Heeding New Voices: Implications for Early Career Faculty Mary Deane Sorcinelli University of Massachusetts Amherst Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing.
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Heeding New Voices:Implications for Early Career Faculty
Mary Deane SorcinelliUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst
Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing (AIM) Stanford University
June 17, 2004
Session Assumptions:
• Best practices for early career faculty are context
and campus sensitive
• Time constraints will limit the breath and depth of
our conversations
• Written resources for post-session reading,
reflection and sharing will be provided
Guiding Questions:
How is the academic workplace changing?
How do doctoral students and early career faculty experience the job search process and the tenure track?
What practices can support you as a teacher, scholar, and citizen of campus?
What practices might senior colleagues, chairs, and other academic leaders consider to support early career faculty?
Introductions
Turn to one person seated nearby. Introduce yourself and share one or two aspects of your academic career that are truly satisfying and one or two aspects that are the most challenging/least satisfying.
Let’s Hear It For The “Good Old Days”
Earn a Ph.D. from a good place
Hone research skills with guidance from mentor
Seek and find a tenure track job
Engage in “on the job learning” and “one size fits all teaching”
If students don’t learn, presume its their fault
Live happily (with tenure) ever after
Taylor, 2003
Academic Careers in the 21st Century
Most jobs in non-research universities
Dramatic growth in non-tenure track positions
Increased stresses related to tenure track
Heightened pressures for research and teaching productivity—what about quality?
For many doctoral students, training may not prepare them for workplace they will enter
Finkelstein, 2003
Workplace Graduates Will Enter
Changing approaches to teaching/learning
Increasing diversity of students
New technologies
Focus on assessment/performance measures
Changing faculty roles Institutional competitiveness, financing
Austin, 2003
Doctoral Candidates:
What Factors Go Into Making Choices About Faculty Positions
and Where To Work?
What Job Factors Are Most Important?
Trower, 2000-01
Top Factors Exercise
Directions: Working individually for the next fiveminutes, please:
Check up to 10 factors that are most important to you in your academic position.
Doctoral Students: Top 10 Job Factors in Choice of Academic Post
6. Institutional support for my research13. Time for family or other obligation/interests 16. Quality of department 2. Number of courses and preps 12. Flexibility of my work schedule 10. Opportunity to work collaboratively 1. The content of courses I would teach 9. Opportunity to work independently18. Geographic location of institution 17. The quality of the institution
Importance of Job Factors to Minority Students
In making job choices, Minority students placed significantly more importance than Caucasian students on:
1. Having institutional support for my research
2. Match between my research interests and those of others in my department
3. Opportunity to work with a leader in my field
Importance of Job Factors to Female Students
In making job choices, female students placed significantly more importance than male students on:
1. Flexibility of my work schedule
2. Time for family or other personal obligations
3. Employment opportunities for my spouse or partner
Students in the Professions
Students in professions placed more importance than students in other fields on:
1. Institutional support for research
2. Flexibility of the work schedule
3. Attractiveness of the compensation package
Highlights:Ambivalence about Tenure
On the one hand, tenure is security, status, prestige, “the green card,” “legitimacy—the measure of worth among peers,” “a voice in one’s department,” “essential” to academic freedom.
On the other hand, tenure is “no guarantee—like the social security system,” “You won’t have a life for 6-7 years and then what?”, “Three full time jobs rolled into one and all for $40,000.”
Highlights:Other Factors Loom Large
Strive for tenure, believe in tenure—but it appears that other factors are starting to play a role in the decision about where to work.
In fact, attractive combinations of other factors can actually challenge tenure-track.
Work…Location…Quality of Life
What They Say About…
Work: “More important to me than tenure or non-tenure is what I’ll actually be doing. I want an even mix, a balance of teaching and research so I’ll go where I can do that, regardless of the contract.”
Location: ”So much more important than any other factor is where the institution is. I have a spouse and we went where we could both find work and a place that was safe, affordable, a decent commute, and comfortable.”
What They Say About…
Quality of Life: “When choosing between tenure track and non-tenure track, I’m looking at it as a lifestyle choice—which path will offer “greater flexibility to work on my own terms,” “more mobility,” less stress,” the chance to "fare better" and the ability to have “some semblance of a life outside of the academy.”
21st - Century Academic Careers:What Matters?
Tension between the existing academic culture and what young scholars want.
In choosing where to work, young scholars are carefully weighing their options.
They are looking for a balance of work that is meaningful, in a place that is a good fit, with a reasonable quality of life.
Implications?
Directions: Working with one or two individuals nearby, please spend the next ten minutes responding to the following:
What matters most to you in terms of work factors/workplace? Any changes from when you were on the job market? Any implications for recruiting new faculty to your department or university?
Vision Versus Reality
A key finding of the Heeding New
Voices: Academic Careers For a New
Generation is the troubling gap between
the vision and the reality of an academic
career.
Rice, Sorcinelli, and Austin, 2000; 2002.
Vision of an Academic Career
Sense of autonomy, academic freedom
Opportunity for continued learning, discovery
Wise use of skills, abilities
Sense of accomplishment
Opportunity to impact others
Reality of an Academic Career
Three core, consistent, interwoven concerns on the minds of early career faculty include the lack of a:
Comprehensible tenure/performance review
Sense of community
Balanced, integrated life
Concerns About Tenure
Expectations for Performance
- Clear? Consistent? Reasonable? Fair?
Feedback on Progress
- Informal and formal feedback?
Review Structure and Process
- Who? How? Timeframe? Standards?
Timeline
- Stop clock? Short-term focus v. intellectual passion
Concerns About Community
Department Chair
- Critical to mentoring, quality of feedback
Senior Faculty
- Key to “culture of collegiality,” vested in success
Students
- Satisfaction with “being valued as a teacher by students” yet “good teaching” is ill defined, poorly evaluated, undervalued and exhausting
Concerns About Integrated Life
Balancing Professional Roles
- How to develop, prioritize and juggle teaching and research (even less prepared for advising, grant writing, institutional service, administrative duties)
Balancing Professional and Personal Life
- How to carve out personal, family and leisure time (spouse/partner’s career, young children,
commuting relationships) and find support (childcare, affordable housing, family leave, community)
The Challenge Ahead…
We need to: Improve academic life as we now know it.
Envision the academic world we might yet construct.
What Can We Do Now?
Principles of Good Practice: Supporting Early-Career Faculty
Communicating expectations Giving feedback on progress Improving review processes Encouraging mentoring and advising Department chair as “career sponsor” Supporting scholarship and teaching
What Can We Do Now?
Directions:
Choose a topic of most interest to you. In your small group, come up with one or two creative strategies that you’ve found helpful in each of the following areas:
What Can We Do Now?
• Teaching
• Research
• Service
• Tenure process
• Relations with colleagues
• Personal life
Improving Performance Review
Mid-term Assessment Process- Feedback from students while course in progress
Annual Review
- Record of scholarly activities in teaching, research, service and meet with chair (and PC) each year
Mini-Tenure Review (4.2)-Take letters from chair, PC, and college PC seriously
Annual Promotion & Tenure Seminar-Chair, dean, provost, newly tenured faculty member discuss what
counts, the case, the process at each level
Enhancing Community
New Faculty Orientation/Listserv Lilly Teaching Fellowship
– Year-long Seminar on College Teaching– Mentors/Distinguished Teachers/Teaching
Consultant – Teaching Project/Portfolio
Faculty as Writers Support Group
Fostering Balance
Time Management – Fewer preps/courses in year one– Lilly Teaching Fellowship (two course release)– Seminars/print resources (e.g., Rick Reis)
Flexible Benefits- Parental leave, flexible time to tenure, child care
Academic Career Network-Database of academic jobs for dual-career couples
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