Curmie Doesn't Like Being Condescended To

Several years ago, Curmie received an e-mail from a well-meaning colleague at another university. He was collecting information about course release for college/university theatre faculty doing production work, i.e., to what extent (if any) do faculty have fewer curricular responsibilities if they’re directing or designing a play in a given semester. He was particularly interested in whether such accommodations were more or less standard for faculty with “heavy teaching loads” of five or more courses a year.

Curmie chortled. Yes, out loud. I’ve done five courses in a semester before. Several times early in my career I taught four regular courses plus two “practicum” courses (one of them in journalism) in a single semester while also directing, designing, and tech directing two major productions including a musical. In the past year I have taught seven sections of courses (six preps), including five different classes at the 400 (senior) level. Four of those courses require assessment reports in addition to the usual work of preparing lectures, searching out supplementary readings, grading, etc.

I directed two full-length productions (one with a cast of 28 and two big sets, the other a musical), supervised four (or was it five?) student productions, and was artistic manager for all 20 or so student productions. I was vice chair of the Fine Arts Council and served on a university committee on sabbatical leaves. I have about 30 advisees, not counting the de facto ones, and I actually spend time with them: at least an hour or two per student per semester, and oftentimes many times that. I am the principal on-campus recruiter for our program: I organize our three departmental “Theatre Days” and I represent us at the three major university-wide recruitment events unless I’m unable to get free of other work-related duties on those Saturdays. I served on two search committees for my department, chairing one. I’ve spent a fair amount of time working on the self-study documents required by our discipline’s accrediting agency. I attended a meeting of the Professional Advisory Board of my doctoral alma mater and drove a full day each way in order to do so. I served on a committee for a professional organization. Oh, and I wrote two scholarly papers and delivered them at conferences.

I think I can say, moreover, that I know something about the way colleges and universities work. I have taught at least one course in 61 of the last 68 semesters, and in every calendar year since 1979 except 1983. I’ve either directed a production or taught (or both) in the summer in 10 of my 12 years at my current job. I have 22 years in tenured or tenure-track positions at three different colleges or universities and I’ve taught as either a grad student or adjunct at four other institutions; depending on how you count (do team-taught courses count? what about being a discussion leader with someone else as the lecturer?), I’ve taught somewhere in the vicinity of 185 classes.

This, Gentle Reader, is the background I bring to bear when I read stuff like Karen Kelsky’s blog, “The Professor Is In,” being hosted (if that’s the right word) by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Dr. Kelsky is a career consultant specializing, one presumes, in higher education issues. She’s been, we learn from the blurb, tenured at two universities, and has been an advisor and mentor to undergrads, graduate students, and junior faculty. So far, so good, right?

I was initially heartened by the choice of question to answer and the first paragraph of the response:

I have a Ph.D. from a mid-ranked program at a middling university. I’m pretty sure I’ll be competitive for SLACs and teaching colleges with this kind of Ph.D., and that’s fine with me since I don’t want to have to work too hard to aim for a big fancy job. Am I right?

A: No, you are not right. Your logic contains two major misapprehensions of the academic job market.

Surely, I thought, she’ll explain that it’s your strengths, not those of your grad school department, that matter to search committees, O Jobseeker. And above all else she’ll disabuse this earnest but ignorant recent PhD of the notion that working at SLACs [Curmie finally figured out that stands for Selective Liberal Arts Colleges] and teaching colleges ought to be mentioned in the same breath as “not [having] to work too hard.”

Alas, Curmie was 0 for 2 in these surmises. Dr. Kelsky sees fits to castigate Eager Young Jobseeker for thinking he/she could possibly compete with someone from “R1s and even Ivy Leagues.” R-1s, for those of you unfamiliar with academic jargon, are “Research 1” institutions, a classification once used by the Carnegie Foundation to designate universities with extensive doctoral programs and a high priority on faculty research. (The Carnegie folks have dropped the term, but it has stuck, the way I think of my current university’s football team as competing in Division 1-AA, not the “Football Championship Subdivision.” FWIW, ESPN agrees with me.) After all, in Kelsky’s world—her CV indicates that she has never been either a student or a faculty member at anything but an R1—publications are paramount. Therefore, in the parochial logic employed by all too many people who ought to know better, it’s the same everywhere.

A few years ago I served on the Research and Publications Committee for a professional organization. I was a tenured associate professor at the time. I was the only person in the room who didn’t need to publish a book to get tenure, and over half of those present didn’t even know that it was possible to do so, anywhere. Yet there are far more institutions like mine than like theirs, and far more faculty members like me than like them.

You’ll notice that in my list of what I’ve done in the past year, there was no mention of publications at all. That’s because there weren’t any. Over the years I’ve published a handful of articles, couple of book chapters, some interviews, and a couple dozen reviews of books or theatre productions. But not this year… and probably not next year, either. I do write an average of two conference papers a year, but no R-1 would pay any attention to that. Still, my scholarly work was once described as “prodigious” in an official review document, and I’ve been nominated for the university’s research award.

Thus, I feel a particular pang when Kelsky offers up this claptrap: “Your competitiveness… is a product of your record beyond the Ph.D., in the form of refereed journal articles, major national conferences, national grants, substantive sole-teaching experience, and illustrious letter-writers.”

Journal articles are nice (although there are some colleges that distrust the priorities of faculty who are interested in publishing). Conferences accept most proposals based on an abstract—being able to sustain an argument for 250 words maximum is different from doing so for a 20-minute formal presentation, and very different from conducting a 50-minute seminar on the subject. National grants are important only in some fields, and only for a minority of colleges and universities. No one cares how “illustrious” your letter-writers are: we care what they say. If you’re just starting out and you have an “illustrious” reference, chances are that one of two things is true: that person was on your dissertation committee (making the “mid-ranked program at a middling university” description somewhat incongruous, and suggesting a potential conflict of interest since your getting a job makes your doctoral program look better), or he/she doesn’t really know you very well, and will write a generic paragraph about how much promise you have. In fact, many if not most search committees have abandoned the idea of letters altogether: a phone call reveals a lot more about a reference’s true feelings about a candidate than a “to whom it may concern” letter ever will.

Speaking as a veteran of search committees at both the SLAC and teaching college level, I can assure prospective applicants that we’re looking for three things:

1). Some demonstrable engagement with the field. This could be in the form of publications, conference presentations, workshop attendance… it doesn’t matter. No, really, it doesn’t. We’re looking for evidence that an applicant could publish (per se), but actually having done so is nowhere near a sine qua non, at least not in an initial hire—a tenure committee might want to see an article or two.

2. Breadth. Smaller departments mean a significantly increased likelihood that you’ll be teaching outside the narrowly-defined area of your research. You wrote your dissertation about Yeats? Great. You’re teaching the American Novel in the 19th century. Enjoy. Over the years I’ve taught beginning and advanced play analysis; numerous variations on the theme of theatre history and dramatic literature; a host of topics courses; beginning and advanced acting; beginning and advanced directing; production courses in stagecraft, lighting, makeup and costume history; a handful of courses in speech and communications; analysis of fine arts; classical mythology; and Eastern civilizations. Oh, and manifold variations on the theme of introduction to theatre. If you think you’re above that, then yes, your only hope is at an R-1, and you’d better get working on those refereed articles.

But the fact is that I generally spend about 15 minutes a year talking about the specific content of my dissertation. (Last year was an exception: I taught a topics course that allowed me to incorporate a couple of the plays discussed in my diss.) This isn’t to say that you won’t, over time, be able to move into coursework that fits your particular skill-set. Two of the courses that are now part of my regular rotation didn’t exist when I came here; I also created (with a lot of help) a study abroad program to Ireland which is about to head into its fifth biennial iteration. But you’ve got to get the job before you can adapt the job.

3. Teaching. This is the only absolute. You have to be able to teach, and you need to be able to do it at all levels. You are going to be in a room with a few dozen students who really don’t want to be there. You are going to be in a different room, or at least at a different time, with a bunch of students who know a lot (but not as much as they think they do). You are going to be in classes that drive you crazy because your students stare zombie-like at you and write down everything you say (including your jokes). You are going to be in classes that drive you crazy because nothing you do seems to engage them in any way. Teach them. Teach them all.

If you really want to improve your chances at getting a job at a university like mine, teach. Teach anything someone will let you teach. If you’re still working on your degree, talk to your department about letting you be teacher of record, about letting you teach the intro to botany course even though you’re a microbiologist. If you have your degree, don’t be afraid to take that adjunct job, as long as you save the time for yourself to do whatever it is that will make you more employable in a tenure-track position. Go to workshops and roundtables on pedagogy. Go to conference sessions on textbook selection, integrating technology, accommodating students with idiosyncratic needs. Participate! (And talk about this stuff in your cover letter.)

All of this, of course, is true only if being in a SLAC, LAC, or teaching college is really where you want to be: you understand the requirements and the workload, and you want to concentrate on teaching while doing enough research to keep you current in your field. Kelsky assures us that “I have no problem at all with people aiming for careers at community colleges and SLACs—those are fine career options,” but of course there’s that tone of dripping condescension that sounds very much like she’s comparing my job to being the assistant manager at Wendy’s.

Fact is, whereas there are certainly those at my institution who couldn’t survive at an R-1, most could, although they’d have to re-orient their priorities to do so. (There are some at R-1s who couldn’t survive here, too.) I had a good talk with my Provost a few years ago in which I suggested that the quantity of my scholarly work wouldn’t keep up with my colleagues at “major” universities, but the quality of what I do present or publish had better be comparable. I am confident that I could have succeeded at an R-1 had happenstance pushed me in that direction—I had a couple of phone interviews at R-1s, but pretty well withdrew my application when the job descriptions became clearer. I’m sure that other R-1 jobs would have been more to my liking, but I’m pretty convinced that for me, personally, my current job (or one like it) is where I want to be. Good thing, of course, since no R-1 would hire a full professor, let alone one my age, with a publication record like mine.

Here’s the thing: if you want to work at an R-1, you need to follow R-1 rules. Publish. Present. Write grants. If you want to work at a university like mine, you follow our rules, and they aren’t the ones outlined by Kelsky. We aren’t the spillover trough. Many of the best scholars I know are also great teachers; many of the best teachers I know are also brilliant and active scholars. But anyone who has ever gone to grad school has had a course with someone who might be doing cutting-edge research but can’t teach a lick. And anyone who has spent any time on a campus like mine knows a professor who can teach anything to anyone but either wouldn’t or couldn’t crank out an article a year and a book every five.

That’s OK, Dr. Kelsky. Really. Different skills for different thrills.

Another Pseudo-Educator Defames Those of Us Who Actually Do Something.

So, there was this op-ed piece in the Washington Post a couple days ago, entitled “Do college professors work hard enough?.” After I finally stopped laughing, I realized that the author, one David C. Levy, was actually serious. Really, he was. He actually argues that escalating tuition costs are the product of faculty salaries, not the fact that administrative positions are multiplying faster than a particularly horny warren of rabbits (and at absurdly high salaries relative to faculty), that services from psychological counseling to high-end computer access are now de rigeur, that new student centers and recreation facilities are sprouting faster than zits on prom night, and that states are myopically slashing their support for higher education even while wailing about how expensive college is.

The problem with giving a forum to misinformed and arrogant cretins like Levy, of course, is that people who don’t know anything about what the professoriate does don’t realize that he doesn’t have a clue, either. He’s currently the president of something called the Cambridge Information Group (a “family-owned management and investment firm,” according to their website), and he’s a former chancellor of the New School University. He also headed the Parsons School of Design for two decades. Pretty impressive, huh? Well… sort of. He hasn’t been associated directly with an institution of higher learning in quite a while, never (as far as I can tell) at a state university, and if he ever set foot in a classroom on my side of the lectern, it was a). forty years ago, and b). not worthy of mention on his official bio. In other words, to say that Dr. Levy knows shit from apple butter about what professors do is roughly akin to saying the CEO of McDonald’s knows what it’s like to be a chef—hey, he’s successful in the restaurant business, right?

Levy is, in short, every real professor’s nightmare: the poseur, the self-proclaimed “career-long academic” who couldn’t find his way to a classroom with a guide dog, and who pretends that his (apparently considerable) skill as an administrator has anything to do with what my colleagues and I actually do. I am reminded of a former dean, whom I knew was going to be trouble when he informed me that he understood what theatre faculty are like because he’d once written a chancel drama for his church. Certainly there are some university presidents and provosts and deans (oh my!) who had previously prospered in the classroom: my father was one, my current provost another. But I fear they’re the exception.

None of this is to say that Dr. Levy’s commentary ought automatically to be discarded, any more that you, Gentle Reader, ought to ignore my commentary on fracking because I’m not a geologist. No, it’s not Levy’s lack of specific expertise that deserves derision: it’s the fact that he doesn’t have a fucking clue is sadly, perhaps willfully, misinformed about virtually everything he says.

Let’s start with the basic assertion that “Happily, senior faculty at most state universities and colleges now earn $80,000 to $150,000, roughly in line with the average incomes of others with advanced degrees.” Dr. Levy, it’s really rude not to share whatever the hell it is you’re smoking… because you are seriously out to lunch. I am a tenured full professor (one becomes “senior faculty” at the associate professor level, one step down from my current rank) at a state university. I have a PhD and a little over 20 years of full-time teaching experience, plus another several years of part-time teaching, both as a teaching assistant (with full responsibility for my courses) and as an adjunct faculty member. The low end of that salary range would represent better than a 25% raise for me.

True, I work at a teaching-oriented university (a.k.a. not a “Research 1” institution), and in a field that doesn’t pay terribly well compared with the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines. But there are a lot of people like me: far more than community college profs making $88K. I mean, seriously, Dave, do a little damned homework.

What is particularly offensive in Levy’s screed is the suggestion that whereas faculty at research institutions might actually do some work, the rest of us clearly don’t:

But we all should object when they receive these [“upper-middle-class”] salaries for working less than half the time of their non-academic peers….

An executive who works a 40-hour week for 50 weeks puts in a minimum of 2,000 hours yearly. But faculty members teaching 12 to 15 hours per week for 30 weeks spend only 360 to 450 hours per year in the classroom. Even in the unlikely event that they devote an equal amount of time to grading and class preparation, their workload is still only 36 to 45 percent of that of non-academic professionals. Yet they receive the same compensation….

…the notion that faculty in teaching institutions work a 40-hour week is a myth.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Seriously, how can anyone this stupid feed himself, let alone be placed in a position of authority? He does, of course, have the advantage of blissful ignorance, having apparently never set foot on the campus of such an institution.

I’d be willing to bet that I’ve never spent a year on a full-time faculty in which I worked less than 2500 hours, and I know for a fact I’ve topped 3000 several times. “The unlikely event” that I spend as much time grading and prepping as physically in the classroom? What planet is this guy from? I generally spend about an hour and a half or two hours of prep for every hour in class… it’s that low compared to many of my peers because I’ve been doing this a while, and I occasionally (gasp!) re-cycle old notes without updating them. Not much has changed about the history of the ancient Greek theatre since last year. (By the way: when a book came out 20 years or so ago that really did change the way we looked at Greek theatre… yeah, I published a review on that.)

The foregoing number does not include grading, by the way. That adds another ten hours or so a week, on average, to my workload. I’ve also got about 30 advisees. Because I take my advising responsibilities seriously, that’s another 100 hours a year or so in formal advising, probably three times that in informal advising. I spend probably 50 hours a year writing recommendations, another 100 in meetings, another 100 preparing for those meetings. I direct a show most years: 200 hours. And then there’s recruiting, supervising student productions, seeing all 30 productions my department produces in a year (yes, I enjoy it, but it’s still work), advanced preparation for courses (not included above), serving on committees and in elected positions in my professional organization, reading shows for possible production down the road… oh, and I really do need to publish and present with some regularity, even here in the hinterlands. Oh, and reading books and journals just to stay current in the field. So much for all that “time off” in summers and such.

If I in fact worked a 2000-hour year for the $80K that’s at the low end of Levy’s scale for senior faculty, let alone for full professors, it would represent a raise of about 55-60% in terms of my hourly wage. If Dr. Levy would be willing to arrange that, I sure would appreciate it. Somehow, however, I doubt that’s gonna happen.

The point is this: judging how much a professor works based on how much time is spent literally in the classroom is akin to judging the workload of that “executive” Dr. Levy is perfectly willing to grant a 2000-hour workload based on how much time s/he spends in formal meetings. No agenda, no credit. Colleague comes by to discuss an idea for two hours? If it’s not in your Blackberry, it doesn’t count. Spend the evening working out a problem? No documentation, then it didn’t happen.

So, I hereby challenge you, Dr. Levy, to follow me around for a week. I’ll do the work; you just sit and watch. Let’s start on a Saturday. If you’re still with me on Wednesday afternoon, I’ll tip my hat to you. Stay with me until Friday and I’ll buy you dinner and offer a formal apology. But if, you sorry sack of equine excrement, I run you into the ground, as I fully expect that I will (and as I’m dead certain that some of my friends and colleagues in the profession would), you will kindly STFU for the rest of your days about subjects you don’t begin to comprehend.

David C. Levy would be a strong contender for a Curmie Award, but unfortunately, he’s not eligible. That distinction is reserved for educators who embarrass their profession. Dr. Levy is no educator. Not now, not ever. And I, for one, am glad about that.