Unsung? Perhaps. Unimportant? Never!

On Monday, we began with a reminder that service does not always come with a uniform, a title, or public recognition.

Sometimes, it is simply ordinary people stepping forward when someone needs them.

On Wednesday, we widened the lens to recognize many of the people whose work keeps our lives and communities moving, even though their contributions are often overlooked.

Where someone begins, or where society places that person on its social prestige scale, does not determine the influence that person may eventually have.

Consider Grace Lee Boggs.

Today, she is remembered as a philosopher, writer, civil rights activist, feminist, and community organizer whose work influenced generations.

She became especially known for her decades of grassroots organizing in Detroit and for helping establish Detroit Summer, an intergenerational program dedicated to rebuilding and strengthening communities.

Her path began with much humbler circumstances.

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Chinese immigrant parents, Grace Lee came of age as a Chinese American woman in a society that placed severe limitations on both women and people of Asian descent.

Although she had earned a doctorate in philosophy, racism and sexism severely limited her employment opportunities. She accepted a low-paying job in a university library and lived in a building that included the rat-infested basement in Chicago.

When she encountered residents of her building who were organizing against rat-infested housing, she joined them. That experience introduced her to grassroots organizing and brought her into direct contact with Chicago’s Black community.

Her involvement became a jumping-off point for more than seven decades of activism.

Dr. Boggs’s story reminds us that influence does not always begin in a prestigious office, with an impressive job title, or among people who already possess power.

At the time, she was Grace Lee, working in a library, and no one could have known what would grow from her decision to join that community effort.

Sometimes, influence begins when an ordinary person recognizes a problem, joins with others, and decides to do something about it.

Today, with that in mind, let us bring the lens closer and consider three groups of people whose essential contributions are too often overlooked:

sterile processing technicians,

sanitation workers,

and adjunct professors.

Each performs essential work that many of us notice only when it is not done.

Let us first consider the important, largely unseen work of a sterile processing technician.

Members of the surgical team are often recognized as the heroines and heroes of patient care. Yet before a surgical procedure can be performed safely, someone must ensure that every reusable instrument has been properly decontaminated, inspected, assembled, packaged, and sterilized.

Soon after I began teaching more than 20 years ago, I had a student named Ryan who had completed his active-duty service in the U.S. Navy. He returned home to begin his educational journey to become a sterile processing technician.

Ryan did not simply walk into an operating room and begin working. He completed the required general education courses. He then completed specialized classroom and laboratory training, followed by supervised clinical rotations at two separate health care facilities in two different cities away from his hometown.

He invested considerable time, energy, and money to prepare for his chosen profession. The last time I heard from him, Ryan was still working in the profession for which he had trained.

Now consider this: What are the potential consequences if a sterile processing technician does not perform the job thoroughly and correctly?

Failure to follow proper procedures can damage sterilization equipment and surgical instruments. More seriously, improperly cleaned or sterilized instruments can expose a surgical patient to dangerous microorganisms. The patient could contract a severe infection, face life-threatening complications, or even die.

Any one of these scenarios could result in considerable costs and consequences for the hospital. More importantly, the patient and the patient’s family could be left facing devastating circumstances.

The surgeon may hold the instrument, and the nurse may assist with the procedure, but a sterile processing technician helps ensure that the instrument is safe to use. Ryan and others who perform this essential work may remain outside the public spotlight, but they contribute directly to patient safety. They are among the unsung heroines and heroes behind every successful surgical procedure.

We could continue through almost any hospital and find unsung heroines and heroes at every point. Environmental services workers, custodians, food service employees, transporters, laboratory staff, and many others perform work that is essential to patient care, even though patients may never know their names.

For now, however, let us step outside the hospital and onto our neighborhood streets. There, we find another group of workers whose importance often becomes most visible when their work is not completed: sanitation workers.

Wow! We have all seen pictures of street corners piled high and wide with bags of garbage when sanitation workers go out on strike.

Stinking, rotting, nasty garbage.

The women and men who collect our cast-off waste perform a tremendous service for society. If they did not show up according to the designated collection schedule, we would quickly find ourselves in dire straits.

Uncollected garbage is more than unsightly and foul-smelling. It can become a serious public health concern. Rotting waste can attract flies, cockroaches, maggots, rats, and other pests. These pests can carry disease and expose nearby residents to serious health and safety risks.

What begins as a collection delay can lead to contamination, illness, infection, and, in extreme cases, life-threatening disease.

We need and are tremendously grateful for our frontline health care professionals and their knowledge and expertise. However, please also consider how sanitation workers protect us, our families, our friends, and our communities every day through their essential work.

We may not know their names, but we depend upon them to keep our neighborhoods clean, safe, and healthy. Sanitation workers belong in the group of those who are unsung.

I hesitate to pull my colleagues and myself into the next example. However, if not for our positions as college instructors, many of us would never have had the privilege of meeting students such as Ryan and contributing to their journeys.

More pointedly, let us consider adjunct faculty.

For those unfamiliar with the term adjunct, allow me a few words by way of explanation. An adjunct professor is generally considered a contingent faculty member. That means the person is hired temporarily, usually on a part-time basis, to teach specific courses. Adjuncts are commonly paid by the course at a rate significantly lower than the compensation received by their full-time counterparts.

Most adjuncts work from one semester to the next without meaningful job security. They are not progressing toward tenure, and many receive no health insurance or retirement contributions from the institutions where they teach.

According to the American Association of University Professors’ 2025 to 2026 Faculty Compensation Survey, the average compensation for teaching a standard three-credit course was slightly more than $4,000.

That amount must cover far more than the hours spent standing in front of a classroom. It also compensates the instructor for preparing the course, developing assignments, grading student work, answering messages, holding office hours, posting and updating course materials and announcements through the institution’s online learning management system, completing institutional requirements, and responding to the unexpected situations that inevitably arise during a semester.

Many adjuncts piece together teaching loads at multiple institutions in an effort to make something resembling a living. Even then, there is no guarantee that enough courses will be available.

Folks, this is difficult to do.

Before the fall semester began in 2025, I had earned only $4,000 from teaching that year. It was not due to a lack of effort on my part. I pounded the proverbial pavement looking for courses.

Sad, huh?

I have taught at one of my city’s largest colleges for more than 20 years. During that time, I completed my doctoral coursework, passed my comprehensive examinations, conducted research, and completed my doctoral dissertation.

Yet I am paid the same per course as a newly hired instructor with a master’s degree who may have little or no previous teaching experience.

That is not a criticism of the newly hired instructor. It is an indictment of a system that frequently does not recognize experience, longevity, advanced education, or proven effectiveness when compensating adjunct faculty.

At many teaching-focused colleges, full-time instructors are not expected to conduct and publish additional research in the same way that tenure-track faculty at research universities may be required to do. Full-time faculty do, however, serve on committees, attend meetings, advise students, and fulfill other responsibilities beyond teaching.

Did I mention that I am an adjunct?

Not in so many words, but I trust you were digging what I was putting down.

Why, you may ask, have I continued down the adjunct road when I could have obtained a full-time teaching position?

Folks, that was indeed the plan.

What is the saying?

The best laid plans . . .

Yep, that is what I did. I planned, organized, prepared, and desired exactly that.

To teach full-time.

Conducting additional research and publishing to gain tenure were not my goals.

Serving on committees would not have been a problem.

My goal was to secure a full-time position at a teaching-focused institution because:

I am good at it,

I enjoy it,

and I LOVE teaching.

I wanted to pass knowledge on to students in the same way my professors had passed knowledge on to me.

However, just as I was entering the arena and becoming eligible for full-time positions, the higher education landscape shifted. Colleges and universities increasingly relied upon contingent faculty.

Federal data for fall 2022 indicate that 44% of faculty members were part-time. When full-time faculty members working in non-tenure-track positions are included, the American Association of University Professors estimates that contingent faculty account for approximately 68% of the higher education faculty workforce.

The reliance on adjunct faculty is especially visible in one of the largest and most important sectors of higher education. A 2014 special report from the Center for Community College Student Engagement found that part-time faculty taught 58% of community college classes and 53% of community college students.

Sit with those numbers for a bit.

That study is now 12 years old.

What are the percentages today?

Unfortunately, no reliable current national figures tell us exactly what percentage of classes or students are taught by adjunct faculty. However, data from fall 2022 show that part-time instructors still accounted for 64.6% of the faculty at public two-year colleges.

In other words, nearly two out of every three faculty members were part-time.

The exact percentages vary among institutions, but one conclusion is difficult to dispute: colleges continue to depend heavily upon adjunct faculty.

This is no longer simply a small group of professionals teaching an occasional course to earn a little additional income.

That type of adjunct still exists. However, many present-day adjuncts rely upon teaching as their primary profession. They move among multiple institutions, search for available courses each semester, and sometimes accept employment outside higher education simply to make ends meet and gain some measure of financial security.

I have watched adjuncts leave a profession they love to accept jobs in retail or lower-level corporate positions because they could no longer survive on uncertain teaching assignments and low per-course pay.

Forgive me if it seems that I am digressing. I felt the need to provide a thorough explanation so that you can understand why adjunct professors are among the unsung heroines and heroes sitting in classrooms with college students every day.

Now, let us get to the unsung portion.

Adjunct professors frequently accept the less desirable, or what some might bluntly call the crappy, time slots that full-time faculty members do not want. These may include 8:00 a.m. classes, midafternoon courses, and evening sessions.

We may be scheduled to teach back-to-back courses with no more than 10 minutes between them, if we are lucky. We take class times that allow full-time faculty members to attend committee obligations and other required meetings. Occasionally, we fill in as substitute instructors or serve as examination proctors.

The institution benefits from our labor. Adjuncts provide experienced instructors at a fixed, low cost. Institutions frequently avoid the expenses associated with employee benefits, dedicated office space or providing the electronic devices needed to fill the position requirements.

Our availability also gives institutions the flexibility to add or cancel courses according to enrollment while shifting much of that uncertainty onto the adjunct instructor.

At the institutions where I teach, adjuncts do not have union representation comparable to that available to some of our counterparts elsewhere.

Before you think I am pouting about the low pay, lack of security, and everything else that comes with adjunct teaching, let me be clear.

I am.

HOWEVER, I am also proud of what I do.

I am proud of our students.

I am proud of the institutions where I teach.

I have been extraordinarily fortunate to teach students who have gone on to become:

attorneys,

directors of senior retirement facilities and memory care units,

nurses,

developers,

filmmakers,

physical therapists,

mental health advocates,

teachers,

counselors,

ministers,

professors,

researchers,

business owners,

builders,

parents,

managers,

performers,

therapists,

bus drivers,

veterinarians,

writers,

military personnel,

baristas,

and many others who now fill essential roles throughout our communities.

These former students perform the work that keeps our society functioning so that others out front can continue to have songs written about them.

Our institutions may classify us as contingent. Our contracts may call our employment temporary. Our names may disappear from course schedules when a semester ends.

But what passes between a professor and a student does not disappear when the course ends.

We hope that we leave a mark on our students through the knowledge we share, the encouragement we offer, and the possibilities we help them recognize. What may be less visible is the mark our students leave on us.

They remain in our hearts, our minds, and our souls.

Years after final grades have been submitted, we watch former students become professionals, parents, community leaders, and people who make a difference in the lives of others. Some remain in contact with us for years. Sometimes another member of the same family enters our classroom. Perhaps one day, the child of a former student will sit where that parent once sat.

Among those students is Ryan.

Ryan entered my classroom after already accomplishing something significant through his active-duty service in the U.S. Navy. I was fortunate to meet him during the next stage of his journey. I watched him continue his education, complete specialized training and clinical rotations, and grow into his profession as a sterile processing technician.

I did not create Ryan’s determination or choose his path for him. However, I had the privilege of teaching him, getting to know him, and perhaps helping shape one small part of his journey.

Ryan’s work now helps protect the lives of surgical patients. To have played even a small role in the journey that brought him there is one of the greatest privileges of being his professor.

But the influence did not travel in only one direction. Knowing Ryan, learning about what he had already accomplished, and watching him grow left a mark on me as well.

That is what teaching does at its best. Our students carry part of us forward, and we carry part of them with us.

Our employment may be labeled temporary, but the knowledge, relationships, memories, and influence created in our classrooms are not temporary.

Unsung?

Perhaps.

Unimportant?

Never!

🤔
🫳🏽🎤
✌🏼
❤️

Turning the Lens with DrT

. . . the beat goes on §

_{2026-08-14 | Unsung? Perhaps. Unimportant? Never!}