Pros
Autonomy in the classroom, opportunities to network with other professors and administrators, opportunities for professional development free of charge, lots of campuses and centers at which to teach, instructional support, clear and effective curriculum, and an overall phenomenal approach by the college to connecting education and community.
Cons
Adjunct professors cannot live off of what they earn--salaries are deplorably and shockingly LOW. Add to this the difficulty of getting classes to teach (because the review process weighs far too heavily on student evaluations of teachers, which determines an adjunct's ranking), and it's almost not worth trying to get a teaching job at ACC. My students' evaluations ranked me at "excellent" for a total of 7 years and "very good" for a total of 4 years. A "very good" rating knocked me out of the first level of adjunct assignments into the second level. Additionally, because of the ranking system used, far too many adjuncts being hired (which means there are more teachers than there are classes to teach), and retired full-time professors being given classes before currently employed adjuncts, even adjuncts who've been with ACC 15+ years are put on the same level as new hires--seniority makes no difference--and often get no classes or only one or two. Finally, some departments are so huge that Dept. Chairs rarely know the people who work for them.
