Hey! This isn't what I signed up for!

In my last blog post I was responding to the academy that isn't - or, perhaps, as some comments indicated, the academy that never actually was.  This past week I was at MIT's LINC conference.  It was a good opportunity to attend (since it was local), listen into some interesting panel discussions, and meet some folks from all over the world doing interesting things.  It was also a good opportunity to connect with folks (via twitter mostly for me) to think about academia (and the role it has) from a systems point of view.  I was rather happy to have been there to see Peter Senge speak at the end of LINC 2019 as he is a systems person, and someone whose work was foundational in my instructional design learning.

Now, I wasn't really planning a follow up to my last post.  I sort of wrote it in order to contribute my 2-cents to the discussion, as a response to @Harmonygritz (George), and also point people to it when they ask me if I want to pursue a tenure-track job.  However, the topic of faculty not being prepared  to do what their schools ask them to do came up on twitter during my #mitlinc2019 posts (via @ksbourgault) and oddly enough when I returned home and checked the subreddit r/professors the following post was made by one of the users:

I got into academia because I love creating and sharing knowledge. As I sit here working through my day, I can't help but wonder how I turned into a website administrator and customer service agent. Next year I've been told I'm going to have administration/management duties I never wanted and won't be very good at. I used to be the kind of person that didn't work a day in their life because I loved what I did. Now...well...getting through the days require medication. God dammit. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.

So, I thought - what the heck?  Why not write about this?  After all, some people tend to give you a strangle glance when you point out the problem but offer no solutions.  So,...here is my tenative solution, as imperfect as it may be.

As I mentioned in my previous post, a tenured (or tenure-track) professor job has three main responsibilities: Teaching, Research, and Service. I would say that here, at the "job description" level there is a problem. Faculty are not prepared for all of these things during their studies.  Faculty are only prepared for one thing in their doctoral studies.  That one thing is Research.

Educating credible, ethical, and competent researchers is the distinguishing characteristic of a doctoral program and that is what makes as doctoral program different from a master's program.  Some people may argue with me that this is specific to a "PhD" whereas an "EdD" is more applied in nature - but I respectfully disagree; I've written this in another blog post year ago, and I am sticking with it. The crux of my argument was this:  Both PhDs and EdDs need to be able to critically consume literature, critically produce research literature, and critically apply research literature.  If you can't do that, then there is a problem.

What you'll notice is that those three verbs (consume, produce, apply) do not include the verb "to teach".  This is something that, in my opinion, could be remedied at the doctoral education level.  It's also something that could be remedied at the hiring level.  K-12 teachers (and other professionals) are expected to complete a certain amount of hours in CPD (continuous professional development) every year to maintain their teaching license.  Why not tenure-track faculty?  My fellow instructional designers bemoan the fact that faculty rarely reach out to them for training, and no one attends the workshops that they spend a lot of time on preparing.  Well, I can tell you why (and I've told my colleagues this too):  This type of CPD is not something that is valued at an institutional level.  No one is forcing faculty members to attend CPD sessions and apply what they learn in their teaching. It's not something that faculty get 'brownie points' on their annual reviews for, and when push comes to shove and they need something to clear off their places, CPD is it.   In my proposal I would say that doctoral students should get their "starter pack" in instructional design and teaching while they are doing their doctoral studies, and then they continue with CPD at the workplace (and have it be required).  Simple.

But, hold on, let me get a little more granular here, because I think it's needed. My proposal doesn't just stop at mandatory CPD.  I would argue that - depending on the needs of the organisation - the job duties of the "professor" position should be malleable and negotiable every so often. What do I mean by this?  Well, I'd say that we should start off with two "starter" JDs (job descriptions), and for a lack of better terms I'll call them:

• Researching Professor (RP)
• Teaching Professor (TP)

The RP would spend 25% of their time teaching, and 75% of the time applying and getting grants, and researching and publishing.  The TP would spend 75% of their time teaching and 25% of their time researching and publishing.  Both positions would be compensated the same, would get the same prestige, and the same benefits, but there would be a difference in how they were evaluated.  A researcher would be mostly evaluated on the quality and volume of their published work, they would need to attend teaching CPD (although I think less than a TP), and they would be evaluated on their teaching, but we'd go "light" on them since this would be a part time responsibility on them.   The TP on the other hand would be required to have higher amounts of teaching & learning CPD for the year, given their teaching-first responsibilities, and conversely would be evaluated annually with more weight going to the teaching than the research output.  This is important because at the moment (from my own little microcosm) I see a lot of emphasis placed on research and publishing in tenure and promotion cases.  Knowing what "track" you've applied to, and what track you are in is extremely important in my proposed model.

Another key element here is the negotiability of the position.  How frequently this happens is up to the organizational needs.  But, let's say that I am hired into a TP-tenure-track position and after a few years of courses I really want to focus a bit on my research for the next year or two. Maybe I want to be 50-50 (teaching/research), maybe I want to be 25/75 (thus being moved into the RP structure).  This should be negotiable between the faculty member and the chair - keeping in mind the needs of the department as well as the needs of the individual.  Likewise, if I am in an RP-type of position but my department suddenly has a ton new students and needs me to teach more courses, I could negotiate to go into a TP-type position for a year or two with this new cohort of learners, and thus be evaluated mostly on my teaching.  The key thing here with evaluations is that we don't privilege teaching over research (and vice versa) when conducting annual evaluations (or even tenure/promotion evaluations).

But...wait!  You are asking me "what happened to service???"  Well... service is kind of a tricky subject, isn't it?  I would treat the service category as a category that would push a faculty member to the "exceed expectations" category of the annual job evaluation, and because of this consideration, the service category would potentially want merit pay (for a job well done, not just having it on paper). One reason for this is that lots of things could fall under service: such as: Organizing a conference, undertaking student advising, sitting on someone's thesis/dissertation committee, doing some marketing for the program or recruiting new students, serving on the library committee, or on the technology advisory board, etc. Because there is such variety in terms of service postings it's hard to say what faculty should or should not be part of. However, CPD and some method of evaluation should be part of these service decisions.

For example, when I was an undergraduate, meetings with my major advisor were short, he looked at my transcript, signed off on courses I wanted with very little dialog, even when I tried to engage about my interests in computer science and future goals I'd basically hear crickets, and that was about it. Except, when my GPA dipped and he advised me to change major - instead of figuring out why this was the case, where my areas of deficit were, and how to improve (I guess he was worried about departmental averages than retaining students in the STEM field...).  In the meantime (last 15 years) I've met faculty "advisors" from all across campus that "advise" students without even knowing the degree requirements for their own programs. This is just plain wrong. So, taking this as a use-case as an example, if your service advising I'd say that those faculty members should attend CPD to get informed (and test on) departmental, college, and university policies; get trained on degree requirements; know the costs of attending college; and getting to know people in other departments that support students (such as the writing center, the ADA center, and so on).

There are some service duties that faculty shouldn't be in charge of.  Marketing and recruitment being one of them (I am sure there are others too).  Faculty just don't have the skill set, and it's not really efficacious to have them obtain it.  There are positions on campus of people who do this type of thing.  If faculty want to switch careers, that's fine, but I do have an issue with faculty keeping their position as faculty while half-assing something (or worse, passing it onto staff...). Faculty can be part of these processes (of course), as experts in their own discipline and experts of their department, but really marketing and recruitment should reside elsewhere, not with faculty.

In the end, here are the guidelines for my NuFaculty setup:

• Get rid of Tenured and Non-Tenured distinctions.  Everyone now becomes Tenure track with two possible starting points:  An RP and a TP. Having tenured and non-tenured tracks leads to discrimination and classism IMO. Just as there can be a lot of different types of professionals, there can be (and should be) a lot of different equal types of faculty.
• Faculty get evaluated not on on a one-size-fits-all model, but rather based on their designated positions and through consultation with their department chairs
• Faculty CPD is a requirement, especially for TP.  CPD factors into annual and tenure evaluations.
• Positions are flexible based on the needs of the individuals and the needs of the department, but they need to be setup before the evaluation period begins (can't change horses in mid-stream...)
• Faculty positions are 12 month positions, not 9 as they currently are now.  Yes, they accrue vacation time that they can take. As a 12-month employee they can decide when their "summers" are when they don't teach, so their period of teaching responsibility can be flexible, and this is a win-win both for faculty and the school.
• Service isn't required for faculty positions, but highly encouraged.  To undertake service the appropriate service type needs to be matched with pre-existing skills.  CPD is available for those skills if faculty want to grow into that area, but you can't practice until you show some competency.  Depending on the department needs service can substitute for 25% of the research or teaching component with prior approval and for defined periods of time.
• The incentive to sign up for service is merit pay.

Your thoughts?