Tell us about your company and the problem it solves, or its benefit to learners or educators.
Adjunctions is a higher-education technology company focused on improving how colleges recruit, evaluate, develop, and support adjunct faculty.
Adjunct instructors teach a significant share of college courses, yet the systems used to find and prepare them are often fragmented, inefficient, and outdated. Departments frequently rely on personal networks, spreadsheets, email chains, and last-minute searches. At the same time, many highly qualified professionals who would make excellent instructors do not know how to enter higher education or demonstrate that they are ready to teach.
Our platform addresses both sides of that problem. Adjunctions helps institutions build qualified pools of prospective instructors and match candidates with teaching opportunities based on their education, professional experience, subject-matter expertise, and availability. AdjunctionsPRO complements that technology with professional development designed to help subject-matter experts become prepared, confident, and effective educators.
Ultimately, our work benefits students by helping institutions put knowledgeable, well-prepared instructors in the classroom.
Tell us about your area of expertise and how your knowledge or work enhances the field or the edtech industry.
My background is at the intersection of higher education, publishing, entrepreneurship, and faculty support. Through Philadelphia Press, I have spent years working directly with faculty members, academic departments, and institutions to create educational materials and understand how courses actually operate.
That experience exposed a major gap in higher education: adjunct faculty are central to the academic enterprise, but the systems surrounding them have not received enough attention or innovation.
Our contribution to edtech is a focus on the people behind the technology. Adjunctions is not simply a job board or administrative tool. We are developing an ecosystem that connects institutional workforce needs, professional expertise, faculty readiness, and student outcomes. We believe technology is most valuable when it strengthens human relationships and helps institutions make better-informed decisions.
Explain a problem in running an edtech company or selling products or services in the space that is related to the work you do.
One of the greatest challenges in higher education is that the person who recognizes a problem is not always the person who controls the budget or has the authority to solve it.
A department chair may urgently need qualified adjuncts. A faculty-development leader may want better professional learning. A dean may see the strategic value, while procurement, information technology, legal counsel, and senior administration each have separate requirements. As a result, even when there is genuine enthusiasm for a product, the decision-making process can be lengthy and difficult to navigate.
This is especially challenging for emerging edtech companies. Colleges want innovation, but they also need evidence, security, stakeholder support, and a clear implementation plan. The challenge is not merely demonstrating that a product works. It is helping an institution build enough internal alignment to act.
What are three to five specific tips for solving that problem?
First, begin with the institution’s actual problem rather than leading with the product. Listen carefully and determine whether the immediate need is recruiting, faculty preparation, administrative efficiency, student outcomes, or something else.
Second, identify all of the stakeholders early. Understanding who will use the product, who benefits from it, who approves it, and who pays for it can prevent months of confusion.
Third, make the first implementation manageable. A department-level pilot or limited institutional launch can allow a college to demonstrate value without making an institution-wide commitment on day one.
Fourth, establish clear measures of success. Those measures might include time saved filling courses, the size and quality of the candidate pool, instructor readiness, participation in professional development, or satisfaction among academic leaders.
Finally, stay close to the users. Some of our most important product improvements have come from listening to the administrators and educators using the platform in real-world conditions.
What other advice do you have for professionals working in edtech?
Do not confuse access to technology with educational impact. A platform can be sophisticated and still fail if it does not fit the daily realities of educators and institutions.
Spend time with faculty members, administrators, students, and staff. Learn how decisions are really made and where the friction actually occurs. Be patient with the pace of higher education, but do not allow that pace to diminish your sense of urgency.
Most importantly, remember that education is built on trust. Long-term success in edtech comes from becoming a credible partner to institutions, not simply a vendor selling them another piece of software.