Adjunct Professor resume examples by experience level

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An adjunct professor resume is a two to three page teaching document that names the courses you can be assigned, the graduate credit hours that qualify you for each one, and what happened in the sections you have already taught.

It is not a research CV, and that distinction is the whole page. A tenure-track search reads a CV for a scholarly trajectory and takes nine months. An adjunct appointment is a per-course contract, often decided three weeks before term by a chair with an unstaffed section and a compliance file to satisfy. Sending the first document to the second reader is the most common mistake in contingent hiring.

Resume guide for an adjunct professor resume

This guide and the corresponding adjunct professor resume example will cover:

• How to write an adjunct professor resume, section by section
• Why it is a teaching document and not a research CV
• Three adaptable summaries: new, multi-institution and course lead
• The qualification file a dean is required to keep, and how to hand it to them
• What the market looks like and what per-course work actually pays

How to write an adjunct professor resume

Six sections: contact header, teaching profile, courses taught, teaching appointments, qualifications and graduate hours, and service or professional practice. Two pages is normal, three once the course inventory is long. The ordering is inverted from an academic CV, deliberately.

Run the finished file through the free Rezoom ATS resume checker before you apply. Community college and university district systems parse applications into a structured record before a human opens them.

Choosing the best resume format for an adjunct professor resume

Reverse chronological with a course inventory block on page one. Two pages, three once your inventory justifies it.

Do not use a functional format; overlapping appointments at three institutions look unusual enough without hiding the timeline. Do not use a CV format either, unless the posting asks for one. Keep a CV for the occasional full-time search and this version for the per-course applications that make up most of the market.

Include your contact information

Put the graduate hours in the header. It is the first thing a chair has to verify and the last thing most applicants mention.

Make use of a summary

Four lines: discipline, the courses you can be assigned, the scale of your teaching, and one number on outcomes or evaluations.

English instructor with an MA in Rhetoric and Composition and 42 graduate semester hours in English, qualified under the Higher Learning Commission faculty qualifications policy to teach first-year composition and introductory literature. Taught 4 sections of Composition I and II as a graduate teaching associate, 96 students, with a mean student evaluation of 4.5 of 5. Trained in Canvas and available for in person, hybrid and asynchronous online assignment.

Adjunct instructor of English teaching 7 to 8 sections a term across three institutions in the Phoenix metropolitan area, including Composition I and II, Technical Writing and Introduction to Literature. Have taught 61 sections and roughly 1,400 students since 2019, in person, hybrid and asynchronous online, with a mean student evaluation of 4.6 of 5. Course completion in my composition sections runs 8 points above the departmental mean.

Senior adjunct faculty member and composition course lead with 11 years of per-course teaching and 4 coordinating a 14-section first-year writing sequence. Rebuilt the common syllabus and the portfolio assessment used across all sections; departmental completion in Composition I moved from 68% to 79% over three years. Mentor new adjunct faculty through their first term and hold 42 graduate semester hours in English.

Right vs wrong: the same adjunct professor summary, twice

The left column can be scheduled and documented. The right column asks a reader to take a stranger's word for it three weeks before term.

Outline your teaching experience across institutions

List each institution as its own appointment with the department, the dates, then the courses, modalities, section counts and evaluation figures. Overlapping dates are normal here; do not hide them.

Adjunct Instructor, Department of English, Sonoran Valley Community College, Mesa, AZ, August 2019 to Present
Teach 4 to 5 sections a term of ENG 101 Composition I, ENG 102 Composition II and ENG 235 Technical Writing, 22 to 26 students a section, in person and asynchronous online.
Taught 43 sections and roughly 1,000 students at this institution since 2019, on 14 consecutive per-course contracts.
Mean student evaluation 4.6 of 5 across those sections, against a departmental mean of 4.2.
Course completion in my composition sections runs 79% against a departmental mean of 71%.
Rebuilt the ENG 102 research sequence and the portfolio rubric, adopted across all 14 sections of the course in 2024.
Adjunct Instructor, Department of English, Papago Community College, Scottsdale, AZ, January 2021 to Present
Teach 2 to 3 asynchronous online sections a term of ENG 101 and ENG 111 Introduction to Literature, 18 sections to date.
Completed the institution's online teaching certification and a Quality Matters course review in 2022.

Build the qualification file your dean has to keep on record

This section exists only on a contingent faculty resume, and writing it is the highest-value thing you can do.

When a chair assigns you a course they are also creating a compliance record an accreditor can ask to see. Under the Higher Learning Commission faculty qualifications policy adopted on 2 November 2023, faculty teaching general education courses hold a master's degree or higher in the discipline, and a faculty member whose degree is in another discipline should have completed a minimum of 18 graduate credit hours in the discipline or subfield in which they teach. The policy also allows institutions to qualify faculty through equivalent tested experience, or a combination of the two.

Every regional accreditor has a version of this rule, which means your resume is read as evidence for a file. Most applicants leave the reader to assemble that evidence from a transcript nobody has requested yet. Do it for them.

State your graduate hours as a number, by discipline. Not "MA in English", but "MA, Rhetoric and Composition, 42 graduate semester hours in English". If you have hours in a second field, list those separately, because they may qualify you for a second course and a second contract.

Map hours to courses. A short table beats a paragraph.

MA, Rhetoric and Composition, Arizona State University, 2015. 42 graduate semester hours in English.
Qualified to teach and have taught: ENG 101 Composition I, ENG 102 Composition II, ENG 111 Introduction to Literature, ENG 235 Technical Writing
Qualified to teach, not yet assigned: ENG 213 Advanced Composition, ENG 218 Introduction to Rhetoric, developmental writing
Additional qualification: Graduate Certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language, 18 graduate hours, Arizona State University, 2018, supporting ESL composition sections
Tested experience: 6 years as a technical editor in medical device documentation, supporting technical and professional writing assignment

Name the tested experience. If part of your qualification comes from professional practice rather than credit hours, say what it is and how long it ran. Accreditor policy allows it, and a chair who wants to hire you still has to write it down.

Build a snapshot of your key skills

Ten to fourteen entries in groups, weighted towards teaching delivery and the systems the institution runs.

Teaching: First-year composition, Technical and professional writing, Portfolio assessment, Writing conferences, Supporting multilingual writers
Modalities and design: Asynchronous online course design, Hybrid delivery, Quality Matters course review, Accessibility and captioning compliance
Systems: Canvas, Blackboard, Turnitin, Starfish early alert, Zoom
Service: Common syllabus and rubric development, New adjunct mentoring, Departmental assessment reporting

List your education and credentials

Degrees with graduate hours attached, then teaching credentials, then anything that widens the range of courses you can be assigned.

Master of Arts, Rhetoric and Composition, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 2015. 42 graduate semester hours in English.
Graduate Certificate, Teaching English as a Second Language, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 2018. 18 graduate semester hours.
Bachelor of Arts, English, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 2012
Credentials: Quality Matters Peer Reviewer (2023). Online Teaching Certification, Sonoran Valley Community College (2020). Accessible Course Design, 2024.

Choose the right layout and design

Single column, plain type at 11 or 12 point, clear headings, page numbers, no photograph. District portals parse applications before a human sees them, and columns, text boxes and graphics break that.

Adjunct professor job market and outlook

Postsecondary teaching is growing faster than the average occupation, and a large share of that work is part-time and per-course.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025-35 projections and May 2025 wage data.

The Handbook notes that most postsecondary teachers work full time although part-time work is common, and that part-time professors, generally known as adjunct professors, usually spend most of their time teaching rather than on research (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2026).

Where the work sits:

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025.

What salary you can expect as an adjunct professor

Read the occupational median carefully. The $85,330 figure covers all postsecondary teachers, most of whom are salaried and full-time. Per-course work is paid on a different basis entirely.

Two levers move an adjunct income beyond section count. The first is range: every additional course you are documented to teach is another section you can be offered when the first one does not run. The second is modality, because an asynchronous online section can sit alongside an in person timetable at a second institution without a travel conflict.

Key takeaways for an adjunct professor resume

1. Write a teaching document, not a research CV; the reader is filling a section, not evaluating a scholar.
2. Put the course inventory on page one, with course numbers, section counts and modalities.
3. State graduate hours as a number and name the discipline, because that is the compliance bar.
4. Map hours to courses, including courses you are qualified for but have not yet taught.
5. Give evaluation figures with the scale and the departmental comparison.
6. List every institution as its own appointment, overlaps included.
7. Name the modalities you can teach, since online sections stack without travel conflicts.
8. Keep a separate CV for the occasional full-time search, and do not send it here.

Build your adjunct professor resume in 15 minutes.

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Pair it with a matching adjunct professor cover letter.