We Don’t Have a Rigor Problem

The close of last week brought a perfect storm of opinion pieces that would seem to herald the inevitable backlash against higher ed’s shift to remote learning and working from home. All three of the essays examined here adopt a posture and rhetoric of standards and rigor, suggesting that in the few short weeks since this shift occurred all hell has broken loose. Rather than arming the barricades for a presumed descent into anarchy, the authors would all do well to take a different set of lessons from this situation. We don’t have a rigor problem, we have a compassion problem.

Claire Laporte and Leonard Cassuto are authors of a piece intended as a tentative blueprint for opening campuses in the fall. As a question weighing heavily on the mind of everyone in higher ed, myself included, I was hoping for an enlightened plan. Instead, in their eagerness to open campuses back up (please note: their model for this assumes an almost exclusively residential campus–which is not the reality for the vast majority of college students), they made their rallying cry the restoration of face to face instruction and took things one step further to lob cheap pot shots at online education calling it “thin pedagogical gruel.” They even went so far as to assert that “online learning just isn’t as good” as in-class instruction. Their desire to open campuses back up is at its core built on an elitist and classist model of dorms and small classes. Its disparagement of online education is an insult to those who have been doing it with integrity and creativity for years.

The same day that this piece appeared, Inside Higher Ed also published an opinion piece that urged us all to wash our hair and present a clean and well-dressed online persona to our students. The author criticized her fictionalized, and tellingly female, target for appearing onscreen with “disheveled, unwashed hair,” and piles of “unattended laundry” in the background. The article brazenly fails to acknowledge the innumerable constraints that have made the shift to remote learning challenging at best, and positively overwhelming and demoralizing at worst. For this author, shared and improvised work spaces, child care, illness, limited resources, not enough time, and perhaps just the oppressive existential doom created by this whole pandemic are no excuse for not putting forth a tidy and composed image.

Often overlooked amid the justifiable outrage at the deeply gendered attempt to get professors to dress and practice a particular standard of hygiene was the Inside Higher Ed author’s concomitant demand that we not abandon standards in the assignments and assessments that we give our students during these difficult times. She and David Brooks would get along well, since his opinion piece also expressed a deep–but ultimately flawed and unsubstantiated–concern about grade inflation and students being coddled. He believes that this moment of hardship can teach us about tenacity and help us educate the next generation to “master hardship” and “endure suffering.” What he fails to acknowledge, however, is how many of them are already too familiar with both. Students are sitting in library parking lots trying to access wifi and complete assignments on their phones because they don’t have reliable access to internet or computing equipment. I’m fairly certain I don’t need to provide them with any lessons in hardship and suffering.

In short, all of these articles, have sought to capitalize on the current moment in higher ed to return us to their artificial and elitist notion of rigor and standards. They have defined online education and disheveled professors that hand out too many good grades as the problem. Those of us in the trenches know, however, that the problems are deeper and more complicated than that.

What all of these essays clearly demonstrate is that higher ed doesn’t have a rigor problem; we have a compassion problem. We are unwilling to see each other for who we are as faculty and students. The academy is deeply fractured along class lines and still sexist and racist. There is a thinly veiled disdain for and even hostility towards any pedagogies that depart from the model of the sage on the stage. There is also a deep unwillingness that keeps some faculty from seeing the harsh financial and socio-economic realities that shape the experience of the vast majority of our students. We have failed to acknowledge or remedy the fact that many of our faculty experience similarly precarious financial circumstances. Outside of the academy this is the story that we need to tell others like David Brooks who continue to rely on facile and outdated notions of what higher ed looks like.

Higher ed is broken and we will not be saved by clean hair and face-to-face instruction. We might be saved by a willingness to acknowledge the gaping rifts in higher ed that this crisis has exposed. We might be saved by taking this moment to really see one another in all our messy humanity through the lens of grace and compassion. Like you, I despair and worry that we won’t, in fact, take the opportunity to do these things. But if I don’t start by at least asking myself these questions and opening myself up to these realities, then all hope is lost.

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Public, Regional, Urban, Comprehensive

In 1995 I moved to Cleveland, Ohio to take up a position as an Instructor in the History Department at Cleveland State University (CSU).  For someone who had gotten her BA in the rarified atmosphere of a small liberal arts college and her MA and (soon to be PhD) at a Big Ten campus, CSU was a bit of a revelation.  I was young and ill-informed about the landscape of higher education and hadn’t really given much thought to urban, public regional campuses like CSU.  I had visited campus in February (not Cleveland’s best month) and my campus tour had consisted of a mad dash through hulking buildings that gave new meaning to brutalist architecture.  My job offer letter included language specifying that I would be expected to regularly teach in the evening and on weekends—at that time CSU had a particularly vigorous array of courses available to adult learners who worked full-time and needed the flexibility of such a schedule.  And so I taught at night.  And during the day.  And I taught students who were many years older than me.  After eight years or so in fairly bucolic and decidedly un-urban settings, I reveled in returning to a city (I grew up in Atlanta).  Cleveland was in the midst of one of its renaissances then and colleagues delighted in telling me about new restaurants and other amenities while introducing me to the city’s stalwart institutions like the Cleveland Museum of Art—that was in the words of its founders “for the benefit of all the people, forever,” and where the world-class permanent collection is free.  I endured the jokes of those from outside Cleveland who didn’t know better and thought I had moved to a rust-belt wasteland (they could not have been more wrong).

And I stayed.  My then-boyfriend moved here.  We got married.  We bought a house.  I found a dentist.  Got a library card.  I got tenure.   We did what I had hungered to do my last few years in graduate school: we put down roots.

And all the while I forged a relationship with the institution where I worked.  With each passing semester my respect for my students—who juggled jobs, family, debt, and food insecurity—deepened.  I became passionate about public education.  I got involved in faculty governance; I served on curriculum committees, faculty senate, faculty job search committees.  I made a commitment to this institution and its future.  I dipped a toe in administrative waters at the invitation of the the then-president of the university.  I liked the work so I took on a different administrative role.  I became department chair.  And then I took a bigger leap and applied and was fortunate enough to be chosen to be the dean of our honors college.

And I continued to teach, at all levels of our program: survey courses, upper-level courses for majors, and courses in our MA program.  I told anyone who would listen that our students were easily the best part of the job.  I loved watching the interactions between eighteen-year olds, new to university life, and returning adult students.  My best students routinely blew me out of the water with their insights and ideas.  My struggling students challenged me but typically worked hard and were determined to improve.  All of my students enriched my teaching with their life experiences and perspectives.

All the while I worked alongside amazing people.  As I moved into administration I connected with a broader cross-section of the university that included staff in academic advising, student life, and student support services.  I came to have a much greater appreciation of their tireless advocacy for our students.

And then suddenly (or so it seemed) I had been here twenty-four years.  I have served under four presidents, and at least twice as many provosts.  Is everything perfect here?  Of course not.  State funding for higher education has declined precipitously during that time.  There are many things we could do better.  But as administrators come and go and various faculty union and faculty governance battles are fought, we still, as an institution, have an important role to play.  Our mission remains unchanged.  Forty percent of our students are first-gen.  And the most striking part of this statistic for me is how little it has changed in my time here—there is plenty of work yet to be done.  Places like Cleveland State account for over a third of all the undergraduate students enrolled in four-year institutions.  So clearly, we are still doing absolutely vital, life-changing work.

An institution like Cleveland State is known by various monikers: public, urban, regional, comprehensive.  I just call it home.

It’s Called Work for a Reason

So I have been thinking a lot about work.  And overwork.  And boundaries.  And trying to have a life (whatever that means).  My inner monologue is a constant tug of war between feeling woefully behind and unproductive and pep talks about how it’s okay to make time for things that don’t involve work. And judging from my Twitter feed, I’m not alone in this.

Undoubtedly, these anxieties are fueled generally by our culture’s obsession with overwork and productivity and how we make those the measures of our self-worth.  More particularly, the current metrics and marketplace of academe create a relentless cycle of never having done enough.

But I think there’s another, less examined culprit as well: the tension between a job on the one hand, and a vocation on the other.

A vocation is literally something you feel called or summoned to do.  And at the outset (before all the committee meetings and grading marathons) I suspect most of us came to higher ed with at least a small sense of that.  We wanted to teach.  We wanted to create knowledge.  And because it’s something we feel drawn to doing, a vocation is, by definition, supposed to provide satisfaction.  We wouldn’t be doing it, if we didn’t want to do it, or even love doing it.

But you know that saying, “Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life”?  We might think this encapsulates the essence of a vocation–a job that transcends drudgery and mere necessity, and provides some sort of deeper fulfillment.  But here’s the thing: there’s a part of me that pushes back (hard) against this pithy little saying.  I think the concept of vocation also has the potential to become a limiting and tyrannical force in our lives.

On the one hand, I get it.  We all want to feel a sense of purpose and as though we are in the right place, doing the work we were meant to do.  We all want our work to be meaningful.  Considering the amount of time we spend there (and perhaps, even the amount of time we spend going back and forth to our workplaces) feeling passionate and excited about our work is critical.  And as someone who has supervised others–both faculty and staff–I know how essential it is for people to be excited and engaged with the work that they do.  And most days, I have these feelings and I love my job.  I work with amazing students, the college classroom energizes me, I have creative and supportive colleagues, and I’m still excited about my research agenda.  I do feel called to do the work I do in higher ed.

But some days it’s awful.  An angry parent, an uncooperative colleague, a failed grant proposal, a rejected article–all of these can derail that passion and sense of vocation.

And even without such dramatic interventions, sometimes work is just that: work.  It can be tedious (hello, endless forms required for anything to happen at my university), it can require tasks that are not naturally in your skill set (hello, Excel spreadsheets!), it can be boring (hello, bi-weekly compulsory meeting where nothing is accomplished). I don’t know about you, but I have days and moments when I genuinely question this thing I’ve felt was my vocation for so long.  Thankfully, those episodes usually pass quickly or are at least batted away by going for a run or drinking a margarita.

But this idea of a vocation can still mess with our heads and lead us to make bad choices.  Focusing on our job as a vocation and not simply the work that it sometimes is, runs the risk of encouraging us to make unnecessary sacrifices because it’s our “calling.”  If we treat our work as a vocation it becomes all too easy to justify staying in the office after 5pm, checking email when we wake up in the middle of the night, or saying “yes” to another commitment when our plate is already full to overflowing.  And I would venture to guess that the tyranny of vocation is particularly the bane of women and POC in the academy who tend to do or be expected to do more service and more emotional labor than their counterparts.  These individuals may in turn feel as though they should discredit or brush aside their exasperation and exhaustion because they’re meant to be fulfilling the higher call of a vocation.

It’s okay to be passionate about our work.  And we ought to seek and nurture and expand those parts of our job that deliver joy and satisfaction and purpose.  But sometimes work is work and it’s hard.  And we shouldn’t beat ourselves up about that.  So it’s also okay to say “it’s just a job,” and to close the laptop, set the phone aside, and to step away to do something else that makes you happy.

Department of Consolidation

Periodically, universities announce their intention to consolidate or outright cut academic departments.  Such a proposal is currently on the table at the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale.  As reported in Inside Higher Ed, the Chancellor there has proposed creating, for example, a “School of Humanities within the proposed College of Liberal and Performing Arts” where “there would still be programs, courses and majors in history, English, philosophy, philosophy and languages, cultures and international studies. But there would no longer be a departmental structure to support them.”

Such plans are typically presented as an opportunity to (1) cut costs and (2) promote interdisciplinary collaboration and “innovative” thinking.  Both of these presumed opportunities are built on false narratives about higher education and are dangerous to our common enterprise.

Arguably, consolidating departments into larger units has the potential to save some money in staff and related bureaucratic costs.  Academic departments typically have support staff and fewer of those individuals will be needed if restructuring amalgamates and thereby reduces the number of academic units.  But such savings are a pittance in the grand scheme of things.  Support staff are often poorly paid and the financial savings of eliminating a few secretaries or administrative assistants would hardly solve the budget deficits that many universities face.

Additionally troubling is the administrative assertion that there is a kind of intellectual inefficiency that results from departments being disciplinarily distinct.  Breaking down those silo-ed barriers, it’s argued, will foster collaboration and multi/cross/interdisciplinary projects.  All well and good.  And I fully support this kind of work.

But until all academics attend graduate schools built on this interdisciplinary model and attend conferences and publish in journals that have erased all disciplinary singularity and identity, faculty are not likely to collaborate simply because they now belong to a “School of Humanities” instead of an English department or now have an office next door to someone outside their discipline.  This is simply the higher ed version of the “open office” plan–the notion that if you throw people together in a shared space–physical or metaphorical–the innovative ideas will simply jump off the page and be ushered to fruition.  And guess what?  The effectiveness of the open office plan has been largely disproved by several recent studies.  While consolidating departments does not include moving to a different configuration of actual workspaces, it does operate on the (unproven) assertion that the thing holding back interdisciplinary work is the self-containment of academic departments.

In fact, interdisciplinary research is stifled not by departmental singularity, but a host of other structural impediments that are practically written into the DNA of academe.  A recent report funded by the NSF and examining the need for but also impediments to interdisciplinary work in the sciences discovered that “‘excellence-based’ journal rankings have a systematic bias against interdisciplinary research. This may create or reinforce disincentives for researchers to engage in interdisciplinary research. When journal rankings are used to help determine the allocation of prestige and resources for faculty, it can hinder interdisciplinary research.”  In addition, although women have a demonstrated greater propensity to engage in interdisciplinary research, they also worry about the effects this will have on their career advancement: “compared with men, women expressed more desire to pursue additional opportunities for collaborative and interdisciplinary research. However, women also perceived greater institutional constraints. Women agreed more than men with the statement, ‘I would like to pursue more interdisciplinary research, but only after I am more established in my career.’ Compared with men, women agreed less with the statement, ‘Participation in collaborative research is viewed positively during the tenure/promotion review process.'”  With such impediments and disincentives in place it is little wonder that interdisciplinary work doesn’t occur more often.

The insidious effect of these false narratives about financial and intellectual inefficiency is to shift the blame to the academic side of the house.  It suggests, incorrectly, that the university is in financial trouble because faculty are not responding nimbly to student interest because they’re sequestered away in their departments instead of developing cool interdisciplinary programs that will draw the students in.  I find it hard to believe that the current combined budgetary/enrollment crisis facing some campuses is result of the History department being distinct from the English department.  Being flexible and responsive with curriculum might allow us to create opportunities for student-designed majors and other programs that blur disciplinary distinctions, and perhaps would attract students, but such efforts are not going to solve the multi-million dollar budget crises proliferating across college campuses.  The best way to retain and graduate students (thereby ensuring the financial health of the university), in fact, is to invest in faculty and student support services.

And despite these narratives shifting budgetary blame to academic departments, such reform programs are typically enacted with little if any consultation with the faculty in those very departments.  Some faculty at Southern Illinois are rightly arguing that collapsing departments into larger units has curricular and other implications that fall within the domain of shared governance.  While it would undoubtedly take more time, wouldn’t it be more interesting and constructive to ask faculty to be participants in these discussions, encouraging them to identify thematic overlap and potential areas for interdisciplinary collaboration?  This, however, will be hard work.  Departments can undoubtedly and demonstrably behave in unproductively silo-ed ways and shifting that culture will be no small feat.  But forcing such decisions will only destroy faculty morale, which in turn will yield little or none of the results that chancellors and others claim to be so desirable.

 

Of Surgeries and Superwomen

I love the start of a new school year.  Even after 20+ years in higher education, I thrill to the new-ness of it all.  Fall temperatures, new students, and that “anything is possible” atmosphere all bring me great delight.

Thus, I was both surprised and disappointed when I found myself in the emergency room the night before the start of the semester, looking at the possibility of needing a surgery that week [spoiler: I’m fine; everything worked out; my health is good].

So I missed the first week of classes, had my surgery, and, as you’ve probably already anticipated, the world didn’t end.

But neither did my fretting, fear of falling behind, or general anxiety about missing so much work.  So I went back to the office the following week.  And lasted about four hours.  And then later that week I put in a twelve-hour day.  Which turned out to be a very bad idea.  I spent the next three days recovering from that decision.

Reflecting on the experience of those two weeks, I have realized that I let my desire to be a superwoman outweigh common sense.  “I’m tough,” I reasoned, “I can go back to work.”  I wanted to be some sort of shining example of resilience and determination.  This surgery couldn’t slow me down.  I’m a superwoman!

While I do not think that women exclusively fall prey to the temptation to be superheroes in these situations, I want to address this post to women in the academy and point out why this behavior and the temptation towards superwoman-hood does us a disservice.*

Senior superwomen: I suspect that we build this tendency towards superwomanhood when we are junior or contingent faculty, trying to be the best and most dedicated colleagues possible.  But what dismays me is that this behavior continues even later in our careers.  I was out once for drinks with a group of female colleagues who all held administrative positions at my university.  At one point the conversation devolved into a somewhat competitive round of who got to work earliest/stayed latest/put in the most extra hours.  It is telling that even senior women who are tenured and secure engage in this behavior. We are still trying to prove ourselves in a culture that whether explicitly or implicitly has not fully welcomed us.  Some places are better than others, but overall, women in the academy as reflected in service obligations, teaching evaluations, pay scale, or any host of other metrics still fight an uphill battle for acceptance.  So whether consciously or unconsciously we continue to try to prove ourselves and our worth and our right to be here.

That said, I try not to play along with my colleagues.  Whenever possible, I leave work at 5.  I don’t check my work email after I get home.  Weekends are for non-work activities.  Now certainly there are exceptions to this.  Big projects or the inconvenient overlap of multiple deadlines sometimes means I stay late or work on the weekends.  Sometimes my role as dean comes with evening and weekend responsibilities.  But generally speaking, making overwork and the dissolution of work-life boundaries a competitive sport is not productive.

Which brings me to my next point:

Modeling and normalizing: What message are we sending to our female colleagues when we try to be superwomen who prove their dedication and their talent through overwork?  We’re certainly modeling a behavior that says that self-care doesn’t matter.  We’re setting a presumed standard that values and perhaps even rewards overwork.  We are perpetuating the cycle and a culture that asks women to rise to the standard of superwomen at a possible expense to their health and well-being.

As I repeatedly argue on this blog, those of us in a secure position of power have an obligation to do the work to gradually shift the culture of academe.  So I would ask you: what example do you set for the women in your office or department?  If you are an administrator what policies do you lobby for at your institution?  Sometimes, for example, our jobs require us to work nights and weekends.  But if we’re going to normalize the expectation for that kind of work, then we also need to normalize the concept of comp time [this idea came from one of my wise female administrator friends].  Work four hours on Saturday at a recruitment event?  Fine.  The duties of the job require it.  But then when you take four hours on a Friday afternoon to have a life, you shouldn’t feel guilty or have to explain yourself to your provost.  We need to stand up for and beside our female colleagues when they make choices like these.

Talk about it: Wherever and whenever possible, we need to highlight this issue.  I posted on Twitter when I started working on this post and was surprised/not surprised at how many people responded, indicating that these issues resonated with them.  Despite an enthusiastic response for addressing this issue, I have never had a conversation about this with anyone on my campus.  That needs to change.  Again, those of us in secure positions need to take some risks and bring this up with the senior administration at our universities.  We need to forcefully and vocally advocate for female colleagues who we see trying to take care of themselves while still fulfilling their responsibilities.  We need to intervene when we see someone falling prey to the Superwoman Syndrome.  This last one, I think, is particularly tricky; we tend to praise, and even reward, superwomen, not caution them.

Our efforts to speak up and highlight this issue probably won’t go terribly smoothly.  We will probably be accused of whining or shirking.  And I am the first to acknowledge that institutional structures and cultures do not always support our ability to take care of ourselves and have fulfilling lives beyond our workdays.  But until those of us who are senior and reasonably well-protected begin modeling better behavior and advocating for ourselves and our female colleagues nothing will change.  We will be very unhappy superwomen.

 

*I want to be quick to say that I think this issue is undoubtedly relevant for scholars of color, contingent faculty, and others who find themselves feeling unwelcome in the academy and/or needing to prove themselves through overwork.

Administration and Faculty: Can This Relationship Be Saved?

A week or so ago I published a piece in Inside Higher Ed about bridging the divide in higher education that too-often separates the administration from the faculty.  It prompted some lively discussion.  I appreciate those of you who engaged with my argument and offer the following as things I learned from your feedback.

* Experiences vary: One thing that the response to my essay taught me is that experiences vary widely.  I would not have necessarily characterized the relationship between faculty and administration at my university as good, but I have learned that it certainly isn’t as difficult as it is elsewhere.

* Point taken: Several of you called me out for describing my colleague’s move from faculty to administration as a “promotion” since that contributed to the very divide that I was railing against.  You are absolutely right.  And such a description is part of the problem.  I will think and write differently about that as a consequence–thank you!  I need to avoid characterizing, and thus valuing, administrative work as something “above” the work that faculty do.

* There are administrators and there are administrators.  What do we mean when we say “administration”?  The responses to my piece would suggest that among faculty the word conjures up images of overpaid and ineffective presidents, vice presidents, deans and others in the upper echelons of administration.  My own definition is a bit more all-encompassing and includes individuals who occupy more modest, but nonetheless administrative, roles at the university–associate deans, directors, and department chairs, for example.  It is often these folks that I think of (though not exclusively) when I think of talented, dedicated colleagues who are not deserving of faculty antipathy.  So we need to be careful that we don’t paint “administration” with too broad a brush.

Which brings me to my next point.

* Bad actors: I resisted the urge to respond to each comment that trashed the bad behavior of a particular administrator or administration with a counterpoint story about the bad behavior of faculty.  I resisted, because that’s NOT THE POINT.  You’re mad because an administrator pushed through a bad policy without adequate faculty governance?  I’m mad at the tenured faculty member who never answers student emails and reads aloud from her textbook as a substitute for holding class.  Both of these individuals are outliers.  They are not the sole face of either the administration or the faculty.

Now, I will acknowledge that my analogy breaks down in the face of the power differential that often separates administrators from faculty.

Which brings me to my next point.

* Cultural v. structural: Admittedly, what I was arguing for was a change in the culture that often divides faculty from the administration.  But as many of you pointed out, there are often structures that mitigate against that.  On campuses without a strong tradition and culture of faculty governance it may be virtually impossible to work with the administration.  If the administration controls large swaths of the decision-making process and wields that power without input from faculty, small wonder that faculty might be inclined to view them in a negative light.  I don’t think this means that bridging the faculty-admin divide is impossible on campuses such as these, but it will face different and harder challenges.

Which brings me to my next point.

* Growing administrators: If your campus is plagued by a toxic environment that divides the faculty from the administration, then perhaps you need to think about moving some of those faculty (or yourself!) into the ranks of administration.  Many of you lamented the fact that some of the most troublesome administrators come from outside the institution and don’t stick around very long.  I agree that this creates disruption and distrust.  One remedy is to encourage talented and dedicated faculty (and again, maybe YOU are one of these faculty) to consider moving into these positions.  The faculty perspective, institutional memory, and commitment to the institution that these individuals bring to the table could go a long way to creating better relations between the administration and faculty.

 

If I learned nothing else from the comments on my essay, it’s that the relationship between faculty and administration is fraught and often outright contentious on most campuses.  But I remain resolute in my insistence that there are things we can do to change that.  I welcome your continued thoughts and suggestions.

Back to School, Administrator-Style

I confess: the first day of fall term always gets me.  I love the shiny new-ness of it all.  The term and the academic year lie in front of you–anything is possible!

But I will also confess that as an administrator, a little bit of that fall luster is lacking. When I was a full-time faculty member, I usually had been away from campus for big chunks of the summer.  I’d also been in a different kind of headspace: doing research, taking time to think, and with any luck, do some writing.  I would return to campus with renewed resolve.  I was all about the bouquet of newly sharpened pencils that Tom Hanks describes in “You’ve Got Mail.”  This would be the year that I would get all my lecture notes organized!  This would be the year I would stay current with the journals in my field! (we will put aside, for now, whether or not I achieved these things.  I suspect you know the answer).

But as an administrator, I work on a 12-month contract.  Sure, I take vacation in the summer, but I don’t really get long breaks from campus.  And yes, I try to carve out a little bit of time for my research, but it usually takes a back seat to more pressing administrative projects.  There’s a continuity to my work life now that means fall doesn’t feel like the dramatic shift that it used to when I had been away geographically and cognitively during the summer.

Administrative work, in addition to its continuity, can also easily become drudgery. Reports, meetings, spreadsheets, and other bits of administrivia can wear down even the best and most enthusiastic administrators.

So rather than get mired in my meh-ness or let my 12-month contract define me, I’d like to propose some strategies for recapturing some of the fresh start-ness of fall term.  Consider this a back to school primer of sorts, for administrators (though faculty may find some useful tips here as well!).

1.  Identify something about your administrative work that brings you joy.  It can be big or small, but you need to find it and make time for it.  Maybe it’s helping faculty connect with grant opportunities.  Maybe it’s developing new curriculum.  Maybe it’s finding a new way to make a cumbersome university process more streamlined.  Use the start of a new year to reconnect with the part(s) of your job that you enjoy and let that provide a jump start for the next twelve months.
2. Identify something that you could be better at.  If you’re like me, graduate school didn’t prepare you for administration, so the learning curve can be steep.  For example, when I started in administration, I was AWFUL at Excel and spreadsheets.  I have worked on cultivating this skill.  Embrace the start of a new school year to say that this will be the year that you learn how to do a certain task or figure out a certain problem.  It’s okay to be bad at something.  It’s not okay to continue to be bad at it if it’s essential to your work.
3. Pay it forward.  If you’ve made it into the ranks of administration you probably have some seniority at your institution.  One thing that can restore a sense of resolve and purpose to the start of the new year is reconnecting with your faculty colleagues and helping those individuals thrive.  So reach out to those junior to you and be a mentor or an ally.
4. Find a way to teach or interact with students.  I have strong feelings about why administrators should teach (which I will save for a future blog post), but for now, I will just say that much of what is missing in higher ed administration could be remedied by administrators reconnecting with the classroom and students.  And it’s good for you, too.  Nothing helps me transcend administrivia and spreadsheets better than the unscripted and unvarnished perspective of students.  So maybe you don’t have time to teach an entire course.  What if you guest-lectured for a colleague in your disciplinary area?  What if you sponsored a co-curricular activity that gave students the opportunity to meet and provide feedback to the dean/associate dean/provost?
5. Vow to do one thing that is about taking care of you.  Maybe it’s getting regular exercise, or drinking more water, or taking time for a hobby that makes you happy.  Whatever it is, take advantage of this time of fresh starts to make it a priority.

I hope these strategies or any others you might identify will help you reconnect with the newness of the fall term.  May it be a year of sharp pencils, well-written reports, and easily comprehended spreadsheets!

 

Mentoring 2.0

By all accounts, having a mentor is a good thing. A mentor is there to provide advice and guidance.   The most common model in the academy is for junior faculty to be assigned a senior faculty mentor. The senior person helps steer the junior person through the first few years of teaching, figuring out the requirements for tenure, and generally negotiating the landscape of a new institution. The research on mentoring demonstrates its key role in recruiting and retaining good faculty.

Yet there are at least two shortcomings with the current way that mentoring happens on campuses. First, despite its clear benefits to institutions and individuals, we are far from a universal culture of mentoring in higher ed. My non-scientific research on the subject suggests that in the case of junior faculty some institutions assign mentors, some don’t (perhaps due to department size) but do provide broad mentoring support, and some do not have any system, formal or informal, of mentoring. Models for mentoring contingent faculty are few and far between and make the mentoring of junior faculty look positively robust.

Second, where it does exist, the model of one-on-one mentoring is not adequate. What do you do when confronted with a difficult work situation that because of power dynamics can’t be addressed entirely or adequately by your mentor relationship? Let me ground this in a specific example: a junior female faculty member receives a very critical peer evaluation of her teaching from a senior male colleague. Her attempts to discuss the evaluation with her colleague are rebuffed. But this individual is also a close friend of her mentor and has repeatedly sung his praises to her. What recourse does she have? The scenario could even be less dire. Even with the best intentions and careful selection, mentoring matchups don’t always work. What if you have a mentor assigned to you and that person isn’t a good fit (for whatever reason)?

The remedy for both of these shortcomings rest with senior faculty and administrators. We need to commit to and create a culture of mentoring on our campuses. This is an admittedly broad and amorphous goal.   Simply saying that an institution has a commitment to mentoring, will not be adequate. Once it’s been said, though, there are ways to build it into the culture of the place.

Don’t wait or hope for mentoring relationships to be constructed. Obviously, the particulars will vary according to the size and other circumstances at each institution, but make mentoring the responsibility of someone at the vice provost or dean level. That person can certainly delegate the specifics down to the department or division level, but the mentoring buck needs to stop with someone. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to assume that someone else will make it happen. Make the provision of mentoring a part of what’s discussed in campus interviews—we tell job candidates about parking and healthcare, why not let them know that mentoring will be part of their experience? Build the expectation of mentoring into letters of hire. Create a community of mentors on campus, who through face-to-face meetings, and some sort of online platform, can talk to each other about challenges and best practices. And do not limit mentoring to tenure-track faculty. We all know the demographics. If we are neglecting to mentor contingent faculty we are doing them and our institutions a disservice. And what about mid-career faculty? Faculty who need support to make the jump from Associate Professor to Professor rank? Or tenured faculty who are beginning to move into campus administrative roles? Wherever and however possible, weave mentoring into the fabric of campus life.

But as you do, be attentive to the limitations of the one-on-one model described above. What about instead assigning groups of faculty mentors to groups of mentored faculty? In other words, what if we imagined mentoring on the model of networks? This is more consistent with how we conduct much of our academic lives these days anyway on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms that connect us to multiple people at once. The existence of a network would give the mentored faculty options in seeking guidance and resolution to problems. It would also give them an immediate community on campus. Rather than isolated meetings with one mentor, the network could meet at least once a semester and the mentored faculty would meet not just mentors, but other new faculty as well. Meaningful one-on-one relationships might grow out of these networks, and that would be an added bonus. But it would be an outgrowth of a broader network and would be more flexible than simply hoping that one-on-one assignments were a good fit.

Certainly, the network model comes with complications. What if, for example, the members of the network offer conflicting advice? Some conflicts like this could be avoided, though, if the mentors worked together, compared notes, and got to know the mentored faculty as well as possible. Rather than a barrier, then, the need for this kind of mini culture of mentoring within the network of mentors would bolster the overall institutional culture of mentoring.

When mentoring works, everyone wins. The mentored faculty receives guidance and advice that can only contribute to their job satisfaction. The mentors build strong ties with their colleagues. And the institution is stronger for this culture of support. That said, the old model of mentoring tenure-track faculty through the one-on-one model is inadequate. Mentoring needs to be woven into the fabric of an institution at all levels and should embrace a networking model of connecting mentors and mentored.

 

Building Better Teachers

Add the Association of College and University Educators to the list of for-profit consulting firms that have arrived on the scene to save the day and help those of us in higher ed get it—in this case teaching—right.  Their consultants offer hour-long modules on a particular topic—increasing class participation in discussion, for example.  The website is slick and professional.  The modules seem (you can only access samples of their content without paying) to have a well-conceived structure that provides feedback, includes videotaped classroom presentations, and well-defined objectives.  The faculty that are listed on the site as experts represent a range of disciplines and come from all different kinds of institutions (public and private, community colleges and 4-year institutions, etc).  The materials on the website rightly incorporate some of the latest research and evidence from the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).  But despite what seems to be a well-executed product, the model proposed by ACUE and its clients is deeply troubling for several reasons.

The first reason is a fundamental question about the structure and process of teacher training.  ACUE is seeking to remedy ineffective teaching, which, it rightly notes “costs” institutions in terms of poor retention and graduation rates.  In its comments on its mission, ACUE has specifically stated that a PhD in a particular field is not necessarily evidence that the candidate is an effective teacher and that many graduate programs do not provide adequate training in teaching and pedagogy.  There is evidence, albeit not universal, for both of these assertions.  However, addressing this after faculty have already been hired and arrived on campus is wrongheaded.  Our efforts to create effective teachers should begin in graduate school.  And several disciplinary associations are working on exactly this.  The Executive Director of the American Historical Association, James Grossman, has issued apersuasive call for PhD programs in History to address this issue: “Teaching is an essential skill for every historian, whether in a secondary school, college classroom, museum, archive, historical site, or even the public square, presenting evidence persuasively to legislators and fellow citizens. Historians teach. Learning how to teach should be equal to and intertwined with learning to become a research scholar.”   The American Society for Microbiology has a Teaching Fellows Program.  And I’m certain there are other examples.  Who better than the disciplines to tackle this gap in preparation?

As a corollary to this, teacher training of this sort—a certification offered by a non-discipline-specific-for-profit company—risks divorcing research and scholarship from the practice of teaching.  While many graduate programs probably still need to work on strengthening the connection between the two as they train future faculty, this alternative model of credentialing could potentially devalue the PhD.

The second reason that this model is objectionable is because it ignores the resident knowledge and wisdom present on all campuses.  Most campuses have a teaching center.  These centers provide workshops, resources, and are run by individuals who are experts in the scholarship of teaching and learning.  All campuses have great teachers.  Further, a group like ACUE assumes a smoothing out of institutional differences and risks proposing a one size fits all approach.  I can already here the pushback from faculty who have to participate in these modules: “what you’re proposing won’t work with my students because they work long hours/they don’t have ready access to technology/our classrooms aren’t set up for what you’re proposing, etc”  And these centers and these faculty are already familiar with the institution and its students.  They know the local culture and are ready to jump in with ideas and solutions that will immediately suit the situation.  The ACUE model devalues existing faculty expertise and experience on every college and university campus.  Why would a college or university spend precious funds to hire an outside firm to provide something they already have at their fingertips?

The third reason to be troubled is the burden that this model puts on faculty.  ACUE places most of the onus for weak retention and graduation rates (and their website makes painfully clear to administrators what the financial cost of low rates is) on faculty teaching.  Adopting the remedy of improved teaching as the solution to low retention and graduation rates implicitly suggests that other factors—high school preparation, income disparities, other campus support systems, etc—are less important or relevant.  Effective teaching is absolutely essential to student success, but if faculty can be blamed for poor retention and graduation rates because bodies like ACUE have not credentialed their teaching, we are definitely in trouble.  Could retention and graduation rates become a metric for faculty performance?  And what is the impact of this on contingent faculty?  Will the absence of such credentials (presumably harder to attain if they do not have stable, long-term relationships with the institutions where they teach) risk further compromising their status within the profession?

The ACUE rightly identifies the importance of effective teaching.  The model it proposes, however, is one that faculty should push back against since it devalues their knowledge and experience and threatens to place undue burdens on them.  Administrators should also avoid this model because it is a bad investment.  They should invest instead in building up teaching and learning centers and leveraging the existing expertise of the successful teachers already on their campuses.

 

We Are All Bunnies

I’m sitting at my desk today watching the reactions and commentary about the situation at Mount St. Mary pour in via Twitter and Facebook.  In case you haven’t read about it yet: here’s the latest.  Those of us who recognize the value of tenure, still believe there is a place for respectful disagreement in higher ed, and want better things for our own students and institutions are a bit speechless (which would be a wise strategy if you were at Mount St. Mary).  Horrified and shocked and saddened seem the most common emotions.

I’m guessing that this drama isn’t over yet.  I expect lawsuits, alumni protest (at least the president can’t fire them), and hopefully, some response from the college’s Board of Trustees.  But in the meantime I think we faculty and administrators at other institutions need to do three things.

The first is to engage in some self-education.  What are the policies and procedures at your institution governing speech?  In one of the first ripples in the drama at Mount St. Mary it became clear that the university had a policy that “all university employees must clear any communications with reporters first with the university spokesman.”  What is YOUR university’s policy in these matters?  Perhaps there isn’t a policy, which is probably a good thing.  But my PSA to you is to find out.

The second two items hinge on the assumption that in the current higher ed climate no one is immune from these kind of actions.  We can shake our heads and wring our hands and say how messed up things are at Mount St. Mary, but I bet our colleagues there didn’t see this coming, either.

So the second item is to become the allies of vulnerable individuals at your institution who might end up in the firing line.  A particularly troubling part of the recent developments is that the untenured facultly advisor to the student newspaper, which leaked the president’s emails, was one of the faculty members fired.  I’m not sure what sort of things might have protected this individual, but having senior, tenured members of the faculty recognize his vulnerability would be a good place to start.

The third item is to write and tweet and post about this as much as possible.  And sign this petition.  We need to recognize not just that this could happen to us wherever we are, but that we need to be in solidarity with our colleagues at other institutions.  It is easier to pick off faculty like this if the perception is that they are isolated.  And I say this to my fellow administrators, too.  We need to say that this kind of management is unacceptable and an insult to the enterprise of higher education.