These workshops consist of a variety of sessions of interest to chairs, including developing and supporting adjunct faculty, working with institutional budgets, managing hiring and evaluation processes to maximize outcomes and minimize legal risk, and dealing with difficult colleagues. Each session is facilitated by an experienced senior administrator (that was why I was there) or an appropriately qualified attorney or other professional.

One of the things that the chairs in attendance noted was that few of them received any formal training whatever from their home institutions before becoming chair. My experience as a new chair at my first institution, and again at the much larger, public institution where I then moved, was similar. In the first instance, I’d been on the faculty for six years, our institutional practices were reasonably simple, and our chairs had very little power or authority, so it didn’t take long to get up to speed.

In the second instance, though, where I was new to a larger institution, having some more specific orientation and professional development would have been welcome. In fact, only in my final year there did I attend the Kansas State Annual Academic Chairpersons’ Conference, in Orlando, which, due to its wealth of information, insight and collegiality, left me wishing that I had attended it earlier. Even though I soon went off to become a dean, this program helped to give me a foundation for that new position.

What struck me in Indianapolis was how exponentially more complex chairing has become in the last academic generation. Assessment, alone, has added large burdens and time challenges to the role of chair. Legal matters have become more vexed and contentious, and the rules, regulations, and laws governing all aspects of college and university operations have become increasingly complex. Unfortunately for chairs, they sit at the nexus of a faculty life that retains a fierce commitment to many powerful and often excellent traditions, and a bureaucratic culture that either does not respect or, in some cases, simply is not compatible with these traditions. A lot of this incompatibility comes from outside the higher-education community, and much as we might like to thwart it, it’s not really possible to do so.

Thus, savvy chairs will know how to manage the gap between faculty and bureaucracy to maximize opportunities for their faculty to thrive in new conditions. To do that, chairs need to understand the legal imperatives, regulatory strictures, and financial realities under which their institutions operate. Even at a small institution (and most CIC colleges and universities are small), it’s no longer possible to be an effective chair without some degree of specialized administrative knowledge.

Many faculty members don’t like this situation, but it’s the reality. Programs like the CIC workshops and the K-State conference provide excellent opportunities to learn many of the key aspects of the job, so if you’re thinking about moving into a chair position, I strongly recommend you negotiate attendance to one or more of these programs when you accept the job.

And yet, as we filed out of the auditorium afterwards, the prevailing mood seemed to be one of optimism. That’s partly, I think, because we have confidence in our new “pilot” to pull the plane out of its nosedive. But it was also due, in no small part, to the fact that we had just been addressed as if we were intelligent adults.

Missing completely from the interim president’s remarks were meaningless platitudes, patronizing buzzwords, and blatant aggrandizement. In their place were difficult truths, stated plainly and succinctly, with little in the way of sugarcoating.

It would be impossible to overstate how refreshing that was. Normally, few settings are more conducive to a good, old-fashioned game of Buzzword Bingo than a community-college faculty meeting. Most of these well-worn words and phrases are harmless enough: “synergy,” “quality enhancement,” “win-win.” But a few, I fear, are more insidious, indicative of the condescending and patronizing attitude that too many community-college leaders have toward faculty.

I always wince, for example, when I hear a leader refer to faculty as a “team.” Although the term may at first seem completely innocuous, on further consideration it raises a number of questions: If we are a team, does that mean the leader is our coach? And if so, are we, therefore, utterly accountable to him or her alone? What if one individual doesn’t go along with the team? Might he or she be cut? After all, there is no “I” in “team.”

Speaking as someone who has participated in team sports most of my life, including at the collegiate level, I can tell you that teams are almost always dictatorships. Benevolent, perhaps, but dictatorships nonetheless. The coach always has the last word, and divergence from the team concept is punished swiftly and surely.

That sort of approach might be necessary if you’re trying to win a basketball game. But is that how we see ourselves as professionals–as dutiful members of the team, answerable solely to the coach … or else?

Even worse is the word “family.” It always makes me slightly uncomfortable when someone to whom I am not even particularly close, and to whom I am certainly not related, refers to me as family. And once again, use of the word in a professional setting raises obvious questions: If we’re a family, then who is the parent? And what happens to us if we’re bad?

Fundamentally, the word “patronize” means to treat someone as if you are the parent and he or she is the child. If referring to faculty as a “family” isn’t patronizing by that definition, then I don’t know what is.

Worst of all, though, is a cliché I’m hearing thrown around a lot these days: “change agent.” I always cringe when I hear a college leader describe himself or herself in those terms, because I know what’s coming: change for the sake of change. Change in order to demonstrate the leader’s ability to bring about change.

Clearly, change is sometimes needed, as is obviously the case at my institution right now. But too often a leader will walk in the door with the attitude, “You people haven’t been doing things right. But never fear: I’m here to fix it.” It seems to me that beginning with the assumption that nobody knew what they were doing before you showed up is a slap in the face to all those who preceded you, including faculty.

Personally, my response, whenever I hear a leader describe himself or herself as a change agent, is to think to myself, “So is hydrochloric acid.”

I’m sure most college leaders who use such buzzwords do so innocently enough, without really thinking about what they’re saying. No doubt they mean no harm and would perhaps be mortified to know what faculty members really think about their “inspiring” comments. But I would encourage those who truly understand the faculty role in campus governance to avoid such pablum in the future, as our interim president did in his first meeting with us. Just tell us what we need to know, as straightforwardly as possible, however difficult it may be.

After all, we’re big boys and girls.

[Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user Gavin Llewellyn.]

My time spent not reading e-mail was put to very good use: a long hike, dinner with friends, cleaning out my garage and, importantly, thinking about why I hate e-mail. After a couple of days of reflection, it occurred to me I don’t really hate e-mail, I just hate the way certain people use it. After careful consideration, I narrowed down my top five e-mail pet peeves:

1) Writing too much. I recently heard a story about an influential faculty member who sent a senior member of our administration an e-mail message that would have been five pages of single spaced text had it been a hard copy document. The response? “OK; let’s do it.” The writer was outraged and is said to have uttered some version of “I took the time to write a lengthy and nuanced examination of an important issue only to be insulted with a one sentence response.” At least the answer was positive! It could have well said, “TLDR” (Too long, didn’t read). While the writer was, no doubt, impressed with his thesis sentence, prose and compelling analysis, the message contained more information than was needed to provide an answer. Plus, just try reading something like that on your phone. Annoying.

2) Using random subject lines. I have a highly effective filing system for my important e-mails that is made absolutely useless when people use inaccurate subject lines. Often a message begins with an appropriate subject line: “Proposed syllabus revisions” and then days or months later a response to that message is used to raise an entirely different subject. The other day I spent 10 minutes looking for some scheduling information that I finally determined to be embedded in a message titled, “Chapters 10-15.”

3) Expecting immediate responses. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might allege that email is a plot to make sure that nothing important ever occurs. For me, a day spent in response, response, response mode means that I’m not able to attend to anything particularly strategic that requires a little thinking time. I have tried checking e-mail just a few times a day, but then have people calling to ask why I have not responded to their (non-urgent) messages. This makes me crazy.

4) Condemnation by cc. A person with whom I interact from time to time has a nasty habit of sending “Let me set you straight messages,” apparently designed to belittle the recipient and make sure that everyone on the cc list appreciates the writer’s superior intelligence. Alas, this writer is often proven wrong. When this happens, does she write a mass message to the original cc list admitting her error and redeeming the reputation of her victim? Of course not; instead she picks up the phone to make a personal apology, cleverly avoiding any documentation that could be used against her. In her mind she has made things right. In reality she has made things worse.

5) Ranting. Mad at me? Think I need to reconsider my position on a sensitive topic? Believe I have done you wrong in some way? Guess what? There is this really cool communication tool called a “conversation” and it works pretty well. Despite beliefs to the contrary, e-mail is not an all-purpose communication tool.

What gets on your nerves about e-mail? Do you have any tips for managing your messages?

[Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user Sean MacEntee.]

I couldn’t have been more wrong. When the list appeared I found that several of the jobs I was interested in wanted their applications completed by the second week in October. Predictably, the teaching statement I wrote two years before no longer fit me, and then there were requests for other documents I hadn’t necessarily anticipated: dossiers providing “evidence of teaching effectiveness,” sample syllabi, etc. In many cases I already had the contents of these portfolios drafted, but they needed serious sprucing up before I showcased them to a search committee. I had my recommenders squared away, but I hadn’t held on to my teaching evaluations from the courses I taught as an M.A. student or from my time as an adjunct. I would need to track those down. With the dissertation still demanding the bulk of my attention, I suddenly found myself at least a month behind.

As a result, time that should have been spent researching the individual job offerings had to be dedicated to parts of the application process that could have been done in advance. This was precisely what the professional-development seminars were intended to help me avoid, but my ignorance of everything that goes into an application kept me from recognizing that earlier.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing about the various components of application packets in more detail, but, other than gathering those documents, what else should applicants be doing now to prepare for a fall job search? How helpful is it to review previous JILs to get a sense of the materials requested? Besides asking for letters of recommendation, what conversations should applicants be having with their advisers and mentors at this early stage of the process?

[Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user Natesh Ramasamy.]

As I pondered the institutions named in the column, I remembered something a mentor told me when I was on the job market. He indicated that you could move into faculty positions south and west of your doctoral alma mater, but rarely north and east, but he further indicated that football-conference affiliations dominated hiring patterns. Southeastern Conference institutions, for example, will hire graduates of other major bowl conferences (PAC 10, Big 12, etc.) but rarely will hire the “lesser” championship conference institutions.

His advice was anecdotal, of course, but in the context of Bissinger’s essay, there is some substance to the concept. Flagship schools with athletic powerhouses, broadly defined, tend to have pretty significant academic reputations. Think Wisconsin, Iowa, Penn State, Ohio State, Oregon, Stanford, and so many others. Bissinger doesn’t seem to arguing against the flagships so much as he is arguing that at most institutions, athletics becomes a monstrous siphon away from the first-priority function of academics.

I thought I would ask our readers if there is any possibility that a synergy that occurs between high-profile athletics and academic reputations or is that just a pipe dream offered by some campus leaders?

[Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user juggernautco.]

“Give [Name Removed] the opportunity to teach English 102.”

“We, the students of Richard Bland College, respectfully request that [Name Removed] be allowed to teach English 102 (Intro to literary genres) during the upcoming semester. Every signature on this list is either from a student who has taken [the faculty member's] class and feels that his encouragement of expression and opinion speaks to us as students, or from a faculty member who can validate the aforementioned claims. [Name Removed] is a gifted teacher and it is widely known that he has wanted to teach English 102 for some time. Please allow him the opportunity that we believe he deserves.”

This petition has problems. Mainly, enrollment is what keeps this faculty member from teaching the English 102 course. The college needs adjuncts to teach English 101, “Writing and Research,” and to teach our developmental English course, because we have a bazillion students who need to take those classes. The e-mail seems to imply that the college isn’t allowing the faculty member to teach English 102 when that is simply not the case.

Still, I signed the petition. I signed it because I believe the petition represents students getting excited about future classes and about their education. The students are taking charge of their own education. They don’t have all the correct information and they probably won’t get what they want, but they believe they can bring about changes in the world. That’s something I want to encourage.

[Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user League of Women Voters of California.]

I do not have a history of PTGD, so its sudden onset last December took me by surprise. The first signs of the condition emerged toward the latter part of a five-hour layover at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport when I was finally able to click the “submit grades” button a full hour before it was time to move to the gate area. The semester was finally over. I was done. I was relieved.

That sense of peace did not last long, however. Within 35 minutes of posting the grades, a student sent an e-mail appealing his grade, and it was kind of snarky. I responded promptly and pleasantly with a clear explanation of how I had calculated his grade. He pushed back. I pushed back. He pushed back again and I let him know that while I appreciated his perspective, not looking at Facebook in class a single time during the entire semester was not worth the extra points required to earn an A. I was annoyed.

Twenty minutes later, a second appeal arrived. It, too, had an edge to it and prompted an e-mail debate about the true meaning of class participation. My plane was about to board and I was growing increasingly cranky with my students’ sense of entitlement.

During the pre-lift-off period during which electronic devices were not required to be in their off position, I did a final check on messages only to find a third appeal. I wanted to break something.

When I reached my final destination several hours later, I was up to five appeals and feeling a sense of despair. This had never happened to me before. I am a fair grader. No, I am a generous grader. How could my students have turned on me this way?

Interestingly, the fifth appeal was worded differently than appeals one through four. “Based on my math, which I had a friend check, I came up with a 92. Could you show me your calculations?” she wrote.

A quick check of my spreadsheet revealed a high B. “How did she come up with a 92,” I wondered? And then I checked my grading spreadsheet formulas. That’s when I found my error. All the appeals were legit and I felt like a self-righteous idiot.

After contacting all the students who had moved from B Land to A Land, I reflected on what I had learned from the experience, other than the importance of double-checking formulas. The key takeaway? Calm requests to reveal a decision-making process tend to yield better results than demands, assumptions of evil intent, and sarcasm. Being “curious, not furious” works almost every time.

Have you ever made false assumptions that got you into trouble? What strategies have you used to encourage others to change their positions?

[Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user ellenm1.]

No, my life is not like a bad movie on the Disney Channel. I actually found myself, after nearly 30 years, back on a couple of high-school campuses. I was at one school to teach dual-enrollment college classes and at another (my son’s school) to help out as a volunteer coach.

What I discovered is that I’m glad I don’t have to spend all of my time at high schools. My decision to become a college professor instead of a school teacher was, in retrospect, the right one. In fact, I’ll go a step further and say that I hope none of my kids becomes a high-school or grade-school teacher, even though I know at least one of them is thinking about it. I’d much rather they chose a career where the working conditions are slightly less stressful and stifling, such as TSA agent or pro-western journalist in Iran.

Don’t get me wrong: Teaching at any level is a noble profession. Some might say it’s not a profession at all but rather a calling. I just pray that if my kids get the call for a high school, they don’t pick up.

I haven’t always felt that way. There was a time when I would have been pleased for my children to become teachers — even though teaching is a relatively low-paying profession and an often thankless job. But I used to think the drawbacks were more than offset by the intellectual stimulation and respect that teachers enjoyed, not to mention cut-rate cafeteria lunches.

Now I look at the school calendar and see one long string of standardized tests, most with acronyms that would make the Pentagon blush: CogAT, PSAT, CRCT, GHSGT, ITBS, BOGUS. (OK, I made that last one up.) It appears that policymakers have reduced teachers to little more than information-dispensing drones. So much for intellectual stimulation.

How about respect? These days, listening to the news, I get the impression that public-school teachers have somehow become Public Enemy No. 1. Seems they’re all a bunch of overpaid whiners who do a poor job teaching our kids. Oh yeah, and they get summers off!

Memo to any parents who buy that garbage: If your children are doing poorly in school, if they are spoiled and undisciplined, if they have no work ethic and no respect for authority, you are at fault, not the teachers. It’s not a teacher’s fault that your kids are allowed to get away with murder at home.

Here’s an invitation to the teacher-bashers: How about you spend all day, every day, for the next 10 months with 25 or 30 members of the rising generation? Then see if you don’t need a couple months off just to recuperate.

And so I say to my own kids: Even if you feel genetically predisposed to be school teachers, even if you have natural teaching ability, please find another profession. Should you choose to ignore my advice, at least remember that what you do, you will do alone. Do not expect support from parents, community leaders, or even your own administrators, most of whom will quickly throw you under the bus rather than face the slightest criticism.

Just dispense information, work miracles daily, and you’ll be fine.

[Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user stevendepolo.]

My community-college classes are both more homogenous and more diverse than I experienced in my undergraduate career; a slim majority of students are Spanish speakers and about two-thirds are Hispanic. But unlike my university life where we were almost all the same age, I teach classes with students from 16 to 60. That’s not even mentioning the vast disparity in terms of socioeconomic status.

Older students sometimes have a hard time blending. They may be shy in a classroom after many years away; they may take things more seriously than kids just out of high school; maybe they are uncomfortable with technological demands. I’m sure there are other reasons as well. Whatever the case, helping these older students work well in groups is a challenge I face each semester.

The other group of students who seem to need special care in the social aspect of class are harder to define. Physical handicaps and differences in sexuality are two of the issues I’m currently facing. Other students are not mean or bullying, just not very inclusive. I take care to frequently assign groups instead of allowing the class to do it on their own. On a peer-review assignment, a gay young man was very clear about only wanting me to read his paper. I realized there was something sensitive going on so we partnered together and I was able to give him constructive feedback about his essay covering his experiences telling his family about his homosexuality.

I fear that I’m not always as sensitive as I could be, and try to do my best to make sure everyone in class is able to learn in the best possible environment. How have you helped your classes be inclusive and comfortable for all?

[Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user LyleSMU102.]

Your résumé is spotless, your reputation is equally as unsullied, but you are now fielding phone interviews and one question keeps coming up: “Why are you on the market?” Other than saying that you feel like you are serving at the University of the Titanic, you are at a loss for what to say to explain your reasons for looking elsewhere. If you speak ill of your current employers, however, you risk sounding like one of the “nattering nabobs of negativism” (to borrow William Safire’s marvelous phrase) or an ill egg in search of a new nest.

My best advice is that you try to accentuate the positives of the institutions that have called: their trajectories, their reputations, even their locations. Offer even begrudging praise of your current place (“Oh, I would miss so many of the people at my current place . . .”) but quickly turn to the merits of the new place (“but I’m sure that the new colleagues at Bright Hope University would be excellent iron with which I could sharpen my own iron. There are so many folks in the department who have such wonderful reputations as scholars/professors/etc.”).

What advice would you offer to folks who are hoping to be “formerly of the University of the Titanic”?

[Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user Gorrilla Girl.]