Loathing Academic Conferences

First question: How does Prof. Jackson cover his undergraduate classes when he’s off at a conference?Second question: What does Assoc. Dean Jackson think of the way Prof. Jackson covers his undergraduate classes when he’s off at a conference?Third question: If Prof. Jackson has no undergraduate classes, why is he [presumably less than full-time] Assoc. Dean for Undergraduate Studies?

Not out of virtue, but out of coincidence and mutual undesirability,* I went to few conferences,** and those were always on breaks–holidays, between semesters, “reading days” before finals. I’m not saying I never missed a class on account of some academic activity, but when I did, I a) told the students in advance, b) prepared an assignment or presentation for that class session, and c) paid an assistant or junior faculty or traded with a colleague who didn’t have a class during that time to conduct the class for me. The business of the student whose class is missed getting a good deal because the “value” of his or her degree goes up because the professor is out there racheting up his or her reputation by giving a paper at a conference strikes me as about as sheer a self-serving sophistry as you can get. “I’m out there getting famous in my field, kid, and even though I blew off 1/26th of the instruction your parents are paying me thousands for, I’m really doing it for you because your degree will be worth more down the road.” Right: the guy hiring the recent grad for an accounting job will say, “Say, that’s a pretty impressive degree, coming as it does from that school where the professors are always going off to give important papers at conferences.”* I can read faster that people can talk, so just give me a hard copy of the paper. And, unless we’re selling something to each other, hobnobbing is mild academic partying by another name.** I’d rather give a lecture some night or weekend that I get paid for than to blather for free in some second-rate hotel’s ballroom.

not only do i *rarely* miss teaching a course when the heavy conference season is upon us (and i arrange a suitable subsitute or assignment), but i also *often* take students with me to conferences as part of their professionalization. sometimes i even take along with me senior undergrads who are considering graduate studies so that they can see what some of their fate may look like.

I suppose that for me, the whole “tirade” sounds rather narcissistic. Kinda like, ‘Oh God, I hate conferences, but look at me! I’m so important because look at how many I conferences I go to! Oh, my life is so tough because I’m so important!’ I know that’s a bit harsh and I’m sure Prof. Jackson is probably a decent sort, but here’s my suggestion. If it’s so tough on you, then skip some of them this year and next. After all, it’s tough economic times and I’m sure Penn would be happy to save the money you are reimbursed for travel, hotel, meals, and other assorted conference expenses.

While Prof. Jackson seems none too worried about the embarassment he has endured over the years by “talking through” (what he describes is really rambling) and not reading prepared remarks at conferences, I implore him to rethink his narcissitic decision — apparently made with the full measure of grad student arrogance. I don’t want to listen to you (or anyone else) ramble on incoherently, forgetting major and semi-major points, failing to bring the talk to some conclusion, etc. It is a waste of my time. Yes, you should be embarrassed.But, I wouldn’t feel guilty about only going to a couple of session. Over a 3 day conference, I usually only go to one, and on rare occasion two, sessions per day. But these sessions, even if they are excruciatingly bad (see above where I endure unprepared, arrogant ramblers) they still teach me something about my discipline. Even in the fulminating over the “demise” of the field, I find myself rethinking my own intellectual commitments. When the session is good or if I hear terrific grad students staking out new boundaries in the field, it changes my own thinking.Yet, I still hate conferences. The jockeying about status, the name dropping (see Prof. Jackson’s comment about who he hangs out with), and increasingly the cost. Even the positives above can no longer quite justify spending $200/night in a mediocre hotel, enduring flying to somewhere I often don’t want to be (but give me DC or Chicago anyday, it’s Denver or Cinncinati or Dallas — and, sorry to say, New Orleans, I hate)in order to pay increasingly inflated registration fees . . . . My university no longer supports these activities and it no longer feels worth it to me to spend my own money on it.

I am grateful that my institution sends me to several conferences each year, particularly since many of my friends at cash-strapped institutions often cannot attend. Since my field is instructional technology, it is professionally edifying (and necessary) for me to interact with my colleagues, find out what is working for them (and what it not working) and to present sessions where I can receive feedback from my peers on my own research and practice. I am also a Dean who teaches, but I teach online and blended courses, so, if I exercise the same self-discipline and time-management that I require of my students, I should be able to teach during the conference (admittely, I sometimes get behind on my grading, but my students tend to be forgiving). The opportunities to see friends, meet new ones and expand my network is invaluable to my institution and to me. I have been enjoying this for 20 years and would consider it to be dishonest to squander my institution’s money by not engaging in promoting my institution, gaining new knowledge and networking. If I am unwilling to do so, then I should send someone else in my stead.

So glad I’m in science. Nobody “presents a paper.” You submit a 150-400 word abstract and then you present a poster or talk. On your poster or powerpoint slides, there isn’t much text. Instead, there are figures of your experimental design / task and results. You explain what you did for the experiment and what you found. You don’t read off of anything, though you don’t sound like you’re rambling, either, because you still have a prepared talk. So conferences aren’t boring. And going to a poster or a talk is so much easier than reading the paper (assuming the presenter is decent.)

ksledge – I find that my appreciation of Chronicle articles is improved immeasurably by mentally inserting the words “… in the Humanities” after every article headline.Some examples:”Loathing Academic Conferences … in the Humanities”"Why Universities Must pay more Attention to Small Disciplines … in the Humanities”"I am so Frustrated at my Dean’s Lack of Attention … in the Humanities”

OK, I’ve already had a turn, but anyway…A distinguishing characteristic of lightweights (at least the voluble ones) in the field is conversation that runs something like, “Blah blah blah conference blah blah blah conference blah blah conference blah blah blah blah blah conference…”And you’d think that academe, loaded to the gills with IT, would be able to replace 90 percent of its in-the-flesh conferences with virtual ones. No more straining travel budgets (either the school’s or the professor’s). Much less missed instruction time.* Less time wasted standing around in the lobby waiting for the talk to begin or shuffling past folding chairs or waiting for the speaking to arrive because she’s stuck in traffic. Less time wasted having to sit and listen while to some doofus’s nominal question from the floor which is actually a speech on some arcane point. Hardly any time wasted in the air or on trains or buses or in taxis. And–this should matter to academic–a tiny fraction of one’s carbon footprint. And so on for maybe fifty more virtues. Of course, virtual conferences don’t provide nearly the opportunities for sniffing around to see if there’s a better job available elsewhere, for impressing one’s colleagues with “blah blah another conference I went to blah blah blah,” or for free meals, or some hotel hanky-panky with another academic (yuk!), but as they say, no pain, no gain.I mean, look at THIS little dialogue with Prof. Jackson (well, whenever he decides to respond) and among each other. We don’t all have to fly to Philadelpha and register at some Marriott and eat bad cobb salad to conduct it, do we?* Let’s be honest: Many if not most faculty who zip off to conferences simply cancel classes, albeit with a whitewash on Blackboard saying something like, “Read ahead in chapter 13 and 14, research the effects of Schmeckleheimer’s Law on the funding of NGOs, and come to class next Tuesday prepared to take a quiz.”

“Mean-spiritedness” = a bit of truth unvarnished by self-serving rationalization.Nautrally the likes of englishwlu will think that conferences make them better teachers. Who doesn’t want an excuse to take a breather from unexpansive discussions with students, not to mention from the same ol’ same ol’ campus and colleagues? But if their universities looked closely at the conference boondoggle, would they think the likes of englishwlu are made better teachers to the degree than the conferences are worth the missed classes, travel budgets, etc.? And would the students, if asked, think it “eminently reasonable and even useful” that their professor cancel a class to attend a conference? (The ones who would are probably the ones who’d welcome any reason to cancel a class–now there’s a group of people conference supporters want in their corner!)Professors are generally honest enough that they don’t use conferences “only” for job-sniffing, name-dropping or hanky-panky, but those are, in the back of their minds, part of the perqs of going to conferences. My contention is that the legit content of conferences (and flying from, say, Normal, IL to Dallas on the off-chance that one might “casually” pick up a teaching tip, is not part of that) can, and increasingly, will be handled by IT. Finally, and this is just a guess about Prof. Jackson: He IS thoughtful, modest, generous and generally (to my way of thinking) on the right (that is, center-left) side of things. But he seems to suffer a bit from golly-gosh happy-to-be-here in the Ivies (where I’m not, incidentally) and naively lapses into bragging-by-complaining, which he does in this post, and which some commenters have pointed out, above. And since he’s an Assoc. Dean for Undergraduate Studies, I think it’s pertinent to ask what toll this current “particularly heavy conference stretch” will take on his classes.Afterthought: If this electronic dialogue about conferences is inadequate, perhaps we could get together and have a conference about conferences!

Actually, I was thinking “mean-spiritedness” meant something more like “assuming the worst about another person based on limited evidence that could easily be otherwise interpreted– and then criticizing them based on that ungenerous guess.”Take, for instance, the insinuation that the “likes of” me (who would that include, exactly? and how could anyone possibly figure that out from reading my comment?) self-servingly pretend (or naively deceive ourselves into thinking?) that conferences are useful for our teaching because doing so gives us an excuse to get out of town. And the likes of me can’t wait to get out of town because we’re bored and selfish. In this context, I can only assume I’ll be accused of naivety, self-interestedness, and/or regionalism when I propose that, slightly tweaked, those strike me as pretty good reasons to want to fly to Dallas (perhaps esp. if one lives in Normal): If my small or isolated campus offers very limited opportunity for scintillating conversation about and access to the latest developments in my particular arenas of scholarship, couldn’t I be read as admirably seeking to develop professionally when I travel to share work and ideas with colleagues in those fields? For what it’s worth, I HAVE talked with students about my occasional choice to attend a conference when we’d otherwise have class — and they have in fact agreed that my doing so is both reasonable and useful, especially because I make a point of talking with them upon my return about what I learned. Sure, we could presume that they’re pretending to care about their learning when they really just want to skip class and watch TV or that I’ve strong-armed my students into nodding along with everything I say so they can get good grades. But let’s not, ok?As goxewu points out, there are good questions to be asked about how colleges and universities can/should/do assess the dollar value of faculty conference participation. Goxewu also seems to be asking about the ethical obligations that come with utilizing a travel budget: how can we best measure whether, as individual faculty members, we’re making sufficiently good use of that money (or, to throw in a new topic, justifying the environmental cost so much travel)? But I’m not convinced we can simply sort out the legit from the illegit aspects of conference-going and then just accomplish the first through electronic media. And I would find the move away from real human interaction — and the nudge toward graciousness that tends to come when a real person is standing there talking to us about the scholarship and teaching she clearly genuinely cares about — a significant loss.

As an aside, an “ad hominem” comment style doesn’t necessarily constitute a true “ad hominem” attack. The subtlety of this distinction is often lost on CHE “moderators.”In a “gosh-gee-golly” sort of way, Prof. Jackson has actually put his finger on an important nerve which is why some of the postings have been so “pointed.”First of all, there are conferences and there are conferences. The distinction between them has been hinted at in the comments above, as well. Conferences with no true peer-review of proposals for the presentations, which offer self-congratulatory opportunities for middling minds to have a “break” from the routine of the campus, often in a tourist location, etc., are far less important to the professional development of a faculty member than ones which do, indeed, exist to provide for pre-publication exchanges of ideas for the better honing thereof.Conferences at conventions that exist primarily for another purpose (e.g., job interviews to relieve campus budgets of the pressures of recruitment) rarely have the same “academic presence” in the minds of the participants. Thus the castigation of the MLA’s annual convention in the media where every affiliated organization offers presentations on everything under the sun, giving the lie to the concept of true professional academic peer review.That said, the most substantial objections to conferences are based in the new expectations that the information age have created in us — new and more expansive expectations for interaction and networking. If educators speak to the reduced efficacy of the lecture over the seminar for learning, why should educators applaud the one-hour session of three fifteen-minute presentations with five minutes of discussion for each as a viable means of professional development for themselves?Before the Internet, I used to send away for printed conference programs after conferences were held for those which interested me the most. I probably sent out for and read the programs of fifty to seventy-five conferences a year. Now, I can read those programs on the Web before the conferences are held, including abstracts; surely that should change the expectations and the utility for actual conferences. Yet, conferences in administration and in the humanities ;-) (my primary experiences) often reserve the opportunity for formal interaction among disparate groups pnly for breakfast or “break-out” focus groups. What if the “outside” became the “inside” of conferences? What if the interaction became the focus rather than the lecture presentations? Thus, indeed, there is something inherently more “honest” about Prof. Jackson’s (and my own) “talk it, don’t read it” approach to conference presentations. Invariably, I have found that approach is met with the most approbation of the attendees. When asked, “How could you say all of that without reading a text?” I would invariably reply, “I haven’t got the time to turn it into a publication yet.”So, in the context of shrinking budgets, etc. the proliferation of less useful and/or non-peer-reviewed “conferences” (as opposed to meetings for other purposes, like job interviewing) should be rethought and restructured. Conferences should be true professional development and scholarly research opportunities, not expense-paid trips to tourist attractions where the “lecture” is given “lip service.” This means the use of technologies to improve the actual human in-person interactions. By way of example, this might correspond to the equivalent of off-loading “grammar review and learning” to Web modules and the use of the conference (and the classroom) for more interactive language communications.As they currently stand, many if not most conferences (in administration and in the humanities ;-)) operate on the outmoded “lecture” model where any “encounter” with the “lecturer” is tangential at best. That there are objections raised to this model is a sign of the evolution of the academic professions away from the passivity of the lecture hall and into the more personal (and often more effective) worlds of synchronous and asynchronous communication, in person and online.

gtkarn, only “irrational” because of my absolute inflexibility on the matter. I think your points about what often gets undervalued is important to thematize.

What in the world are “deployments” of the Bible?

It was snark, jljjr.And now that you have answered sincerely I feel confounded, abashed…