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Linda
McMillin on Hiring, Socializing, and Supporting Faculty for Productive
Careers
Linda
McMillin |
What follows are excerpted paragraphs
of Linda McMillin's plenary remarks on November 9, at the ANAC/AACU
conference at Butler University. In suggesting ways that
colleges and universities might create a supportive environment
beneficial to students, institution, faculty, and higher education
alike (while developing the faculty member's stake in each), she
provides a faculty member's vision for development as a "Complete
Scholar," a term Eugene Rice coined several years ago. Linda
McMillin (mcmillin@susqu.edu)
is professor and chair of history at Susquehanna University
and served as manager of ANAC's faculty work project and co-editor
of the book, A New Academic Compact: Revisioning the Relationship
between Faculty and Their Institutions (Anker Press, 2002).
My interest in this nature vs. nurture question—the impact
of "environment" in creating the complete scholar—has
immediate applicability. For on the other hand, I have three junior
colleagues—recent arrivals, freshly scrubbed with newly minted
Ph.D.s. They are so young and excited, so full of energy and potential.
My hope for them is that they all will grow up to be "complete
scholars"—like our senior person. And I want my institution
to do everything we can in the next few years to increase the likelihood
that they too might cultivate "a multidimensional sense of
the professional self.
The popular wisdom is to "protect" younger faculty from
such endeavors—keep them focused on traditional research and
don't let them branch out until after the tenure decision. And yet
the truth is that if folks aren't finding ways to make their research
accessible to students, serving the local community, and building
some interdisciplinary connections before tenure, they rarely do
it after. The challenge is to find the right balance for new faculty
and also to make sure our reward systems in the area of scholarship
are broad enough to include the work most connected to institutional
mission.
Knowing our students means constantly evaluating and re-evaluating
not only pedagogy but also curriculum. New faculty often are given
a strong voice in the shaping of disciplinary curriculum—they
are the folks most in touch with new trends and methodologies. But
they also need to be invited into conversation about general education.
I am surprised at how many times new faculty are asked to teach
a course that is part of a Core curriculum without even knowing
such a larger context exists much less how their particular course
fits into the whole. New faculty (and sometimes older ones as well)
need to be challenged to think not only about their bit of turf
in gen ed, but also about what it means to be liberally educated
and to take responsibility and ownership of the whole program.
New faculty need to understand as well the particular students
they are teaching. Of course, we all want to work with the best
and the brightest students. After all, these are often the easiest
folks to teach; you mainly just get out of their way. But the greater
challenge is to meet all our students where they are and create
a learning environment where they might be both challenged and successful.
This involves understanding who our students are, their backgrounds,
their learning styles, their work habits, and their "other"
life outside the classroom that may enhance or impede their learning.
How purposeful are we in sharing student profiles with new faculty?
When I think about the stake faculty have in a local institution,
tenure comes immediately to mind. Indeed, the willingness of an
institution to make a lifetime guarantee of employment to a faculty
member would seem to give that person a very large stake in the
fortunes of that institution. It also confers, I think, an obligation
to understand and work toward strengthening that institution. One
of the greatest difficulties with becoming increasingly dependent
on part-time and adjunct faculty is that an institution will have
fewer and fewer individuals to do the important work of institution
building—from student recruitment and curriculum design, student
advising and institutional governance, to staying connected to alumni.
This last piece of professional identity involves the ways in which
institutions connect their faculty to the larger context of higher
education. What do faculty gain when they are dragged along by an
administrator to an ANAC or a AACU conference—like this one
we are attending now? The most important thing gained, I think,
is perspective. Faculty come to understand how their institutions
are like and unlike others—even within the same educational
niche. This may mean going home with new ideas for solving old problems.
Or with a new appreciation for their own institution's strengths.
It allows faculty to place what had been perceived as unique or
idiosyncratic challenges into larger trends with hopefully larger
possible solutions. And when part of a team, the gains are even
greater as the group is afforded time and space away from campus
to work together—and often drink and eat together in ways that
create stronger bonds that translate into greater collaborations
upon return.
The greatest challenge in constructing a multidimensional sense
of the professional self is figuring out how to integrate these
various dimensions into a whole and not to be torn apart by them.
The complete scholar learns to balance these commitments and to
move among them over the course of a career in ways that are appropriate
given individual talents and inclinations and institutional circumstances
and needs. It is also clear that we cannot expect new faculty to
be complete scholars when they walk in the door. But we can think
carefully about how to give them the opportunities to cultivate
a full professional identity—with a stake in a discipline,
in students, in our local institutions, and in higher education
as a whole—early in their careers so that some 35 years later
they too will be celebrated as Complete Scholars.
Susan
Traverso on Designing Faculty-Institution Mutuality That Works
Susan
Traverso |
Susan Traverso (sutrav@noctrl.edu),
a newly tenured associate professor of history and faculty work
project participant from North Central College, spoke of
what is important to faculty and essential to their effectiveness
in a plenary session at the ANAC/AACU conference at Butler. Her
comments are provocative in contemplating the nature of a faculty-institution
reciprocity that serves higher education's mission well, as these
paragraphs excerpted from her remarks illustrate:
Times of transition, like the one we seem to be experiencing, can
help us clarify our understanding of academic freedom and academic
community, not only to strike a balance between freedom and community
but to recognize the dynamic relationship—the synergy—between
academic autonomy and community engagement. Our commitment to the
values associated with academic autonomy and engaged communities
and our efforts to realize them on our campuses will assure the
continued vitality of learning and scholarship in times of change.
The Academic Compact, I think, is distinctive among the
literature on faculty work, though. Its recommendations move beyond
managing the faculty, though it does some of that. It advances a
holistic vision of campus collaboration, with a special focus on
the relationship between faculty and their institutions. Using terms
like "reciprocal obligation," "civic professionalism,"
and "shared community," the Academic Compact asks
that we consider our values as we respond to changes in higher education,
asks that we take care that our responses to these changes are responses
that maintain a commitment to knowledge and inquiry in a open and
democratic community. Most important from my perspective as a
faculty member, it affirms the roles and responsibilities of faculty
in institutional development. This vision resonates with me
not only because I believe that a managed faculty is a dull faculty—and,
therefore, an ineffectual faculty in nurturing students as active
and responsible learners; but because I am someone intrigued by
dynamic institutions of higher education and committed to the creation
and renewal of dynamic sites of learning. While buildings, slick
brochures, and fat endowments can highlight institutional strength,
truly dynamic institutions are those with creative and engaged
faculty members laboring in the classroom, as scholars, and as institutional
participants.
The result of the selective memory about teaching is that the effort
needed to create a learning environment is underestimated. This
underestimation plays out when faculty are asked to craft, implement,
and assess new curricula—sometimes far from their field of
expertise—without the resources and institutional support to
achieve success. It is also underestimated when faculty and student
affairs professionals are asked to collaborate on new programs.
Seldom is time given for these groups of professionals—trained
in distinctly different ways—to understand each other. Instead,
we implement programs that take, what I call, an associative approach,
meaning we work side by side but not really together. It is also
seen in the limited training faculty receive for their work as advisors—work
that Richard Light has shown is key to college learning. It's not
surprising, then, when national surveys of faculty, including the
one conducted by Carnegie and the ANAC Faculty Work Project, indicate
that faculty members, young and old, sense a lack of reciprocal
support from their institutions. In these surveys and focus groups,
we hear faculty saying: "I'm doing everything I've been asked
to do, but I haven't really been given the support I need to do
it really well. Good enough, yes. Excellent, not really.
Our work with students, on curriculum, as advisors, in the classroom
needs to be the expression of independent scholars and teachers;
but its measure of value is found in the community that respects
that freedom. A community that assures autonomy of thought is not
a community that lets anything pass in the name of academic freedom
but one that demands engagement, assessment, and review as part
and parcel of that freedom. Faculty members understand this in terms
of peer review within their disciplines, but we need to reflect
on our work as teachers and scholars in terms of its connection
to our communities closer to home—our campuses. To do so, does
not limit individual autonomy but rather invigorates our work, much
as peer review within our discipline does.
The synergy between intellectual autonomy and community should be
at the very center of faculty development. Jacqueline Mintz and
others have urged us to adopt a holistic model for faculty development,
one that considers every member of the community as an evolving
individual. The new literature on faculty development is particularly
good in stressing the reciprocal relationship between faculty and
their institutions. We could do a better job implementing the ideas
of this literature. Much faculty development at the pre-tenure stage
remains disaggregated—teaching, scholarship, service—rather
than holistic. And post-tenure faculty, with or without reviews,
usually understand institutional measures of faculty development
as bureaucratic necessities of little value.
Don't get me wrong, I am not ranking intellectual work higher than
service responsibilities, as was done in the MLA 's 1996 policy
paper on faculty service and governance. I am ranking intellectual
work higher than phony shared governance activities. Authentic shared
governance is at the very heart of a dynamic learning community.
It reflects the values of a free and democratic society. With truly
shared governance, service is recast as citizenship, and faculty
as well as other members of the institution bear the responsibilities
of assuring a learning community that fosters important, some might
even say sacred, rights—academic freedom, freedom of thought
and speech, and the right to dissent. Students privileged to learn
in a community with shared governance are getting a lesson in much
more than the disciplines they are pursuing. They are learning in
a crucible of democracy. The context around them, if authentic in
its civic responsiveness, will inspire student learning and a sense
of community responsibility over a life time.
And so, it is our values we should consider as we envision higher
education in the 21st century. As we replace teaching with learning,
as we train and develop the professoriate, and as we look for new
ways to govern our institutions, we should be sure that, in all,
we strengthen the dynamic interplay between faculty and their institutions,
between intellectual autonomy and community engagement, and between
the learning environments in individual classrooms and larger institutional
efforts to assure student learning. Guarding these relationships—better
still, enhancing these relationships—is crucial as we face
this latest transformation of higher education.
Review
of A New Academic Compact: Helpful Text for Public Institutions?
ANAC's A New Academic Compact
book, resulting from the faculty work project, has been reviewed
positively from a variety of perspectives, institutional and otherwise.
In a recent review posted online in the AAHEBulletin.com,
Bennett G. Boggs (ben.boggs@mail.state.ky.us),
senior associate for academic affairs, Kentucky Council on Postsecondary
Education, proposes that the work has implications for public higher
education. Excerpts of this review follow:
"If necessity is the mother of invention, then the contributors
to A New Academic Compact are the latest inventors of American
higher education. Their critical need: redefine the independent
comprehensive university for 21st century relevance. Their method:
reinvent and reconnect the faculty to the core institutional mission."
"Can comprehensive universities really redefine the role of
the faculty? The compact offers two positive indicators. First,
a circle of value clarifies that the individual faculty members
should enhance the academic unit, the academic unit should enhance
the institution, and the institution should enhance the faculty.
Second, faculty development should begin before the hiring phase
and continue beyond tenure—with commitment from both the faculty
and administrators.
Faculty leaders and administrators from universities laden with
the dreaded "PC" (public comprehensive) label would benefit
greatly from their independent sisters' effort. ANAC shows that,
true to American education history, private institutions are often
the innovative risk-takers among us."
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