Adjunct Instructor, Lecturer, Professor…?
A “visiting” professor is usually paid a salary for a determined period of time (a semester or a year, usually). And “adjunct” professor is paid by the course, and usually far less. “Visiting” appointments are generally used to hire people who already have jobs, or are moving to a new university but awaiting a tenure decision, or wavering about which job to take, or to one-year replacements who take a leave from another job. “Visiting” is an official title, not a casual word. OP, you’re and adjunct professor in the eyes of the academic world, and as someone in the business who reads academic resumes all the time (on search committees, for example), I would not even pause over that title to describe what you got paid for. It’s fine to call yourself that no matter what the contract said, at least in the US.
Adjunct Professor is correct, denoting a rank within the Professoriate. You were not an Assistant, nor Associate, nor Full…there’s nothing misleading about this. In some countries, this is exactly the reason you will hear people called “Doctor Professor Smith”. Doctor is an earned degree, Professor is a position at a University. Doc is the honorarium, but Prof is the job. Go with Adjunct Professor.
I would go with exactly the title that was on your job description, nothing more nothing less. While it’s good to have “truth in advertising,” it’s also important to communicate what you do or are. I’m an Assistant Professor and to me Adjunct Professor and Adjunct Lecturer mean different things. Professors tend to be more involved in research, while Lecturers are primarily instructors of courses. I would use the term that more clearly connotes what you do. “Taking the maximum” can annoy some people and confuse others. It also depends on the intended audience for your bio. If it’s going to be read by people in industry, i.e. outside of the university setting, it doesn’t really matter. If it’s going to be read by other professors, I would use the one that’s more accurate.
Just a note: if you are sending your resume, etc, overseas, you may want to use “instructor” which may be confusing to a non-North American audience (as it is literally what you did). I know that in Britain, at least, “Professor” is only ever used to describe the very highest academic rank. Everyone else is “Reader”, “Lecturer”, “Instructor”, etc, and never uses the title “professor” unless they are officially a Professor. (It’s a pretty big deal there, being made Full Professor.) But within North America, titles are a lot more lax, though I think I would err more on calling myself an instructor when teaching unless I had a faculty position. (There are so many assumptions that goes with the title “professor”, including that one has a PhD.
