Adjunct Instructor, Lecturer, Professor…?
I’d go with adjunct professor. I teach as an adjunct professor in our department, and there are different ranks within the adjunct position, of which lecturer is one designation. At our school, it’s the highest adjunct rank, in terms of pay scale. It would make sense that your paycheck indicates your rank as an adjunct, if they do something similarly. Some of the difference may simply be semantics as well. For example, they may be using professor and instructor interchangably; or, in some cases, different departments responsible for parts of your contract processing (like processing your ID) may have not been on the same page regarding designation. In any case, I think professor sounds best, and that’s what I would go with, if asked, especially since it was on your department contract.
I concur with mausburger: I’d take Adjunct Professor to mean, e.g., a contractually-limited (i.e., non-tenure-track) assistant professor. Adjunct Lecturer would mean an instructor/sessional. The distinction for me would depend on whether you were making a yearly salary (presumably at a much higher rate) as a professor, or a per-course wage (presumably at a lower rate) as a lecturer.
At the institutions where I’ve worked, what astrochimp is describing as an Adjunct Professor (a non-tenure-track Assistant Professor) is described as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Again, this varies by place. At some schools, an “adjunct” professor/lecturer may be full or part time, and may have a long-term relationship (to the point, in some cases, of having tenure) with the school; a “visiting” professor would then be a short-term employee, often limited by internal rules to a 5 year stay. These terms are incredibly slippery, and get used even within one institution in very loose ways. So I think you need to pick the answer that feels ethical to you, and is likely to be supported by the department, but it really may just come down to a guess for you. In your case, I would go by the contract, not the ID card or pay slip (the people who make the ID cards and do payroll often have a limited number of options — student, faculty, staff — and anyone in a grey area just gets slotted int
I agree that you are entitled to call yourself “Adjunct Professor” (which doesn’t imply research activity to me). No one is going to check your ID card or paycheck. If you need proof you can always supply your contract. Something that people might check is the university directory. You haven’t said what it says, but if it doesn’t say “Adjunct Professor,” you should get it fixed.
