Community College English Faculty Pandemic Teaching:Adjustments in the Time of COVID-19

ABSTRACT

In this article, we describe initial findings from a survey of English composition faculty at two-year colleges about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their workload. This survey, conducted as a follow-up to ongoing research by the Two-Year College English Association (TYCA), examines the working conditions and practices of English faculty at two-year colleges. Respondents described broad increases in English faculty’s workload and identified the institutional supports available to support that work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis highlights the strengths and limitations of institutional support provided for faculty. Echoing previous scholarship, these findings suggest that the pandemic exacerbated existing gaps in institutional support for faculty. Thus, we identify the 2020–2021 academic years as an opportunity to reflect upon the radical changes and fraught collaborations that enable our institutional work. We discuss how institutional partners and faculty colleagues evaluate the intersections of labor, professional development, and disciplinary knowledge as sites where institutions can remove information silos and improve the flow of knowledge to better and more holistically support our students. This focus on opportunities suggests that we use the exigency of the pandemic to learn from this experience and also address longstanding problems and inequities in higher education that have emerged or become more visible from the impact of COVID-19 as observed through the pandemic TYCA Workload Survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).