It's That Time of Year

And no, I don't mean Christmas, and no, I will not support the insanity that leads retailers to put out Christmas merchandise before Halloween.

 

I mean the time of year when I get my annual review from my department chair. He observed my teaching last week, he has my student evaluations, and I filled out an eight-page self evaluation, probably giving him even more ammunition to use against me.

 

But I appreciate these reviews, because in the seven years I worked as an adjunct, I never once had a performance evaluation. In one school, I was observed every semester and met with the chair to discuss the results, but there was never any overall evaluation.

 

And why should there be? The purpose of the evaluations is to determine promotion and merit raise issues, and for most adjuncts, there is neither.

 

But they do have the student evaluations to contend with, and that is a serious problem. If it is the only tool administration uses to assess the teaching in the adjuncts' classrooms, they need to consider the reliability of the source.

 

I have always known that students don't take these evaluations seriously. Last year, in the portion asking how the class might be improved, one student wrote, "Have a petting zoo."

 

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Vitae" leads with a case of an adjunct losing her job because of course evaluations. The article also quotations from several of my friends because, I suppose, birds with no feathers flock together.

 

You can read the whole article here.

 

Author Max Lewontin writes:  

For most tenure-track and tenured professors, course evaluations are used as guidance or feedback, a way to tweak their courses based on student concerns. At their worst, the evaluations are an annoyance, as students vent their frustrations or lament a poor grade.  

But for adjuncts, student evaluations often carry much more weight. In a way, that makes sense: Most adjuncts are, after all, hired to teach. But in the absence of other metrics or methods, many colleges use evaluations as a key means—or the only means—of determining whether to renew a contingent professor’s contract.

I have frequently gotten good tips from student evaluations. Probably the best one was that I talk too fast.

And I would like a petting zoo.

    

 

Dear "Whining Adjuncts" - Keep Up the Good Work!

The web is alive with the sound of outrage. In a remarkably tone-deaf letter to the editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Catherine Stukel suggests - no, she flat-out states, that adjuncts may not be getting hired in full-time, tenure-track jobs because they are annoying, they are unlikable, they are mediocre, or they don't fully engage their students. You can read her letter here.

The most outrageous thing she does is attack Margaret MaryVojtko, referring to an article about a "dying, broken-hearted 83-year-old adjunct professor." Stukel is disgusted. She suggests that Professor Vojtko should "put on [her] big girl panties."

Apparently she didn't read the article, because Professor Vojtko was already dead.

She also suggests that, in placing the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article in her mailbox, the adjunct-teacher's union at her institution was whining. She never acknowledges that her so-called colleagues were taking action, as she later suggests they do (although unionizing and fighting the Walmartization of higher education is not what she has in mind for them).

And while the story of Professor Vojtko was simplified (in part, I suspect, because of the very limited word count of op-ed pieces)in the Post-Gazette article, and more fully formed stories of her life have been published, Stukel has no interest in finding the facts. Instead, she launches into one of the most appalling versions of blame the victim I have ever seen.

Stukel may be right on some points - if you are desperately unhappy, perhaps you should find another career - or at least, another job. I know of at least one adjunct who was inspired to quit by this article. I suspect that if more adjuncts walked away, and at the very last minute, when full-time schedules had been finalized, things might change. Might.

But Stukel's total oblivion to the system that created legions of "whiners" and the many benefits she receives from it that she would deny the adjuncts on her campus, is something that cannot continue in the ranks of the tenured faculty.

As a tenure-track faculty member who spent seven years in the trenches with the freeway flyers, I have made it my mission to keep the issue in front of both the academic community and its stakeholders: parents, students, fellow citizens desiring a system of higher education that focuses on teaching and learning rather than fancy dorms, athletic facilities, and the over-population of  over-paid administrative suites.

I hope tenured professors such as Stukel will wake up and understand that the very system they benefit from is destroying itself from within. If Professor Stukel hopes for higher education for her children, grandchildren, or great grandchildren, she had better acknowledge that the continued reliance on part-time workers will remove that opportunity within the next generations.

(Note: Cartoon courtesy of  Hugh MacLeod at gapevoid.com)

The Locusts are Singing

My mother used to tell me that the droning of the locusts was a song. The lyrics? Summer's over, summer's over.

So as I'm digging out my pencil box, my plaid skirt, and my lunch bag, getting ready to return to the classroom, I'm reflecting on my summer's work. All to the tuneless song of the locusts.

I will say, it was pretty lazy by my usual standards. I attended a conference, where I presented a paper; I team-taught a week-long workshop for high school teachers; I went to a writers' conference in creative nonfiction, for which I had to write an essay; I developed a survey for a major research project I'm beginning with a colleague; and I proposed a chapter for an edited book which was accepted - all I have to do now is to write it.

I haven't begun the syllabus writing yet, but since I'm usually the last one in the department to send mine to the print shop, that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone - not even the print shop.

I also squeezed in a fabulous trip to Rome, Florence, and Paris with a colleague, and visited my new great niece in Akron.

I know that I have an unusually good life for someone with a PhD in English. I remember the years when I had to beg for summer courses to teach, just to keep a roof over my head. I remember when I had no research agenda or professional development funding or time to do anything but read student essays and sleep.

As I look ahead to the fall 2014 semester, I am excited: I have a new plan for my basic writing courses, I'm teaching a media theory course for the first time, and, as a third year teacher, I feel comfortable at my institution.

I also anticipate teaching an overload, for which I will be paid, but, of course, not enough. I will be in my office 10 hours a week, hoping students will come and talk to me. I will be on at least three committees, a team, and a task force.

And . . .   there's the usual three days of meetings and trainings and orientation events. I used to complain about these days - when I did, my husband said, well, why don't you quit? Why don't you go into another profession? As many professors have done - and then there's this:

I'm being positive right now, so it's he students, I say. I'm in it for the students. 

There's no other reason on earth for anyone to do this job.

And I'm very thankful for every day I spend with them.

After the Deluge

The deluge in question is a long thread that has been running on the Council of Writing Program Administrators' list serve. It started with a simple, practical question and has morphed and morphed again into a discussion of tenure track and non-tenured teaching positions. This is positively a boon for me, as I am speaking at that very group's conference on that very subject on Saturday.

Ironically, if not absurdly, I submitted my proposal in the category of "conversation starter" - not a full paper, but a brief overview of a given topic which is then thrown open to the participants to discuss. It's obvious that this conversation has been started, and is not going to end any time soon.

And it's possible to squeeze out a tiny bit of hope for the future of labor conditions in American higher education. On June 26, adjunct faculty at Point Park University in Pittsburgh voted to join the Adjunct Faculty Association of the USW. Previously, part-time faculty members at Tufts, Leslie, and Northeastern Universities also voted to unionize. There are many more cases of organizing in process, including awaiting the results of Duquesne University's appeal of the union vote to the National Labor Relations Board.

There is currently a petition circulating to urge David Weil, the director of the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor to investigate working conditions and wages of adjunct faculty. (Read and sign the petition here.)

It may not seem like much, but the movement has gained steam quickly since the September 18 article in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the life and death of spurned adjunct Mary Margaret Vojtko. I've seen more concern from people outside of academia, and more concern from tenured faculty, many of whom had sat above the fray.

All of those are positive things. Something that strikes me as less positive is a growing support for converting adjunct jobs into non-tenured, full-time teaching lines with benefits. On the surface, and certainly for the poor adjunct traveling to three or more schools, teaching an outrageously heavy load, and still walking the tightrope of the poverty line, it seems like a wonderful idea.

Here are my reservations. First, the online division of Southern New Hampshire University (a huge operation that has been called "the Amazon of education") has tested converting adjunct jobs to full-time. The workload, already heavy, increased. The pressure to follow the rules (respond to every assignment within 72 hours, for example) increased. And when the full-time jobs are created, the university has said that "some" of the current adjuncts will be hired in them.

Granted, there may be good reasons not to hire every single adjunct in a full-time position. Some may, for their own reasons, prefer to remain part-time. But every qualified and capable adjunct who has served the university well should be offered a full-time job, until those jobs are all filled. I was warned by a faculty member at one university where I applied to be an adjunct not to do it, as adjuncts were never considered for tenure-track jobs. Thank you for your service; please apply elsewhere.

The second concern is more urgent. Full-time, non-tenured teachers often have no support, no protection, and no job security. I worked one year in such a position,where I was assured that renewal was almost automatic. Sadly, someone with a strong vote and a weak grasp of my field didn't like the way I taught. I was a campus leader in service, scholarship, and teaching - at least to everyone else, but it didn't matter. In a tenure track job, I would have been protected from such pettiness.

So the conversation, once started, will not hush. Here are the questions I intend to raise on Saturday:

How can writing program administrators:

• create an atmosphere inclusive of contingent faculty
• advocate for better conditions, including increased pay, benefits, and working conditions such as office space, parking, and access to university services
• address gender inequality in contingent issues
• participate in activism on behalf of contingent labor beyond our own campuses
• build alliances among administration, tenured and tenure-track faculty, full-time nontenured faculty, and adjunct faculty, staff, students and parents for the improvement of the working conditions of contingent faculty as well as a longer-term goal of increasing the number of full-time, tenure-track positions?

If you have any answers, feel free to post a comment. And if you're going to Normal, Illinois this weekend, you'll be one step ahead of the rest of the participants at my panel.

The Will to Prepare

Tanzanian marathoner and trainer Juma Ikangaa said, "The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare." I've been thinking about these words of wisdom for two reasons.

The first is American runner Meb Keflezighi's win in Monday's Boston Marathon - the first American to win since 1985. I met Meb at the Pittsburgh Marathon Expo several years ago and have his autograph: he signs, "Run to Win" - and then explains that winning is personal, individual. Obviously, he could tell to look at me that I was not going to "win" the Pittsburgh marathon. But in my mid-50s at the time, persevering through a long run was (and still is) a win.


Earlier this month I joined friends in running the inaugural Scranton Half Marathon. I ran it with almost no training. It's not that I didn't have the will to prepare - I just didn't have the health to prepare. I went through two bouts of flu with a broken toe in between.

Meb might have said that I hobbled to win that day.

It was not the smartest thing I ever did - the chances of getting injured were huge, especially considering that a few miles of the race were on an uneven and rocky trail. I was lucky - and I had enough residual fitness from before the triple health whammy to finish, and to recover quickly.

How, you may be wondering, is any of this relevant to labor conditions in academia?

When I began my PhD program, I had already run seven marathons, and I ran my eighth during my first year there. I don't think I would have had the nerve to go back to school if I hadn't learned about the will to prepare through long-distance running. Both events are more about tenacity than native talent - and tenacity is learned.

And, again, I was lucky. Two years after finishing my degree, I landed a tenure-track job. I had taught as an adjunct for seven years, in a one-year contract job for exactly one year, and in a job with no tenure or rank for four years. I was prepared.

But sadly, preparation isn't always enough. My electronic devices are being flooded with stories about the glut of PhDs on the market and the ever decreasing number of full-time, tenure-track jobs for them. So many of my friends are prepared - prepared for a marathon that was cancelled while they were lacing their shoes for the first training run.

I realize more and more that if he problem of contingent faculty is to be solved, it falls on the shoulders of full-timers, tenured and tenure-track faculty to stand up and say, no more. We must help our unemployed and underemployed colleagues run to win.

Power of the Blog?

Not mine, but that of Becky Tuch I wrote about in my last entry. Suddenly, in its call for proposals for the 2015 conference, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) is not only calling for, but begging for, proposals dealing with faculty labor issues.

Coincidence? You decide.

But thanks to Becky Tuch and her supporters (including me, I hope), AWP is paying attention.

The rest of the world? Join us!

Are the Professional Organizations Supporting Organization?

According to a recent article in Salon, not so much. At least not the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), the organization of programs, professors, and students in creative writing.

In her article entitled "Professors in Homeless Shelters," Becky Tuch calls the organization out:

At this year’s conference in Seattle, the biggest AWP conference yet, you did not have a single panel dedicated to adjunct teaching. Nor were there any panels addressing this shift toward part-time faculty at colleges. Absent also were lectures, discussions or Q&A sessions addressing these changes in the academic climate.

 The involvement of AWP is especially important, I believe, because teachers with creative writing degrees are more likely to become adjuncts than many other faculty. While English departments have an embarrassment of riches in the number of potential teachers with advanced degrees in literature, composition, and creative writing, in many ways the creative writing graduates have the hardest time.

They have earned Masters of Fine Arts (MFAs), degrees considered terminal, and yet they are in competition with people who have earned PhDs. If they do not have a published book as well as a string of smaller publications, they are not considered for positions teaching creative writing in their genre. They fall back into the pool of candidates for jobs in composition, and often feel fortunate to find even part-time positions (as I did).

There is better news, however. The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), whose national conference starts today in Indianapolis has been paying attention. The Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) conference this summer is dedicated to the nature of work and workplace issues in writing programs (generally composition programs, to differentiate WPA and AWP). But they all - and we all - could do more. Tuch concludes:

But we working writers/teachers/students need to get our act together. We need to start talking about the treatment of adjuncts and graduate students. We need to stop pretending there is no problem. We need to work together to address these issues. You, AWP, are in a unique position to help us do that.

Please, AWP - connect with your fellow organizations as well as your own members, and join the conversation.

Spring Break!

While I've written (more than once, I think) about how I do not get summers off, I will confess: I take spring break off (with the exception of checking email to make sure the school didn't burn down in my absence).

Last year, I spent spring break at a professional conference - but, hey! it was in Las Vegas so I counted it as work and play.

This year, I'm doing what students do: I'm in Florida.

But for four years I taught in a school with a year-round schedule and no spring break.

Before that, for seven years, I taught as an adjunct at three different institutions. On good years, two out of three of them would have the same week off for spring break. Several years, all three had different break weeks. How often did they all have the same week? That would be exactly never.

So at least I got two or three slightly easier weeks, but never a true break.

Friends of mine who are currently working as adjuncts are in the same position (I would have said same boat, but no boat for them). In addition to teaching heavier loads for less pay and no benefits,  part-time faculty members don't enjoy one of the expected perks for students and teachers alike - a break in the middle of the spring term.

Just one more overlooked disadvantage of the two-tiered faculty system - and a sign of just how far those tiers are from each other.

Why I Didn't Quit

As the new essay genre "Why I Quit Academia" continues to be populated with stories of poverty, lack of respect, anger and frustration, I thought I would respond with why I didn't quit - and why "Why don't you quit?" is not the best thing to say to contingent faculty expressing their concerns about their situations.

I didn't quit because finally, in my 40s, I found my calling. I had bounced around in a variety of jobs from journalism to make-up artist, hoping that eventually I would write the Great American Novel. Instead, I got an MFA in fiction writing, wrote the Not So Bad American Novella (yet to be published), and managed a high-end women's shoe store.

The opportunity to teach composition as an adjunct came through a connection - it certainly wasn't what I knew, because I had never taught. It was who I knew, and that was good enough for me.

My first job wasn't just teaching composition. It was teaching a section of basic writing (a course for students not prepared for college-level composition courses) and a section of students who had just that moment arrived in the United States from Africa.

I was in heaven. I fell for basic writing, and I fell hard. I still consider it the most important part of my career. I also consider it a calling, even a gift. I understand students who struggle academically, who don't know how to navigate the unknown territory of academia. And I loved working with the African students, who were new to both academia and America (and I'm not sure which culture was stranger to them).

And so, as I have reported here before, I spent seven years cobbling together teaching jobs at three colleges, freelance editing, and part-time make-up artist work until, after finishing my coursework for my PhD, I found my first full-time teaching job.

I know I've been lucky. I have a husband with a good job, so those semesters when I was down a course, we didn't have to struggle as single teachers do. I got that first full-time job. And the second. And, finally, the tenure-track dream job (note: slight irony intended).

But I know many adjuncts will not find the path I stumbled upon (in both senses). And yet, they don't quit. They are dedicated teachers who dream -futilely, far too often- of a real career. They believed the Great American Lie: Get an education, and you will live the Great American Dream.

Friends who told me I should quit were often the same friends who were unhappy in their jobs - in or out of academia. Why didn't they quit? And what would I have done if I did quit? Return to the shoe trade? I had already reimagined myself too often.

So if contingent faculty choose to labor on, in spite of the conditions, in spite of the odds against ever finding full-time employment, I hope it is for the same reason I did: the love of teaching.

This, however, does not justify the continued abuse of contingent faculty. And, yes, if adjuncts all quit, the academy might have to rethink its labor policies.

But more likely it would just churn out thousands more MAs to take their places.

So instead of suggesting that your adjunct friends just quit, take to the streets. Write to your local college administration, your newspaper, whoever might listen. Don't send your kids to colleges that abuse faculty labor pools. Help your friends in ways that might help the academic world.

Adjunct Earns $62.50 per Hour! Film at 11!

Apparently, no matter how often we talk about it, many people still believe that teachers are actually working only during their classroom hours.

In an email that went through a real university email system, it was suggested that adjuncts earning $2818 for a three-credit course were earning $62.50 per hour: 15 weeks, 3 hours per week equals 45 hours - divide that into 2818 and voila! $62.50! (I get $62.62 - perhaps the writer was no better at math than at having a clue what teachers do.)

There are two egregious errors in logic being made here. The first is that even if you are earning $62.50 per hour, if your entire income is $2818, you are not exactly rolling in cash. And  many contingent faculty members are assigned only one or two courses per semester - at the institution paying $2818/course, that would be an annual high income of $11,272. You would earn more in 40 hours a week at a minimum wage job* (assuming you could find a full-time minimum wage job).

The more serious problem is the assumption that face-to-face time with students in the classroom is the sum of the work of a teacher.

Why, as a profession, do we need to continue explaining this? No one believes that a surgeon only works when he is in the operating room, or that a lawyer only works when she is in the courtroom. And yet, here I go again: Prep time! Grading time! Individual conferences with students! Committee work! Advising! Scholarship! We do it all!

Hello? Hello? Anybody out there?



*I will address the question of Why not? Why not go for the minimum wage job! in a later post.

More of This, Please!

Point Park University students have formed a Student Solidarity Organization to demand fair labor practices. Point Park was one of the three colleges that I taught part-time for, and while I had a great relationship with my department chair (I still count him as a friend), I received the lowest pay there - and since it was downtown Pittsburgh, I often had to pay outrageous parking rates, adding insult to injury.

It was the only school where I frequently had students who had no full-time faculty members teaching them in any given semester. There was no office space, not even the usual tiny room with one computer to serve a dozen adjuncts. And this is a private university with full-time tuition ranging from about $25,00 - $32,000 per year. Just tuition - not room and board, not any of the dozen fees that colleges add.

On the plus side, the students were bright and interesting - with majors ranging from musical theater to mortuary science/business, and it was the only school that offered undergraudate tuition benefits for adjuncts and their dependents. Sadly, I could not avail myself of that.

Student activism is crucial to changing the system. If administrations are going to insist on considering students customers, they will have to give the customers the product that they claim to be selling them: a quality education. And students, parents, and other key players are going to have to step up and demand that they do. Congratulations, Point Park students - this is a great start!

Awareness? Raised. Action? Not So Much.

Since I last wrote, at least half a dozen new adjunct blogs have begun. Several "I Quit Academe" essays have surfaced, and one "Academe Quit Me" essay roused some interest.

It's beginning to feel a lot like October.

Not the weather. It's a seasonal 32 degrees and lightly snowy here in Central West Virginia.

But in the conflict between awareness and action.

I know I've mentioned this before. October, as we all know, is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Pink ribbons appear on products. NFL players wear fuschia shoes and gloves. The City of Pittsburgh dyes the water in the fountains pink.

But seriously. You'd have to have been raised by wolves, born in a barn, AND living in a remote cave not to be aware of breast cancer. Awareness is no longer the issue. Why can't we put all the money that goes into pinkness into research for prevention and cures? (And, yes, I know - some of the profits from these programs does go into those things, as well as providing mammograms for uninsured women. But still.)

Besides, I don't like pink much. When my sister and I were young, our mother often bought us almost-matching outfits - hers was blue; mine was pink. I've had enough.

The public conversation about working conditions for college and university faculty is feeling very pink to me now. There is no one with a pulse over 20 in academia who is not now aware of the problem. The road we are on - the road to all part-time faculty with low wages and no benefits - will destroy higher education in America sooner rather than later.

So what now? Do those of us actively working to improve working conditions in academia need to adopt a color and campaign for a month? I think blue would be appropriate . . .and how about February - we don't want people to be aware for too long.

Or is it time for those who have been lying low - administrators who believe that by hiring several adjuncts they're actually increasing the number of available jobs; tenured faculty near enough to retirement that they don't care; parents who believe that part-time faculty somehow means lower tuition*; students who don't know if their faculty members are full-time or not, simply because most adjuncts show the same dedication to their learning as tenured or tenure-track faculty members do; politicians; voters - is it time for them to add their voices and demand that some action be taken?

Yes.

*For the record, there is a definite correlation between increasing tuitions and increasing pat-time and contingent faculty. Not a causation perhaps, but definitely a correlation. Hmmmm . . ..

No Room on the Back Burner

Happy New Year, everyone, and Happy Epiphany.

Epiphany is the celebration of the arrival of the Wise Men at Jesus' home - historically figured to be about three years beyond the manger scene where their figures are so often placed.

The word is used by fiction writers - their main characters must have an epiphany! And by self-help gurus - you realize that if you eat a bag of chips every day, you will continue to gain weight and feel crummy? Epiphany!

My Epiphany epiphany is that I will never, ever finish the work I have to do.

I return to school Friday. I have not written my syllabi. I have not written a book review - and, in fact, I have not even finished reading the book, which seems to be some sort of requirement. I have not completed - or even worked on - three other projects.

Part of this is because I came down with a miserable fluish thing right after Christmas that I am still fighting. Part of it is because I taught an overage, directed a play, and otherwise overworked myself in the fall semester, and somehow thought I deserved a rest.

And part of it is because I've always had faith in an infinite back burner, where projects would happily simmer until I had the time to pull them forward and finish cooking them (to extend the metaphor to an annoying degree). Sadly, my projects will soon be falling off the back of the range as I push more and more tasks to those overburdened back burners.

My epiphanic* wishes for my readers, both real and imagined, are health, energy, and a much bigger stove in 2014.

*Yes, epiphanic. I looked it up.