Strategies for the Unequal Distribution of Emotional Labor in Graduate Student and Contingent Teaching

ABSTRACT Scholarship on teaching and learning (SoTL) shows how caring for students proves crucial to effective college teaching. Providing mentorship to undergraduates in and outside the classroom can require ample emotional labor, especially for graduate-student and adjunct instructors. Even though graduate students and contingent faculty are at a structural disadvantage, they have profound influence over undergraduate students, particularly at large institutions where undergraduates may encounter them and look to them for emotional support and professional mentorship more than tenure-track faculty. For example, female and minority instructors disproportionately take on unpaid emotional labor in students’ personal and professional lives related to courses focusing on issues of structural inequality that may require them to mentor and manage student emotions more than those in more secure positions. This can amplify the stress, competition, and uncertainty of graduate study and employment. Consequently, this essay focuses on strategies—boundary maintenance, time strategies, and managed expectations—to mitigate the unequal impact of this emotional labor and create more equitable pedagogical practices.