Summer community college teaching?

In our November "how can we help you?" post, Anthony writes:

Question: How does a graduate student find summer teaching opportunities? I would be happy to adjunct this summer at a community college.

Context: I'm currently earning a masters degree in humanities. For it, I'll take a couple philosophy-related courses. I'm actually halfway through a PhD in philosophy at a different institution; I'm officially on a leave of absence from my PhD program to complete this MA. I've completed graduate coursework at my PhD program. But my PhD program only grants masters degrees to those who exit the program early (which seems unjustified to me, but that's a different matter), so I won't have a MA degree until June. My only experience as a primary instructor was at a summer school, but I do have several semesters of TAing under my belt.

Good question, and I have to confess to not knowing the answer. I suspect it's easier to get teaching opportunities at a community college during the normal academic year, as there are presumably more course sections then. I taught at a CC for a couple of semesters during grad school, and if I recall I just applied when I saw an advertisement. But I never did during the summer, so again, I'm not quite sure what the answer to the OP's question is. Do any of you know?

Comments

[DS]

In general, there are less courses to go around in summer, and depending on the situation, the summer courses at a CC will usually go to the full time faculty (if they want them) or long-time/favored/reliable adjuncts. As a new adjunct at a CC, it can be a bit difficult to get a summer slot. The best thing to do is to cold email department chairs of CCs in the area, ask them if they have anything for the summer and if not, to keep you in mind for the future. If you are willing to teach entirely online, then you most likely can find some kind of summer teaching opportunity, at like Southern New Hampshire Unuiversity Online or something like that. I would also look in John Hopkins CTY summer program, which is a good place to get teaching experience (but I wonder if it will actually happen this year).

[Michel]

What happens at my institution (former CC, now a university) is that most of the regulars and non-regulars have most of their sections assigned in the regular school year, and whoever hasn't hit a full load that way gets the summer sections. The university limits us to eight sections max (a full load), so if anything happened in the semester--someone got sick, went on leave, etc.--then we're likely to have gaps for sessional work in the summer, but not the regular semester. This is the case for us this summer, where we're at least two sections short, and could possibly run one more section as well (which would also have to be covered by a sessional or new non-regular hire).

There are fewer summer sections, but it's still a fair number (eight or so, if memory serves). So anyway, the answer here is that scheduling makes the summer the likeliest candidate for sessional work. And we'll be looking for someone to take those sections very soon.

[Peter Furlong]

In my experience, this largely depends upon whether the school in question requires full time faculty to teach over the summer. Some state systems do require this, while others do not. I think DS's suggestions above are good ones, both about cold-emailing and looking for online gigs.