| This study is a description and analysis of itinerant adjuncts that teach in off campus, high school sites for a community college, Melrose Community College [pseudonym]. Spatialization of the academic space within these "borrowed classrooms" secretes a distinctive and more marginalized existence for adjunct faculty, in what I refer to as being in the "third-tier" of the academy. Because of the unique and disempowering spatial relations produced and orchestrated by non-collegiate personnel at these sites, participants (Circuit Riders) perceive college classrooms as constructors of identity differently from other types of adjuncts who teach in dedicated sites or on-campus.; The purpose of the investigation, then, systematically was to look at how Circuit Riders view their academic identities within the context of their borrowed classrooms, the reasons for continuing to be itinerants despite the relatively low pay and lack of benefits, and how academic space produced by non-collegiate personnel frames and exacerbates a "lack of place" for part-time faculty.; In this study, thirteen individuals participated. Interviews and observations were employed to gather data. The qualitative framework selected to support the research was phenomenology. Data analysis revealed that Circuit Riders have negative perceptions of their academic identities due to teaching in borrowed classrooms. Further, the data indicated that the respondents possessed a passionate desire, an "academic calling," to change the lives of their students, but only as it related to a specific type of student---the Non-Traditional Students. Through Non-Traditional Students, Circuit Riders perceived their work, which they clearly separated from their academic identities, as being meaningful. |
