Impossible Realities: Preparing Future Faculty
(A Teacher Network Forum)In a recent study by the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students, 81 percent of the respondents said that they were satisfied with their preparation, but only 38 percent said that they were satisfied with the services that they received to prepare them for their careers. Even those data reflect divergent perceptions, for while 70 percent of the students in the humanities said they were satisfied with their preparation for careers, only 20 percent of the students in non-academic careers indicated that they were satisfied.
The three articles you are about to read reveal very different reactions to the writers' first years at their first universities. Cynthia Jeney ("CJ's Good Advice for Mentors and First-Year Tenure-Track Hires in Computers & Writing") writes about what it means to deal with the miscommunications and mutual distrust between faculty and technology support staff, along with all the other changes and adjustments to be made when transitioning from graduate student to full-time faculty, Joel English ("Politics, Market Value, and Salary Compression: Ahh, the Life of a Tenure-Track Professor") discovered that salaries might not increase appropriately in years subsequent to being hired, and Michael Salvo ("On Your First Year Out...") reports that his institution has done a good deal to help new faculty survive the tenure process. What they reveal is my one big generalization about being an untenured faculty member: No two institutions are alike. In fact, as Michael Salvo reveals, even within the same institution, judgments about tenure vary. His department's values differ from those of his college, which, in turn, differ from those of his dean. Not only are no two institutions alike, but no two English departments are alike. Their values have been shaped by their cultural histories and the contexts in which they find themselves. So the key skill that untenured faculty must acquire is the ability to learn the culture(s) of their institutions. That doesn't mean that they should compromise their values, but it does mean that they have to decide whether their values are appropriate for the department and institution they work in.
Cynthia Jeney Joel English Michael Salvo
Many new faculty are surprised at what they discover: faculty roles and rewards are shockingly uneven. Some faculty union contracts actually constrain their choices. Some senior faculty members have accomplished substantially less than untenured faculty are expected to do (tomorrow's untenured faculty will probably say the same about today's untenured faculty when they become senior faculty). Some departments are so dysfunctional that they can't agree upon anything – not even judgments about tenure. The bureaucratic maze one has to maneuver must often be discovered by wandering alone through it. Salaries vary widely, and merit pay is both real and uneven in application. Tenure is under attack, and now post-tenure review mandates are growing. And, as 40 percent of those responding to the NACGS survey reported, they simply were not prepared for teaching.
If there is a culprit in all this, it is the doctoral-granting department that does not prepare its doctoral students to teach and that does not prepare them for the normal expectations of faculty these days, such as the expectation that programs will assess whether their students have learned what they think they are teaching. How many doctoral programs address differences between community colleges, where most faculty end up teaching, comprehensive non-doctoral institutions, and universities, where doctoral programs reside? How many give their doctoral students experiences with teaching the wide varieties of students found in our institutions? How many teach their doctoral students how to find grant sources and write grants? How many teach them about the politics of faculty governance? And how many themselves recognize the scholarship of teaching, which enables faculty to write about their teaching and count it as scholarship. After all, isn't that what most faculty involved in computers and writing do as their scholarship?
Recognizing this, the Preparing Future Faculty project has set out to link doctorate granting departments with institutions that do not have doctoral programs – the vast majority of our institutions. Co-sponsored by the Council of Graduate Schools and the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the intent of PFF is to enable doctoral students to learn more about other institutions, their budgets, their service expectations, their research expectations, and their diverse students. More and more institutions, such as Kean University, have begun to recognize the need for mentors and other opportunities for professional development, a requisite that Jeney's and Salvo's articles reveal.
There is probably good reason why many consider the institution of tenure to be dysfunctional. So I invite you to read the reactions of these three colleagues to what they discovered and judge for yourself. And then, if you are an untenured faculty member, but especially if you are a faculty member preparing doctoral students, I invite you to read these AAHE principles and join those colleagues who are committed to repairing doctoral education programs so that untenured faculty are prepared to succeed whatever context they find themselves in.
This just in: Another newly available resource, sponsored by the CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition (the 7 Cs), is Tenure and Promotion Cases for Composition Faculty Who Work with Technology. This should be a must-read for any new faculty who are interested in using technology in his or her teaching, research, or service activities.