Dear Chair Walker and Vice Chair Collett:

In January, a brief was made available to everyone in the UCLA Department of Sociology regarding "Lecturer Underemployment and Precarity.” It can be accessed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Sy6U6fVuD3R2ohRzNBkPjCK4fTsm9RRe-xlNR7wAqh0. A key paragraph in that brief read as follows: “The Sociology Department has been opting for some years to rely on the use of a pool of primarily part-time lecturing professors who are under-employed (at UCLA), and overworked (splitting time between work sites to make ends meet). When there is a curricular need for more labor, this lecturer pool is typically expanded to include more part-time hires, rather than bringing existing lecturers up to a sustainable level of employment.”

This paragraph precisely describes Continuing Lecturer Terri Anderson’s experience with Sociology from Fall 2012 to the present, a period spanning over 11 years. Dr. Anderson has been explicitly communicating her need for a permanent third class to the department throughout this time.

After six years of excellent teaching, Dr. Anderson’s Continuing Lecturer appointment was approved in 2008 for three classes per year. Just as UCLA was beginning to rebound from the effects of the Recession, Dr. Anderson was given notice that she would be laid off, effective July 2012. Her union fought the layoff, and Dr. Anderson did get her job back—but lost her 3rd class, which put her benefits eligibility and access to paychecks over the summer at risk.

Ever since then, Dr. Anderson has been held to two classes per year, even as more and more lecturers have been hired, many of them teaching classes that she has successfully taught in the past. At one point, Dr. Anderson submitted an application to a hiring announcement for SOC 132/Social Psychology, which had been one of her specialties from 2001 to the time of her layoff—and one of her highest-evaluated classes. She never received a response; instead, the job was given to an individual who had been her Teaching Assistant for that class. In total, Sociology has hired 36 lecturers since 2012-13 rather than offer Dr. Anderson (Sociology’s 2nd most senior lecturer) a permanent third class and stabilized employment.

Sociology has hired 10 lecturers to teach in 2023-24; Dr. Anderson is the only one whose base appointment is below 3 classes. In some years, including this year, she has been assigned an additional class with Sociology, but always as a one-time exception rather than a permanent addition. If Dr. Anderson is not permanently contracted to teach three classes per year by June 1, she will lose her health insurance entirely, go unpaid throughout summer and her quarter without a class, be denied library and email privileges, and will be permanently dropped into a lower retirement tier.

Sociology can at any time offer Dr. Anderson a permanent third class, and it has the list below of all the different classes she can teach (and has taught).

• SOC 1/Introductory Sociology
• SOC 20/Introduction to Sociological Research Methods
• SOC M115/Environmental Sociology
• SOC 128/Sociology of Emotions
• SOC 130/Self and Society
• SOC 132/Social Psychology
• SOC 135/Sociology of Body
• SOC M148/Sociology of Mental Illness
• SOC M162/Sociology of Gender
• SOC M174/Sociology of Family
• SOC M175/Sociology of Education
• SOC M176/Sociology of Mass Communication

Not only is the department’s persistent refusal in the past to provide Dr. Anderson stable employment in direct contradiction of its aims to be a fair and supportive workplace, it is standing in the way of providing undergraduates a wonderful and experienced teacher. Sociology has the opportunity to build on this year’s temporary solution of one extra class by permanently augmenting Dr. Anderson’s contract, beginning 2024-25.

We the attached signatories affirm our support of Dr. Anderson’s contract being immediately and permanently augmented to three classes per academic year.