Post job
zippia ai icon

Automatically apply for jobs with Zippia

Upload your resume to get started.

Adjunct psychology instructor skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025
2 min read
Quoted experts
Dr. Jason Pierce,
Roselyn Costantino Ph.D.
Below we've compiled a list of the most critical adjunct psychology instructor skills. We ranked the top skills for adjunct psychology instructors based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 16.2% of adjunct psychology instructor resumes contained social work as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills an adjunct psychology instructor needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 adjunct psychology instructor skills for your resume and career

1. Social Work

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use social work:
  • Assisted hospital social workers with complex cases.
  • Designed course curriculums for several new courses in psychological sciences, social work, and criminal justices.

2. Sociology

Sociology is the study of human behavior through societies, groups, and larger developments. Sociology encompasses virtually every aspect of human interaction, from crime to religion to marriage rituals. This study also looks at how humans divide one another, including race, political, and wealth classes.

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use sociology:
  • Present college-level courses in sociology, psychology, humanities, philosophy, and communications through a variety of innovative technologies.
  • Provided direct classroom instruction to undergraduate college students on introductory level Sociology and Race and Ethnic Relations courses.

3. Syllabus

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use syllabus:
  • Developed and implemented course syllabus, following established institutional guidelines.
  • Develop Syllabus, Lesson Plans, Utilize internet, Films, Guest speakers, Group Discussions and Projects in the classroom.

4. Instructional Materials

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use instructional materials:
  • Developed lesson plans and instructional materials and provide individualized and small group instruction in the subject area of maintaining renewable resources.
  • Designed and developed instructional material for personnel training courses to support equipment needs through technical writing, teaching/training, performance measuring.

5. Research Methods

Research methods are tools, strategies, processes, or techniques that are used to collect and analyze data to discover new information or better understand a topic. Developing a research method is an integral part of research design. There are different types of research methods that use different data collection tools. These can be qualitative, quantitative, or mixed.

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use research methods:
  • Teach Psychology courses to graduate students -Research Methods
  • Prepared and organized curriculum for graduate and undergraduate level courses in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and Advance Research Methods.

6. Canvas

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use canvas:
  • Mentor adjunct instructors in Angel, Blackboard, Canvas, and Banner Web.
  • Used Canvas LMS the past two years for distance learning courses.

Choose from 10+ customizable adjunct psychology instructor resume templates

Build a professional adjunct psychology instructor resume in minutes. Our AI resume writing assistant will guide you through every step of the process, and you can choose from 10+ resume templates to create your adjunct psychology instructor resume.

7. Blackboard

Blackboard Learn is a web-based learning management system or virtual learning environment that provides information management for courses and learning materials. It is a scalable software with a customizable open architecture and strong security authentication protocols. Blackboard Learn is used by various Universities around the world to provide course management for their students.

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use blackboard:
  • Develop and instructor for internet online psychology courses using Blackboard Learning System (BlackBoard).
  • Use the Blackboard Learning System 9.1 for classroom and online instruction and testing.

8. Assess Student Learning

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use assess student learning:
  • Plan and present lectures to undergraduate students Assess student learning

9. Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology is the study concerning the changes and growth of a person throughout their life, usually from infancy to adolescence.

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use developmental psychology:
  • Teach Introduction to Psychology and Developmental Psychology to college students
  • Prepared lesson plans and taught General Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Social Psychology, and College Student Success classes.

10. Student Performance

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use student performance:
  • Provided statistical data to college regarding student performance.
  • Evaluated student performance, maintained accurate student records, and submitted grades in accordance with the college's policy.

11. Course Curriculum

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use course curriculum:
  • Developed course curriculum; facilitated group learning; and remained current on research within the field of psychology.
  • Establish and maintain course curriculum, provided classroom instruction, counsel students.

12. Course Objectives

A course objective allows students to know all that a course is about, why it is taught, where it is going, and what is required of them to be successful in the course. It forms the basis of the class and establishes a behavior, skill, or action that a student can demonstrate if they have achieved mastery of the objective. The objectives must be observable, measurable, valid, and also aligned with the expectations of the course.

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use course objectives:
  • Provided instruction to students by ensuring student satisfaction through the classroom and laboratory setting according to the course objectives.
  • Evaluated students by a variety of means to measure their progress toward course objectives.

13. Course Materials

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use course materials:
  • Course material is composed and taught via weekly lectures, monthly quizzes, bimonthly exams, and term papers.
  • Prepared course materials, assignments, handouts, & tests in the role of psychology instructor.

14. Social Psychology

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use social psychology:
  • Provided instruction in subjects: general psychology, social psychology, substance abuse and world cultures.
  • Position involved instruction in upper level undergraduate courses in psychology including: Motivation, Personality, Social Psychology and Industrial Psychology.

15. Course Syllabus

Here's how adjunct psychology instructors use course syllabus:
  • Created course syllabus and outline* Instructed both group and individual settings* Developed and graded assignments to facilitate and gauge learning
  • Developed course syllabus and led students to explore ways elementary educators can foster literacy skills development for their students.
top-skills

What skills help Adjunct Psychology Instructors find jobs?

Tell us what job you are looking for, we’ll show you what skills employers want.

What skills stand out on adjunct psychology instructor resumes?

Dr. Jason Pierce

Professor, Department Chair, Angelo State University

Colleges and universities vary in terms of their primary focus. While larger private and public institutions value research as much as teaching, smaller regional institutions, like Angelo State University, put the most emphasis on teaching. Thus, teaching experience is paramount. We look closely at how many sections a candidate has taught and what classes they could offer when hiring a tenure track or non-tenure track instructor. Faculty at my university teach 4 classes per semester, so we must have someone who is "plug and play" and can handle the workload. For larger universities, research projects may need to be emphasized more. Be sure you understand what kind of institution you are applying to so you can get a sense of what skills that institution or department values the most. Researching the institution and the department is critical for success. Thankfully, that's relatively easy to do nowadays.

What adjunct psychology instructor skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Roselyn Costantino Ph.D.Roselyn Costantino Ph.D. LinkedIn profile

Professor of Latin American Studies, Pennsylvania State University Altoona

Most important advice: Take initiative and be productive.
Find practical ways to use skills even if unpaid. Volunteer work is good. Use language skills. Technology skills. Exploit technology skills around the area of interest. If you want to be a teacher find out what software they are using today; what research skills are they utilize. Make sure you log your activities during the gap year especially those that relate to the area in which you want to work. If you want to go into finance, and you're working at a lawn service, understand and learn the business model and the accounting. If you're working at Starbucks (or in any commercial environment), get a chance to do inventories, learn about the ordering process and sources and suppliers for those orders; and how people are scheduled for work. All of that is relevant experience for business.

The CFO and recruiter for Keystone Staffing Solutions emphasized having evidence in your resume of of being productive during the gap time, no matter if it's one, two or three years. Evidence of being productive is what recruiters want to see on your resume: He stresses: "What did you do to expand your knowledge and skills not only in your selected area but beyond. BEING PRODUCTIVE for yourself proves to be an indicator of how productive you will be for me."

Still on gap year. How to go about it? Use teachers, friends, family, anyone in the field or related to it to provide guidance, insight, suggestions. This can lead to projects or experience that will help in learning and growth.

What soft skills should all adjunct psychology instructors possess?

Dr. Richard Volkman

Professor of Philosophy, Chair, Department of Philosophy, Coordinator, Religious Studies, Southern Connecticut State University

The "soft skills" would be those mentioned above and especially the ability to model the Philosophical Attitude in a way that students can relate to, with the good judgment to know what style of engagement is likely to be effective with a particular set of students. In philosophical research, the "hard skills" predominate, but the fluid interaction in the classroom that allows a conversation to blossom is at the foreground of effective teaching.

What hard/technical skills are most important for adjunct psychology instructors?

Walter Greason Ph.D.

Professor and Chair, Macalester College

Ability to learn multiple managerial and technical platforms rapidly; facility with both quantitative and qualitative data and the capacity to discern multiple forms of mixed research methodologies.

List of adjunct psychology instructor skills to add to your resume

Adjunct psychology instructor skills

The most important skills for an adjunct psychology instructor resume and required skills for an adjunct psychology instructor to have include:

  • Social Work
  • Sociology
  • Syllabus
  • Instructional Materials
  • Research Methods
  • Canvas
  • Blackboard
  • Assess Student Learning
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Student Performance
  • Course Curriculum
  • Course Objectives
  • Course Materials
  • Social Psychology
  • Course Syllabus
  • General Psychology
  • Learning Environment
  • Curriculum Development
  • Human Development
  • Human Behavior
  • Classroom Discussions
  • Organizational Psychology
  • Abnormal Psychology
  • Learning Process
  • Courses Taught
  • Child Psychology
  • PowerPoint
  • Psychopharmacology
  • Professional Development
  • Undergraduate Courses
  • Course Outlines
  • Ethics
  • Educational Process
  • Lifespan Development
  • Moodle
  • Group Discussions
  • Group Project
  • Educational Psychology
  • Human Growth
  • Course Development

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Research Team
Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

Browse education, training, and library jobs