|
Articles Conference Reviews |
2007HFeatureHartFeatured Session H: “Making It (while Having a Life): Success Strategies for Women in Rhetoric and Composition” Drawing upon their research for their book project, Women’s Ways of Making It...In Rhetoric and Composition, D. Diane Davis, Michelle Ballif, and Roxanne Mountford offer “women in the field strategies for negotiating the hard realities of their professional career.” Shirley Wilson Logan responded with a first-hand account of her own experiences in the field. Louise Wetherbee Phelps opened this session, identifying herself as a woman with three children who, when she entered the Rhetoric and Composition profession in the late seventies, had few role models upon which to draw or seek out as mentors. She then remarked upon the current situation in which the academy is experiencing “an enormous turnover in faculty” and in which half of the graduates with PhDs will be women. In such an environment, she speculated, many of the customary “ways of making it” may remain the same, but she has been gratified to see that many “flexibility plans” are being put into place in academia as well, plans that take into account the demands of childcare, elder care and other contingent situations. Diane Davis began the panel discussion by reminding the audience that the tenure bar has been rising steadily over the past decade which, consequently, means that the entry level bar for tenure-track positions has been rising as well. According to Davis, an MA-entry level job in the current job market is often more challenging than a tenure-track assistant professor’s job was just a few decades ago. Therefore, Davis and her co-authors recommend that every job candidate both create a thorough teaching portfolio and demonstrate clear evidence of scholarly productivity including conference presentations at major venues, such as the CCCCs, and publications in recognized journals. In other words, eventual job candidates (particularly those interested in obtaining tenure-track positions at Research I universities) must pursue three broad goals while in graduate school: they must teach, they must present at conferences, and they must publish. Before providing five “keys to succeeding in graduate school,” Davis briefly described the research methods that she and her co-authors used, including a review of literature and resources available on the topic and interviews with an impressive array of women who have succeeded as professionals in the academic field of Rhetoric and Composition. This list includes but is not limited to Patricia Bizzell, Sharon Crowley, Theresa Enos, Cheryl Glenn, Susan Jarratt, Shirley Wilson Logan, Andrea Lunsford, Jacqueline Jones Royster, Cindy Selfe and Lynn Worsham. According to Davis and her co-authors, there are five (5) keys to succeeding in graduate school: 1. Find and cultivate at least one mentor. Achieving this goal was often challenging for many of the women Davis and her co-authors inteview, but even those interviewees who had found devoted mentors emphasized the importance of finding senior faculty members at both the home institution and others who have a sincere interest in the success of graduate students as emerging professionals. 2. Start presenting your work at national conferences. Although some graduate students lament the financial burdens of conference fees and travel expenses, Davis and her co-authors claim that graduate students can’t afford not to go to conferences, as these conferences serve as the primary means of “professional orientation” for graduate students. At conferences, graduate students share their ideas and join in on the professional conversation, which helps them gain the confidence and momentum to begin working on larger, perhaps national or international projects. Furthermore, conferences provide premium networking opportunities, therefore serving as gateways to other conference presentations, publications and jobs. 3. Get a publication or two under your belt before you graduate. Many job candidates are asked to present evidence of “scholarly potential.” There’s no better way to do so than to have publications in hand when entering the job market. To prepare for sending out scholarly work, Davis suggests studying the major journals of the field and learning to recognize and emulate the “author ethos” presented by journal authors. According to the groups’ research, “ignorance of current issues in the field” is the main reason editors give for rejecting submissions. 4. Form a writing group. Since graduate students, particularly once they have completed their coursework, can “be sucked into procrastination’s black hole,” Davis and her co-authors recommend finding three to five people with whom they meet regularly to read and comment upon each other’s developing scholarly work. Such a writing group keeps graduate students, who may otherwise feel disconnected, motivated and productively engaged in writing. Being invested in a writing group holds graduate students accountable to themselves and others for their development and assists in giving manageable and achievable writing objectives. Agreeing to have a subsection of a chapter written and distributed for review prior to each writing group meeting often enables graduate students to take the “baby steps” necessary for completing what can be otherwise perceived as a somewhat insurmountable writing project. Being accountable to a writing group also provides graduate students with extra motivation to protect their writing time and to say no to other requests. 5. Write a book instead of a dissertation. According to Davis, the “dismal job market” and “heavy publication pressures” have motivated this shift. The major differences between writing a dissertation and a book, says Davis, are the tone and function of the first chapter. Traditionally, the first chapter of a dissertation is meant to prove to the student’s dissertation committee that he or she knows the field and has done an extensive review of the literature in the field. However, the first chapters of scholarly books do not function as literature reviews. Therefore, Davis recommends dissertation committees allow the literature review to be part of the prospectus and encourage a more publishable first chapter instead. Finally, Davis reminds all graduate students to not allow the stresses of graduate school, the dissertation, and the job market become overwhelming. Don’t take it all too seriously, she recommends. Instead, try to follow the advice of Lynn Worsham: “Work constantly without stressing excessively.” Michelle Ballif takes the podium next to discuss “Ways of Making It through the Ranks.” According to Ballif, “professional” is the key word to “making it.” As a professional, a woman in the academic field of Rhetoric and Composition must keep her boundaries clear. Although women teachers and administrators are generally expected to be more “nurturing” and thus to spend more time being available to students and colleagues, the women Ballif and her co-authors interview stress the importance of blocking out time for writing and reading, as these activities (rather than teaching and program administration) are the principal means of progressing in the profession. Becoming a professional by transitioning from a PhD candidate to an assistant professor is the hardest transition, finds Ballif. This transition is most often a solitary journey, undertaken away from the support systems most likely students have formed at their degree-granting institution. Not only will they be without that familiar base of support, but they will also have new demands placed upon them and will have to negotiate new power dimensions. However, despite being untenured, Ballif encourages new assistant professors to immediately conduct themselves as professionals, even when encountering various “mean people,” and strive to develop collegiality. More importantly, these new faculty must know what is expected, must provide evidence of follow-through, and must maintain a commitment to ongoing professional development. In other words, new faculty members must learn the expectations for teaching, research, and service, must collect and maintain supporting materials for annual reviews, and must continue to seek opportunities to present and publish. To make a successful case for tenure and promotion, new faculty must also understand the unstated expectations and stay in contact with their department chairs and deans to keep abreast of shifting expectations in order to fulfill them. Because research will be the most closely scrutinized faculty expectation, the women Ballif and her co-authors interview highly recommend that assistant professors not accept administrative positions prior to receiving tenure in order not to allow their research to suffer. Ballif remarks, “Publication is the coinage of power.” Therefore, she recommends assistant professors treat writing as a regular part of their jobs and set aside a fixed amount of time each week to write. “Don’t put yourself last,” she urges. If you do have heavy service and administrative obligations, she suggests looking for ways in which to use these duties as the basis for research materials. She also encourages her listeners to develop a focused research agenda and to package publications under the auspices of that synergistic, overarching agenda, even when they have seemingly divergent research areas. In addition, she recommends packaging and presenting scholarly work in terms that are “non-threatening” to others and to include responses to this work (e.g. reviews) when possible. Once granted tenure and having achieved associate professor, faculty have essentially “made it,” claims Ballif, however productivity will still be evaluated. At this point, faculty must begin to become established as nationally if not internationally recognized. Because post-tenured women are still not publishing as much as men in Rhetoric and Composition, stresses Ballif, these mid-level professional women need to reinvigorate their research agendas and begin to make cases for full professorships. Above all, cautions Ballif, apply for that next promotion. Although progress has been made, the academic field of Rhetoric and Composition still needs more senior women in the ranks, says Ballif. Echoing Davis’s first key principal for success in graduate school, Ballif calls for these women to then assist others in the field to achieve similar success. Having left it to her colleagues to provide the keys to “making it,” Roxanne Mountford tackles the “while having a life” portion of the panel. The most difficult challenge facing the women whom Mountford and her co-authors inteview is how to “have a life” while pursuing a career, a reflection of the overall tendency of female professionals to feel work life and home life competing for their attention. Each of the interviewees acknowledges the constraints placed upon their time by the requirements to publish and achieve professional prominence are often magnified by expectations of administrative duties and mentoring students. Therefore, these women have attempted to organize their lives around work in ways that are sustainable. The work vs. life dichotomy, they suggest, is false, according to Mountford. Instead, each woman must ask herself, “What is balance for me?” These women find their highest levels of enjoyment and well-being when they are engaged in difficult tasks in which they are able to lose themselves, in which they are, as Sharon Crowley describes it, “transported to another place” for the time being. To achieve a sustainable work life and home life, each of the interviewees employ one of two strategies: integration of work life and home life (in which one’s colleagues also become one’s friends and one’s social “community”) or isolation of work life and home life (in which work life and home life are compartmentalized). The second strategy is the one more often employed by the interviewees, including Patricia Bizzell, who recommends a true “day of rest” devoted solely to cultivating interests unrelated to work. Mountford also suggests regarding academic work as seasonal, with summers reserved for research and writing. Similarly, Mountford and her colleagues suggest that women with children may find it easier to achieve balance once their children have grown older. Mountford ends by quoting Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Composing a Life, who rejects forced choices and dichotomies as well as urges women to take charge of composing their own lives and to have sustainable initiatives. Shirley Wilson Logan responds to the panelists as a woman who has “made it” in the field, although she notes that paradoxically she locally still makes less than most men in her department. She characterizes her entry into the profession as an entrance “through the side door,” a “surreptitious but not dishonorable entry,” an entry that was either unobserved or perhaps observed disinterestedly. As a woman scholar and a scholar of color, she asks herself, what does she know for sure? “Very little,” she responds, “despite years of certainty seeking.” She then addresses the concerns of “making it” within the expansive categories of gender, race, teaching and research. Gender Logan suggests many women in the audience might wonder when they should talk about things such as children, groceries and housework. While women want to claim that work as well as claim the work of the academy, they often do not want to give their colleagues the sense that they are not focused on the next research project, notes Logan. Therefore, like the interviewees in the “isolation” model of work life and home life, she recommends that her listeners guard their academic work time, their writing and research time, and put some distance between the work they do for a living and the work of living. Race According to Logan, scholars of color may be particularly challenged by what kinds of service obligations they agree to take on, as they may be sought out for diversity committees or committees that need their diversity. On such committees, says Logan, scholars of color must assume the minority role. The race card is always already in the deck; it’s just a matter of figuring out when to place it on the table, she argues. However, in regards to service, she urges her listeners to “do what’s important to you.” Teaching For scholars of color, disciplinary identity becomes a question in teaching as well, claims Logan. As a result, she has learned to bridge the gap between rhetoric and African-American literature, not just as a contrivance, but because it helps her colleagues to perceive her as being “useful.” Research Next, Logan explains that she waited until her children were leaving her household to enter the profession so that she could focus fully on her research and teaching. Echoing Ballif’s earlier remarks, she urges her listeners to develop a clear research trajectory. She admits to “stumbling upon” her own research into Ida Wells after the Ida Wells stamp came out, but happily remarks that this research has sustained her interest and has been a fruitful trajectory for her. She concludes by urging her listeners to have a “motivating passion” for what they are pursuing, even if their passion is teaching, leaving her audience with some final words from bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress. Q&A When asked if there have been any challenges to the model of professionalism forged in a principally male environment, Ballif responds that “there is a need,” as Davis echoes “of course.” Phelps comments that the people controlling such decisions are about to retire themselves and that there currently is a national effort based upon incoming faculty surveys and surveys with graduate students to achieve flexibility in academic career paths, not just during the childbearing/child-rearing years, but throughout an entire career path. According to Phelps, the American Council on Education has been making recommendations such as lengthening the probationary period of tenure up to ten (10) years instead of the standard six (6) years along with increasing the potential for academics to move in and out of tenure-track positions. She refers to a Penn State study that suggests some systems already include such flexibility, but she mentions women are not taking advantage of this flexibility because the culture is “psyching women out of doing these things.” When asked how other models of professionalism (e.g. community colleges) might fit into their research, the panelists respond that they make several caveats about the limits of their model in the introduction to the book. They explain that they started the book project because all are on the tenure and promotion track at research-intensive institutions, so they have defined “success” for the purposes of the book very specifically. They want this book to be about getting tenure in research institutions, although they acknowledge and celebrate the fact that there are many other models of success. However, they also acknowledge that the standards and expectations everywhere are increasing. Finally, a question is raised about how many of the women the panelists inteview and profiled in the book had children, Mountford responds that half of the women profiled had children at all different stages of their careers. Phelps then refers to a report entitled “Why Babies Matter” that shows a “baby gap,” revealing that women who have children early in their academic careers are “leaking out of the pipeline” and are therefore “not visible” with regard to career advancement and success. The study also demonstrates that women have “distorted” their family lives in terms of their careers (e.g. have not gotten married or had children or have delayed getting married or having children, etc.) in much larger proportions than men. Comments? |