Ellen Eggers has every reason to believe she is about to become an invisible statistic, an uncounted casualty in the ongoing state budget crisis.

Since 2000, Eggers, who has a doctoral degree in linguistics, has been teaching in the English department at Chico State University, but she has been told there is little chance she will be teaching their in the fall.

Officials at Chico State are publicly pleased with the fact they have not been forced to "lay off" any faculty members, but there is a range of people like Eggers teaching in various departments throughout the university who may not be back in the fall.

Eggers is technically a "lecturer," which means she is a "temporary" employee since she has been working on a string of one-year contracts. The fact her contract may not be renewed is not technically a layoff, but she will be just as unemployed regardless of the word used to describe her condition.

However, she is yet to receive any official notification regarding her future.

"To tell you the truth, I haven't been told much except it looks very unlikely that there will be courses for me to teach in the fall. That's all that I've been told, that it is unlikely there will be classes in the fall."

Besides being a Ph.D., Eggers is unusual among the lecturers because she once held the academic brass ring tenure.

For a decade she taught at the University of Nebraska, where she was granted tenure a near iron-clad guarantee of a job until retirement and reached the rank of associate professor.

However, after her husband, Paul Eggers, earned his doctoral degree, they began looking for work.

It was essential they live in the same community.

"A lot of people do have long-distance marriages in the academic world so that they both can work, and we just decided that wasn't our priority," she explained.

"We spent three years trying to find a double position for both of us. We tried tenure-track positions. We tried for just whatever job looked good. Some of them would have involved my having the primary position, some involved Paul having it, some involved equal.

When Paul was offered a tenure-track position at Chico State, they decided this "seemed the most promising for both of us."

He took the job, and she became what has been called in the academic industry, the "trailing spouse."

Even though there was no tenure-track position available for her, Eggers thought she could depend on a regular teaching load at Chico, "because they have such a viable, active linguistics program here and so many students needing to take courses.

"I do have moments when I wonder if it was a bad decision, but it hasn't turned out to be a bad decision until now," she said.

Paul Egger's position at the university remains secure.

However, facing what looks like a workless fall, she is considering other possibilities.

To begin with she is working on the third edition of a "historic dictionary" of the language of the African nation of Burundi.

"Right now I'm looking at other options but nothing has jumped out at me yet. I don't plan immediately to apply at Wal-Mart."

The adjustment isn't easy or comfortable.

"The prospect of not working for a semester or two is a little hard, but not a big hard. The is things that are a big hard are like not paying into my retirement fund, losing affiliation. It's a little bit humiliating to not be a part of any institution or being at the beginning of a contract."

While saying she is still hopeful that by fall there will be classes for her to teach, she also said the situation could result in a major career course adjustment.

"I'm not saying I'm definitely leaving academia, but it has to be considered. Of course, I have never done anything else but teach," she said.