Tri-Scene

Once a semester, CCC publishes Tri-Scene, a 12-page newsletter specifically for its part-time faculty. In the spring of 2000, when original editor Andrea Peck was hired in as a full-time faculty member, the Tri-Scene editorship was offered to me, and I edited two issues a year for the next four years.

Each of my eight issues opened with an essay, usually 2-3 pages long, titled "Notes from the Interstate." In these essays, I wrote about teaching for the University of Maryland's European Division, teaching in Ashland University's prison-education program, finding other sources of income inside the CCC system, building this website, and other topics (hopefully) of interest to part-timers.

The inner pages were a mix of news bits, personality profiles, book reviews, and contributions from other adjunct faculty members. Page 12 was always something goofy. For the Spring 2001 issue, for example, I wrote "A Part-Time Primer," which offered an alphabetical look at the adjunct's world.

As you can see, something went wrong in the printing process, and the large red U was somehow omitted. Before distributing the issue to the Evening/Weekend offices of the three campuses, I actually sat down with a red marker and drew that damn U in by hand — two thousand times! (You can read the primer text more easily by clicking either on the illustration above or here. By the way, years earlier I did a similar primer, "The ABC's of Murder," which you can read here.)

Other page 12's included "Five Goofy Questions Students Ask — and the Answers We'd Love to Give," "A High-School Teacher's Lament, or Why I Became a CCC Adjunct," and "The Adjunct Jukebox." These novelty items and the opening essays were fun to do. The other pages were work.