Rachel Schaffer
English
MSU-Billings
The Art and Politics of College Teaching is aimed at graduate students who will soon be looking for a job in academe and wonder what pitfalls they may face in the interview process and during their first year or two in a new job. While the same function--answering basic questions and offering advice--can also be filled by faculty mentors, not everyone is lucky enough to have a trustworthy, experienced source of honest, accurate answers. This book can therefore serve as a valuable resource in clarifying expectations, dispensing good advice, and providing helpful warnings for neophyte college teachers.
The book begins with an introduction stating its purpose: to provide a "handbook for the aspiring faculty member" (ix), to "help ease the transition from student to colleague" (xi), and, in general, to offer advice on shaping a career in higher education at four-year-plus institutions. The book proper is divided into two sections, Part I: "Role Expectations for Beginning Professors at Eight Institutions of Higher Education," and Part II: "Step by Step Analysis of Career Patterns for Faculty Members."
Part I, "Role Expectations," examines the forces affecting expectations of and attitudes toward faculty at eight four-year institutions, ranging from a major research university to a small liberal arts college, from public to private schools, including religious, all-black, and all-female institutions. Each chapter, presented from the point of view of an experienced faculty member at the institution, focuses primarily on the relative importance of research, teaching, and service. Other, more specific expectations, such as presenting a suitable role model for students or preparing students with special needs, are also discussed for the colleges where they are of major concern.
This section is readable, well written, and informative. The authors make very clear why research is weighted more heavily than teaching--and service least of all--at their institutions and offer practical suggestions to help new faculty members manage their time while preparing new courses and planning their research activities. One piece of especially useful advice is offered by Norman Rempel of Fresno Pacific College: "Do your homework before arriving for interviews.... [spend] the time to get a good feel for the distinctive character of the institution seeking your services" (48). Such advance preparation is crucial for showing applicants the expectations they will face if hired and thus helping them to decide whether or not to accept a job offer.
My only complaint with Part I is the lack of female (and probably minority) authors. The only chapter written by a woman is the one by Mary E. Kitterman, Dean of Faculty at Stephens College in Missouri, a women's college. (And, I suspect, the only black author in this section is Lamore J. Carter of Grambling State University in Louisiana.) Given the care with which the authors solicited a wide array of voices, including female and minority, for Part II, I was disappointed that they failed to take the same approach to Part I. Women and minority faculty at "mainstream" schools may face different pressures and expectations than their white male counterparts do; this possibility is not addressed in the chapters in Part I.
In Part II, "Career Patterns," the authors state their intention of presenting a realistic picture of what a new faculty member's first year or two will be like, avoiding "the romanticism so often used to portray the professoriate" while taking "a candid look inside academia" (89). This they succeed in doing, in large part by seeking contributions from faculty with a wide range of backgrounds: age, experience, geographic location, sex, and minority status. To further increase the generalizability of the information provided to as many fields and schools as possible, they have included "second opinions" for most of the topics in this section, i.e., two essays from different points of view.
The chapters in this section follow a chronological order, beginning with "Getting the Job," "Accepting the Job," and "Creating the New Course," and continuing with chapters on "The Students," "Getting Along with Colleagues," the "Research Agenda for the Beginner," "Promotion and Tenure," etc. Most of the chapters take a narrative form with many anecdotes included to illustrate the copious advice and warnings.
The advice throughout this section is uniformly solid and helpful, if at times vague, repetitive, or obvious (for example, the reader is advised in "Getting Along with Colleagues: Collegiality, Professionalism, and Ethics," "Reject, when unprofessional, outside influences on your work, teaching, or research" (229). The chapters taking a more objective, list-like approach, however, are less effective than those using personal experiences to support the advice offered. The narratives, while interesting, occasionally overstep the bounds of relevant personal information, as in the case of the young woman discussing her boyfriend's reaction to her accepting a job in the Midwest, down to the degree of their commitment to each other ("Getting the Job: With a Little Bit of Luck...And a Whole Lot of Forethought").
On the other hand, this same author, Linda Haverty of Ohio State University, presents eye-opening commentary on her conference interview experiences: of the several interviews she went through, only one included women as active participants. The rest were conducted by men, either alone or in groups, and mostly in hotel rooms. Haverty says, "The interview process...made me aware of my gender in ways I had not anticipated" (107), not because there were any inappropriate questions or behaviors, but because of the "psychological impact on female applicants" of interviewing with men in hotel rooms (107). She finally asks a question (107) that deserves serious consideration by the entire academic establishment: "...couldn't we find a more appropriate venue for interviews than hotel rooms?"
A similarly eye-opening perspective is offered by Gargi Roysicar Sodowsky of the University of Nebraska in her chapter on "Getting Along with Colleagues: Collegiality, Professionalism, and Ethics--A Cultural Perspective." Sodowsky, an assistant professor of counseling psychology, addresses the need "to develop a psychological match between" new faculty's "needs, goals, values, achievement potentials, and past training and their newly chosen culture--that of academia" (239). Minority faculty "experience a double dose of acculturation problems" (244) resulting not only from having to adjust to the academic culture but also from "conflict between the values and mores of their cultures of origin and those of White middle class America which appears [sic] to be well reflected by the academic culture" (244). To help alleviate these problems of adjustment and conflict, Sodowsky recommends the mentoring of new faculty by more experienced members of their departments, those familiar with the "culture and worldview" (246) of the school. This, I feel, is one of the most important points of the entire book, a recommendation that should be followed by all schools claiming Affirmative Action policies.
The two chapters on research will probably be of most long-term relevance to the majority of readers of this volume. Both stress the importance of establishing a research track record early, while still in graduate school, and then continuing with a high degree of productivity through the tenure process. "Research Agenda for the Beginner: When Your Feet Hit the Ground Start Running" advises readers to avoid milking the dissertation for publications, since "if you publish your dissertation materials early, it often leaves the promotion and tenure committee with a poor image of you.... Evaluation committees and administrators want to see growth beyond your dissertation" (251). While this advice may be true for extreme cases of publications coming solely from the dissertation, it doesn't make sense to ignore the publication possibilities of a book-length work that took months or years to complete. New research can and should accompany publication of older material.
John A. Glover, in the second research chapter, "Scholarly Publications: It's Still Publish or Perish," strongly advises against new faculty members trying to write books. He claims that
at many major research-oriented institutions, 10-12 publications in major journals over a five-year period are enough for faculty to gain promotion and tenure. The time, effort, and energy needed for these reports almost inevitably will be far less than what is needed to write one book. In most fields, writing books is better put off as a post-tenure activity. (268)
I wonder, however, how many major research institutions actually agree with this philosophy. Over the years since I was in graduate school, I have heard many stories about faculty who were refused tenure because they hadn't written at least one book--at some schools two--by that time (and what better source for a first book than the dissertation?). Clearly, this advice (like any advice one receives, for that matter), needs to be verified by applicants and new faculty at each individual institution. The best and surest advice in the book is still Norman Rempel's: newcomers must do their homework and learn as much as they can about the publishing expectations at the school(s) which will have so much influence over their lives and careers.
Glover's article also raises a controversial point which still generates hot debate today (see, for example, Paul Trout's book review of Richard M. Huber's How Professors Play the Cat Guarding the Cream: Why We're Paying More and Getting Less in Higher Education in the Spring 1994 issue of The Montana Professor): the publish-or-perish syndrome is still very much alive and casts doubt on just how much institutions of higher learning--and by extension American society as a whole--value good teaching. As Glover says:
Teaching may be what the professoriate should be about.... However, professional survival and advancement do not depend on teaching well. In fact, survival and advancement depend on scholarly publication. With only a modest program of publication, one can be a mediocre teacher and still be very well rewarded. (268)
Cynical, yes. Sad, you bet. True, for sure. Most of us have seen this phenomenon firsthand, and this passage serves as an appropriate warning to new faculty entering the system to be prepared for those expectations--or try to find a school that agrees more closely with their own values.
I was extraordinarily lucky to have well-informed, supportive faculty mentors in graduate school, and luckier still to have even more supportive mentoring colleagues in my first--and only--faculty position. But how many faculty members can say that? For the vast majority of graduate students, this book can provide useful, even vital information about what they will soon face in their careers.
It presents a broad perspective on a process that can be mysterious and therefore frightening to the novice, and so fills a real need. I would recommend that every school library (maybe even every department library) serving graduate students buy a copy.