February 10, 2012, 2:58 pm
By Isaac Sweeney
Though many speakers at the New Faculty Majority’s national summit, in Washington, D.C., on January 28, urged spreading the word about the overreliance on contingent faculty and how this harms student learning, few were as colorful as Deborah Leigh Scott.
Scott, an adjunct instructor, artist, writer, and filmmaker, uses various forms of art as her mode of expression. She’s currently working on a documentary called ‘Junct: The Trashing of Higher Ed. in America. She urges those with artistic means and motivation to use them to spread the word about contingent faculty issues. She talked about some of her fellow adjuncts who live in vans or in their parents’ basements. She said these stories are heart-wrenching, but the images could be even more striking if they were captured on film, in fiction, or in some other artistic form. The idea was to let the general public know, somehow, what is…
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February 9, 2012, 11:15 am
By George David Clark
I’m a naturally optimistic person, maybe even a little naively so at times. When I read through the job lists this fall even the roughest postings seemed attractive for at least a moment. “Sure,” my thinking went, “Mid-Tundra State is a little isolated and it sounds as though they’re looking for their hire to run the writing center, edit the literary magazine, and teach a 6/6 load, but just think how much I could accomplish without distractions. I wonder if I could see the aurora borealis from there?”
Of course, the more I learned, the clearer it became that some of the jobs I am most competitive for are no one’s “dream jobs.” In one interview the dean of arts and sciences made it clear that, while the university encourages research, in most cases the volume of teaching and service obligations effectively precludes it. Another interviewer at a different school described the university…
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February 8, 2012, 2:16 pm
By Eliana Osborn
As we talk about higher education in the 21st century, there are big-picture questions to address: What is the purpose of our varying institutions? What are our teaching goals — to give students a broad liberal-arts education or job preparation? How can we best meet those goals and use our dollars?
Since I attended the New Faculty Majority summit, however, I’ve been thinking about something equally important: education as a matter of civil rights and social justice.
Anne Wiegard, president of the NFM Foundation, shared remarks with a pre-summit group that were based on Martin Luther King Jr.’s words: “We can never be satisfied as long as our colleagues are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating ‘For Tenure Track Only.’” She talked about inequality in the academic world — in terms of academic freedom, job security, and more.
There are two…
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February 7, 2012, 1:28 pm
By Allison M. Vaillancourt
Imagine sitting at a table with six fellow members of a search committee and feeling relieved that after a fair amount of debate and voting, the group has finally settled on the top three finalists — or so you think. “I really hate to do this,” says your colleague to the left, “and I thought maybe the process would play itself out so I wouldn’t have to, but I feel obligated.”
“Obligated to do what?,” you ask.
“Obligated to tell you that Susan tends to sleep with her grad students,” your colleague replies. “It’s been a serious problem in her current department, so I’m sure that’s why she is looking to make a move.”
This, of course, prompts half of the group to call for Susan’s candidacy to be tossed out and the other half to question whether the grad students are in her lab, which would be very, very bad, or just grad students in the department, which seems possibly okay in a…
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February 6, 2012, 12:18 pm
By Rob Jenkins
One often-frustrating aspect of academic life is the phenomenon of alleged “policies” that, upon further inspection, turn out not to be policies at all. These “policies that aren’t” come in two main varieties: phantom policies, which the “old guard” will swear to on their mothers’ graves but which don’t appear in any official document, and administrative edicts, which are not really policies–at least not at any institution that espouses shared governance–because they haven’t been approved by the relevant, representational bodies.
Years ago, when I first became department chair at another institution, I was told by the other chairs (most of whom had been there for 20 years or more) about several policies regarding faculty teaching schedules–for example, that every full-time faculty member had to teach at least one night class a year. Because the people in my department weren’t…
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February 3, 2012, 2:17 pm
By Isaac Sweeney
Like Eliana Osborn, I was at the New Faculty Majority’s national summit in Washington, D.C. A number of things caught my attention as I listened to the speakers. I’ll spend this and the next few posts describing some of these ideas and offering my own thoughts and questions.
One of the most important ideas was that of fear, which was implied by many, but brought up specifically by Rich Moser, a senior staff representative at the Rutgers Council of the AAUP Chapters, and by Joe Berry, author of Reclaiming the Ivory Tower. Whether it’s consciously or unconsciously, higher-education systems often work to keep contingent faculty members quiet. That way, they can claim that their contingent faculty members are happy because they don’t complain.
A scarier byproduct of this is the self-censorship of many contingent faculty. Many are unhappy but they fear speaking up. Like all working…
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February 2, 2012, 12:13 pm
By George David Clark
Like a lot of job seekers this month, I am spending much of my time now preparing for interviews. This means not only anticipating possible questions about my teaching and scholarship, but also thoroughly scrutinizing the universities and their search committees. I want to be able to reference specific ways in which the current faculty’s research intersects with my own work and to articulate precisely how I might add something to the particular department/program.
This kind of preparation is relatively straightforward. The questions are predictable and in most cases department Web sites with faculty biographies make it easy for job seekers to learn about past and ongoing projects. What I am finding more difficult to prepare for, though, are those last 5 to 10 minutes of the conversation when the tables are turned and the applicant is asked what questions he or she has for the…
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February 1, 2012, 10:44 am
By Rob Jenkins
Who knew how polarizing the issue of classroom management could be? I certainly didn’t, until I read the comments on my December Two-Year Track column, “The Rules about Classroom Rules.”
Clearly, there are two distinct schools of thought regarding how best to manage one’s teaching environment: the “libertarian” approach, which basically allows students to behave more or less as they like as long as they’re not disturbing others, and what I’ll call (at the risk of much additional abuse) the “authoritarian” approach, which calls for strict rules and swift punishments.
Consider the very first response to my column, a long and (I thought) rather nasty comment in which the writer basically accused me of being single-handedly responsible for the decay of America’s youth because I don’t snatch up students’ cell phones whenever I see them texting in class. My reply, I admit, was hardly…
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January 31, 2012, 11:39 am
By Allison M. Vaillancourt
My last post, “Are Your References Reliable?,” prompted several readers to weigh in on the ethics of providing a less-than-stellar employment reference. The general consensus of the comments was that would-be reference providers who have reservations about a candidate should be honest and encourage these job seekers to find others who can offer a more enthusiastic endorsement. I agree completely, but what happens when a candidate fails to even ask permission to list you as a reference?
Just before the holidays, I received a message asking me to return a reference call for a “highly confidential search.” No name and no clue about who we might be talking about were provided. Because I take reference inquiries seriously and always take care to return these kinds of calls promptly, I did what I always do. I got on the phone and looked forward to being helpful. Unfortunately for the…
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January 30, 2012, 11:43 am
By Eliana Osborn
We’ve found a forum here and elsewhere online to finally open some conversations about contingent faculty issues. On individual campuses it is hard to find time or opportunity to talk through these things in any meaningful way. At the New Faculty Majority Summit this weekend we’ve tried to shy away from the airing of grievances, no matter how valid, and focus on ways to move forward. That’s where I’ve been stuck–knowing the problems is just the beginning and I haven’t known how to do more.
A theme for the NFM is the title of this post and something that I think we need to emphasize in any discussion with the broader public about why they should care about our problems; after all, jobs are tough to find all over. Why does contingent faculty even matter? It matters not just to me and you and the other 800,000 non-tenure-track faculty across America. It matters to everyone who will take…
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