Soon I need to submit a document to my mentoring committee explaining (a) what I plan to accomplish this year and (b) what I'll accomplish for tenure. It's not a document that's set in stone, but it needs to be thoughtful and ambitious without being suicidal. Would any of my tenured or tenure-track readers be willing to share similar documents they have submitted early in their careers? I'd find it tremendously helpful. You can e-mail me at trillwing -at- gmail -dot- com.
Alternatively, if you happen to know where I might find such documents online, please leave a link in the comments below. I'm having a heck of a time locating samples.
Many thanks!
Showing posts with label Administrategery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Administrategery. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Getting the job
I've been wanting to write something about process of landing the history job, to reflect a bit on my experiences over the past several years, both to make the narrative clear to myself and because maybe--though I know the job market is prone to brutal whimsy--doing so will help someone else seeking a tenure-track job.
I wince a bit as I write this, as I know some folks from my new university will read this post, and my accounting of events may seem really skewed and possibly inaccurate and narcissistic. But such concerns have never before stopped me, eh?
So, a quick accounting of my intellectual and professional life, in case you haven't bothered to piece together my life story by browsing the 4.5 years of posts in The Clutter Museum archives:
But there's another narrative, one that is less obvious but, I think, more relevant. In this version of events, my graduate program did nothing to prepare me for the realities of the job market. Instead, a little intellectual and technological curiosity propelled me to the point I'm at today.
In fall 2005, I started this blog, and in January 2006, I became a contributing editor for research, academia, and education at BlogHer.
In 2006, I also attended the BlogHer conference in San José. There I met three women whose blogs I was already reading: Barbara Sawhill (of Oberlin), Barbara Ganley (then of Middlebury), and Laura Blankenship (then of Bryn Mawr). Individually, these women are amazing. Together, they are awesome. We hooked up with Martha Burtis from the University of Mary Washington (one of my erstwhile almost-almae matres) and began talking about teaching in technology, about the strictures of course management systems and the possibilities of social media. We took our show on the road,presenting moderating conversations and doodle fests at education and technology conferences. Inspired by the Barbaras, Martha, and Laura, I experimented with technology in my teaching and became, well, maybe a little too comfortable with it. But I definitely became more conversant in educational technology than most folks who teach undergrads, and it helped me tremendously in my professional development on both the academic and staff sides of my higher ed career.
Also in 2006, I started a blog about museums. It drew the attention of the director of a museum studies graduate program about an hour down the road. She remembered my name from a question I asked on a museum history listserv a few years earlier, and apparently she had been cyberstalking me until I finished my Ph.D. When I had the degree in hand, she contacted me and asked if I would teach the history and theory course. What I didn't tell her is that I was actually thinking about enrolling in the program. When she went on sabbatical in winter and spring quarters of 2009, I oversaw the students' Master's theses.
At the teaching center, I taught a nine-week seminar in college teaching once a year to grad students and postdocs. I consulted with faculty across the disciplines. I chaired committees for the teaching center and was invited to be on ones outside the center. I then began to receive invitations to chair those committees. I am not a natural networker, and all of these experiences have been invaluable in making me comfortable speaking with faculty and administrators (OK, being a print journalist for several months in 1999 also helped, because I had to learn to pick up the phone and call just about anyone).
I also continued to benefit from mentoring by my dissertation adviser and, later, from coaching by a history professor who was on my dissertation committee. Their generosity with their time and advice has been invaluable in more ways than I can enumerate here. The director of the museum studies program also passed a couple opportunities my way when she was too busy to handle them herself, which resulted in (and I know this sounds weird, but it's oddly true) a very well-placed encyclopedia article.
I also submitted an article to a journal that ended up being a pretty respectable venue, and it was published there this past summer. I must admit that once I had narrowed my choices to three journals, I went with the one whose citation system matched that of my dissertation. I had a toddler, a full-time job, and an adjunct gig, and I was looking for any possible way to save time. I was fortunate that in this case such a decision worked in my favor.
I've been thinking about my professional experience as falling on two tracks: the traditional path to the job market and the unconventional one.
Traditional path:
Yes, I still have impostor syndrome. I am, after all, embarking on a tenure-track job in a discipline in which I have no academic degrees, no discipline-specific teaching experience, and very little experience as a student myself. (I'm putting together a survey course on the U.S. to 1877, for example, and the last time I took a course that covered such a broad span of U.S. history was in 10th grade.)
But to bring us to the present, here's what I understand about how I snagged my new job:
There were 260 applicants; each member of the five-person search committee looked at 20% of the applications, each of which encompassed only a cover letter, a CV, and letters of rec. My application caught the eye of the person in whose pile my packet landed. So that was totally committee member roulette, as far as I'm concerned; it was more luck than strategy that landed me a videoconference interview.
I did my final prep for this interview--how else?--by writing a blog post. Which I then--stupidly, I thought at the time--mentioned during the interview. I later discovered that at least one search committee member read the blog post and was impressed by my sleuthing into the university's struggles with teaching the liberal arts.
I also let myself be funny during the interview--mostly to keep myself sane and because I was a bit sleep-deprived, but I think it worked to my advantage.
By the point of the campus interview, I had decided that I would squelch any impostor syndrome I was feeling and just let myself be, well, me. And so I talked with faculty and students about the things that interested me--my research, women in academic and museum science, students with disabilities, and local social justice issues--and pointed a couple faculty members to some resources that might be useful to them in teaching and writing grants. I also refused to lecture exclusively to the fifty or so students in the course I guest-taught, even though I knew that attempting an interactive and wide-ranging lesson on material culture, the 1893 world's fair, and technology with someone else's students in the third week of a survey course might be risky. My one capitulation to tradition was that I allowed myself to have the full text of my research talk on my computer screen when I presented it. I don't usually read my talks, but I was a bit nervous about the whole, you know, history thing.
And when one faculty member asked me who my people were, in terms of public history--was I an AASLH or NCPH person, or something else entirely?--I answered that my historians were those I followed on Twitter and via their blogs and podcasts, or whom I met via listservs on topics other than history, and that the conferences I attended were more focused on teaching and learning than on historical research. That was a risky conversation, but I'm glad I had it.
When the same professor asked after my research talk if it was autobiographical, I figured my cover had been blown, in that I was arguing that it was women from outside mainstream academic science who most contributed to the public understanding of natural science. And there I was, an interloper (in my mind), making the argument that I should be hired by a history department to do public history.
My point is this: the process of landing this job, from the time I finished my Ph.D. until I accepted their offer, was marked, it seemed to me at the time, by risk-taking. But the risks, I now see from the other side of the job market fence, were all about remaining authentic to my interests instead of pandering to what I believed theirs to be. In the case of this university, my interests and those of the faculty happened to match up pretty well. So I'm absolutely delighted because I'm starting a job from a position of authenticity; I didn't build up a façade that I'll need to maintain or very carefully disassemble.
I hope the recipe I've shared here--one part luck, two parts authenticity, and two parts unconventional professional development--proves useful to someone else frustrated with a more traditional approach to the job market.
I wince a bit as I write this, as I know some folks from my new university will read this post, and my accounting of events may seem really skewed and possibly inaccurate and narcissistic. But such concerns have never before stopped me, eh?
So, a quick accounting of my intellectual and professional life, in case you haven't bothered to piece together my life story by browsing the 4.5 years of posts in The Clutter Museum archives:
- I earned a B.A. in English in 1997.
- I earned an M.A. in English/creative writing (poetry!) in 1998.
- I worked for a year outside academia.
- I started dating Fang, and a week later moved to Iowa to pursue a Ph.D. in American Studies.
- The following spring, Fang wooed me back to California, where I worked outside academia for another year, and I applied to one grad program, sort of on a lark.
- I started a Ph.D. in cultural studies at UC Davis in 2001.
- I finished my dissertation in 2006.
- I went on the academic job market in four of the five years between being ABD and now. During that time, I applied for about 100 jobs, mostly in academia. The only interviews I had were on the edges of the academy: to manage the public history and public science programs for a city, to direct a new teaching center (a position that came with a tenure-track job), and to direct professional development opportunities for staff and volunteers at a consortium of 23 museums and cultural institutions. It was clear from the day I spent touring the city with the other candidates that I wasn't as qualified as they were for first job, the second job was closed due to lack of funding, and the third went to an internal candidate.
- Meanwhile, I worked as a pedagogy consultant in academic technology and then transferred into my current job, where I am--I kid you not--"Assistant to the _______ I" in a teaching center. I've spent much of the past 3+ years consulting with faculty on teaching with and without technology.
But there's another narrative, one that is less obvious but, I think, more relevant. In this version of events, my graduate program did nothing to prepare me for the realities of the job market. Instead, a little intellectual and technological curiosity propelled me to the point I'm at today.
In fall 2005, I started this blog, and in January 2006, I became a contributing editor for research, academia, and education at BlogHer.
In 2006, I also attended the BlogHer conference in San José. There I met three women whose blogs I was already reading: Barbara Sawhill (of Oberlin), Barbara Ganley (then of Middlebury), and Laura Blankenship (then of Bryn Mawr). Individually, these women are amazing. Together, they are awesome. We hooked up with Martha Burtis from the University of Mary Washington (one of my erstwhile almost-almae matres) and began talking about teaching in technology, about the strictures of course management systems and the possibilities of social media. We took our show on the road,
Also in 2006, I started a blog about museums. It drew the attention of the director of a museum studies graduate program about an hour down the road. She remembered my name from a question I asked on a museum history listserv a few years earlier, and apparently she had been cyberstalking me until I finished my Ph.D. When I had the degree in hand, she contacted me and asked if I would teach the history and theory course. What I didn't tell her is that I was actually thinking about enrolling in the program. When she went on sabbatical in winter and spring quarters of 2009, I oversaw the students' Master's theses.
At the teaching center, I taught a nine-week seminar in college teaching once a year to grad students and postdocs. I consulted with faculty across the disciplines. I chaired committees for the teaching center and was invited to be on ones outside the center. I then began to receive invitations to chair those committees. I am not a natural networker, and all of these experiences have been invaluable in making me comfortable speaking with faculty and administrators (OK, being a print journalist for several months in 1999 also helped, because I had to learn to pick up the phone and call just about anyone).
I also continued to benefit from mentoring by my dissertation adviser and, later, from coaching by a history professor who was on my dissertation committee. Their generosity with their time and advice has been invaluable in more ways than I can enumerate here. The director of the museum studies program also passed a couple opportunities my way when she was too busy to handle them herself, which resulted in (and I know this sounds weird, but it's oddly true) a very well-placed encyclopedia article.
I also submitted an article to a journal that ended up being a pretty respectable venue, and it was published there this past summer. I must admit that once I had narrowed my choices to three journals, I went with the one whose citation system matched that of my dissertation. I had a toddler, a full-time job, and an adjunct gig, and I was looking for any possible way to save time. I was fortunate that in this case such a decision worked in my favor.
I've been thinking about my professional experience as falling on two tracks: the traditional path to the job market and the unconventional one.
Traditional path:
- Ph.D. (but with a liability: mine is interdisciplinary, not within a discipline)
- tons of teaching experience (required for humanities jobs, it seems)
- fancy shmancy graduate research fellowship at the Smithsonian archives
- publication
- conference presentations
- some minimal kind of service as a graduate student.
- start a blog on academia and motherhood
- contribute to another blog
- start yet another blog
- make fabulous connections via blogging
- blog connections lead to conference presentations, an adjunct gig in museum studies, and the opportunity to mentor graduate students
- parlay blogging experience into a job in academic technology
- transfer academic technology experience to job at teaching center
- get a ton of administrative and committee experience and be able to talk somewhat intelligently about how the bureaucratic university works.
Yes, I still have impostor syndrome. I am, after all, embarking on a tenure-track job in a discipline in which I have no academic degrees, no discipline-specific teaching experience, and very little experience as a student myself. (I'm putting together a survey course on the U.S. to 1877, for example, and the last time I took a course that covered such a broad span of U.S. history was in 10th grade.)
But to bring us to the present, here's what I understand about how I snagged my new job:
There were 260 applicants; each member of the five-person search committee looked at 20% of the applications, each of which encompassed only a cover letter, a CV, and letters of rec. My application caught the eye of the person in whose pile my packet landed. So that was totally committee member roulette, as far as I'm concerned; it was more luck than strategy that landed me a videoconference interview.
I did my final prep for this interview--how else?--by writing a blog post. Which I then--stupidly, I thought at the time--mentioned during the interview. I later discovered that at least one search committee member read the blog post and was impressed by my sleuthing into the university's struggles with teaching the liberal arts.
I also let myself be funny during the interview--mostly to keep myself sane and because I was a bit sleep-deprived, but I think it worked to my advantage.
By the point of the campus interview, I had decided that I would squelch any impostor syndrome I was feeling and just let myself be, well, me. And so I talked with faculty and students about the things that interested me--my research, women in academic and museum science, students with disabilities, and local social justice issues--and pointed a couple faculty members to some resources that might be useful to them in teaching and writing grants. I also refused to lecture exclusively to the fifty or so students in the course I guest-taught, even though I knew that attempting an interactive and wide-ranging lesson on material culture, the 1893 world's fair, and technology with someone else's students in the third week of a survey course might be risky. My one capitulation to tradition was that I allowed myself to have the full text of my research talk on my computer screen when I presented it. I don't usually read my talks, but I was a bit nervous about the whole, you know, history thing.
And when one faculty member asked me who my people were, in terms of public history--was I an AASLH or NCPH person, or something else entirely?--I answered that my historians were those I followed on Twitter and via their blogs and podcasts, or whom I met via listservs on topics other than history, and that the conferences I attended were more focused on teaching and learning than on historical research. That was a risky conversation, but I'm glad I had it.
When the same professor asked after my research talk if it was autobiographical, I figured my cover had been blown, in that I was arguing that it was women from outside mainstream academic science who most contributed to the public understanding of natural science. And there I was, an interloper (in my mind), making the argument that I should be hired by a history department to do public history.
My point is this: the process of landing this job, from the time I finished my Ph.D. until I accepted their offer, was marked, it seemed to me at the time, by risk-taking. But the risks, I now see from the other side of the job market fence, were all about remaining authentic to my interests instead of pandering to what I believed theirs to be. In the case of this university, my interests and those of the faculty happened to match up pretty well. So I'm absolutely delighted because I'm starting a job from a position of authenticity; I didn't build up a façade that I'll need to maintain or very carefully disassemble.
I hope the recipe I've shared here--one part luck, two parts authenticity, and two parts unconventional professional development--proves useful to someone else frustrated with a more traditional approach to the job market.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
University of California tuition to increase 32 percent
(Cross-posted at BlogHer.)
Today, a panel of the University of California Regents—the ten-university system's governing body—approved a proposal to increase undergraduate "fees" (UC's word for tuition) by 32 percent over the coming year. Should the full board of Regents consent to the increase tomorrow, students will see a fee increase of more than $2,500 by fall 2010.
Needless to say, this is a huge leap. (By comparison, when I was an undergraduate a little more than a decade ago, tuition at my (non-UC) school increased by 2-4% a year.) Coming on top of all the cuts being made to education and to supporting units at the UC, the increase is brutal.
The university community isn't taking this news sitting down--unless you count sit-ins. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports,
Fourteen protesters were arrested at UCLA when they disrupted the meeting and refused to leave. Protesters then stopped the meeting several times, shouting "Whose university? Our university!" and chanting "We Shall Overcome." Hundreds of students and staff members also gathered at Berkeley and UCLA to begin a three-day protest of the tuition increases and faculty and staff furloughs.
University leaders have argued that the fee increases are necessary to compensate for severe cuts in state support. Mark G. Yudof, the system's president, said three out of four students would be shielded from the effects of the tuition increase by additional financial aid.
What Yudof is really saying—despite assurances elsewhere that the university system will raise grants to subsidize students who demonstrate financial need—is that students who can't afford to pay tuition up front will now have the privilege of taking out even more loans. College has become so expensive that paying back such loans--particularly if a student goes on to grad school--can become a decades-long commitment. (Me, I'm paying off my UC graduate education on a 20-year plan. It's like the mortgage I can't afford because I work at the University of California and live in a UC town.)
Jenna Benty explains the impacts the budget cuts already have had on financial aid. She focuses in particular on a program that was recently cut from UC Irvine, Student Academic Advancement Services, "which helped support low-income, first generation or disabled students." Benty continues:
Ironically, the program SAAS was recently eliminated due to budget cuts, considering these are the students that are largely affected by the budget cuts and tuition increases. When talking to past SAAS students and now ex-coworkers, Deborah was shocked to find “the students were rationing their food in order to fight the termination and tuition increase just so they could have the opportunity to study abroad.”
Low-income students have now taken the budget problems from both ends, not only will they have to pay a higher tuition; important programs that assisted them in financial aid are being cut. Former SAAS student Leandra Ordorica states “SAAS has helped me find resources to be able to pay for UCI. Every time I applied for a scholarship, there was always someone there to write me a letter of recommendation.” These small amenities make the largest impact on the low-income students where finances are constantly a concern. Not only did the SAAS program assist in finding low-income students scholarships, “each counselor sat down personally with a student to see what their specific needs and goals were. After assessing each individuals students ambitions, they would personally find a type of aid that fit their specific needs,” according to Deborah Lee.
The office of the student Regent (an undergraduate who serves on the UC board) liveblogged today's Regents panel vote. From the first post on the event:
9:35AM – [UC systemwide president] Mark Yudof is trying give his board report, but the crowd keeps interruppting and booing him. the chant is “take a stand.” yudof: “regents have to act. in the end of the day, it’s your job to blaance the budget. the budget on the table is the only budget out there that will balance the budget.” Yudof ends his speech early – asks the people that are distrubing the meeting to leave or be removed form the room. police have just entered the room and are waiting for the protesters to remove themselves. students please be safe!
These tuition increases are coming at a time when the UC campuses are actually reducing the number of courses they're offering, and when the quality of education at the university is at serious risk of deterioration. UC is firing lecturers (contingent laborers, unlike tenured faculty) in droves, and the professoriate is loath to pick up the classes the lecturers had been scheduled to teach. Worse, although UC may now authentically say that undergraduates have more contact hours with honest-to-goodness professors, many of these professors have not taught large classes (and large-enrollment courses of hundreds of students are increasingly replacing smaller ones, tripling or more the size of some classes) for a very long time. Teaching very large classes is an art that few have mastered; after all, how does one employ best practices in undergraduate learning (e.g. interaction with and among students, activities, ongoing assessment) in a class of more than 500 students?
Democracy Now recently convened a discussion with a number of UC stakeholders to help people better understand the crisis. I think Professor Ananya Roy of UC Berkeley's department of Department of City and Regional Planning put it best:
I think there is a very real crisis in California, where continuing budget cuts have devastated the infrastructure of public education, and we have a governor who continues to call for deeper and deeper budget cuts, even though there is nothing left to cut. So we’re clearly fighting for the ideal of public education. We’re fighting for the opportunity of Californians and Americans to get a decent education. But we’re also fighting for the future of our particular university, the UC system, and we’re fighting to be represented by leaders who believe in and can defend the mission of public education.
That bit about leaders may be a reference to UC President Mark Yudof's interview in The New York Times, which is widely regarded by UC denizens as both a disaster and symptomatic of the UC administration's profound misunderstanding of the history and values of public higher education in California. In that interview, Yudof said he feels like the "manager of a cemetery," admitted he gets about a $10,000/month housing stipend from the UC (his total compensation package is $828,000/year), and admits he doesn't know how he got into education: "It's all an accident," he explained.
In response to that interview, two Berkeley professors wrote a letter to the NYT that included these paragraphs:
These missions of access, excellence and vision have been the essence of California’s Master Plan for Education since 1960. Yudof also says that he fell into education as a profession by “accident.” In contrast, each of us came to Berkeley deliberately, because we believe in the importance of the public research university as an institution — one that provides an outstanding education that is accessible and affordable. We are proud that for decades, our students have gone on to become the next generation of educators, researchers, business developers and public servants.
Yudof’s joking remarks about finance speak to the lack of vision and leadership in his administration. As faculty, we fear that it is not only our present but our collective future that is being destroyed. We need executives who will do more than preside over the collapse of the finest public university system in the world.
In the Democracy Now discussion, moderator Amy Goodman asked Laura Nader, a professor of sociocultural anthropology at UC Berkeley, to explain what she meant by a call for transparency in the UC budget--and suggests it's time for the university to reconsider its priorities:
LAURA NADER: We need transparency about such things as intercollegiate sports, which is a problem all over the country. And Brian Barsky and Alice Agogino, these are people in computer studies and engineering, they can add the figures, and the figures don’t make sense.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
LAURA NADER: The figures, it’s supposed to be—intercollegiate is supposed to bring in money to the university.
AMY GOODMAN: Sports.
LAURA NADER: In fact, they’re in debt, intercollegiate sports. So we’re subsidizing, the student fees are subsidizing intercollegiate sports. And we’re closing libraries. So we had—the libraries are supposed to be closed on Saturdays. There were some students that sat in, professors that spoke. And a wonderful donor, anonymous, gave money to keep the libraries open on Saturday, but the university didn’t fall into line and open the libraries on Saturday. So these are issues of transparency and accountability, fiscal accountability, that are very important today.
Because I earned three graduate degrees from the UC over a period of seven years, taught undergraduates and graduate students at the UC, and have served as a staff member there for more than three years, I've been around the UC block once or twice. But I've never seen anything like this, nor felt such an atmosphere of fear, anxiety, frustration, and anger at any of the five other universities where I've worked or been a student. One word comes to mind again and again: clusterfuck. It's the perfect compound word for the situation.
Really, there's no one person or agency to blame for getting us into this mess, but there are definitely people and offices and agencies who could be working more thoughtfully and transparently to get us out of it. Because a 32 percent tuition increase in a single year? That's criminal.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
On the current situation at work
I've been trying to be careful not to write too much about work, lest my position suddenly be Raptured by the University of California gods. But today I commented on a couple of posts and wrote one e-mail that, taken together, nicely reflect my thinking (and frustration) about working for the UC in an era of lean budgets. Here, then, are my comments; you'll see they revisit themes in my earlier post "Cloudy with a Chance of Layoffs."
I. The freshman seminar teach-for-free controversy
My comment on Tenured Radical's incisive post "And If You Give Us A Full Book Of Green Stamps, You Can Teach Macroeconomics", which responded to this article in the UC Davis student newspaper, which in turn reported that our vice provost of undergraduate studies, along with the director of the Teaching Resources Center, invited freshman seminar faculty to return their stipends to the program:
II. Again with the freshman seminar controversy, but also in response to commenters' calls for reductions in administrative pay:
And then, on Eric Rauchway's post at The Edge of the American West:
III. The Staff Assembly madness
As if the freshman seminar controversy wasn't enough to deal with today, UC Davis staff also received--as I reference in my comment on Eric's post--a Staff Assembly e-mail that featured a link to this article.
Needless to say, I couldn't let that stand, so I sent an e-mail to the author:
So yeah, that's about where I'm at right now. How about you?
I. The freshman seminar teach-for-free controversy
My comment on Tenured Radical's incisive post "And If You Give Us A Full Book Of Green Stamps, You Can Teach Macroeconomics", which responded to this article in the UC Davis student newspaper, which in turn reported that our vice provost of undergraduate studies, along with the director of the Teaching Resources Center, invited freshman seminar faculty to return their stipends to the program:
Oy. I work for the UC Davis Teaching Resources Center as a teaching consultant and programs coordinator, so you might imagine I have some thoughts about this issue.
First, please note: My comments here are mine alone, and are not intended to represent my employer's stance on any issues.
I didn't know about this letter, or the budget info mentioned in the article (that first-year seminars will be the last program cut from the unit), until I read the student newspaper this morning.
I have very mixed feelings about the vice provost's request. I don't work directly with this program, so my comments aren't as well-informed as I'd like them to be, but probably better-informed than those of people outside the unit. :)
On the one hand, the program does attract a lot of senior professors from the sciences who are excited about the opportunity to actually teach a small class that requires very high student participation--as opposed to lecture courses whose enrollment has ballooned to 900 students in at least one case (a subject for another blog post).
If the participating faculty really enjoy teaching in the program and aren't hurting for research funds, then I have no problem with them returning stipends to the program. It is a VERY lean budget year, and honestly, I'm scared the center won't be around much longer if we have further cuts--but I haven't seen the latest budget numbers, so unfortunately I can't speak with any certainty. I do know that unless we find grants to pay his salary, I'll be losing one incredibly talented and thoughtful colleague at the end of the academic year.
On the other hand, I suspect there are also lecturers and humanists (I'm one of them) who use the program as you describe--to have access to research funds they might otherwise not get, and it's not fair to apply any pressure on them, and sending out a blanket letter does, I think, pressure these faculty. For that reason, had I been asked about it, I would have advised they send the letter first to only full professors.
As it offers approximately 200 classes enrolling ~15 students each during the academic year, the program itself represents a very inexpensive way for the campus to lower its overall faculty : student ratio, so from a labor standpoint, any outrage might be better focused there.
I will say that it is an incredibly strong program, with very high quality classes taught by faculty who are passionate about teaching (too rare at any research university)--or who become passionate through the experience of engaging with first- and second-year undergraduates. The program holds faculty to rigorous pedagogical standards. For more information about it, see the first-year seminar faculty toolkit (PDF).
It's sad to see the teaching center connected with this controversy, as the Teaching Resources Center really is a fabulous resource and increasingly an intellectual hub on campus--and we run it on a shoestring budget. (We're small but mighty.) The office staff and graduate student researcher who coordinate and evaluate the first-year seminar program also do really terrific work, so it must be especially frustrating for them to see its administration depicted in an unflattering light.
II. Again with the freshman seminar controversy, but also in response to commenters' calls for reductions in administrative pay:
And then, on Eric Rauchway's post at The Edge of the American West:
Remember one of the reasons the first-year seminars are there in the first place: they provide a very inexpensive way for the university to lower its instructor : student ratio–even more cheaply than having grad students teach might.
I get a little bit antsy when people start talking about reducing “administrator” salaries, both because my own salary may or may not fall under that category and because after three years in the staff trenches, I’m keenly aware of the faculty-staff caste system.
Yes, there are many administrators whose salaries seem inflated. But the line between “administrator” and, oh, “program coordinator” (ahem) can be a blurry one. Staff like me have already had our salaries frozen for years, even as we support faculty who have continued to receive merit increases. With the furloughs, I’m now making less than when I started working at UC Davis, and 14% less than I would have made had I received my merit increases. It’s incredibly demoralizing, especially since these slights are coming from the exact university that supposedly readied me for an academic career.
I sat in a meeting w/a top HR admin at UCOP a few weeks ago, and I asked him point-blank if there would be any relief for staff soon, or if things would continue to deteriorate. His response was that “faculty attract people and resources, while staff don’t”; ergo, staff are dispensable. His remark about resources is a gross generalization, of course–it assumes, for example, staff aren’t writing grants, raising funds, or otherwise helping to recruit, support, and retain faculty.
Today a Staff Assembly e-mail claimed it’s not fair to compare staff and faculty salaries, that it’s like comparing doctors’ pay with lawyers’. But when you have countless lecturers, postdocs, and staff with similar credentials to faculty (PhDs, research agenda, publications, etc.), I don’t think that’s a fair analogy.
III. The Staff Assembly madness
As if the freshman seminar controversy wasn't enough to deal with today, UC Davis staff also received--as I reference in my comment on Eric's post--a Staff Assembly e-mail that featured a link to this article.
Needless to say, I couldn't let that stand, so I sent an e-mail to the author:
While I appreciate your reminder to staff (at http://staff.ucdavis.edu/News/not-the-time-for-assumptions) that we keep our heads when all around us seem to be losing theirs, I must take issue with one of your claims: “Comparing staff compensation with faculty compensation maybe more like comparing a doctor’s compensation with a lawyer’s compensation. These are different fields with different expectations and skill sets.”
This is a terrible generalization, as there are many, many staff on campus who have the same credentials as faculty (PhDs, teaching experience, peer-reviewed publications) and the same expectations (teaching, research agendas, grant writing, committee service) and skill sets (writing, teaching, intellectual engagement with academics and the wider world), but who are paid half as much as faculty—or less. My colleagues and I in the Teaching Resources Center, for example, are expected to stay current with trends in pedagogy, research and publish, and teach--only we’re expected to do the same for far less, and to manage multiple programs and projects in addition to the responsibilities we share with faculty. I’m on at least eight committees on campus and systemwide, and I chair several of them.
A few weeks back, I was in a meeting at UCOP, and when I asked a top HR administrator if staff would continue to feel budgetary pain out of proportion to our faculty colleagues, he said, “Faculty attract people and resources, while staff don’t.” Ergo, staff are dispensable—even if we write grants and help to recruit, support, retain (and, in my and my colleagues’ case, train) faculty. To say that faculty deserve better compensation than staff because of different “expectations” is too easy; it’s a capitulation to the campus’s continued denigration of staff and contributes the UC’s erasure of the incredibly high-level work many staff are doing.
So yeah, that's about where I'm at right now. How about you?
Friday, September 18, 2009
Cloudy with a Chance of Layoffs
I.
A couple days ago, I was reading Lucas some bedtime stories; among them was one of my favorites, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. As I read, Lucas was mumbling about something else, so I had to focus extra hard on the text. Reading deliberately, it turns out, has its dangers; in the middle of the book I had a revelation that the book wasn't at all about the challenges of having food fall from the sky.
In case you're not familiar with Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett's book (1978), a quick plot synopsis: A man tells his two grandchildren a tale of the tiny town of Chewandswallow, where instead of having supermarkets or raising their own food, the townsfolk depend on the weather to bring in storms of hamburgers, orange juice rain, clouds of sunny-side-up eggs, and Jell-O sunsets. But then, inexplicably, the weather takes an erratic turn, and, besieged by pea soup fogs and house-crushing giant food falling from the sky, the people of Chewandswallow flee the town for a new land, where they must adjust to rainwater, packaged food, and supermarkets.
As I read the book this last time, it increasingly seemed at once an allegory and a parable for my own life.
II.
Recently, I caught up with several far-flung friends and colleagues, and I heard--explicitly, in the anecdotes they shared, and implicitly, in the alternately wistful and frustrated tone of their voices--a desire to move on to something new, even if it meant walking away from their current careers, where over decades they have built up a good deal of respect, authority, and expertise. They're in their 40s and 50s, and I'm 34, but I must admit I was feeling the same existential angst.
We admitted to intellectual fatigue, to wanting to have new conversations rather than rehashing the same old ones that kept arising. We wanted to move forward, to be creatively productive, to be proactive rather than merely reactive.
III.
As many of you are undoubtedly learning through articles in higher ed publications or--God forbid--first-hand experience, the University of California is kind of a sucky place to work right now. We've gone beyond the point where the budget cuts are damaging the quality of our programs; the cuts have become personal. Some of us have been more than cut to the bone. We're oozing marrow.
We're in hedgehog mode, rolling up in little balls hoping to escape the budget scythe, hoping we don't lose our jobs and health insurance and our ability to provide for our families. We're being kicked while we're down.
So is it any wonder that when I read "Whatever the weather served, that was what they ate," I felt as if I had been punched in the chest?
Last week we were informed that employees represented by the clerical and technical unions that had not agreed to furloughs would be laid off for the same number of days that they would have been furloughed. I'm not represented--not by my choice, I assure you--but half of our office staff is. We non-represented employees are having our annual salaries cut by a percentage that varies with how much we make (e.g. I'm taking a 6% cut), with each paycheck being reduced by that amount. So yes, losing 6% of my salary sucks, even with the 16 furlough days I've "earned" as a result, but at least the pain is spread across 12 pay periods. Not so for the union-represented employees. My coworkers will be temporarily laid off for a certain number of consecutive days. If I were union-represented, for example, I would be laid off for 16 consecutive workdays--meaning my paycheck for that month would cover only 4 days. How many of us could live for a month on 4 days' wages?
Worse, these union-represented employees will also be required to observe the 11 mandated campus closure days (during which the rest of us will be using furlough days). They'll need to cough up some vacation or comp time or take those days off without pay. Which means a union-represented employee earning my salary could lose 27 days of pay this fiscal year.
Whatever the weather served, that was what they ate. Overcooked broccoli. Brussels sprouts and peanut butter with mayonnaise. Or nothing but Gorgonzola cheese all day long.
Another day there was a pea soup fog. No one could see where they were going.
III.
I asked our budget person about upcoming cuts. As I said, we're already hemorrhaging, losing staff and being asked to find grants to pay for our own keep. She said she expected another $100,000 in cuts to our unit this coming year. We've already lost at least $200,000, maybe $250,000--I've lost track. Here's the deal about the $100,000, though--we only have $70,000 in our current budget for non-salary expenses. You do the math.
IV.
Confession: Fang and have $30 in savings and something like $75,000 in debt from student loans, debt Fang brought into the marriage, emergency car repairs during grad school when I was only making $13,000 a year, dental bills, vet care for the last dog, etc. We try to live within our means, but our means are a bit modest right now.
Alert: Fang needs $1900 in emergency dental care at the end of the month. We found out today the dog might need shoulder surgery. And we're spending $1,600 to attend a relative's wedding next month. We can't not attend the wedding because the groom is shipping out to his first tour in Afghanistan shortly thereafter.
When you take into account the university's freezing of staff (but not faculty) salaries the past couple of years, my pay has actually declined 13% over the past two years--and that doesn't account for inflation. Considering only one year I've worked here has the university offered merit increases (of 4%), I'm making considerably less than when I started.
We live, in short, hand to mouth. The cost of living in this town outstrips our salaries. And I'm tired of freelancing, of selling used books on Amazon in an attempt to make ends meet. I don't want to have another yard sale.
I know there are people in far worse shape. At least we have jobs. (For now.)
Everyone feared for their lives. They couldn't go outside most of the time. Many houses had been badly damaged by giant meatballs, stores were boarded up, and there was no more school for the children.
V.
So what do we do in the face of tomato tornadoes and hurricanes of hard rolls?
VI.
Well, what did the people of Chewandswallow do?
A decision was made to abandon the town of Chewandswallow.
It was a matter of survival.
The townsfolk made sailboats out of giant pieces of stale bread and set sail on their rafts for a new land.
VII.
So I ask myself: What constitutes a new land?
Never have I had so many ideas and so little hope. I feel over the past few years I've set sail a dozen tiny boats, none of them seaworthy on their own.
Right now I'm trying to find the one or two projects on which I really want to focus, the ones where I can get busy slathering peanut butter between two huge pieces of stale bread before I jerry-rig some sails from oversized slices of pizza and Swiss cheese.
And I'm doing it all without the benefit of medication, which is making it especially hard on me, and on Fang as well. It's hard to be positive or to imagine--let alone chart a path to--a better future. In my current financial situation, it's hard not to resent the university--both as the grantor of a three graduate degrees I'm realizing are largely unmarketable and as my current employer. It's especially hard because in a perfect world Lucas would have a sibling, but my fertility and I are staring down the barrel of "advanced maternal age" and we can't afford another child, and won't be able to for a long time. I feel as if that decision has been taken out of my hands somewhat by my decreasing salary, and I resent that, too.
I'm so ready to be somewhere else--mentally, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, perhaps physically. I used to be the kind of person who could steer her own life in an appropriate direction. But for now here I am, with my stale bread and my peanut butter, wondering which way the wind will blow us next.
A couple days ago, I was reading Lucas some bedtime stories; among them was one of my favorites, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. As I read, Lucas was mumbling about something else, so I had to focus extra hard on the text. Reading deliberately, it turns out, has its dangers; in the middle of the book I had a revelation that the book wasn't at all about the challenges of having food fall from the sky.
In case you're not familiar with Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett's book (1978), a quick plot synopsis: A man tells his two grandchildren a tale of the tiny town of Chewandswallow, where instead of having supermarkets or raising their own food, the townsfolk depend on the weather to bring in storms of hamburgers, orange juice rain, clouds of sunny-side-up eggs, and Jell-O sunsets. But then, inexplicably, the weather takes an erratic turn, and, besieged by pea soup fogs and house-crushing giant food falling from the sky, the people of Chewandswallow flee the town for a new land, where they must adjust to rainwater, packaged food, and supermarkets.
As I read the book this last time, it increasingly seemed at once an allegory and a parable for my own life.
II.
Recently, I caught up with several far-flung friends and colleagues, and I heard--explicitly, in the anecdotes they shared, and implicitly, in the alternately wistful and frustrated tone of their voices--a desire to move on to something new, even if it meant walking away from their current careers, where over decades they have built up a good deal of respect, authority, and expertise. They're in their 40s and 50s, and I'm 34, but I must admit I was feeling the same existential angst.
We admitted to intellectual fatigue, to wanting to have new conversations rather than rehashing the same old ones that kept arising. We wanted to move forward, to be creatively productive, to be proactive rather than merely reactive.
III.
As many of you are undoubtedly learning through articles in higher ed publications or--God forbid--first-hand experience, the University of California is kind of a sucky place to work right now. We've gone beyond the point where the budget cuts are damaging the quality of our programs; the cuts have become personal. Some of us have been more than cut to the bone. We're oozing marrow.
We're in hedgehog mode, rolling up in little balls hoping to escape the budget scythe, hoping we don't lose our jobs and health insurance and our ability to provide for our families. We're being kicked while we're down.
So is it any wonder that when I read "Whatever the weather served, that was what they ate," I felt as if I had been punched in the chest?
Last week we were informed that employees represented by the clerical and technical unions that had not agreed to furloughs would be laid off for the same number of days that they would have been furloughed. I'm not represented--not by my choice, I assure you--but half of our office staff is. We non-represented employees are having our annual salaries cut by a percentage that varies with how much we make (e.g. I'm taking a 6% cut), with each paycheck being reduced by that amount. So yes, losing 6% of my salary sucks, even with the 16 furlough days I've "earned" as a result, but at least the pain is spread across 12 pay periods. Not so for the union-represented employees. My coworkers will be temporarily laid off for a certain number of consecutive days. If I were union-represented, for example, I would be laid off for 16 consecutive workdays--meaning my paycheck for that month would cover only 4 days. How many of us could live for a month on 4 days' wages?
Worse, these union-represented employees will also be required to observe the 11 mandated campus closure days (during which the rest of us will be using furlough days). They'll need to cough up some vacation or comp time or take those days off without pay. Which means a union-represented employee earning my salary could lose 27 days of pay this fiscal year.
Whatever the weather served, that was what they ate. Overcooked broccoli. Brussels sprouts and peanut butter with mayonnaise. Or nothing but Gorgonzola cheese all day long.
Another day there was a pea soup fog. No one could see where they were going.
III.
I asked our budget person about upcoming cuts. As I said, we're already hemorrhaging, losing staff and being asked to find grants to pay for our own keep. She said she expected another $100,000 in cuts to our unit this coming year. We've already lost at least $200,000, maybe $250,000--I've lost track. Here's the deal about the $100,000, though--we only have $70,000 in our current budget for non-salary expenses. You do the math.
IV.
Confession: Fang and have $30 in savings and something like $75,000 in debt from student loans, debt Fang brought into the marriage, emergency car repairs during grad school when I was only making $13,000 a year, dental bills, vet care for the last dog, etc. We try to live within our means, but our means are a bit modest right now.
Alert: Fang needs $1900 in emergency dental care at the end of the month. We found out today the dog might need shoulder surgery. And we're spending $1,600 to attend a relative's wedding next month. We can't not attend the wedding because the groom is shipping out to his first tour in Afghanistan shortly thereafter.
When you take into account the university's freezing of staff (but not faculty) salaries the past couple of years, my pay has actually declined 13% over the past two years--and that doesn't account for inflation. Considering only one year I've worked here has the university offered merit increases (of 4%), I'm making considerably less than when I started.
We live, in short, hand to mouth. The cost of living in this town outstrips our salaries. And I'm tired of freelancing, of selling used books on Amazon in an attempt to make ends meet. I don't want to have another yard sale.
I know there are people in far worse shape. At least we have jobs. (For now.)
Everyone feared for their lives. They couldn't go outside most of the time. Many houses had been badly damaged by giant meatballs, stores were boarded up, and there was no more school for the children.
V.
So what do we do in the face of tomato tornadoes and hurricanes of hard rolls?
VI.
Well, what did the people of Chewandswallow do?
A decision was made to abandon the town of Chewandswallow.
It was a matter of survival.
The townsfolk made sailboats out of giant pieces of stale bread and set sail on their rafts for a new land.
VII.
So I ask myself: What constitutes a new land?
Never have I had so many ideas and so little hope. I feel over the past few years I've set sail a dozen tiny boats, none of them seaworthy on their own.
Right now I'm trying to find the one or two projects on which I really want to focus, the ones where I can get busy slathering peanut butter between two huge pieces of stale bread before I jerry-rig some sails from oversized slices of pizza and Swiss cheese.
And I'm doing it all without the benefit of medication, which is making it especially hard on me, and on Fang as well. It's hard to be positive or to imagine--let alone chart a path to--a better future. In my current financial situation, it's hard not to resent the university--both as the grantor of a three graduate degrees I'm realizing are largely unmarketable and as my current employer. It's especially hard because in a perfect world Lucas would have a sibling, but my fertility and I are staring down the barrel of "advanced maternal age" and we can't afford another child, and won't be able to for a long time. I feel as if that decision has been taken out of my hands somewhat by my decreasing salary, and I resent that, too.
I'm so ready to be somewhere else--mentally, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, perhaps physically. I used to be the kind of person who could steer her own life in an appropriate direction. But for now here I am, with my stale bread and my peanut butter, wondering which way the wind will blow us next.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Freaking out
I just received a report from a committee making recommendations to the Provost of the university regarding budget cuts.
This paragraph caught my eye:
First of all, "support for faculty teaching" is what we do, and encompasses all of my position, plus that of 1 and 4/7 of my colleagues. The only cost for many of our faculty support programs are salaries, so to cut those programs means cutting personnel.
Second, departmental TA training and our TA orientation are very different. Many departments don't have TA training, so the only training many TAs get is our seven hours at the very beginning of their grad school careers. In addition, we orient 700 TAs in the fall for the cost of only salaries, photocopying, and nametags. So again: Cutting TA orientation would mean cutting personnel time.
Third, I'm no fan of Scantron machines, but the return rate of online course evaluations is very, very low, and online exams don't yet have the enough security against cheating to persuade faculty to adopt them.
I'm furious and frightened. Maybe I'm overreacting upon the first reading of this report. Let's hope so.
By the way, the same report counsels the Provost not to cut athletics too deeply, as sports programs would feel the effect for many years. (Apparently the quality of teaching wouldn't suffer at all. GAH.)
This paragraph caught my eye:
A number of areas of the Teaching Resources Center should be examined for possible reduction. These include support for faculty teaching, the Scantron service for course evaluations (eliminate with on-line evaluations), the mini-grant program and the SPEAK test (should be able to use results of new TOEFL in its place). Some consideration should be given to better coordinate (or centralize) TA orientation and training. Some units provide their own while others rely on the TRC, resulting in duplication of effort. Decisions could be informed by existing qualitative evaluation data of the various programs. The additional review could be conducted jointly by representatives of the Undergraduate Council and the Graduate Council.
First of all, "support for faculty teaching" is what we do, and encompasses all of my position, plus that of 1 and 4/7 of my colleagues. The only cost for many of our faculty support programs are salaries, so to cut those programs means cutting personnel.
Second, departmental TA training and our TA orientation are very different. Many departments don't have TA training, so the only training many TAs get is our seven hours at the very beginning of their grad school careers. In addition, we orient 700 TAs in the fall for the cost of only salaries, photocopying, and nametags. So again: Cutting TA orientation would mean cutting personnel time.
Third, I'm no fan of Scantron machines, but the return rate of online course evaluations is very, very low, and online exams don't yet have the enough security against cheating to persuade faculty to adopt them.
I'm furious and frightened. Maybe I'm overreacting upon the first reading of this report. Let's hope so.
By the way, the same report counsels the Provost not to cut athletics too deeply, as sports programs would feel the effect for many years. (Apparently the quality of teaching wouldn't suffer at all. GAH.)
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Academic freedom endangered again
(Cross-posted at BlogHer)
Members of the University of California, Davis Academic Senate (mostly tenured and tenure-track faculty) recently received an e-mail that contained this warning:
Full disclosure: I'm a (staff, not faculty) employee of UC Davis, but I would be writing about this issue even if I weren't. In addition, let me make clear to any UC or UC Davis administrators out there: I'm not writing this as part of my duties as an employee at UC Davis--an important caveat in the context of this article.
For fascinating background on the court cases that led to the UC Davis memo, definitely check out Michael Bérubé's post at Crooked Timber and UC Davis Professor Eric Rauchway's post at The Edge of the American West, as well as the large number of comments at each post. Both posts offer a legal history memo, tracing its contents back to two cases: Garcetti v. Ceballos and Hong v.Grant. You can read a quick round-up of the issues from Marc Bousquet, but I highly recommend the Bérubé and Rauchway posts. Really, they're required reading on the subject.
Here's my question as an occasional lecturer at UC Davis and an adjunct professor elsewhere: If faculty have neither First Amendment nor academic freedom protections outside their areas of "demonstrated academic scholarship," how do we draw the borders of that scholarship? For example, I consider myself a scholar within the very broad (inter)disciplines of American studies and museum studies. But my peer-reviewed publishing has been limited to the history of women in American institutions of natural history, as well as a couple of academic book reviews. If dissertating or publishing are to be used as demonstrations of scholarship--and those traditionally are the ways academia has defined someone's areas of research--then my teaching largely falls outside my areas of demonstrated scholarship. Which means I have neither First Amendment rights nor academic freedom in my classroom--even though American universities are supposed to be preserves of intellectual thought, and even though I live in one of the more left-leaning states in the country. How does one teach undergraduate and graduate students if expressing evenly mildly controversial opinions becomes a threat to employment?
As is too often the case, I found it difficult to locate women bloggers commenting on this issue of academic freedom in the university context, and particularly as it relates to Hong or Garcetti. That said, the women who are writing about it are saying really interesting and important things.
Helen Norton at First Amendment Law Prof Blog points us to an article (PDF) by Judith Areen on "the interests that justify constitutional protection for academic speech, addressing faculty speech on governance issues as well as speech related to research and teaching." Areen argues that the scope of academic freedom should extend beyond a faculty member's narrow band of scholarly production. Here's an excerpt from her article:
Katharine Mangan writes at The Chronicle of Higher Education about how one administrator losing her court case as a whistleblower "could have a chilling effect on free speech and make it harder for university lawyers and officials to do their jobs."
Back in 2006, LizardBreath of Unfogged provided a dissection of Garcetti. Looking at the Supreme Court decision, she concludes,
Be sure to check out the comments on her post for some interesting opinions.
At Socialist Worker, Dana Cloud considers several cases of faculty whose academic freedom was challenged by conservative activists. She explains the activists' motivations:
For breaking news on constraints placed on academic freedom, check out the blog of the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB. For a more in-depth examination of the issues, view the videos or listen to the audio from the In Defense of Academic Freedom conference held at the University of Chicago in 2007.
What are your thoughts?
Members of the University of California, Davis Academic Senate (mostly tenured and tenure-track faculty) recently received an e-mail that contained this warning:
According to recent court rulings, your speech and behavior in job-related duties as a public employee rather than a private citizen have no First Amendment protection. This means that disciplinary action may be taken against you (including dismissal) for statements you make in the course of your employment. Any activity performed on the job falls within this purview. [... W]e recommend that you expect that your speech and behavior outside of your field of scholarship is absolutely not protected by the First Amendment.
Further, university policies on academic freedom only protect speech and behavior in your area of demonstrated academic scholarship. Do not expect that university policies give you a right to speak and act freely in your job duties on campus outside of your scholarship. [...] Our employment culture at UC Davis has been supportive of transparency and freedom, but it may not be a right.
Full disclosure: I'm a (staff, not faculty) employee of UC Davis, but I would be writing about this issue even if I weren't. In addition, let me make clear to any UC or UC Davis administrators out there: I'm not writing this as part of my duties as an employee at UC Davis--an important caveat in the context of this article.
For fascinating background on the court cases that led to the UC Davis memo, definitely check out Michael Bérubé's post at Crooked Timber and UC Davis Professor Eric Rauchway's post at The Edge of the American West, as well as the large number of comments at each post. Both posts offer a legal history memo, tracing its contents back to two cases: Garcetti v. Ceballos and Hong v.Grant. You can read a quick round-up of the issues from Marc Bousquet, but I highly recommend the Bérubé and Rauchway posts. Really, they're required reading on the subject.
Here's my question as an occasional lecturer at UC Davis and an adjunct professor elsewhere: If faculty have neither First Amendment nor academic freedom protections outside their areas of "demonstrated academic scholarship," how do we draw the borders of that scholarship? For example, I consider myself a scholar within the very broad (inter)disciplines of American studies and museum studies. But my peer-reviewed publishing has been limited to the history of women in American institutions of natural history, as well as a couple of academic book reviews. If dissertating or publishing are to be used as demonstrations of scholarship--and those traditionally are the ways academia has defined someone's areas of research--then my teaching largely falls outside my areas of demonstrated scholarship. Which means I have neither First Amendment rights nor academic freedom in my classroom--even though American universities are supposed to be preserves of intellectual thought, and even though I live in one of the more left-leaning states in the country. How does one teach undergraduate and graduate students if expressing evenly mildly controversial opinions becomes a threat to employment?
As is too often the case, I found it difficult to locate women bloggers commenting on this issue of academic freedom in the university context, and particularly as it relates to Hong or Garcetti. That said, the women who are writing about it are saying really interesting and important things.
Helen Norton at First Amendment Law Prof Blog points us to an article (PDF) by Judith Areen on "the interests that justify constitutional protection for academic speech, addressing faculty speech on governance issues as well as speech related to research and teaching." Areen argues that the scope of academic freedom should extend beyond a faculty member's narrow band of scholarly production. Here's an excerpt from her article:
[C]ontrary to common understanding, academic
freedom is about much more than faculty speech—more than simply the university professor’s analog to the citizen’s right of free speech. Rather, academic freedom is central to the functioning and governance of colleges and universities. Louis Menand recognized this broader role when he called academic freedom a “key legitimating
concept” of academic life, one that explains a wide array of issues from why departments have the authority to hire and fire their own members to why the football coach is not allowed to influence the quarterback’s grade in a course. Academic freedom, properly understood, has what I will call a “governance dimension.” It is not only about faculty research and teaching; it is also about the freedom of faculties to govern their institutions in a way that accords with academic values whether they are approving the curriculum, hiring faculty, or establishing graduation requirements for students.
Katharine Mangan writes at The Chronicle of Higher Education about how one administrator losing her court case as a whistleblower "could have a chilling effect on free speech and make it harder for university lawyers and officials to do their jobs."
Back in 2006, LizardBreath of Unfogged provided a dissection of Garcetti. Looking at the Supreme Court decision, she concludes,
Souter contemplates that speech by government employees in the course of their duties should only be protected only insofar as it meets a high standard of responsibility and consists of "comment on official dishonesty, deliberately unconstitutional action, other serious wrongdoing, or threats to health and safety"; Breyer believes that even that standard would unworkably deprive state employers of control over their employees, and suggests that the First Amendment should protect such speech only where "professional and special constitutional obligations are both present". Either of those standards, still, either: (1) ends up protecting employees whose duties consist of speech from management action even where they are wrong or incompetent in what they have said, which seems absurd, or (2) ends up extending First Amendment protection to speech only when a court considers the speech correct or valuable, substituting the court's opinion on how to perform the employee's duties for the employer's, which seems, likewise, absurd.
I'd love to be talked out of this position -- I'm uncomfortable with the company I'm keeping.
Be sure to check out the comments on her post for some interesting opinions.
At Socialist Worker, Dana Cloud considers several cases of faculty whose academic freedom was challenged by conservative activists. She explains the activists' motivations:
From the 1964 free speech movement to today's anti-occupation organizations, campuses have always been places where struggles for justice break out. This potential might explain why, losing ground in politics and the economy, the right seeks to maintain its grip on outspoken faculty and students.
For breaking news on constraints placed on academic freedom, check out the blog of the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB. For a more in-depth examination of the issues, view the videos or listen to the audio from the In Defense of Academic Freedom conference held at the University of Chicago in 2007.
What are your thoughts?
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Employment, Part A. I very much like my job. I really do. But the possibility of getting to build a teaching center at Awesome University was very exciting. Since it fell through, I've been open to other opportunities that would allow me to build a new organization or initiative--you know, an opportunity to be a bit entrepreneurial.
When I saw the Latest Awesome Directorship (LAD) advertised on a museum industry website, I knew I had to apply. In short: LAD will be responsible for establishing professional development opportunities for thousands of staff and volunteers working for 24 cultural institutions (including many museums, one symphony, and a major zoological society). And it's in a city with excellent beaches, and much nearer to my family than I am now--a 2-hour drive instead of a 6- or 7-hour drive.
So I applied. And I had a 1.5-hour phone interview. By the end of the interview, the top-of-her-field consultant (whom I want to be when I grow up, if I can't be Barbara Ganley) hired by the new professional development organization told me she was advancing me to the final slate of 10 candidates for LAD.
The next step was to write three one-page essays. I did. And I made it to the final four (because I can write my way into just about any opportunity). Next month I fly down for a day and a half of interviews of various sorts. I'll also be required to give a 10-minute presentation of the PowerPoint variety. I'm not a fan of slide presentations, so I'm going to have to work extra hard to force my thinking into a linear sequence.
I've heard through the grapevine that they're looking for someone "entrepreneurial." I hope that means in spirit and practice rather than in dress. :)
The LAD salary should be better than my current one (a low bar: I'm an employee of a state on the verge of financial collapse, and we're staring down furloughs), but living down there is considerably more expensive, so in the end our standard of living might be a wash. (Except: Beaches!)
Anyway, I'm very excited about this opportunity.
Employment, Part B. Today I was in a meeting to discuss the section of a report I'm writing for the campus's steering committee on electronic accessibility. (I chair the subcommittee on teaching and learning.) In the middle of the meeting, the two major co-conspirators (one faculty, one staff) told me that during a meeting they had with the vice provost of IT (who is a big champion of e-access), they decided the campus needs someone to shepherd the campus through the transition to electronic accessibility. At this earlier meeting, the three of them strategized about what kind of work this person would do, and then the VP asked if they had anyone in mind. At once they all blurted out my name.
An immediate caveat: the position would be funded at first by "soft money," meaning the position wouldn't at first be classified as a permanent one, but the hope is that the position would become permanent. And the last thing I want to do in a recession is trade in a reasonably secure job I like for an exciting new opportunity that is unstable.
I said I'd need more information about the position, and they pretty much told me I could write the position description myself. Awesome. (I also told them I'd need a door.)
(An aside: This is the first time I've heard a potential employer say to me, "The big challenge is that you're not disabled. We'll have to address that eventually." By which she meant address it politically--not that I need to acquire a disability.)
Because we're in a tight budget year, there's the possibility that the teaching center where I work now would be open to a part-time buyout of my time--especially during the slow summer months--by another department.
But: If I were willing to assume more risk and accept a part- or full-time position instead of a buyout, I might be able to ask for a larger salary (from the new job), even in a recession year.
So there are possibilities, and I feel the longer I'm a staff member at this university, the savvier I'm becoming atconniving thinking through all the permutations.
Employment, Part C. Awesome University will likely reopen their teaching center job next year, albeit as a staff position. I saw the plans for the new building, and it looks like the teaching center director will have a windowed office at the curve of the building on the fourth floor. Beats the heck out of my current basement office or my impending move to the windowless cube farm in a tin shed. But: There's no guarantee I'd once again be a finalist for the job in a new search. And I'm impatient. . .
Your thoughts?
P.S. In my phone interview for LAD, when I was asked what my greatest flaw is, I said I tended to lean too much in the direction of transparency in all things. This blog entry is good evidence of that, n'est-ce pas?
When I saw the Latest Awesome Directorship (LAD) advertised on a museum industry website, I knew I had to apply. In short: LAD will be responsible for establishing professional development opportunities for thousands of staff and volunteers working for 24 cultural institutions (including many museums, one symphony, and a major zoological society). And it's in a city with excellent beaches, and much nearer to my family than I am now--a 2-hour drive instead of a 6- or 7-hour drive.
So I applied. And I had a 1.5-hour phone interview. By the end of the interview, the top-of-her-field consultant (whom I want to be when I grow up, if I can't be Barbara Ganley) hired by the new professional development organization told me she was advancing me to the final slate of 10 candidates for LAD.
The next step was to write three one-page essays. I did. And I made it to the final four (because I can write my way into just about any opportunity). Next month I fly down for a day and a half of interviews of various sorts. I'll also be required to give a 10-minute presentation of the PowerPoint variety. I'm not a fan of slide presentations, so I'm going to have to work extra hard to force my thinking into a linear sequence.
I've heard through the grapevine that they're looking for someone "entrepreneurial." I hope that means in spirit and practice rather than in dress. :)
The LAD salary should be better than my current one (a low bar: I'm an employee of a state on the verge of financial collapse, and we're staring down furloughs), but living down there is considerably more expensive, so in the end our standard of living might be a wash. (Except: Beaches!)
Anyway, I'm very excited about this opportunity.
Employment, Part B. Today I was in a meeting to discuss the section of a report I'm writing for the campus's steering committee on electronic accessibility. (I chair the subcommittee on teaching and learning.) In the middle of the meeting, the two major co-conspirators (one faculty, one staff) told me that during a meeting they had with the vice provost of IT (who is a big champion of e-access), they decided the campus needs someone to shepherd the campus through the transition to electronic accessibility. At this earlier meeting, the three of them strategized about what kind of work this person would do, and then the VP asked if they had anyone in mind. At once they all blurted out my name.
An immediate caveat: the position would be funded at first by "soft money," meaning the position wouldn't at first be classified as a permanent one, but the hope is that the position would become permanent. And the last thing I want to do in a recession is trade in a reasonably secure job I like for an exciting new opportunity that is unstable.
I said I'd need more information about the position, and they pretty much told me I could write the position description myself. Awesome. (I also told them I'd need a door.)
(An aside: This is the first time I've heard a potential employer say to me, "The big challenge is that you're not disabled. We'll have to address that eventually." By which she meant address it politically--not that I need to acquire a disability.)
Because we're in a tight budget year, there's the possibility that the teaching center where I work now would be open to a part-time buyout of my time--especially during the slow summer months--by another department.
But: If I were willing to assume more risk and accept a part- or full-time position instead of a buyout, I might be able to ask for a larger salary (from the new job), even in a recession year.
So there are possibilities, and I feel the longer I'm a staff member at this university, the savvier I'm becoming at
Employment, Part C. Awesome University will likely reopen their teaching center job next year, albeit as a staff position. I saw the plans for the new building, and it looks like the teaching center director will have a windowed office at the curve of the building on the fourth floor. Beats the heck out of my current basement office or my impending move to the windowless cube farm in a tin shed. But: There's no guarantee I'd once again be a finalist for the job in a new search. And I'm impatient. . .
Your thoughts?
P.S. In my phone interview for LAD, when I was asked what my greatest flaw is, I said I tended to lean too much in the direction of transparency in all things. This blog entry is good evidence of that, n'est-ce pas?
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Is it time to end the university as we know it?
(Herein I offer a round-up of responses to Mark Taylor's recent Op-Ed in the NYT. I'm still processing his opinions and will have more to say soon. This post also appears over at BlogHer.)
This past weekend, I considered a critique of universities as abusive employers and suggested that American universities are, in some ways, profoundly broken. Mark Taylor, chair of the religious studies department at Columbia University, takes this critique to its (il)logical conclusion, calling for us to "End the University as We Know It." He begins with this analogy:
Taylor is a fan of interdisciplinarity. He calls for universities to
Among his other recommendations:
Click through to the article to read the reasons behind his recommendations, which attracted 437 comments before the editors closed the comment thread. Some comments were appreciative, while others--not so much. Quipped one reader, "Go abolish your own department."
A discussion broke out among readers as to the extent universities should be responsive to market forces, and particularly those of industries that want undergraduates prepared with the skills necessary to join their particular workforces. In my view, universities are where undergraduates develop their critical and creative thinking skills. Undergraduates may enter college thinking they're training for a particular industry, but universities must prepare them instead for work in any industry. Universities should be treating graduate students much the same way; all too often, graduate students, especially in the humanities and social sciences, are trained to be faculty. They hone their skills for a job market that is beyond competitive--it is brutal, with hundreds of applicants sometimes jockeying for the same position.
Bloggers of course have had plenty to say. (As do I, but I'm going to let a round-up stand in for my own still-garbled thinking on Taylor's suggestions.)
Marc Bousquet offers perhaps the most searing critique of the op-ed:
Dean Dad brings an administrator's perspective to the article:
Laura Blankenship (AKA Geeky Mom) of Emerging Technologies Consulting sees some possibility in Taylor's vision of interdisciplinary undergraduate collaborations:
Cathy Davidson of he Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) sees Taylor's piece as short-sighted, but only in that he lacks a sense of recent history:
Michael Campana points out other collaborations envisioned by Taylor that are already taking place within water resources programs at universities around the U.S.
Joseph Shahadi takes issue with Taylor's call to abolish tenure and impose mandatory retirement:
After reading the Taylor article and others of its ilk, Historiann wonders if members of any other industry as regularly ridicule their profession in the pages of the New York Times. She comments,
I heart Historiann.
After reading her comments, I suspect Oona Eisenstadt will also become a new favorite of mine:
Bobba Lynx of Cranky in Academe takes issue with both Taylor and Erin O'Connor's praise of his article:
Michael Bérubé uses the Taylor article as an excuse to write, very thoughtfully I think, about the difference between disciplines and departments:
Natalia Cicere takes this critique a step further, saying bluntly that Taylor "confuses interdisciplinarity with adisciplinarity."
Your thoughts? Which of Taylor's suggestions, if any, speak to you? Which are the crackpot divagations of, to borrow Historiann's term, an old fart?
This past weekend, I considered a critique of universities as abusive employers and suggested that American universities are, in some ways, profoundly broken. Mark Taylor, chair of the religious studies department at Columbia University, takes this critique to its (il)logical conclusion, calling for us to "End the University as We Know It." He begins with this analogy:
Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
Taylor is a fan of interdisciplinarity. He calls for universities to
Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.
Among his other recommendations:
- Restructure the curriculum, beginning with graduate programs and proceeding as quickly as possible to undergraduate programs.
- Increase collaboration among institutions.
- Transform the traditional dissertation.
- Expand the range of professional options for graduate students.
- Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure.
Click through to the article to read the reasons behind his recommendations, which attracted 437 comments before the editors closed the comment thread. Some comments were appreciative, while others--not so much. Quipped one reader, "Go abolish your own department."
A discussion broke out among readers as to the extent universities should be responsive to market forces, and particularly those of industries that want undergraduates prepared with the skills necessary to join their particular workforces. In my view, universities are where undergraduates develop their critical and creative thinking skills. Undergraduates may enter college thinking they're training for a particular industry, but universities must prepare them instead for work in any industry. Universities should be treating graduate students much the same way; all too often, graduate students, especially in the humanities and social sciences, are trained to be faculty. They hone their skills for a job market that is beyond competitive--it is brutal, with hundreds of applicants sometimes jockeying for the same position.
Bloggers of course have had plenty to say. (As do I, but I'm going to let a round-up stand in for my own still-garbled thinking on Taylor's suggestions.)
Marc Bousquet offers perhaps the most searing critique of the op-ed:
The piece is hilariously out of touch — noting the rise of adjunct labor, the Columbia philosopher of religion and author of 20 books wrings his hands that per-course pay is “as low as” $5,000 dollars a class.
BWAAA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
Reality? Annual income for many adjuncts is about $5,000 dollars a year. On pay that can be lower than a grand per class.
They’re on food stamps.
But sure, you’re right. The problem is that we need to end tenure. When we end tenure, the market will insure that these folks are paid fairly, that persons with Ph.D.’s will be able to work for those wages.
Oh, crap, wait. As anyone actually paying attention has observed, we’ve ALREADY ended tenure. With the overwhelming majority of faculty off the tenure track, and most of teaching work being done by them, by students, and professional staff, tenured appointments are basically the privilege of a) a retiring generation b) grant-getters and c) the candidate pool for administration.
Dean Dad brings an administrator's perspective to the article:
Yes, the existing structures are clunky and overtaxed and frequently asinine. They survive because they address certain problems. The way around them is not to wish those problems away or to postulate a world in which every college is modeled on a graduate seminar at Columbia. It's to come up with alternatives that solve those problems better. Prof. Taylor's model could be a lot of fun on a very small scale, like a think tank. But as a blueprint for higher ed across America, it's a farce.
The reality of higher ed in America is mobility. People move from one institution to another all the time. We've developed an admittedly frustrating common language to make that kind of movement possible. Replacing that common language with a babel of tongues is not a serious answer, and replacing what little common knowledge that clusters of scholars share – canons or classics or traditions – with whatever seems convenient at the time would only make matters worse. Disciplines are arbitrary and flawed, but random fads are even worse. And incompatible random fads at different institutions would be disastrous.
Laura Blankenship (AKA Geeky Mom) of Emerging Technologies Consulting sees some possibility in Taylor's vision of interdisciplinary undergraduate collaborations:
I also see what a fabulous learning experience this was for students. I could envision parallel systems here, where students are required to take courses that are interdisciplinary, but still have majors. And these courses could be centered around a common theme, so that there’s a common language for the students, but it would be good to have the math majors talking to the English majors.
Cathy Davidson of he Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) sees Taylor's piece as short-sighted, but only in that he lacks a sense of recent history:
My one regret is that it is a bit Rip Van Winklish in not recognizing that HASTAC and many other organizations dedicated to changing institutions of learning have been working on this for decades. Change is happening everywhere around him--although, sadly, not so much in the elite humanities departments that he is familiar with.
Michael Campana points out other collaborations envisioned by Taylor that are already taking place within water resources programs at universities around the U.S.
Joseph Shahadi takes issue with Taylor's call to abolish tenure and impose mandatory retirement:
While impossible-to-fire tenured Professors are easy targets, the cost to students incurred by forcing their most experienced professors into retirement would be incalculable. Perhaps my judgment is colored by my arguably atypical experience, but rather than withdrawing into their academic dotage the tenured professors I studied with were dynamically involved with their students and passionate about teaching.
After reading the Taylor article and others of its ilk, Historiann wonders if members of any other industry as regularly ridicule their profession in the pages of the New York Times. She comments,
Taylor sure sounds like a department chair bucking for dean: most of his suggestions will cost universities almost nothing because they depend mostly on–wait for it!–volunteer faculty labor. Who else is going to “restructure the curriculum,” “increase collaboration among institutions,” “transform the traditional dissertation,” and “expand the range of professional options for graduate students?” Good luck getting faculty to do that after you abolish tenure–most of us are going to be sure to look out for Number One when that happens, so you can kiss all of our committee work good-bye! (Won’t you miss all of those senior faculty then? “Old farts” with tenure sure are useful for lots and lots of committee work.) But, whoever does the work, Taylor’s suggestions are just collections of fashionable buzzwords about “the intersection of multiple perspectives and approaches,” and preparing students “to adapt to a constantly changing world.”
I heart Historiann.
After reading her comments, I suspect Oona Eisenstadt will also become a new favorite of mine:
An enormously successful academic, aged 64, Taylor wants to abolish the academy at exactly the point where he’s got from it everything he can get. He is, like, sooo over the university; therefore the university is, like, sooo over. Ego anyone? But there’s more. Because in one instance only might Taylor not quite be finished with the academy, namely if it falls. If the called for apocalypse does take place, Taylor will be one of its high priests. He’s setting himself up for real power here. Already vastly famous within the power structure that exists, he can spring to further fame only on its ruins.
[...]
If Taylor had told the university to go to hell when he was a rising academic of 35, I might have given him some respect.
Bobba Lynx of Cranky in Academe takes issue with both Taylor and Erin O'Connor's praise of his article:
I give higher ed more credit: it is a smart animal and can transform itself without the pseudo-radical provocation from the likes of Prof. Taylor. It is here that institutions themselves must be more flexible, and open to the scholarship and kinds of classes they make possible; this may be generational, and seems to already be happening. Shi[f]t happens, and before Profs. O'Connor and Taylor and their ilk go scrambling in peri-apocalyptic survival mode, offering human sacrifices in hopes of appeasing forces over which they sense only minimal ---if any--- control, let's really get at that thought experiment: the larger questions that are diminished by the defensive mentality exhibited in Taylor's piece. The idea that only some radical reconfiguring will save us still has academia stranded on its on island, trying to build its own boat in order to land on the same shore. The larger and more compelling issues are the ones that become demonic forces in O&T species' mind (think of their initials as standing for "zero tenure"): in what kind of a society do we want to live ? If the academy becomes merely reactive instead of constructive, it will ---or has--- lost a great deal of its function in society.
Michael Bérubé uses the Taylor article as an excuse to write, very thoughtfully I think, about the difference between disciplines and departments:
[T]he next time someone complains about the constraints imposed by disciplines, ask yourself (or them!) whether they’re not really complaining about the constraints of departments. And the next time someone claims to be post-disciplinary or anti-disciplinary, ask yourself (but probably not them!) what it would sound like to be “post-intellectual traditions” or “anti-intellectual traditions.”
Natalia Cicere takes this critique a step further, saying bluntly that Taylor "confuses interdisciplinarity with adisciplinarity."
Your thoughts? Which of Taylor's suggestions, if any, speak to you? Which are the crackpot divagations of, to borrow Historiann's term, an old fart?
Monday, April 27, 2009
A book review and giveaway in which I confess I'm ready to move on to (what may seem to you to be) weirder things
Many months ago, I volunteered, via an invitation on Pamela Slim's blog, to serve on an informal advisory board while she drafted her book (due in stores on April 30) Escape from Cubicle Nation. Periodically she would send out e-mails with insightful questions asking for anecdotes about a time when something in our lives as corporate drones went off the rails, or how we made our own escapes from cubicle nation. I never felt quite ready to give Pam an answer to any of these questions because I hadn't really worked for a big corporation, though I certainly have spent time in cubicles and their equivalents. I escaped, for many years, from cubicle nation by going to graduate school, which I thought would forever secure my release from office dronedom.
As the months passed, it became clear that much of what Pam was writing was geared at people who already had experienced some success and garnered some respect in their corners of corporate America and were wondering if they were crazy for thinking it was time to jump ship to, in one of Pam's examples, a doggy daycare business. I began to suspect I might not be in her target audience.
So I remained silent, and thus I felt a bit guilty when Pam sent a signed hardback copy of the book to me, as she did to all members of the book's advisory board. But as soon as I cracked open the book, I knew, finally, that I am--as are many of you, I suspect--the implied readership of Escape from Cubicle Nation.
Those of us in higher ed have known for a long time that the research university is in bed with corporate interests. (For an excellent overview of this phenomenon, see "The Kept University" in the March 2000 Atlantic Monthly.) And those of us who have worked as faculty or staff (but oh, especially as staff) at universities, or who have read Dean Dad's blog for any length of time, know that the university itself is increasingly organized along corporate lines. We know what it's like to be managed, to not be listened to, to be hired on one pretense and then asked to do something else entirely, thanks to that "and other duties as assigned" clause in our job descriptions. Increasingly, as universities slash their budgets, we're learning what really matters to them. (Hint: it isn't teaching, and it isn't the arts, humanities, and cultural studies.)
I'm fortunate to have a position among truly excellent peers in a teaching center whose (retiring!) director shields us, I suspect, from some of the mandates from above. As his time with our center wanes, I'm growing increasingly nervous about what will happen to our center's mission--and with good reason, as no one has invited anyone from our center to participate in the search for a new director (each director is a Senate faculty member and serves a three-year term). Some directors are very laissez-faire, letting the staff develop programs as we see fit, while others are more interventionist. In the case of our current brilliant director, the intervention has been much appreciated, but I fear I will not enjoy the intervention so much when it becomes managerial. Currently, I have a good deal of freedom to design and implement programs and communications for the center, as long as the programs don't cost us anything beyond my salary and perhaps a few hours' time from our administrative staff.
But, as I've said before: In December, we're literally moving from our lovely windowless basement offices to cubes in a 50-year-old "temporary" building/tin shed. We'll be sharing two big cube farms with staff from related units (synergy!), and in each room there will be about 15 people, with one "hotelling" office we can reserve for when we need to have a private conversation. You can imagine how well this plan is going to work. . .
Add to this disappointment my experience of the job falling through at Awesome University. From what I can suss out, there was a difference of opinion between the faculty and staff on the search committee and the administration, with the administration winning, as administrations tend to do. So even at Awesome University, things can suck. Yay.
Anyway, back to Pam's book. I knew from the moment I saw such chapter titles and section headings as "If It Is So Bad, Then Why Am I Afraid to Leave?" and "I Am 35, Divorced, and Live in a Van Down by the River" that Pam was speaking to my fears. After all, I worked damn hard for my Ph.D., and I desperately wanted that tenure-track faculty job. When I didn't get it, and I had to settle for the consolation prize of adjuncting or a staff position, when I accepted my first staff position (as an instructional technologist) I felt that at least I was applying my knowledge and skills in the arena where they were most respected and perhaps needed. I also felt grateful for being able to stay at the university where I had already cultivated a broad network of contacts among faculty and staff.
Why the hell would I want to move on to something else? (Aside from the fact that my therapist pointed out I might be making twice as much money if I were working in private industry.) I have health insurance, decent (by university staff standards) pay, and I believe, to some extent, in the mission of higher education--insofar as it advances liberal arts thinking and enriches community life.
I'm not crazy
Pam's book tells me I'm not crazy. Which--although I appreciate my friends' moral support when I express my dissatisfaction--is such a relief to hear from an objective outsider.
My therapist cautioned me today that I may be still mourning the loss of the opportunity at Awesome University and therefore in peril of investing too much hope into Pam's book.
Still, I keep telling myself: I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy.
I like my job, but I don't belong at this university any more.
I'm not sure if there is an organization where I belong.
This frightens the bejeebus out of me.
It's really hard to admit to academics and to my family of educators that I have an entrepreneurial streak. I believe in Creative Commons, I believe in open source, I believe in open educational resources--I believe, in short, in all that great stuff that so often gets set up as the opposite of the marketplace and of the dreaded "monetization."
But at the same time I desperately want to find a way to "monetize" what I know in the form of services and, yes, products I might provide. I feel I could have an impact on far greater numbers of people by working outside of the academy than I do as a staff member inside of it. (Note: by staff, I mean "not tenure-track faculty.")
Options
I also know that I'm in no position, financially speaking, to quit my current job.
My options, as I see them, are these, each of which is mutually exclusive from the other because of time constraints:
- Buck up and deal, and continue to adjunct elsewhere so that I can (a) keep my teaching skills sharp and (b) make some extra cash.
- Cut down pretty dramatically on my living expenses so that I can cut back on my working hours a little bit. Rededicate myself to research, try to get a book contract from my dissertation, and throw myself back on the (incredibly depressing) academic job market in the next year or two in the hopes of getting a tenure-track job at a small liberal arts college.
- Again, cut down on my living expenses so that I can cut back on my working hours. Experiment with creating products and services on the side, related (and I don't want to disclose too much here, both out of an embarrassment I'm still trying to overcome--and I think Pam's book will help more with that--and out of a desire not to reveal my idea to potential competitors) to K-16 education and/or museums.
All of this is tempered, of course, by Mr. Trillwing's employment in the increasingly perilous newspaper industry and his desire to move over to life coaching and writing, both of which he's very, very good at.
Back to the book
I haven't read all the way through Escape from Cubicle Nation yet, but I will tell you that I'm looking forward to chapter 11, "Test Often and Fail Fast: The Art of Prototypes and Samples." The chapter title appeals to me as a teacher, as isn't teaching often about prototyping and testing and, often, failing and learning from our mistakes? But it also addresses some fears that are, I'm sure, familiar to academics:
Book Giveaway
The book is definitely worth checking out. And, as it happens, I have a second signed copy because Pam offered a "buy one, get a second signed copy free" deal, and my second signed copy arrived the same day as my free advisory board copy.
I want to give this second copy away to an academic or (recently) former academic who, like me, feels he or she is at (or approaching) a transition point or (let's call it what it is) a crisis of conscience.
To get this second signed copy of the book, you need to do the following:
Share with me your own thinking on this topic of moving to a new place within or away from academia, and why you think Pam's book might help you. Address in particular why you think a book that is pro-entrepreneurialism would be a worthwhile resource.
You can share your story in one of three ways:
1. Blog it, then leave a link to your post in the comments of this one.
2. Leave your story in a comment on this post.
3. Send me your story in an e-mail to trillwing -at- gmail -dot- com. I understand some of you aren't as eager as I am to come out of the entrepreneurial closet, so I won't reveal your name or identifying details if you contact me in this manner.
I'll be picking the winner on Friday, May 8 and either announcing the winner on my blog or contacting the person privately, as appropriate.
Please blog and tweet about this giveaway as the spirit moves you. I'd love to hear from fellow academics (and former academics) what you're thinking about where you are and where you're going.
As the months passed, it became clear that much of what Pam was writing was geared at people who already had experienced some success and garnered some respect in their corners of corporate America and were wondering if they were crazy for thinking it was time to jump ship to, in one of Pam's examples, a doggy daycare business. I began to suspect I might not be in her target audience.
So I remained silent, and thus I felt a bit guilty when Pam sent a signed hardback copy of the book to me, as she did to all members of the book's advisory board. But as soon as I cracked open the book, I knew, finally, that I am--as are many of you, I suspect--the implied readership of Escape from Cubicle Nation.
Those of us in higher ed have known for a long time that the research university is in bed with corporate interests. (For an excellent overview of this phenomenon, see "The Kept University" in the March 2000 Atlantic Monthly.) And those of us who have worked as faculty or staff (but oh, especially as staff) at universities, or who have read Dean Dad's blog for any length of time, know that the university itself is increasingly organized along corporate lines. We know what it's like to be managed, to not be listened to, to be hired on one pretense and then asked to do something else entirely, thanks to that "and other duties as assigned" clause in our job descriptions. Increasingly, as universities slash their budgets, we're learning what really matters to them. (Hint: it isn't teaching, and it isn't the arts, humanities, and cultural studies.)
I'm fortunate to have a position among truly excellent peers in a teaching center whose (retiring!) director shields us, I suspect, from some of the mandates from above. As his time with our center wanes, I'm growing increasingly nervous about what will happen to our center's mission--and with good reason, as no one has invited anyone from our center to participate in the search for a new director (each director is a Senate faculty member and serves a three-year term). Some directors are very laissez-faire, letting the staff develop programs as we see fit, while others are more interventionist. In the case of our current brilliant director, the intervention has been much appreciated, but I fear I will not enjoy the intervention so much when it becomes managerial. Currently, I have a good deal of freedom to design and implement programs and communications for the center, as long as the programs don't cost us anything beyond my salary and perhaps a few hours' time from our administrative staff.
But, as I've said before: In December, we're literally moving from our lovely windowless basement offices to cubes in a 50-year-old "temporary" building/tin shed. We'll be sharing two big cube farms with staff from related units (synergy!), and in each room there will be about 15 people, with one "hotelling" office we can reserve for when we need to have a private conversation. You can imagine how well this plan is going to work. . .
Add to this disappointment my experience of the job falling through at Awesome University. From what I can suss out, there was a difference of opinion between the faculty and staff on the search committee and the administration, with the administration winning, as administrations tend to do. So even at Awesome University, things can suck. Yay.
Anyway, back to Pam's book. I knew from the moment I saw such chapter titles and section headings as "If It Is So Bad, Then Why Am I Afraid to Leave?" and "I Am 35, Divorced, and Live in a Van Down by the River" that Pam was speaking to my fears. After all, I worked damn hard for my Ph.D., and I desperately wanted that tenure-track faculty job. When I didn't get it, and I had to settle for the consolation prize of adjuncting or a staff position, when I accepted my first staff position (as an instructional technologist) I felt that at least I was applying my knowledge and skills in the arena where they were most respected and perhaps needed. I also felt grateful for being able to stay at the university where I had already cultivated a broad network of contacts among faculty and staff.
Why the hell would I want to move on to something else? (Aside from the fact that my therapist pointed out I might be making twice as much money if I were working in private industry.) I have health insurance, decent (by university staff standards) pay, and I believe, to some extent, in the mission of higher education--insofar as it advances liberal arts thinking and enriches community life.
I'm not crazy
Pam's book tells me I'm not crazy. Which--although I appreciate my friends' moral support when I express my dissatisfaction--is such a relief to hear from an objective outsider.
My therapist cautioned me today that I may be still mourning the loss of the opportunity at Awesome University and therefore in peril of investing too much hope into Pam's book.
Still, I keep telling myself: I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy.
I like my job, but I don't belong at this university any more.
I'm not sure if there is an organization where I belong.
This frightens the bejeebus out of me.
It's really hard to admit to academics and to my family of educators that I have an entrepreneurial streak. I believe in Creative Commons, I believe in open source, I believe in open educational resources--I believe, in short, in all that great stuff that so often gets set up as the opposite of the marketplace and of the dreaded "monetization."
But at the same time I desperately want to find a way to "monetize" what I know in the form of services and, yes, products I might provide. I feel I could have an impact on far greater numbers of people by working outside of the academy than I do as a staff member inside of it. (Note: by staff, I mean "not tenure-track faculty.")
Options
I also know that I'm in no position, financially speaking, to quit my current job.
My options, as I see them, are these, each of which is mutually exclusive from the other because of time constraints:
- Buck up and deal, and continue to adjunct elsewhere so that I can (a) keep my teaching skills sharp and (b) make some extra cash.
- Cut down pretty dramatically on my living expenses so that I can cut back on my working hours a little bit. Rededicate myself to research, try to get a book contract from my dissertation, and throw myself back on the (incredibly depressing) academic job market in the next year or two in the hopes of getting a tenure-track job at a small liberal arts college.
- Again, cut down on my living expenses so that I can cut back on my working hours. Experiment with creating products and services on the side, related (and I don't want to disclose too much here, both out of an embarrassment I'm still trying to overcome--and I think Pam's book will help more with that--and out of a desire not to reveal my idea to potential competitors) to K-16 education and/or museums.
All of this is tempered, of course, by Mr. Trillwing's employment in the increasingly perilous newspaper industry and his desire to move over to life coaching and writing, both of which he's very, very good at.
Back to the book
I haven't read all the way through Escape from Cubicle Nation yet, but I will tell you that I'm looking forward to chapter 11, "Test Often and Fail Fast: The Art of Prototypes and Samples." The chapter title appeals to me as a teacher, as isn't teaching often about prototyping and testing and, often, failing and learning from our mistakes? But it also addresses some fears that are, I'm sure, familiar to academics:
- What if it doesn't turn out the way you had imagined?
- What if no one likes it?
- What if no one buys it?
- What if someone else does it better?
- What if you have been wasting your time and should have done something else?
Book Giveaway
The book is definitely worth checking out. And, as it happens, I have a second signed copy because Pam offered a "buy one, get a second signed copy free" deal, and my second signed copy arrived the same day as my free advisory board copy.
I want to give this second copy away to an academic or (recently) former academic who, like me, feels he or she is at (or approaching) a transition point or (let's call it what it is) a crisis of conscience.
To get this second signed copy of the book, you need to do the following:
Share with me your own thinking on this topic of moving to a new place within or away from academia, and why you think Pam's book might help you. Address in particular why you think a book that is pro-entrepreneurialism would be a worthwhile resource.
You can share your story in one of three ways:
1. Blog it, then leave a link to your post in the comments of this one.
2. Leave your story in a comment on this post.
3. Send me your story in an e-mail to trillwing -at- gmail -dot- com. I understand some of you aren't as eager as I am to come out of the entrepreneurial closet, so I won't reveal your name or identifying details if you contact me in this manner.
I'll be picking the winner on Friday, May 8 and either announcing the winner on my blog or contacting the person privately, as appropriate.
Please blog and tweet about this giveaway as the spirit moves you. I'd love to hear from fellow academics (and former academics) what you're thinking about where you are and where you're going.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Can you hear me now?
In another sign of the institutional apocalypse, yesterday I heard this story from a faculty member in the sciences:
So I tweeted this, and the news was soon confirmed via Twitter by a colleague in a humanities department, who wrote (sarcastically), "Yup. it's true. thank goodness twitter is free. we're all moving to twitter."
No phones in faculty offices. (Safety first! It's especially funny because on Thursday the campus tested the "Warn Me" emergency system by leaving--you guessed it--voicemail messages on all campus phones.) So here's the next question: If you're faculty, would you give your cell number to your students? (Especially knowing that there are many places on campus that still don't get cell service, especially the ubiquitous tin-can "temporary" buildings from the 60s?)
Next up: Pay-per-e-mail internet service, à la 1994?
*Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies
I called [Professor Bob Z] today and got the message that his phone had been disconnected. So I called the department office to ask what his new number was. And the department admin told me that many of the faculty phones in HArCS* had been disconnected to save money. (The science prof widens her eyes and drops her jaw in disbelief.) So I asked how I could reach him. And she says, "His office is just down the hall. I could stick my head into the hallway and call his name, and if he's here, he'll hear me."Pro-fes-sion-al.
So I tweeted this, and the news was soon confirmed via Twitter by a colleague in a humanities department, who wrote (sarcastically), "Yup. it's true. thank goodness twitter is free. we're all moving to twitter."
No phones in faculty offices. (Safety first! It's especially funny because on Thursday the campus tested the "Warn Me" emergency system by leaving--you guessed it--voicemail messages on all campus phones.) So here's the next question: If you're faculty, would you give your cell number to your students? (Especially knowing that there are many places on campus that still don't get cell service, especially the ubiquitous tin-can "temporary" buildings from the 60s?)
Next up: Pay-per-e-mail internet service, à la 1994?
*Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Update on the Awesome University job
Someone at Awesome University was kind enough to call me unofficially yesterday to fill me in on what's going on with the teaching center director job there.
Without divulging too many details that were offered in confidence, it sounds as if I could very much have had the job--if a difference of opinion between the committee and administrators at AU hadn't led to cancellation of the position. It likely will be relisted next year, but it may be a staff job with teaching responsibilities (much like the one I have now) instead of the dreamy tenure-track faculty job it was.
So that sucks. Big time.
I'll live.
I think the worst of it will hit on Monday when I sit back down at my desk. You know how when you're thinking about a new job, you begin to fantasize about the things you do for your current job that aren't your favorite tasks, and how soon you'll get to leave them behind? Yeah, I had started to do that. So I'll need to refocus on Monday.
At the same time, I'm seeing my current institution as an increasingly unstable place to be, economically speaking, and an increasingly undesirable place to be professionally (see: impending move to cubicle farm, likely furloughs, already frozen salary, likely temporary or permanent cuts in salary).
But the great cosmic wheel of my professional development continues to turn, and another really interesting possibility has fallen into my lap, one outside the academy working with a large coalition of regional cultural institutions. I don't have any connections at this organization, but it does intersect with both my professional experience and--imagine this!--my dissertation research.
Meanwhile, my support system here has kicked into high gear, with friends and colleagues offering assorted e-mails, phone calls, and, yesterday, a good lunch accompanied by some strong, er, lemonade. I'm getting lots of reassurance that I'm "amazing," "a gift," "terrifically talented, imaginative, and thorough," etc., so on balance I guess I'm OK. Thanks for the self-esteem boost, colleagues!
Without divulging too many details that were offered in confidence, it sounds as if I could very much have had the job--if a difference of opinion between the committee and administrators at AU hadn't led to cancellation of the position. It likely will be relisted next year, but it may be a staff job with teaching responsibilities (much like the one I have now) instead of the dreamy tenure-track faculty job it was.
So that sucks. Big time.
I'll live.
I think the worst of it will hit on Monday when I sit back down at my desk. You know how when you're thinking about a new job, you begin to fantasize about the things you do for your current job that aren't your favorite tasks, and how soon you'll get to leave them behind? Yeah, I had started to do that. So I'll need to refocus on Monday.
At the same time, I'm seeing my current institution as an increasingly unstable place to be, economically speaking, and an increasingly undesirable place to be professionally (see: impending move to cubicle farm, likely furloughs, already frozen salary, likely temporary or permanent cuts in salary).
But the great cosmic wheel of my professional development continues to turn, and another really interesting possibility has fallen into my lap, one outside the academy working with a large coalition of regional cultural institutions. I don't have any connections at this organization, but it does intersect with both my professional experience and--imagine this!--my dissertation research.
Meanwhile, my support system here has kicked into high gear, with friends and colleagues offering assorted e-mails, phone calls, and, yesterday, a good lunch accompanied by some strong, er, lemonade. I'm getting lots of reassurance that I'm "amazing," "a gift," "terrifically talented, imaginative, and thorough," etc., so on balance I guess I'm OK. Thanks for the self-esteem boost, colleagues!
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Using clickers in the university classroom
Recently "clickers"--a remote control-like personal response system universities are adopting in droves--have (quite literally) made the news. NPR ran a story on them, and The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription only) provided an analysis of clicker economics and a critique of their use. (If you don't have a Chronicle subscription, Margaret Soltan of University Diaries provides the article in its entirety.)
So: Clickers--good or evil? That seems to be the question everyone is asking, and in many ways it's an annoying question. On the one hand, I think it's important to ask if clickers are useful in the first place. On the other hand, since they are being widely adopted, it's clear many faculty do find them useful in one way or another. The question then becomes, at least for teaching consultants like myself, "How can we ensure clickers are being used in a way that's pedagogically sound?" In particular, how might clickers improve students' experience in large-enrollment courses?
Near the end of the Chronicle article, Michael Bugeja writes,
Laura Blankenship (AKA Geeky Mom, whom I seem to be citing a lot these days) has a post about the importance of cost-benefit analysis in adopting new technologies to support teaching and learning.
I agree with both Bugeja and Blankenship: all parties at a university--students, faculty, IT folks, teaching centers, and administrators--must collaborate in selecting the best technologies for students. Too frequently, this isn't the case.
The best practices, it seems to me, for adopting clickers at a university include*:
Which begs the question: Is there a meaningful way to use clickers?
I'm no booster for clickers, particularly when I suspect they're being used as a substitute for true student engagement and interaction. Yet in very large enrollment classes--of more than 100 students, say--clickers can provide instructors with a way of gauging what students are learning.
For example, say an instructor asks a question of a large class and provides three possible answers (A, B, and C). She then asks students to raise their hands if they believe A is the correct answer, then B, then C. Inevitably, large numbers of students aren't raising their hands because they either aren't paying attention or, more likely in my experience, they worry about embarrassing themselves by raising their hands for an incorrect answer. With clickers, students can answer these questions confidentially. Faculty might then more accurately determine what proportion of a class is not understanding what's going on.
Since clicker systems have an option to identify individual students to the instructor, instructors could ask students to "log in" to their clickers for such an exercise. This would encourage even higher participation--particularly if a portion of the course grade was based on participation, which is not usually the case in large lecture courses. In my opinion, it's not wise to grade student responses to on-the-fly questions like the example given in the previous paragraph, but recording individual student responses would help faculty and teaching assistants identify students who regularly respond with incorrect answers and target them for additional, small-group assistance.
I have also heard of professors asking students to individually punch in an answer--A, B, C, D, or E, for example--then confer with their fellow students before answering the question a second time. Such a practice encourages students to help one another and reinforces student learning by having students justify their answers, explain how they arrived at their answers, and possibly even teach one another a concept. It also may reinforce for the faculty member the importance of giving students time to engage with and learn from one another.
I'm not sure those who have written about clickers recently have considered the promise of this technology in very large enrollment classes. For example, Margaret Soltan dismisses them with this comment:
Certainly there are many instances--and probably even a majority of them--where clickers are not implemented thoughtfully. That's why it's important that the best practices I outline above are followed.
I also agree wholeheartedly with Historiann's assessment:
Amen. The real solution to the problem of large-enrollment courses would be to stop the factory farming of undergraduates. At my university we now have science courses of more than 900 students. That's not just insane; it's criminal. However, as a staff member of a teaching center, I can make my displeasure with that system known, and I can help interested faculty undertake research on the learning outcomes of large-enrollment classes versus seminars, but in the end the juggernaut of the university will bowl over those of us who try to stand in its way. After all, large classes give faculty more time for research (although I've found that adjuncts teach these large introductory classes much of the time, and adjuncts typically aren't required to undertake research), and large classes are very cost-effective, as they require only one faculty member and a small army of poorly paid TAs or readers rather than a very large department of more highly paid professors ready to meet with students in more intimate settings.
Until the day when large universities collapse under their own weight and those of us who care can say "I told you so," we're stuck with improvising solutions. And I think, used thoughtfully, that clickers provide some small hope of improving students' motivation and ability to learn.
*I owe a debt of gratitude to my local clicker guru, Robert Ralston of the University of California, Davis, who has spent years figuring out how these systems work, and who has reminded me of their benefits and liabilities on many an occasion.
So: Clickers--good or evil? That seems to be the question everyone is asking, and in many ways it's an annoying question. On the one hand, I think it's important to ask if clickers are useful in the first place. On the other hand, since they are being widely adopted, it's clear many faculty do find them useful in one way or another. The question then becomes, at least for teaching consultants like myself, "How can we ensure clickers are being used in a way that's pedagogically sound?" In particular, how might clickers improve students' experience in large-enrollment courses?
Near the end of the Chronicle article, Michael Bugeja writes,
I am still wary of clickers, and I asked professors in my unit if they were using them.
Jay Newell, who teaches advertising, consulted with his student advisory committee about using clickers in his large class. The students were against clickers, he observed: "One said that she and her friends would slow down lectures by inputting incorrect answers to poll questions. Another said that it was not unusual to have one student bring multiple clickers as a favor to friends in classes in which clicker responses were used to award credit."
I was intrigued that Newell had consulted with students and had created an advisory committee, an idea recommended by the same center for excellence in learning and teaching whose e-mail message triggered this essay.
And that's the moral of the story. Institutions have much to learn from students about the cost and effectiveness of technology. Chief information officers need to be consulted before departments invest in expensive for-profit consumer technologies. Professors need to realize that technology comes at a price, even when advertised as "free." Finally, administrators need to double their efforts at cost containment, demanding assessment before investment, especially in schemes that bypass mandated accountability standards.
Laura Blankenship (AKA Geeky Mom, whom I seem to be citing a lot these days) has a post about the importance of cost-benefit analysis in adopting new technologies to support teaching and learning.
I agree with both Bugeja and Blankenship: all parties at a university--students, faculty, IT folks, teaching centers, and administrators--must collaborate in selecting the best technologies for students. Too frequently, this isn't the case.
The best practices, it seems to me, for adopting clickers at a university include*:
- Having academic technology services (or IT or whatever department is in charge of these things at your institution) set up classroom pilots of clicker systems from several different vendors.
- Selecting from among these many vendors the clicker system that is most flexible, is platform agnostic (e.g. works on both Macs and PCs), and is inexpensive for students. This clicker system, and only this clicker system, would then be made available through the campus bookstore.
- Working with vendors to provide students with the best possible deal. In the best-case scenario, students would pay once for a clicker that they could use throughout their college years, and then sell it back (assuming the technology is still current) at similar buyback rates for textbooks (best case scenario: the bookstore pays 50% of the clicker's original cost to buy it back from the student). Students would not pay per-class or per-term for clicker service; there would only be the one-time purchase cost.
- Avoiding costly installation of clicker technology in classrooms. Instead, select a system that allows instructors to carry around a small box-type receiver that can be plugged into their laptops and easily receive feedback from student clickers, even if the clickers aren't in a direct line of sight from the box.
- Ensuring that faculty in adjacent classrooms could use clickers without interfering with one another's sessions. Clicker systems should be multichannel. If memory serves, the system at my university offers 13 simultaneous channels in a concentrated area.
- Training faculty on the systems prior to the start of the academic term, and having quick-response teams of academic technology experts who could be in a classroom within three minutes. Again, this is the goal of classroom technology support folks at my university, and it's larger than 5,000 acres, so I don't want to hear any complaining from people on 300-acre campuses. :)
- Coordinating with the campus teaching center and any other relevant campus units (e.g. the student disabilities center) to ensure the best possible learning outcomes for clickers. This means not just holding workshops--which faculty tend to be loath to attend, in my opinion--but finding out from the bookstore who has ordered clicker systems and then working proactively with those faculty to ensure they are implementing clickers in a meaningful way.
Which begs the question: Is there a meaningful way to use clickers?
I'm no booster for clickers, particularly when I suspect they're being used as a substitute for true student engagement and interaction. Yet in very large enrollment classes--of more than 100 students, say--clickers can provide instructors with a way of gauging what students are learning.
For example, say an instructor asks a question of a large class and provides three possible answers (A, B, and C). She then asks students to raise their hands if they believe A is the correct answer, then B, then C. Inevitably, large numbers of students aren't raising their hands because they either aren't paying attention or, more likely in my experience, they worry about embarrassing themselves by raising their hands for an incorrect answer. With clickers, students can answer these questions confidentially. Faculty might then more accurately determine what proportion of a class is not understanding what's going on.
Since clicker systems have an option to identify individual students to the instructor, instructors could ask students to "log in" to their clickers for such an exercise. This would encourage even higher participation--particularly if a portion of the course grade was based on participation, which is not usually the case in large lecture courses. In my opinion, it's not wise to grade student responses to on-the-fly questions like the example given in the previous paragraph, but recording individual student responses would help faculty and teaching assistants identify students who regularly respond with incorrect answers and target them for additional, small-group assistance.
I have also heard of professors asking students to individually punch in an answer--A, B, C, D, or E, for example--then confer with their fellow students before answering the question a second time. Such a practice encourages students to help one another and reinforces student learning by having students justify their answers, explain how they arrived at their answers, and possibly even teach one another a concept. It also may reinforce for the faculty member the importance of giving students time to engage with and learn from one another.
I'm not sure those who have written about clickers recently have considered the promise of this technology in very large enrollment classes. For example, Margaret Soltan dismisses them with this comment:
Once again we take note of the way an alliance of commercial interests and slothful professors creates a shitty, expensive education for American students.
Certainly there are many instances--and probably even a majority of them--where clickers are not implemented thoughtfully. That's why it's important that the best practices I outline above are followed.
I also agree wholeheartedly with Historiann's assessment:
I can’t help thinking that all of the problems teachers may experience with not knowing if students are getting anything out of lectures could be solved by the old-fashioned technology used by top-notch prep schools and liberal arts colleges throughout history: classes small enough (say, up to 40) where professors know the students’ names and can gauge student interest and throw out provocative questions to keep student attention.
Amen. The real solution to the problem of large-enrollment courses would be to stop the factory farming of undergraduates. At my university we now have science courses of more than 900 students. That's not just insane; it's criminal. However, as a staff member of a teaching center, I can make my displeasure with that system known, and I can help interested faculty undertake research on the learning outcomes of large-enrollment classes versus seminars, but in the end the juggernaut of the university will bowl over those of us who try to stand in its way. After all, large classes give faculty more time for research (although I've found that adjuncts teach these large introductory classes much of the time, and adjuncts typically aren't required to undertake research), and large classes are very cost-effective, as they require only one faculty member and a small army of poorly paid TAs or readers rather than a very large department of more highly paid professors ready to meet with students in more intimate settings.
Until the day when large universities collapse under their own weight and those of us who care can say "I told you so," we're stuck with improvising solutions. And I think, used thoughtfully, that clickers provide some small hope of improving students' motivation and ability to learn.
*I owe a debt of gratitude to my local clicker guru, Robert Ralston of the University of California, Davis, who has spent years figuring out how these systems work, and who has reminded me of their benefits and liabilities on many an occasion.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
The academic caste system in an age of budget cuts
(Cross-posted at BlogHer)
At the university, whose work is more valuable--a professor's or an administrative assistant's? In a time of budget cuts, should the professor--who might make vastly more than the administrative assistant--be expected to sacrifice proportionately, or should academics be immune from the slings and arrows of budgetary fortune? These and other issues have been raised these past few weeks during a wide-ranging discussion in the academic blogosphere.
Along with auto makers and financial firms and everyone else, many, if not most, U.S. colleges and universities are hurting. My own institution announced no staff would be getting raises this year, the office of the university president proposed a 23 percent workforce reduction in its own staff of 1,749 and has taken a budget cut of $60 million, and the university system will likely curb enrollments of first-year students.
At many universities, everyone--from Provosts who have been protecting their favorite programs to mailroom staff--has been asked to make sacrifices. Many in the academic blogosphere are saying the distribution of cuts is not exactly fair. Dean Dad summarizes the first part of this conversation, two posts by Tenured Radical and Dr. Crazy:
Dean Dad puzzles through the difference between being tenured and being unionized, and opines that it's not fair for faculty to be both tenured and unionized. The benefits of tenure--owning a job for your professional lifetime--come in exchange for institutional stewardship responsibilities, which includes institutional sacrifice. Unionization, on the other hand, is more clearly a labor-management situation, where the laborers (Dean Dad refers specifically to adjunct faculty here) can be expected to protect their own self-interest over that of the institution because it's likely the institution has in the past not protected this class of faculty and staff.
Dr. Crazy frames her perspective more in terms of being asked to give more and more--in terms of labor, salary cuts, and cuts to her budget. She writes,
In another post, she rebuts Dean Dad's implication that tenured faculty should be asked to sacrifice equally across the disciplines and ranks:
Amen. I was recently in a meeting on the status of women on my campus, and one of the scientists expressed the belief that it's possible to undertake humanities scholarship and teaching without a budget, whereas her research required real money. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, and it chaps my hide when scientists brush off the costs of my research--for which I travel enough to sometimes need temporary housing instead of just a motel room--as incidental. Humanities folks do draw the short straw, in terms of budget and prestige, at many large research institutions.
That said, Tenured Radical reminds us that tenure-track faculty (yes, even in the humanities) have plenty to be grateful for. She provides an excellent list of questions about faculty privilege during tough budgetary times, and concludes with this reflection:
Historiann points out that it's not fair to only ask teaching faculty to make cuts, and she provides an excellent illustration of the ways that faculty spend money throughout the day and year:
In a comment on another post by Historiann, Ann Bartow provides a list of the dozen ways she as a faculty member is asked to donate monetarily to the university community. "The requests are relentless and sometimes obnoxious," she writes, "and no one seems to care how many different times we get asked for money."
Geeky Mom comes at the issue of faculty-staff equity from the perspective of someone who has been both adjunct faculty and full-time staff:
Amen again. I, too, have served--continue to serve--as both adjunct faculty and staff, and in my experience neither category of employment gets the respect it deserves from the university. Whether it means teaching the classes that tenure-track faculty either don't want to teach or (let's be honest) don't have the instructional chops to teach well (such as courses with very large enrollments), assisting students with finding options to study abroad, or tracking grants for faculty, adjuncts and staff tend to be the first to suffer from budget and staff cuts.
Roxie wonders why there hasn't been a bailout proposed for the nation's educational institutions:
An excellent question. After all, universities make serious contributions to local, state, and national economies that can be measured in a variety of ways, and they provide as well less tangible benefits such as reduced crime rates in many communities near universities, improved health of individuals in that community, and increased civic engagement.
Be sure to check out all the posts I linked to here, as there is some terrific discussion going on in the comments.
What are your thoughts? Would you support a bailout package for failing institutions of higher education? And do you think the public would look differently at "state-funded" universities if they knew how small a percentage of the overall budget of some of these universities actually comes from the state rather than from private sources?
At the university, whose work is more valuable--a professor's or an administrative assistant's? In a time of budget cuts, should the professor--who might make vastly more than the administrative assistant--be expected to sacrifice proportionately, or should academics be immune from the slings and arrows of budgetary fortune? These and other issues have been raised these past few weeks during a wide-ranging discussion in the academic blogosphere.
Along with auto makers and financial firms and everyone else, many, if not most, U.S. colleges and universities are hurting. My own institution announced no staff would be getting raises this year, the office of the university president proposed a 23 percent workforce reduction in its own staff of 1,749 and has taken a budget cut of $60 million, and the university system will likely curb enrollments of first-year students.
At many universities, everyone--from Provosts who have been protecting their favorite programs to mailroom staff--has been asked to make sacrifices. Many in the academic blogosphere are saying the distribution of cuts is not exactly fair. Dean Dad summarizes the first part of this conversation, two posts by Tenured Radical and Dr. Crazy:
To oversimplify, TR's position is basically that colleges are communities, and that the members of a community need to share sacrifices in tough times. The idea is that if the community gets a clear sense that the local leadership has a reasonable plan, is sticking to it, is sharing it, is soliciting and listening to input, and isn't pulling any fast ones, then it's fair to include some shared sacrifice in that plan. (Admittedly, that's a long chain of 'ifs,' many of which won't be met in very many cases.) In the case TR outlines, it's reasonable for faculty to accept a pay freeze for a year, given that others are accepting it, too, and that the freeze prevents layoffs. Underlying this perspective, I think, is a nuanced sense of reciprocity as a common obligation. If a single group is singled out for sacrifice, then by all means, resist. But if everybody gives up something, then even a card-carrying lefty could sign on without selling out.
Dr. C's position is less idealistic. She argues that professors are workers, and that workers are entitled to fight for the best deals they can get. She suggests that paeans to 'community' are belied by the weight of her workload, and that given what she already does for her salary, she already (effectively) gave at the office. She seems to suspect that all this 'shared sacrifice' stuff is a sort of surrender by faculty, who are essentially being played for chumps.
Dean Dad puzzles through the difference between being tenured and being unionized, and opines that it's not fair for faculty to be both tenured and unionized. The benefits of tenure--owning a job for your professional lifetime--come in exchange for institutional stewardship responsibilities, which includes institutional sacrifice. Unionization, on the other hand, is more clearly a labor-management situation, where the laborers (Dean Dad refers specifically to adjunct faculty here) can be expected to protect their own self-interest over that of the institution because it's likely the institution has in the past not protected this class of faculty and staff.
Dr. Crazy frames her perspective more in terms of being asked to give more and more--in terms of labor, salary cuts, and cuts to her budget. She writes,
I get really angry when it comes to all of the above. The bottom line is that I work at this place, and every such request that faculty "do their part" makes me feel like my work isn't valued - like I'm not already doing my part by teaching in fucked up classrooms without the equipment that I need, quietly accepting that I have an office with no heat and that's 400 miles away from the printer, teaching four freaking maxed out classes a semester, etc. I feel like people have their hands in my pockets and like they're taking money that is mine and that I earned. And while I get the fact that a university is a special kind of place, blah blah blah, I kind of want to tell everybody that they can fuck off and that I don't make enough on a humanities salary, no matter how giving a heart I possess (and really, I don't possess one of those, but for the sake of argument), to keep a university in the black. Shit, I'm not in the black just in terms of my personal finances. And yet, because of all of the PR surrounding this shit, I feel guilty when I don't give. You know what? Screw it. No more guilt. I'll feel guilty when my student loans are paid off. Until that time, they'll just have to be happy that I do my freaking job.
In another post, she rebuts Dean Dad's implication that tenured faculty should be asked to sacrifice equally across the disciplines and ranks:
Yes, compared with our administrative assistants, or the janitorial staff, I hold a position of privilege. Compared with adjuncts and full-timers not on the tenure track, I hold a position of privilege. But if we compare me to my peers across institutions or even across disciplines within my own institution, I would not characterize my position as one of privilege. I am in a field that bears the brunt of some of the most labor-intensive portions of the general education curriculum; I am in field that has historically been one of the lowest paid; I am in a field where job mobility is about zero once one hits the associate level, and where it's not much better even at the assistant level for all but lateral moves; I am at the lowest funded university in my state, a state with notorious budget problems, and that disparity will likely not be rectified in my lifetime; at the same time, my university's enrollment is rapidly growing and there is an expectation that it will continue to grow by leaps and bounds even without adequate state support for that growth.... I could go on, but I think the gist of what I'm saying here is clear. My job, although I really do enjoy it most days and while I am pleased to be working in the field in which I trained, is not a plum gig.
Amen. I was recently in a meeting on the status of women on my campus, and one of the scientists expressed the belief that it's possible to undertake humanities scholarship and teaching without a budget, whereas her research required real money. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, and it chaps my hide when scientists brush off the costs of my research--for which I travel enough to sometimes need temporary housing instead of just a motel room--as incidental. Humanities folks do draw the short straw, in terms of budget and prestige, at many large research institutions.
That said, Tenured Radical reminds us that tenure-track faculty (yes, even in the humanities) have plenty to be grateful for. She provides an excellent list of questions about faculty privilege during tough budgetary times, and concludes with this reflection:
The strangest thing I have heard -- and I have heard it from more than one person -- is the narrative of sacrifice, in which a faculty member claims to have chosen university teaching when other, far more lucrative work was possible, but in an act of self-abnegation chose to teach the unwashed masses who seem to cluster regularly at private colleges and universities. Having made this sacrifice, the story goes, no others should be required: nay, this person should receive raises while others near and far, working class and middle class people working in soulless occupations, lose their jobs.
While it is not required of us to be grateful for having jobs as unemployment gallops to new highs, it is worth remembering that life isn't fair. When we are not being rewarded with cash prizes for our accomplishments, it might be a good time to figure out if there are personal rewards other than money that cause you to stay committed to teaching and the production of knowledge. If there are not, I strongly suggest you use the safety of your tenured position to explore another line of work that would make you happy.
If not, my advice is this. Gratitude for your job security isn't required, but it might be seemly. And since this doesn't seem to be widely known, let me just say: being a university teacher is not the moral equivalent of being a priest, a social worker, a member of the Peace Corps, a safe-sex worker or a community activist, in which you have traded affluence to serve others. If you think that is the entire reason why you chose to teach and write you are, frankly, delusional, and suffer from profound status anxiety.
Historiann points out that it's not fair to only ask teaching faculty to make cuts, and she provides an excellent illustration of the ways that faculty spend money throughout the day and year:
Can you feel the excellence, my darlings? Let's see if the copier company will be happy to to fix our copier--for no money! How about serving up lunch in the student center to us--for no money! Maybe Shell Oil will donate gasoline for staff and faculty vehicles so that we can get to campus--for no money! I wonder if banks and landlords will forgive mortgages and rents for everyone employed in higher education, so that we can house ourselves for no money! This no money thing could work, just so long as it's not just people in higher education who are doing it for no money!
In a comment on another post by Historiann, Ann Bartow provides a list of the dozen ways she as a faculty member is asked to donate monetarily to the university community. "The requests are relentless and sometimes obnoxious," she writes, "and no one seems to care how many different times we get asked for money."
Geeky Mom comes at the issue of faculty-staff equity from the perspective of someone who has been both adjunct faculty and full-time staff:
On the staff side, when things get tough, the situation is even grimmer (and perhaps this applies to contingent faculty as well, but my experence is the order of layoffs is staff, part-time contingent faculty, full-time contingent faculty). Dr. Crazy acknowledges that she's in a position of privilege as a faculty member. The janitor, whose job gets outsourced, not so much. As Dr. Crazy said, someone earlier in their career hurts more when the raise doesn't come. For many staff, the lack of a raise is the difference between being able to commute to work or not or between paying the heating bill or not. Most staff (and I'm guessing faculty too) have seen their real incomes decline over the years. I experienced a downturn in my first 6 months on the job. I got no raise the first year and only a paltry one the second. The 3 years after that were fine, but still, overall, I saw my salary decline. Add into that that faculty have the opportunity for merit raises--a sizable one when getting promoted to associate or full and yearly ones based on teaching, research and service accomplishments--while staff do not and you end up with some real inequalities that cause some serious pain during hard economic times.
I'm not putting forth this information to say to faculty, you don't know how good you have it, but to say that I think staff, too, should not take on more sacrifice. Too many of them do. They look at themselves as part of a family or team or whatever and put in extra hours without pay or offer to donate to the college(!) or suck it up when they go without raises for a couple of years.
Amen again. I, too, have served--continue to serve--as both adjunct faculty and staff, and in my experience neither category of employment gets the respect it deserves from the university. Whether it means teaching the classes that tenure-track faculty either don't want to teach or (let's be honest) don't have the instructional chops to teach well (such as courses with very large enrollments), assisting students with finding options to study abroad, or tracking grants for faculty, adjuncts and staff tend to be the first to suffer from budget and staff cuts.
Roxie wonders why there hasn't been a bailout proposed for the nation's educational institutions:
Folks, we're real sorry to hear that the bailout for the auto industry has apparently fallen apart, but have you noticed that no one is even talking about a bailout for higher education? For years, public institutions like Queer the Turtle U have been stuck between the rock and the hard place of declining levels of state support and mounting pressure to keep tuition affordable. Caught in that vise, schools have fought to do more with less while scrambling to catch up to private institutions in the game of fundraising. That strategy worked reasonably well when times were good and the bubbles in stocks or real estate had a lot people feeling rich. Now? The party's over, public and private revenues have dried up, and schools are desperately trying to figure out how to cut costs without compromising the value of their brand (the ne plus ultra of higher ed under the consumer model).
An excellent question. After all, universities make serious contributions to local, state, and national economies that can be measured in a variety of ways, and they provide as well less tangible benefits such as reduced crime rates in many communities near universities, improved health of individuals in that community, and increased civic engagement.
Be sure to check out all the posts I linked to here, as there is some terrific discussion going on in the comments.
What are your thoughts? Would you support a bailout package for failing institutions of higher education? And do you think the public would look differently at "state-funded" universities if they knew how small a percentage of the overall budget of some of these universities actually comes from the state rather than from private sources?
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