While we’re all sporting our new official BYU email addresses, this newsletter will continue to be sent to your personal email address for all of the various reasons you can imagine.

If you’re one of the newly hired 15 adjuncts reading this, welcome to The Adjunct Advocate, a (sometimes) bimonthly newsletter full of (hopefully helpful) tidbits of news and information!

And to all of our regular readers, welcome back!

Stuff to know (or review) before returning to work

The information you’re about to read will one day be on an official Adjunct Faculty Commons webpage! Ansalee Greenwood, Greyson Gurley, Kelsey Smith, and I are hard at work writing the content for the page(s) right now! (Look for it to be live Summer 2024! If all goes well!)

Unlike the content we’re currently writing, what you’re about to read has not been reviewed and vetted by Those in Charge, which means there’s a fair chance that a correction (and a denial) will be issued promptly.

So without further ado, here’s a review of

• syllabus requirements,

• office hours,

• attendance policy,

• Zoom policy, and

• final exam policy.

Syllabus Requirements: Ah, the syllabus. The foundation of our classes. Here’s a list of what every syllabus should have:

1. Course title and section

2. Semester and year

3. Class time and location

4. Your name, office hours, and contact information

5. Course learning outcomes

6. Required materials—any extra costs students might incur

7. Class policies (e.g., attendance, late work, resubmission opportunities, extra credit)

8. Grading: assignments and their point/weight breakdown and grade scale

9. Final exam date and time

10. Required university policies: Honor Code, Title IX: Preventing and Responding to Sexual Misconduct, and Student Disability (If you use Learning Suite’s plain-but-functional syllabus builder, these policies will be automatically included on your syllabus.)

11. Optional policies: College of Humanities Statement on Inclusion, AI Use policy (scroll to about halfway for a sample policy you can adapt)

Be sure to check out syllabus.byu.edu if you’re needing some syllabus inspo. (I’ve got to say my syllabus is pretty darn good—it just took me eight years of revising to get to where it is today!)

One more thing, if you don’t use Learning Suite’s syllabus builder, make sure you post your syllabus to Learning Suite / Syllabus tab before the semester starts so your students and your course coordinator can review it.

Office Hours: The university requires you to host 3 hours of office hours each week. How and when you host these hours is up to you. You can set regular hours or you can set your office hours to be “by appointment.” You can also choose to do your office hours in person or over Zoom.

Attendance Policy: Did you know that research shows that students coming to class is the number one predictor of their success in college?

This fact should motivate all of us to have fair and firm attendance policies to combat the After Covid Plague of Absences! I highly recommend the University Writing (UW) attendance policy. For my latest syllabus, I plan to add these words in boldface to the attendance policy: If you miss 8 classes (or 30% of class!), you will fail WRTG 150.

Of course, if students become super ill or have something happen in their life that’s out of their control, I will make exceptions to the official attendance policy (and I will be very careful in doing so).

Zoom Policy: You’re welcome to Zoom your class to students who can’t come, but I wouldn’t. Zoom can sometimes make for an awkward class (even if you don’t pay attention to the students in Zoom-land). Worse, it can lead to resentment that lasts for years (e.g., the student who revealed to me at the end of the semester that he spent most of the semester having a great time in San Francisco while I set up and monitored Zoom for him nearly every class in Provo).

Now if life happens and you can’t come to campus to teach your class but you can Zoom-teach your class, don’t hesitate to Zoom. A Zoom class is better than a canceled class.

Final Exam Policy: You must give your students a final exam (WRTG 150 students must complete a final exam to pass the class!). But you do not have to give a final exam during your officially assigned final exam time (see AIM for your assigned time!).

Translation: This means you can assign a take-home final instead of requiring students to meet as a class one last time. (Not that meeting one last time is a bad thing—well, it is if your final exam time is on the last day of finals during the last final exam slot—3-6 pm on December 21! Many a more expensive flight I made my students take all in the name of a WRTG 150 final exam!)

Some final words on finals—you cannot assign your students to turn in their finals before your officially assigned final exam time! So if you have the last final slot, then your students have until 3 pm on December 21 to turn in their finals! The end.

It’s my job to help adjuncts!

Send me an email if you have any questions or concerns or need some help—it’s my job as adjunct liaison to help you! You can reach me at my new professional address [email protected] (or my address formerly known as semi-professional, [email protected])

Stuff for your calendar

Calendars are starting to percolate! Take a few minutes to check out The English Department Calendar. And keep an eye on this space: a lot more dates and events will be added in the next newsletter!

AUGUST

August 24: The Annual Adjunct Faculty Back-to-Work Kickoff @ 9-12 pm in  4186-4188 JFSB. Yes, it’s three hours long, but it’s three hours of good stuff with a tasty lunch served at the end! Let us know you’re coming by August 17, so we can have a lunch for you—click here to RSVP today! (If you would like to Zoom the meeting, click here on August 24 at 9 am.)

August 24: Sylla-WHY? @ 1-3 pm in 4188 JFSB. The syllabus struggle is real. But there's hope. Learn how to craft a useful syllabus from Learning & Teaching Consultant Julie Swallow. Be sure to bring your laptop so you can get to work on the foundation of your class! (If you would like to Zoom the meeting, click here on August 24 at 1 pm.)

One more thing, to help Julie know what we like about our syllabus and what we despise about our syllabus, fill out this two-question survey by August 22.

August 28: BYU’s Opening General Session @ 10-11:30 am at the Marriott Center. Newly appointed President Shane Reese will give his first State of the Union/University, and my husband Jon Cox (CAPS therapist and new FAC co-chair) will be giving the closing prayer! (He’ll be wearing his General Authority best, despite my attempts to convince him to boldly wear a blue shirt and khakis. But I bet he’ll be the only one on that stand boldly sporting a mustache!)

August 29: University Breakfast @ 8-9:30 am at Brigham Square WSC. Celebrate the new academic year and mingle with other BYU employees over breakfast. Feel free to bring a guest—just make sure you reserve a ticket(s)!

August 30: College of Humanities Opening Ceremony and Lunch @ 10:30-12 pm with lunch from 12-1 pm in B092 JFSB. Come listen to Dean Scott Miller give his State of the Union/College and find out who’s been recently hired and who’s earned awards.

SEPTEMBER

September 22: English Department Dinner in the Park (Lion’s Park in Provo)! Please join us—and please bring your people (spouse, children, roommate, BFF). It’s a good time! Keep an eye on your email to RSVP!

OCTOBER

TBA

NOVEMBER

TBA

DECEMBER

December 1: The English Reading Series—featuring Darlene Young, a Fellow Adjunct!—@ 12 pm in the HBLL Auditorium.

December 15: English Department Christmas Lunch (aka You Survived the Semester!) @ 12-1:30 pm in 4088 JFSB. Fa la la la!