Junior faculty workloads

In the comments to my completely self-serving post below, ewjn06 raises the question of junior faculty workloads. Ever your humble servant, I'll post a few thoughts (though I have to say that I feel like I'm trying to be Dean Dad, and I won't do as good a job as he does!).

First of all, I will say that faculty workloads in general are, generally, heavy, and invisible. Heavy, because there is no clear dividing line between "work time" and "off time;" every faculty member I know spends much of their leisure time conscious of the work that they could perhaps be doing  instead (those of you who don't, I salute you). As a medievalist, I always feel like that even if I were completely up to speed on my grading and class prep (which never happens), or had completely finished a research project without anything waiting in the wings (which also never happens), if I were truly dedicated, I could always start learning another language. I also think that the academic calendar tends to fit 12 months worth of work into 9 months of faculty contract, so that instead of having a balanced workload year-round, it's feast (during the school year) and famine (during the summer. When one definitely works, but in a different way).

And invisible, because the majority of non-academics have no idea what our job entails. (Remember, we all work 6 hours a week and make $150K, right?) True, I consider it a great luxury to have the kind of autonomy and flexibility that academia provides, but it certainly doesn't mean I'm not working - instead, it means I'm working all the time (see previous point).

Junior faculty, of course, face particular burdens due to their place in the food chain. Junior faculty often feel unable to say no to requests for their time/presence, for instance, because of the need to appear agreeable and collegial in tenure reviews. At the same time, junior faculty are also generally working on building up a stable of courses, which is incredibly time-consuming and sleep-eradicating.

I would submit, however, that the junior faculty workload has only got worse in the last 10 years or so, due (like almost everything else, it seems) to the conditions of the market. In the same way that junior faculty are often being hired with better vitae than many of the people hiring them had when they earned tenure, schools can demand more of the junior faculty that they do hire. After all, given the glut in the job market, schools that formerly had little to no research expectation for tenure are now hiring people out of major research programs who have strong research agendas. It's not hard to raise the research expectations for tenure in such a situation. But such schools don't reduce the other expectations correspondingly - teaching is still expected to be stellar, service is still a relatively heavy burden.

Another wrinkle that comes out of all this seems to be in play in ewjn06's case, too. The changing demographics of the junior professoriate often create a huge cultural barrier between the junior faculty and the senior faculty who hire them. I should point out that this is certainly not always the case, and I do NOT mean to paint senior faculty all with the same evil brush. Let me say, for instance, that I love the senior faculty in my department, who are all incredibly supportive and helpful (but I think there are some structural things that encourage that, which I'll get to in a moment). What I do know, however, is that ejnw06's experience with her senior faculty reminds me of some of my own past experiences.

There are a LOT of department out there that are incredibly split, demographically. At Rural Utopia, for a time I was the only tenure-track junior faculty member among a group of senior faculty who'd all been at the school since the mid-70s. In RU's case, some of this was a result of weird circumstances out of anyone's control. But in my many years on the job market (4, if you want to know), I came across many, many, many departments - generally at smaller schools that, in the past, would have had minimal research requirements for tenure - populated by 5-7 faculty who'd earned their Ph.D.s in the early-mid-70s, and then maybe one person with a doctorate from the 90s. (This is starting to turn into departments where everyone earned their degree in the 90s, as the senior generation retires, but it hasn't happened everywhere yet.) What this means is that you have a department that 1) has done very little hiring recently, and 2) is composed primarily of people who've been in place for nearly 30 years.

This is a very, very, very hard situation for the junior faculty member (and probably for the senior members, too, but I can't comment on that).

The problem, as I've experienced it, is simply that the junior and senior faculty members inhabit two entirely different academias. The administrative assistant at RU once said to me, "You treat this like a job - you know, as a career. They [meaning senior faculty] treat it like their life." Now, while one of the distinguishing features of academia among all academics (as far as I can tell) is an inability to separate life and work, what she meant was that I (and my jr. faculty cohort) were professional and approached this as a job, whereas the senior faculty treated it as a calling. Or at the least, something unlike a modern career.

What this can result in, then, is a junior faculty member to whom many look for more "professional" approaches to the job (need catalog copy? ask jr. faculty, who won't resent just on principle the "registrar-speak" of catalog copy. Need someone to work on student retention? ask the jr. faculty), yet who also needs to spend lots of time getting their teaching up to snuff, fulfill the expectations of teaching and service that were developed probably twenty-five years before, AND get out that research that makes every place look so good these days. At the same time that they deal with senior faculty who feel invested in the way that the department/institution has developed and may want to keep it that way; who are invested in research identities of their own, and may feel humbled or threatened by the activity of their junior colleagues; and who may be suspicious of what looks like change for change's sake.

I should emphasize that I don't really know how generally accurate this picture is. My sense, however, anecdotally from other junior faculty, is that it is, at the least, not uncommon.

How to cope with it? I don't have any great solutions to that. Personally, I changed jobs. My current institution has managed to avoid that senior faculty glut, and has hired pretty regularly since the early 80s or so. Therefore, they don't currently face the problem of how to negotiate that demographic transition. (So, note for the future: try to avoid loading the deck with all one generation! My fear is that many of these top-heavy departments are merely setting themselves up for the same problem 30 years down the road, when they're full of people from the late 9os who all have to be replaced at once. Of course, who knows what academia will look like then?)

But these are the suggestions I have: make alliances outside your department. Find other junior faculty who can provide emotional and institutional support. Find supportive associate professors who may be able to bridge the gulf between junior and fully senior. Administrators can also be useful allies, if they are more likely to be sympathetic than your senior colleagues. (This often depends on whether the administrators identify with the senior colleagues or not - but many of them come from outside an institution, so they're as likely to be frustrated as you are).

As for reducing the workload (what I think ewjn06 was really asking about, and which I've sort of wandered away from), learn to say no. This is where administrative allies can be important, because it's great if you can say, "I'd love to, but [Administrator X] really feels I need to spend more time on my research/teaching/anything that's not what you've been asked to do." If possible, only take on those service responsibilities that are important to you.

Also, recognize that the teaching prep will get better. I am at a point now where, unless I introduce a new course (which, of course, I am expected to do periodically, and want to do), I have many of my courses ready to go. Of course I change things every year (in the hopes of creating the Ur-Course, the One Course to Bind Them All). But I can walk into class and talk about Renaissance Italy without slaving for hours to write a lecture (thank God). There's a certain amount of inevitable suckage when prepping new courses, that's really hard to avoid.

What should faculty workloads look like? I'm probably not the best person to answer that. I have no kids, my husband lives in another state, and I tend to dedicate myself to my work to compensate. (My work, and CSI in all its variations.) But I do think everyone has to find a balance that works for them. And not get sucked into the kinds of masochistic "I work harder than you, no you don't, I work the hardest" one-upmanship that often pervades academia.

So, after all these words, I'm not sure I'm helping ewjn06 very much. Anyone else want to weigh in? What words of advice and wisdom would you provide? What should a faculty workload look like, and how do you get yours to look that way?

Comments

[Liz]

Wow, great post. You've articulated a lot of my frustrations. I don't think I can address the issue of what a faculty workload should look like, but I can address what it shouldn't look like. I am full-time faculty at a community college, where the standard teaching load is 5/5. As you noted, much of the work of teaching in invisible. What's even less visible is the "service" component, which, because scholarship is supposedly not required at a community college (oh, don't get me started on that--how can good teaching exist without scholarship??), is huge. I chair a committee, belong to two others, advise two student organizations, and do countless other service activities throughout the academic year. On average, I spend 8 hours a week fulfilling my service commitment. And that's on top of prepping and teaching five classes a semester. A faculty workload should NOT look like this.

[ianqui]

The contrast between senior faculty = calling and junior faculty = job is fascinating. I personally agree with that, but I wonder if (a) other jr faculty disagree and (b) if later (e.g. when I have tenure) I will think that it was a calling. I might think it were a calling if I were researching cancer cures or something, but the world wouldn't come to a grinding halt if my research weren't in it. For me, a calling would be something more immediately hands-on--running a homeless shelter, working with inner-city youth, organic farming.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that of guilt: as you say, faculty members "spend much of their leisure time conscious of the work that they could perhaps be doing instead". If we could just all get rid of this feeling, we might have a better overall impression of our careers.

[Dr. Crazy]

What you say about the invisibility of much of our work is dead on, but this is why i think it's especially important for junior faculty not to hide their light under a bushel when it comes to talking up all of what they're doing (e.g., don't think of writing that catalog copy of something that isn't worthy of mention in your performance review because it was such a small task, etc. - if you don't make the stuff visible nobody is going to notice you're doing it) (a) and why i think it's important to choose one's service (especially, though this is true of teaching and research, too) with an eye toward doing the most visible service activities possible with the lowest possible workload.

Re: the calling vs. job thing, I'd be inclined to say that my colleagues who are senior at my institution don't exactly view what they're doing here as a calling but that they, having not been through the horrible recent job market and having gotten tenure on few to no publications, have no sense of insecurity - that their job won't be there forever. This then gives them license to be jerks about certain things, because they don't feel like they have constantly to prove themselves in the way that junior faculty do. (One of the big problems in my department, for example, is that after tenure many tend to disappear from everything but teaching, thus meaning that they really are working only 12 or so hours a week and that others have to pick up a lot of administrative slack.)

[marcelle p.]

My dept. is the reverse of Dr. Crazy's, in that we try to keep junior people off committees so they have time to write. It's a very humane place, which is one reason I'm still here, rather than having tried harder to get back to Eden when I was a junior. Most of our 70's hires have retired, & those that remain are very productive. Scarily so. I've now been tenured a little longer than I was a junior, & still remember vividly my pre-tenure anxieties. I didn't really feel like part of the department, even though I was well-treated & people were kind, because I didn't really understand how things worked. This might be me--I really like to know how stuff works, which is part of the reason I'm on a lot of committees now--but it does seem to me that we need to be more transparent with our current crop of juniors about the ways decisions get made. All the requirements for tenure are codified, I don't mean that people can't read them & know what they have to do; but even when I could do that, I didn't feel that I was sure that was what they meant. Was there some secret code, did other things get discussed behind closed doors? Now I know: no, not really. Part of my paranoia was due to talks with my friends at other, more cruel institutions, and of course if you are in one such, trust your instincts and watch your back. But if you seem to be somewhere reasonable, senior people may be more helpful than you expect. They may not realize you think you have to take everything on, may not realize that someone else has just asked you to do another thing. Speak up, nicely, if you feel overloaded--some of us do want to make things easier for the juniors.

[Rana]

I thought it was a calling until I couldn't get a position, and learned what it was like working outside of academia. Basically, my faith in the system was broken, and I've become far more critically-minded when it comes to assessing things like workload and pay.

My partner's institution is doing a search in my field area now, and, honestly, I'm of mixed feelings about it. I remember all too well how much work goes into a position like that, and the thought of trying to do it in the absence of my previous faith in the system is daunting. But I'll probably end up applying anyway.

Marcelle's point about differing expectations strikes me as a useful one.

[dr four eyes]

I'll second you on the calling vs job observation. Last year when I was on a campus visit, one faculty member complained to me that the junior faculty seemed to treat their job as a job. Meaning, in part, that they didn't come to every single student event, play, showing, etc and that they actually seemed to want a life apart from the college.

Of course, I also met junior faculty there and could see that they took their jobs very seriously, were tremendously dedicated to their students, sometimes to their own detriment, so I don't think this senior faculty member's perception was entirely accurate or fair.

[Ancarett]

I think the difference is that the generation hired before me (all in the 70s) usually had a stay-at-home spouse for the most intensive of the childcare years and could dive into their work for all that was asked. Oh, yeah, and they were all men!

But, despite that, they turned out to have a seriously cool attitude when I came along and got married. I was taken aside and reminded that this was really just a job, that my expectation for tenure was thus and such and no more, really, and if I had kids and needed to balance kids with work, they totally understood. And it wasn't just lip service! They really did support having a life as a junior faculty member. I got tenure with two under three, only enough money for daycare three days out of the week and a husband who was a fulltime student, juggling childcare alongside me.

What I had to watch is the tendency for committee requests to come down from on high -- people outside of your own department tended to have less of a feeling for how much I already juggled and desperately wanted my assistance on an important committee. Sometimes it hurts to say no to that kind of ego-boosting plea, but my one-time chair helped remind me that there was a finite list of how much service I ought to do and, with red pen, drew the line at the end of my list at the start of every year.

[Another Damned Medievalist]

That's so cool, Ancarett! Rana, it's funny, but taking time off and working outside academia actually convinced me that it was a kind of calling. I know I can make a decent living and have the respect of my colleagues if I want to work a 'real job.' But despite the fact that I felt much more secure in terms of finances and knowing I was doing well (merit raises help with that), I only really LOVE doing what I do now. And I only feel fulfilled when doing this incredibly stressful and scary job !

[ejnw06]

NK,

Wow what a great post. You nailed it right on..it is the generational difference between viewing academia as a calling or a profession. I have been told that I am too professionalized by my senior colleagues. I am wondering if tenure will be enough? Will I always feel two steps behind? Ok, off to a long night of grading, I didn't have time to do today!

[Dean Dad]

Thanks for the name-check, NK!

From my angle, I'd say that Dr. Crazy pretty much nails it. I've noticed plenty of senior faculty, who were tenured back when it was easy, have adopted attitudes that the college works for them, and not the other way around. So they feel entitled to gripe about every little thing, but get offended when invited to pitch in and do something about it. The younger ones are more aware that, among other things, they are employees.

I can't help but wonder if today's struggling assistant prof will be tomorrow's bitter burnout. Seems to me that requiring people to sacrifice their personal lives for decades on end, and then rewarding them with lifetime job security, is practically begging them to adopt an attitude (upon receiving tenure) of 'never again.' The problem is so very common that it must be structural. I've seen people effectively retire upon receiving tenure, and I'm not convinced that a system like that does anybody good.

[Mon]

This is a great discussion--as someone starting her first TT job in the fall, I appreciate this conversation. As a woman of color, I am concerned about the invisible workloads of mentoring minority students and serving as minority representative on various committees. My chair has promised to do his best to protect me in my pre-tenure years which I appreciate, but I know I will have to learn to say "no."

I also am concerned about the "never again" feeling that Dean Dad expressed. Having gone through so much so quickly already, I do often think about life after academe and some days I do feel like "if I can just make it to tenure, I can leave." I am hoping that feeling will lessen now that I've taken a position at a smaller/less research- intensive university than where I am now, but I don't know....

[Laura]

I just interviewed at a place like your RU for an adjunct position that may turn into a full time position next year. This college is also undergoing a major generational shift. I was actually shocked about how cool they were that I had kids and how they were completely uninterested in my research. Really, really different from the big city schools that I had been involved with.

excellent post, NK.