foundations in Canada to begin issuing grants is approximately $10,000. A $10,000 endowment produces an annual grant of something around $400, which is unlikely to be enough to offer even the kind of small win described above for an individual researcher. If $1,000 is taken as a kind of minimum viable annual grant it means an endowment size of approximately $25,000.3 I will be working with this as an initial minimum investment necessary for such a project. As per the Canadian Sociological Association website, the association has approximately 1000 members. If half of those members were willing to donate $10 per year, a manageable sum for those with reasonably stable employment, then a $25,000 endowment could be created in a period of 5 years. I am conscious of the argument that individual donors should not be responsible for addressing what is essentially an institutional failure. To that end, consider that the Canadian Sociological Association lists departmental representatives for 65 post-secondary institutions across the country. While I accept that discretionary budgets in the post-secondary sector are somewhat limited at the moment, it seems reasonable to talk about a $50 annual contribution from the majority, say 50, of these departments. At that rate, a $25,000 endowment could be built over a period of 10 years. Combining individual and departmental donations would establish a $25,000 endowment in a period of just over 3 years. The above calculations exclude any investment returns on contributions to the endowment, so they are likely conservative. Donors making larger contributions would, of course, accomplish the goal more quickly. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I would personally commit significantly more than $10 a year to begin to practically address deep inequities in the discipline and expanding the scope of sociological knowledge in Canada. Once an endowment is established, it exists in perpetuity and its value can continue to grow over time. This means that the Canadian Sociological Association could create a permanent avenue to meet the research needs of sessional faculty over a relatively short period, relatively small contributions for individuals over the the of an endowment of that annual grants would have to approximately and the fund would have paid out more than $25,000 overall, even if no one to the project in that Over that period, the endowment would also have the research careers of Canadian and the of those grants on their or on Sociological knowledge as a is to

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