The University is trying to coordinate to make adjuncts full-time faculty members where possible, Provost Steve Goldstein ’78 affirmed in an email to the Justice. 

Goldstein wrote that Dean of Arts and Sciences Susan Birren has been “making an effort … to coordinate the College of Arts and Sciences’ need for adjunct faculty to teach courses across different areas in order to package these courses into full-time contract faculty positions starting in the fall of 2014.” 

Birren could not yet specify the number of adjuncts that would become full-time faculty, or in which areas they would teach. “We are still in the process of hiring for next year, so I don’t have any numbers yet,” Birren wrote in an email to the Justice, adding that the University “should have a better idea later in May.” 

Adjuncts set to become full-time faculty members would be eligible for benefits, just like contracted faculty who teach two or more courses per year, according to Goldstein. 

Goldstein commented on the benefits of making adjuncts full-time faculty members, “This is good for students because full time faculty are members of the community who come to know more students and develop deeper educational relationships from teaching some students in more than one course,” Goldstein wrote. 

He added that they would also be able to oversee independent studies and to serve as advisers and mentors. “A full time position also allows faculty to become more fully engaged in the life of the university since Brandeis becomes their sole professional home for teaching and scholarship,” he wrote.