July 1, 2009
Academic Self-Fashioning
This article on professorial fashion caught my eye. As much as most of us hate to admit that fashion plays a role in our professional lives (we echo Henry David Thoreau’s lament in Walden: “The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same”), the reality is that there are trends and expectations aplenty even in academe.
This got me thinking about the amount of fashion posing that goes on in any profession; higher education certainly is not immune to this, from the grungy Marxist to the cuff-linked development officer to the seersucker-clad law professor to the presidential wannabe’s who wear those trendy rimless glasses. Most campuses have more than a few poseurs in their communities; likewise, we have enough free spirits to keep things interesting (I have fond memories of colleagues who have worn the occasional kilt and bathrobe around campus).
So, which fashion items drive you the craziest as you look around campus? Which do you secretly envy?
By Gene C. Fant Jr. | Posted on Wed Jul 1, 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comment [43]Righting a Wrong
Considering the turbulent financial times, it’s understandable that many universities are freezing faculty and administrative pay. What’s less understandable is why some of them are putting the kibosh on pay raises for grant-supported postdoctoral fellows, FemaleScienceProfessor writes in her latest post. She points out that not only does it make no financial sense to freeze the pay of externally supported postdocs, but it’s, well, downright unethical:
In fact, universities benefit financially from postdoctoral scholars because postdoctoral salaries may be part of the indirect cost calculation of a grant. Postdocs in the sciences bring money to a university. Freezing salaries of postdocs or other soft-money researchers is a money losing policy. …
I can’t think of a good reason why grant-funded salaries can’t be paid as budgeted in the grants. If the money exists in a grant for the specific purpose of paying a researcher, the researcher should get the budgeted money no matter what the university policy is regarding hiring/pay for faculty or staff.
Which is why she’s considering resorting to less-than-ethical means herself in order to award her postdoc his/her rightful raise:
One of the only ways to be granted an official exemption to the no-raise policy is if the person in question has another job offer. The job offer doesn’t have to be carved in stone — it can just be an email from someone at another institution expressing an intention to offer a position. I don’t want my postdoc to go out and get a real job offer (and he has said he wants to stay on here as a postdoc for another year or two), but I am pretty sure that I could get a colleague at another institution to send my postdoc an email expressing an interest in hiring him away from my institution (but without any real intention of doing so). With such a letter in hand, there’s a good chance I could get the raise approved.
So, tell us, readers: What would you do?
By Gabriela Montell | Posted on Wed Jul 1, 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comment [13]In Hard Times, Colleges Search for Ways to Trim the Faculty
The Jones Theatre at Washington State University is getting a $500,000 face-lift this summer. A construction crew has already ripped out its 500 orange and blue seats and is replacing them with new ones covered in a wine-colored fabric. The theater’s walls are being painted a light beige, and a new set of black velour curtains will grace the stage.
But some professors are worried that the theater will remain dark. That’s because the department of theater and dance is one of three academic programs slated for elimination because of budget cuts at Washington State. Officials say they must slash a total of $54-million from the university’s budget over the next two years. The 11 tenured and tenure-track professors who work in the three programs are also on the chopping block.
Administrators are calling the eliminations “vertical cuts.” Instead of slicing costs equally across the board as many other colleges have done, the administration singled out a few that it said were not crucial to the university’s mission and attracted few students or little outside research money.
As the economy slumped this year, institutions in other states adopted similar strategies. The Louisiana Board of Regents cut the philosophy major at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, for instance, and colleges in Idaho, Florida, Michigan, and Wisconsin are also planning to eliminate programs and departments.
That has typically happened after broader austerity measures have failed to stanch enough red ink. “You can bleed to death from a thousand cuts,” says Warwick M. Bayly, provost at Washington State. “We felt we had to prioritize.”
But selective cuts have their own price. Faculty morale is hurt, and professors worry that the damage extends to the overall reputation of the institution. Terry J. Converse, a professor of theater who has been at Washington State for 18 years, is angry that his department is scheduled to be wiped out completely while others remain largely intact. “It’s unconscionable,” says Mr. Converse. “It’s just not fair to knock off a very functional department that is critical to the liberal arts when it clearly could have been completely avoided.”
By Robin Wilson | Posted on Wed Jul 1, 10:14 AM | Permalink | CommentU. of Wisconsin Academics Win Collective-Bargaining Rights
More than 20,000 academic employees in the University of Wisconsin system have collective-bargaining rights now that the state’s new budget has been signed into law. Those covered include tenured and tenure-track faculty members, part-time and full-time lecturers, and adjuncts, among others. The law, long sought by the Wisconsin chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, paves the way for the federation to begin organizing campaigns.
By Audrey Williams June | Posted on Wed Jul 1, 10:03 AM | Permalink | CommentSharing the Pain: Cutting Faculty Salaries Across the Board
Greensboro College has many of the intimate hallmarks of a small, private, liberal-arts college.
Professors give their cellphone numbers to students and routinely provide extra help to those who need it. Classes at the North Carolina institution average 14 people. And one of the students featured on the college Web site is a biology major who plays on the tennis and volleyball teams and says she is grateful that professors are willing to work around her hectic schedule. The college motto is “You belong here!”
But in mid-April, faculty and staff members got some news that cast a pall on the close-knit campus. At a hastily arranged meeting in the chapel where worship services are held every week, President Craven E. Williams announced layoffs and a temporary, across-the-board pay cut of 20 percent for salaried employees. In addition, sabbaticals were shelved and many benefits were cut.
The institution needs $5-million to stay afloat until the fall, when tuition payments roll in. “It’s very difficult to tell somebody that you’re cutting their pay 20 percent,” said Robert Stout, chairman of Greensboro College’s Board of Trustees. “But the important thing is to make sure the college survives.”
Some colleges, slammed by the nationwide recession, have begun to eliminate specific programs and departments. But those cost savings often take time to materialize. Greensboro and other colleges instead turned to across-the-board measures that could be put in place quickly and have an immediate effect on the bottom line. Pay cuts often fit the bill.
By Audrey Williams June | Posted on Wed Jul 1, 09:39 AM | Permalink | Comment [1]June 29, 2009
Outsiders on the Search Committee
Every college and university where I’ve worked has included extra-departmental faculty members on search committees, though the rationale has been somewhat different in each place. It’s also important to note that all four of those institutions have been small and primarily focused on teaching.
Chosen carefully, such external committee members can have a powerful positive effect on the outcome of a search. From a candidate’s perspective, they can show that the institution as a whole is interested in each department’s hiring, and can lay the foundation for future collegial relationships.
From a departmental perspective, it is (or, more precisely, can be) extremely helpful to get a clear, external perspective on the various candidates. It’s almost inevitable that the disciplinary enthusiasms and schisms that operate in a particular department can lead to certain kinds of blindness that can be alleviated by wise words from beyond the department. It’s also sometimes true that departmental faculty members will act better when an outsider is in their midst. If a department is riven by factions, sometimes that moderating force makes a real difference in the conduct of a search.
The challenge is to get the right person or people to perform this role. The same departmental forces that may make a search itself difficult can, and probably will, cause problems in selecting the external search-committee member. A clever department head or committee chair can, perhaps, select a good colleague who will have the right kinds of influence.
An outsider on the committee may be useful in determining how well candidates can articulate their discipline to a well-informed person who is not a part of the field. An external member can also serve as a good reviewer of teaching demonstrations, and can be tasked with observing the way candidates interact with students, staff members, and others not directly connected to the search.
What are your experiences with having faculty members from outside a department serve on its search committee? Has that worked well, or caused difficulties in your process?
By David Evans | Posted on Mon Jun 29, 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comment [13]See You in the Funny Papers
College professors have a well-known affinity for comic strips, but I have a feeling that this recent Wizard of Id strip won’t be going up on office doors or into PowerPoint slides on too many campuses.
When I saw it, it made me think about a colleague who told me that a relative of his, who is a farmer, once observed that he worked more during most days than a professor did in an entire semester (professors only teach 12 hours per semester, right?).
One of the problems we face as a profession is the perception that thinking is not legitimate work. It’s hard to compare jobs that include visible, sweaty, physical labor to reading, writing, and reflecting. I have to say, however, that writing a book is just as tedious and exhausting as any job I’ve ever had (and I’ve had some very physical jobs throughout my life, including four years as a dry cleaner’s assistant in a steam-heat environment); it’s just a whole lot less sweat-inducing. Teaching involves many bleary-eyed nights spent squinting at essays or late-night sessions in laboratories. Reflecting can be an emotional kind of work that alternately drains and invigorates.
In the current economy, it is more important than ever to communicate to folks outside the academy that our work is worthwhile and legitimate. How can we explain to people that what we do is “real” work?
By Gene C. Fant Jr. | Posted on Mon Jun 29, 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comment [18]Oregon Set to Adopt Legislation That Helps Adjunct Faculty Members
The governor of Oregon is expected to sign a bill that includes principles of the American Federation of Teachers’ Faculty and College Excellence campaign. The legislature approved the bill over the weekend, as the State Senate voted unanimously to make Oregon the first state to enact such a law.
The union’s national campaign, which began in early 2007, urges colleges to hire more full-time faculty members and to give part-timers health benefits and to adopt policies of “equal pay for equal work.”
Oregon’s bill would require colleges to document just who makes up the faculty — many adjuncts fall between the cracks when it comes to official data — and would give part-timers access to the state health-care plan.
By Audrey Williams June | Posted on Mon Jun 29, 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comment [2]June 26, 2009
Hiring and Firing Bytes
Here’s the latest appointment news …
- Brooklyn College has picked Karen L. Gould, provost and vice president for academic affairs at California State University at Long Beach, as its next president, The New York Times reports.
- The president of Bucknell University, Brian C. Mitchell, said Wednesday that he will step down next June, Philly.com reports.
- Warren D. Wolfson, a justice on the Illinois Appellate Court, has been appointed interim dean of the DePaul University College of Law, which is still reeling from the sudden dismissal last week of respected Dean Glen Weissenberger, the Chicago Tribune reports.
In other news …
- The wait is over. Harvard University announced this week that it is laying off 275 staff members and trimming the hours of another 40 workers, thanks to its tanking endowment, The Harvard Crimson reports. No faculty jobs will be cut. Meanwhile, many Harvard students and employees are wondering why the university is firing people when, despite its endowment losses, it’s still sitting on a big pile of money, the Boston Globe reports: “The fact that this is happening at Harvard, who is still sitting on a chest of billions and remains the richest university in the world, shows it is pursuing this incredibly narrow path of naked self interest,’’ said Geoff Carens, a library assistant and union representative who [organized a rally this week] to protest the cuts. “They’re using this drop in the endowment as an excuse to justify really terrible cuts that will have a disastrous impact on the surrounding communities.’’
- Another Ivy League university — Princeton — will offer early-retirement incentives to workers 55 and over, who have at least 10 years of service at the university and whose age plus tenure equals 80 years or more, the Associated Press reports. The move is part of an effort to slash expenditures in the face of an expected 30-percent drop in the university’s endowment.
- Washington State University will kill three academic programs and eliminate 360 positions as it tries to slice its budget by $54-million over the next two years, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports. Of those jobs due to be cut, about 167 are vacant, while another 116 are currently occupied, the newspaper notes. In addition, another 47 employees have opted to retire early and others will have their hours cut.
- The University of Nevada at Reno is slashing 279 positions in response to a 15-percent reduction in its state budget, the Associated Press reports.
June 23, 2009
Late-Season Serendipity
The summer months can give chairs and deans night sweats, but it’s not from the heat. They are dealing with unsuccessful searches, last-minute retirements, and surprise resignations. This time of year is very active among administrators as they try to figure out how to fill positions when the calendar dictates that full searches may be impractical.
This season underscores two important elements about the search process:
- The urgency of networking: Good administrators, including chairs, keep files of CV’s from friends, former colleagues, and former students. These may be shared when queries come through. I can say from personal experience that few things yield more pleasure for me than helping someone find a good job or helping a fellow dean find a great professor.
- The necessity of being a graceful candidate: Often there is a microscopic line between the candidate who gets the offer and the one who doesn’t. First-choice candidates sometimes sign contracts and then back out, leaving the position open for second-choice candidates to advance. Unexpected positions may open up in ways that can be molded to fit a great second choice from a previous search. Chairs have friends at other institutions who are looking for impressive candidates. Deans share CV’s with one another of ABD candidates from last year’s search who have since completed the doctorate and are impressive candidates. Graceful candidates generate an incredible network (see point one!) for themselves.
What other insights might you offer job seekers about the distinctive features of late-season searches?
By Gene C. Fant Jr. | Posted on Tue Jun 23, 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comment [16]