About Us

Adjunct Professor

Production Division / Directing

I fully embrace teaching the next generation of storytellers. Outside of actually making movies, it is my greatest privilege and challenge. Sadly, USC has created an environment that does not enrich and empower its faculty. SCA adjunct professors make up nearly 75% of the total faculty. Adjunct is just a fancy word for part-time, and part-time faculty at such a high % is an unbalanced, unhealthy, and unfair structure. There is nothing part-time about what I do. For eleven years I have given 110% to my students because I respect them – which is what I’m asking from SCA. I support forming AFA so adjuncts can negotiate for compensation that reflects the valuable contributions we make at USC.

Adjunct Professor

Screenwriting

I have been an adjunct for 16 years. I love teaching and am emotionally invested in the success of my students. However, the university is more interested in tracking my hours so they can keep my salary low than helping me succeed. I’ve been told adjuncts shouldn’t “take work home” or put in hours outside the classroom. How can I possibly address the needs of my students in only three hours a week? During Covid, I worked additional hours late into the evening because I had two students who returned to China and I didn’t want them to fall behind or miss out. After sixteen years, I am still earning the same pay as the day I started. My weekly salary is actually $150 less once you factor in inflation. The University needs to show appreciation for the commitment and dedication of its adjuncts. Instead of lip service, it’s time to start paying us a living wage.

Adjunct Professor

Production / Directing

I adore teaching and nurturing the next generation of filmmakers at USC. It’s time the adjunct faculty leverage our collective power so we can make SCA a better school and a better place to work. The success of the school is tied to the success of its faculty. I’ve spent countless hours above the required hours to give the students a very hands-on, one-on-one experience. I’m not alone in this… it’s what gives SCA its great reputation, that is, its faculty are very skilled and devoted. The creation of AFA will make our roles more secure and give us fairer compensation for what we do. It will give us, the adjunct educators, a voice in our well-being. The lack of advancement, uncertainty of our future, and the same wages year after year do not speak to our worth. The adjunct faculty represent the majority of SCA so we are critical to the university. It’s time we assert our collective bargaining power to give us a more sustainable future.  We’ve earned that.

Adjunct Professor

Screenwriting

When my daughter was 7 months old, she stopped breathing in front of me. She struggled, turning blue, then purple, and then she was gone. I had to do CPR on her, and she was rushed to the hospital. It took 2 months of testing until they discovered she had a rare congenital heart defect. The only reason she’s alive today is because we could afford that testing with our insurance through USC. Even though the pay is not enough, I have taught here for the last 14 years because the insurance was a lifeline to protect my family. I support an adjunct union at USC because we need to codify our existing healthcare benefits in a contract so that we can keep what we have and expand our coverage to more faculty people. There are adjuncts I know who still desperately need that insurance. This is literally a life and death issue.

Adjunct Professor

Screenwriting

Adjunct Professor

Production Division/Producing

I teach 2 classes (which qualifies me for health insurance) and I devote an additional 10-20 hours a week helping students with resumes, career advice, and mentorship. I’ve helped my students get jobs and internships, going above and beyond whenever I can. People who have been teaching for years are having their health insurance taken away. If classes get taken away in order to save a few hundred dollars a month on health insurance, it is really the students who will suffer. I support forming the AFA so adjuncts can protect the benefits that allow them to sustain their contributions to their students.

Adjunct Professor

Production Division / Directing, Screenwriting

I love teaching at USC. I love the students and my colleagues. But as an independent filmmaker who previously held a full-time position at another university, I find that despite the wonderful experience of being part of this institution, being an adjunct is extremely humiliating. The cost of living has gone up and the pay doesn’t cover the hours required to give the kind of excellence I want to give to the students. I feel that collective bargaining through the Adjunct Faculty Alliance is crucial to the survival of our community of educators.

Adjunct Professor

Screenwriting

I both work and teach screenwriting professionally. I love doing both. It makes me a better artist and a better instructor. It gives me an expertise my students draw on for their own betterment. While my students value my expertise, in my time at USC, the school hasn’t. I’ve been amazed by the sheer number of my colleagues who are also excellent teachers and professionals. Yet each semester, in the interest of saving money, USC tries to cut costs rather than retain talent. The excellent teachers our students have now? Students will lose that if USC doesn’t turn around and value, cultivate, and retain adjunct faculty. Collective bargaining is the only way to make sure USC does.

Adjunct Professor

Screenwriting

As a proud Trojan and grad of SCA, I love this place. It’s why for 13 years I’ve carved time out of my professional career to give back. I love my students and colleagues. What I do not love is the disrespect management has for its part time faculty: wages far below other schools, no raises, no promotions, no benefits, no free parking, but lots of free work. In an industry built by labor unions, it’s shameful one of the country’s wealthiest schools runs its program by exploiting its part-time faculty, who do the bulk of the teaching. When confronted, management’s response is “You’re lucky to teach here!” But the greatness of the school is tied to the greatness of its faculty. Since they refuse to acknowledge this, it’s time for us to demand they recognize our union. In the words of Fredrick Douglass “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” We must set the example for our students by standing up for our own worth. This is the very meaning of USC’s motto: Fight On.

Adjunct Professor

Animation

When you get old, you teach. And those of us oldies who now rely more and more on teaching for income, it sucks having to hustle from one place to another making meager bucks in order to put food on the table. I worry about keeping my  job and benefits every year. I support forming the AFA to win fair wages and job security.

Adjunct Professor

Animation

Adjuncts have been struggling with a lack of advancement, uncertain futures, expensive parking, and the same wages year after year. Something’s got to give! Collective bargaining is the only way to make our voices heard, and bring about positive change.

Adjunct Professor

Production Division / Cinematography

I am a proud graduate of SCA’s Production program, and I love teaching our eager and talented students. USC is known as one of the world’s best film schools, so at first it feels like an honor to work for such a prestigious program; however, the reality is I am grossly underpaid. Educators are a significant contribution to that garnered acclaim, but the university doesn’t acknowledge this value in their adjunct faculty.  With AFA’s collective bargaining power, we can restore value to our educators in wages, upward mobility, and job security.

Adjunct Professor

Production Division / Directing

Growing up with two public school teachers, I saw firsthand how a powerful union is not just about getting better pay or benefits. It also gives educators the ability to have a voice at the table and put students first. That being said, the current pay for an adjunct with a full course load is less than the starting pay rate that  my parents earned over 47 years ago (with inflation). As a former student at USC and SCA, it was my dream to not only attend school here but also become a teacher here. I believe collective bargaining and the Adjunct Faculty Alliance is the only path forward for creating a better, more sustainable future for SCA and retaining fantastic professors with fair wages, adequate healthcare, and more diversity.

Adjunct Professor

Screenwriting

When I started teaching at SCA ten years ago, I ignored paltry pay and focused on becoming a better teacher of an art form I deeply love. Working with SCA students has been more fulfilling than my 25 year career writing the six films that got me this job. But now the administration is whittling away the few benefits and job security we adjuncts depended upon, and I can no longer remain complicit in my own exploitation. The WGA’s recent victory against the AMPTP has convinced me that nobody gets anywhere alone. The way to improve working conditions at SCA is to leverage our collective power. It will make SCA a better school and a better place to work.

Adjunct Professor

Peter Stark Producing Program

I have been an adjunct lecturer at USC for 10 years this fall. I’ve taught writing in both the John Wells Division of Writing for Screen & Television and the Peter Stark Producing Program, and I just adore it. Teaching is my passion, and I am often told by my students I am one of the only female professors from whom they have had an opportunity to learn. But the university’s policies prevent me from teaching more than one class. Even though I work as a TV writer full-time, I would love the chance to teach more sections, and eventually segue into academia one day. I believe students would benefit from my lifetime of experience in the entertainment business as a female showrunner.  I support forming a union so adjuncts can negotiate a clear pathway to an academic career.

Adjunct Professor

Screenwriting

As the longest serving adjunct faculty member in SCA (since spring 1996), I have always been concerned and affected by the treatment of adjuncts as dispensable cogs in the education “industry.” Now as a parent who has been paying private college tuition for two children for many years, I can also say I would be dismayed if most of my children’s professors were as poorly compensated as adjuncts at SCA. (I will also note that full-time professors receive 100% free tuition for their children; adjuncts receive 0% – this to me is strong evidence of how little our contribution is valued, as many other universities extend this and many other benefits to all their employees). Adjunct turnover has increased dramatically at USC, and this threatens what should matter most to all of us who work for the university: the quality and level of the student experience. I support the formation of the AFA because our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions.

Adjunct Professor

Screenwriting

I love USC and feel a sense of great pride to be teaching there. My family and friends brag about my position there because it’s undeniably a symbol of excellence and prestige. However, there is an unpleasant disconnect between USC’s reputation and how the administration treats its faculty. It is important that adjuncts, as an unionized front, deconstruct the notion that if you are hired to teach at USC then you are teaching purely as a way to give back. Movies, TV shows, video games, and in fact any piece of media takes multiple years to develop, finance, produce, and release. The entertainment pipeline is slow-moving, so teaching is a life-line for filmmakers. Adjunct professor wages fall short of the wages at other institutions. USC’s unsustainable adjunct ecosystem makes it harder for us adjuncts to create our art. I support AFA because SCA adjuncts should be able to pay rent for the work that we do and collective bargaining is the only way to have a say about our wages

Adjunct Professor

Interactive Media & Games

In the video game industry, crunch culture, lack of job security, and low pay are too often the norm. I teach my students that these practices are not acceptable and that they should speak up and fight for their worth. However, my coworkers and I  are suffering from the very conditions we advise our students to fight against. How can I be there for my students when I don’t even know IF I’ll be there next semester? How can I preach to my students to know their worth, when I know very well that my work is being undervalued? A union for SCA adjuncts isn’t just for us, it is a message to our students that they too can live in a world where they are fairly compensated and treated with respect.

Adjunct Professor

Screenwriting

I’m not a group guy. I’ve participated in only one team sport in my life. But when I learned of the conditions my fellow SCA adjuncts were facing, and the disparities between our situations and adjuncts at other peer institutions, joining up was a simple choice. My family has never turned its back on those less fortunate, nor accepted inequality when it reared its ugly head, and until we all stand for what is right, it will continue. Of course I support the AFA, not simply for myself, but to help make USC number one for everyone.

Adjunct Professor

Production Division / Producing

I am honored to have attended a renowned university like USC, and even more honored to have been asked to teach and help usher in the next generation of filmmakers. But over the years the reliance of adjuncts not only as teachers, but as contributors to curriculum and policy has become quite apparent. We often go above and beyond what is asked in the classroom, and I feel that pay and job security should reflect the contributions adjuncts make to the stability, growth, and evolution of educational programs. Forming a union gives us that collective voice to express our concerns and fight for the equality that will ensure the high standing we, as a university, strive to maintain.

Adjunct Professor

Screenwriting

I find it ironic that I have received emails and mail promoting USC’s great benefits while at the same time USC is doing everything in their power to take those benefits away from me. Every semester I have students tell me that my class was their favorite class. Students have gone out of their way to take more classes with me. You would think that a University would want to reward a professor that creates such a positive environment rather than punish them by taking classes and benefits away. We need to form AFA so we can continue USC’s legacy of excellence in teaching by empowering educators to win the benefits they deserve.