Let the panic begin

Well, I leave for London in two days. I have promised to finish my admin stuff Real Soon Now -- and that really means by the end of next week. I also promised a group of fairly intimidating women scholars that I would submit my paper from Berks to an Actual Journal by the end of next week. In the meanwhile, I am beginning to panic about my Leeds paper and why the hell I thought it would be a good idea. Just kill me now.

At least I will be in the place of peace that is the BL by Tuesday...

In the meantime, I am trying to get together my life, my house, and denying it all by watching Season One of Being Human.

Training for the Dark Side?

From Kalamazoo to a workshop where I am supposed to be learning to be an administrator, my life takes me such wonderful places. Exciting! One day between, spent mostly marking with colleagues. More on that later, but let's just say that it helped to demonstrate why some colleagues are so adamant that double-marking is a bad thing.

In between, I've been becoming ever more conscious of what it means to be an introvert. For example, it's pretty late, and I am finally winding down enough to sleep -- and I have to be up early to lead a discussion. So tired. But can't wind down.

But enough of that.

I'm learning the ways of the Dark Side. Mostly, I'm learning about my colleagues and myself, and how we take different things away. For example, a colleague in another department went to a similar workshop and came back with a new and enlarged chip on hir shoulder. What zie learned was that other low-level administrators all had it better than their colleagues at SLAC, and that SLAC sucks. It doesn't, as it happens.

What I have learned so far is that SLAC is pretty weak in procedures and a few other things. Also, I've been able to listen to other people and it's helped to re-set my reality scale. It's been nice to hear so many non-SLAC stories, most of which are not about dysfunctional departments and divisions. Some are, and I think it's not all sunshine and roses out there: too many heads nod when someone tells a story that sounds painfully familiar. I've also learned a lot of things about data, how universities function, and how, even though department and division chairs at SLAC have very little power, we are given so much more information than many of our colleagues. That information is something that, if you can make sense of it, can itself be somewhat empowering. Or maybe it's just me -- when I understand things, I feel much more secure! There have been frightening moments, though. I am far better at understanding the big picture than I like. I don't think departmentally; I think institutionally much more often.

Midway through a session today I was reminded of how many medievalists I know who are really very good at administration. And since it was well into day two, and my mind was wondering, I started thinking about the pedagogy panel at the Zoo, and how a colleague there reminded the rest of us that, where our modernist and Americanist colleagues' specialties are generally no broader than 50-75 years in one place, medievalists are expected to specialize in a thousand years, and at east 2-3 geographical areas. On top of that, we have the killer arsenal of mad skills. Sure, we tend to focus our research a bit more, but when we teach, we teach a LOT of content, comparatively speaking. Moreover, the content we teach is not just "history" -- we include literature and art and material culture -- lots of stuff. I wonder if there is a connection between our interdisciplinary training and an ability to look beyond our very narrow fields/departments/divisions. Or not. Just a thought. Anyway, it was interesting to hear the stories of colleagues and also to hear the occasional shock at some of the suggestions made in some discussions: one colleague seemed to say that hir program generally wrote job ads so that hir school's graduates would be the best candidates for those jobs. There were gasps, too, when I suggested that perhaps a way to deal with grade appeals was to ask someone else to take a copy of the rubric and the exam or paper and have them regrade. Threats to autonomy, dontcha know...

Wonder what I'll learn tomorrow..

A few thoughts on Tenure

A Few Thoughts on Tenure

Most of you readers know that I am a strong supporter of tenure and the tenure system. Most of you also know that I believe strongly in post-tenure review. Recent events have made me think of tenure in slightly different ways, so I thought I'd puzzle a few of them out here, rather than working on Syllabi.

Tenure is a Good Thing. It protects, or should protect, one's academic freedom. I think the guidelines of the AAUP are sound, although I am not as clear on their position on post-tenure review. In general, I think tenure is not supposed to protect people who are not doing their job well.

But this means a possible conflict. There's tenure, and there are our annual contracts. Institutions change. We all know people who were tenured when publication requirements were lower, or when accreditation agencies had less power, or even under other administrations whose rules were different. Tenure doesn't mean we faculty are not also employees. When institutions change, it seems to me that, whatever the rules were, whatever the contractual obligations were, when a person was granted tenure, the terms of employment change. This is true in any job. Companies are re-organized, industries and government agencies require new standards or new sorts of reporting, etc. I am not sure how tenure protects one from having to follow new versions of the Faculty Handbook, new requirements for reporting attendance for financial aid, adhering to FERPA, or any other such thing. And yet I know people, some at my own SLAC, who insist that the contract that was in effect when they were granted tenure supersedes any later contracts -- even when those new contracts have different wording that clearly includes new or slightly different obligations (as well as new amounts of money!). This seems to me to be a very problematic situation. I certainly wouldn't want our senior and tenured colleagues to have to go back and produce monographs to keep tenure, or anything like that. But I do expect that tenure not be a protection against increased work loads, service, or any other time-suck imposed on us by external agencies (or even against learning to use new equipment, software like Blackboard, or sim).

Discuss.

Re-thinking teaching, professionalism, and a bunch of other stuff

Re-thinking teaching, professionalism, and a bunch of other stuff...

...probably not all in one post. One of my goals this academic year is to get back to blogging more regularly, despite having a much heavier load than I've had in a long time. I need to do this because I need the discipline of writing something thoughtful on a regular basis, something that in the post has helped me to focus better on my research and teaching, Some of you are aware that the last year has been pretty hard -- so much so that I really couldn't blog the way I wanted to, i.e., objectively enough that I could mask enough details to preserve my friends' and colleagues' privacy. But there are a series of posts I would like to write about teaching, assessment, maturing in the profession and at an institution, wearing an administrator's hat, and what it is that we do for a living. Hint: it's not some of the stuff in this. So here's an update on what's going on, and a solicitation of opinions on what you guys want to hear first. While you're thinking about that, I may be writing. More later today.

Busman's Holiday

Busman's Holiday

So I'm several states away from home, visiting my Cranky academic sibling, and having a lovely time. And working, even though it's spring break at SLAC. Yeah, I know -- faculty don't get spring break!! Seriously, I don't know anyone who won't be doing some sort of work, even if it's just catching up. In my case, it's been connected to lots of fun, though. I got to stop to break a really long drive by having a late lunch with an esteemed senior medieval legal historian and his wife, which was really pleasant. And then spent a very pleasant evening decompressing with Cranky, who took me to a really good little restaurant where I pretty much spent my honorarium I earned today by guest teaching for him.

The next day, we went along on a field trip to the art museum at Cornell, where we saw lots of cool stuff, and had some pretty fantastic Japanese food for lunch. The trip was organized by Cranky's Asian art historian colleague, who totally rocks and put up with lots of questions from me. Then home and dinner and hanging out. And grading. Don't forget midterm grading.

Yesterday was more hanging out, more grading, a visit to a winery, and wings with a bit more local beer than was necessary. But all in all, mostly just fun -- have I mentioned that Cranky is a great host? He took me on a walking tour where I managed to not take any pictures, so will probaby do that tomorrow morning. But this is a fantastic town with all sorts of amazing houses and OMG a LAKE VIEW to die for!!

Today, I earned my keep, having met some other nice colleagues and enviously toured the building that houses Cranky's department. I think I sort of scared the students, who clearly were not prepared for the intense seminar exercise I'd sent ahead. But it was still enjoyable, and gave Cranky a break, so there you are. Back after class to grade some more, discover I'd totally b0rk3d my Blackboard grade books, so will likely get yelled at next week for submitting S/U grades for one class, and kind of pushed the limits of "on time." Never again will I try to teach four classes in the Spring. It's insane. I have never been so behind before. argh.

So what's up for the rest of my break? Well, there's the marking I haven't finished, for starters. Then proofing my department's pages for next year's catalogue -- as well as writing up some sample matrices of how majors should progress in their degree programs for my department. After that, another set of reports for a new SLAC initiative that I suspect will end up in my department being combined with another as a program. And I think I have a bunch of reading to do. Welcome to spring break!

What day is it?

What Day is it?

What I have done this week:

• taught 6 classes (including prep, obviously)
  
• had one chairs' meeting
  
• dealt with several end-of-semester student crises
  
• two phone interviews (on a search committee)
  
• Weighed in on College issues
  
• written up questions for a different part of the search
  
• written a review for survey classes
  
• lost a large chunk of my mind
  
• ranted about people who really got on my nerves
  
• paid bills
  
• had a really good meeting with a colleague on some of the things we're doing to revamp the program

What I would like to have done:

• slept more
  
• got to the gym
  
• kept the flat tidy
  
• read something for me
  
• reviewed to start writing again
  
• gone to the basketball game with friends
  
• did I mention sleep?

What I'm going to do with the rest of the week:

• sleep
  
• get to the gym
  
• have friends to dinner
  
• go out for a beer on Friday
  
• finish all my pre-exam grading
  
• write my final exams
  
• prep my last three days of classes
  
• teach 4 more classes this week
  
• finish reading Bone, from volume 5 on.
  
• Start my Christmas cards!!

If I do this, I can go for a hike next week, do some search committee work, and still get my grading done and in by next Sunday, and will have most of the break to write and prep for the newish course in my specialty area that I am teaching in the Spring. w00t!

Should I or shouldn't I?

should I or shouldn't I?

So there is one reason at SLAC that I really do not love it. It's nothing I can do anything about, sadly. It will play itself out, one way or another.

Otherwise, I love my job, mostly. I love my colleagues, mostly, and I have made really good friends here. I am happy to work with them AND play with them. I love working for Superdean. He's a great boss in almost every way (nobody's perfect), and knows me well enough to nag me about my scholarship. Frankly, I could use a bit more nagging, but that's not really his job. I also just get along really well with him.

We have a cool new Provost and an energetic BoT, and I think that the direction SLAC is taking is one I like. In 5-10 years, I think we may have moved along to much closer to the kind of place where I want to end up. It's a neat idea to think of myself as someone who can help take it there.

Speaking of which, I really think that there's a chance of building a much stronger program, one known for producing good teachers, public historians, and grad students.

And I really like my students. Sometimes I wish they were more driven, but as human beings, they are some of the nicest I've taught.

So why am I thinking about applying for the really cool job? Especially when I really am not competitive compared to many of the candidates?

Well, besides working with an incredibly cool scholar I really admire, that is?

Because honestly, as much as I love SLAC, I sometimes feel that I work best when surrounded by people who function at the levels I aspire to. When I surround myself with people who are good teachers AND good scholars, I find myself more energized and more productive. It's not that SLAC doesn't do that, but ...

so, my loyal readers, should I or shouldn't I? Am I disloyal to SLAC if I do? Am I being selfish?

Or is it just smart to keep reaching higher?

Grading Jail

Grading Jail and Institutional Wisdom

OK ... I'm sick and in grading jail. Not so much fun there. And I'm procrastinating a little, as do many of us when we are staring at mounds of papers and exams. The papers so far are pretty good -- upper-division papers, that is. The exams? I anticipate some dreadful ones, but also some good ones. If I could just stay home and mark for the next few days, I'd be happy, but for some reason I have to teach, too. Feh.

In the meantime, I'm sort of marveling at something. It's institutional wisdom that isn't. Most of the places I've taught, there were ridiculously long contracts and handbooks, and orientations that told us what we can do and what we can't. That's also been true for non-academic workplaces, as well. The only places I've worked where that was not true were start-ups and SLAC. I have a feeling that this is not just my SLAC, but maybe something that is related to the breed, the suddenly growing SLAC. Maybe you all can tell me if that's true.

Institutional wisdom can be a slippery thing. In a lot of places, there are one or two people, often admin assistants, who know everything about a place. They know where the skeletons are buried, they know people's direct extensions and have them memorized. They also know who to call to get things done, even when someone else says they can't be. These are the people I like to know. Hell, I used to be one of those people. In some ways, I still am. I like to know stuff, and I really like it when someone mentions how nice it is to see someone doing things right. Yes, I admit it... I am a Do-Bee. And since I hate to have paperwork handed back to me, or lose out on money, or any number of things that can happen when things aren't done correctly, or when you annoy the staff people who handle our paperwork, I really think it's important to learn and follow procedures. Yeah ... I'm also kind of rule-oriented when it has to do with a procedure that makes sense to me, or that is set up to make things easier for everybody. It is in some ways a bad quality: it can stress me out way too much and it can also make me a pain in the ass.

But here's the thing for me: this stuff is not so hard to find out. And yet ... I'm sometimes amazed at how many times I hear that X is the way we do things, X is always the way we do things, X is the way we have always done things ... despite the fact that Y is what is written down in several places, and if one does X where X is something connected to the people who handle money, one is likely to have one's paperwork sent back with a note to please do Y!

I would understand if this sort of thing were restricted to my more senior colleagues, the ones who have been doing X for donkey's years and just refused to see any reason to change to Y, even if Y were a change that made things much more sensible and simpler for many people. But it always confuses me a little when I hear similar things from my more junior colleagues, some of them junior faculty. It's especially weird when you hear from them that Z is the norm. Because, you know? the handbook still says Y. And my mind is breaking from the idea that so many people don't bother to look, and then pass on misinformation to others.

Is it me, or does this happen elsewhere, too?

If you teach in a forest, and nobody learns

If you teach in a forest and nobody learns ...

...did you really teach?

When I started this academic gig, I pretty much figured I knew the basics of the job: academics, no matter where we are employed, are engaged in some combination of teaching, service, and scholarship. The priorities and proportions may shift depending on where we are, but it's pretty much that, right? I also am one of the last people to subscribe to the idea that a college or university is a business, at least in the sense that the student is the customer and the customer is always right. No. Really, no. The student pays to have the chance to learn or not learn, as she chooses. Paying tuition gets a student in the door. What they do after that point is largely up to them. But in another way, institutions of higher education are businesses. It's not just that people are paying for the opportunity to learn, but they are also paying, especially at SLAC's like mine, for a particular sort of experience, a certain ratio of faculty to students, and to feel that they are being given the best possible chance at success -- and that's not even counting things like decent dorms, edible food, nice gym facilities, and ... oh yeah, quality teaching.

So what is quality teaching? How do you measure it? Can you measure it?

These are not trick questions.

For some of us, we measure our teaching by how much students learn. More or less. Obviously, if students are crap, or unable to do the work, they won't be learning much, no matter how good we are as teachers. But in general, the only way I can think of to tell if I'm a good teacher is to see whether the students are learning. This means that I need to think about what it is I want them to take away from my teaching, and in some way, measure it. I guess. The traditional way of measuring learning is through exams. And you know, I'm good with that in a general sense. You spend a period teaching a subject, and at the end, you test the students to see if they've learnt it. But that's a pretty broad interpretation. When I was attending Beachy U, and in Grad School, I knew I was responsible for learning all the information delivered to me in lecture and in the readings, and synthesizing it (and to some extent, regurgetating it) on exams. That's how it was done. If you had asked my profs how they measured learning, it would likely have been expressed more or less as, "the student used historical information from a variety of sources in order to support arguments for a particular historical interpretation." Or something like that. And I agree that that's basically what we want students to do. But what does that mean?

There are lots of important factors in learning history. And even those students who received what are considered decent high school educations are often ill-equipped for such exercises. They don't know what they don't know, nor are they sure what they are supposed to know. So in order to figure out if they are learning, i.e., if I am teaching effectively, I have to ask myself this: What parts do I most want them to learn? Is it learning the narrative? Is it learning to read and analyze primary and secondary sources? Is it learning to argue a particular view of why something happened? Do I focus on content or skills? Those are all important things. For myself, I'd like some sort of balance between them all, but if I have to choose, I tend to fall towards the 'learning to be a historian' side of things, because I think that the sorts of thinking and the presentation of information and creation of narratives that we do are the things that transcend the narrative, and are the tools that allow people to create their own narratives, and to question the ones they are offered. I think this is because, to me, thinking that learning history means learning a narrative, and maybe some varying interpretations, is like thinking a degree in English is about learning all the important works well enough to recite the plots, and compare and contrast them, but not ever learning about how the works have been seen, interpreted, and fit into the contexts of genre, style, period, etc.

Admittedly, there is a disadvantage -- well, lots of them! -- to this approach. First, it means that I often rely on my students learning a narrative (not the narrative, but a narrative) and the general factual stuff on their own, so we can spend the majority of class time discussing primary source documents. Next, it's just hard, because it means going in to every class not knowing where the discussion might lead. Students in one class might pick up on one thing, but not the same thing that another class does. I'm not saying it's chaos, but it means being fairly flexible and sometimes taking what you thought was an obvious discussion of class and changing into a discussion of gender roles, for example. Finally, that flexibility means that you really have to keep in mind, and keep steering towards, the things you want the students to learn, even if it means getting there by a slightly different path.

Honestly, I'm also a bit leery about this approach, because I worry that the students aren't learning enough content, enough narrative. And I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be just as good to walk in and give topical lectures and ask the sort of questions that help the students tie it all together. But this is all in my Survey courses, and I think I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that there is no way to cover all the content for five continents and anywhere from 500 years to 5000 years, so concentrating on a few themes seems a good way to go. And you know, it's not too hard to assess whether students have learned -- the hard part is making sure I cover the stated outcomes for the Gen Ed the course is supposed to fulfill.

Well. For a minute I was worried I'd got off track, but maybe not.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, whatever I'm doing wrong or right, when I think of teaching, it's always connected to whether or not the students are learning. If they aren't learning, I look for other ways to teach so that they do. There are some things I can't do: the sort of teaching do requires that the students take a lot of responsibility for their own learning, and it really doesn't work if they don't prepare for class. But still, in my head, there the point of teaching is that students learn from it: I need to be able to tell if they are learning and, if they aren't, I need to think about whether how I am teaching is part of the problem. And again, I am a little worried that the what I am teaching seems to be getting short shrift, or maybe I'm expressing it badly? Or maybe it's because, even apart from the survey, I teach Ancient, two different Medieval courses (this is my one attempt at 'specialty' courses -- I do Late Antiquity to the end of the Carolingians, and the Central- and HMA as separate courses -- still pretty much surveys), Ren/Ref, East Asia, and am supposed to fit Britain, Contemporary Europe, and Historiography/Methods into my two-year course rotation. So honestly, I'm still working on refining preps, and focusing on how I can teach well given that I've only taught one of these preps twice seems my best option. Or maybe it's excuses?

Anyway, I think we've established that teaching and learning are absolutely connected in my mind.

But not everybody sees it that way. There is a school of thought that our expertise is what makes us good teachers, that teaching is an art itself, and can be judged separately from whether students learn. And, well ... I think that, without students, I couldn't teach. They're sort of the point of it for me. A university, no matter the size, exists because of the students. Now don't get me wrong -- I think that the faculty are the heart of the university. Without us, there's no reason for the university to exist, and I wish more administrators and staff would remember that (SLAC's top administrators are admirable in the amount of support they give faculty, but some of the others seem intent on creating a culture among their staffs that breeds contempt for faculty and not only treat us as nuisances, but will say out loud that we aren't to be trusted advising students on career paths, courses to take in our majors, etc.). Without faculty who can do their jobs, no one else would have a job. But without students to justify faculty, none of us would have jobs. Or that's my understanding of how this stuff works.

To return to that idea of expertise, though, I have to ask: "what is the purpose of expertise?" And how do we judge it? Is it by the fact that our peers in the wider academic world respect us? Is it because we publish? I never really understood until I came to SLAC just how justified some people were in scoffing at the academics safely ensconced in their Ivory Towers. I'd met one or two in my career, but they were generally considered out-of-touch, oddballs. My undergrad days are far behind me, but even today, I can go to a conference in Anglo-Norman stuff, and when people ask me how I, the Carolingian person, can feel comfortable asking questions on Orderic Vitalis, for example (I wrote my senior thesis on his ideas of proper female behavior), I can say, "I did my undergrad work with X,Y, and Z at Beachy U", and S the scary A/N legal guy was on my PhD committee," and all is explained. Same when I go to the Late Antiquity panels -- what can I say? I studied with good people as an undergrad and grad student. Hell, I studied with people who are very well known in their fields. I have friends who are well known. So do a lot of us, I know. But my point is, none of these people, these well-known scholars, ever have ever given me the idea that there was a separation of teaching and learning, or that their expertise, especially the expertise attached to their rather extensive CVs, was enough to justify their continued employment or get them out of service or teaching or the exercise that is assessment. In fact, I just flashed on the fact that one of the best known of all of these folk was better-known on our campus for his teaching, which contained many of the best show-tunes-based historical filks I've ever heard. I'm sorry -- a song about Alfred the Great sung to the tune of "Mame"? How could you not remember bits of narrative when presented that way?

And yet, the more time I spend at SLAC, and the more I hear from friends at SLACs, that Ivory Tower phenomenon is not nearly as rare as I thought. Our brilliance is not something quantifiable, our lectures are well-prepared pearls cast largely to an audience of unappreciative swine, and any attempts to articulate our goals and whether or not we meet them is merely killing the program by reducing it to numbers and threatening our academic freedom. I used to think this was more to do with an older generation of faculty who didn't like all of that newfangled assessment stuff, and who hadn't been allowed any buy-in when it came to self-evaluation and the setting of assessment standards. After all, that's the message that we often get from news reports on the possibility of external agencies and the federal government imposing standards from above. But now, I'm wondering if it isn't something more to do with the culture of the Small (Private) Liberal Arts Colleague. Where there is a tradition of building a particular culture of 'we are special', are we more at risk for creating Special Snowflakes?






I leave you with a cautionary tale -- Here's what happens when people have elevated their quest to something that may exist only in legend, or at least when they can't articulate their quest very well!