Secure Employment? What a concept!

Something at the forefront of most all TRT faculty concerns here at Hopkins is the security of our positions here (The HFA TRT Committee has evidence of this).  We are, generally speaking, career scholars devoted to our cause and have built our professional lives into the departments and programs that we call our local communities.  Yet we live on rather short term contracts that can hang like a shadow over our careers, especially near the borders of the contract lengths.  And we are subject to periodic reviews for contract renewal that are, again generally speaking, poorly designed, locally administered and subject to local departmental politics.  In fact, the contract lengths themselves are mostly locally managed by our chairs or directors.  This gives many of us even less comfort, due to the local and sometimes volatile politics within our local groups.  Add to that our reticence to actually take a stand within our community, explore more controversial issues, or even engage in departmental politics at all, and our careers can feel tentative and fragile.  We live within a system where we are really not sure about the longevity of our professional lives, and yet, we work side by side with colleagues who are immunized from any and all such worries.  

What gives with a university system where some have near total job security (tenure) and others live year by year, term by term, even as they enjoy an institutional memory which is often many times that of their same immunized colleagues ?!?

Many of us here at Hopkins may not yet be aware that the two terms "non-tenure track faculty" and "TRT faculty" are not synonymous everywhere: 

Teaching and Associate Teaching Professors have "tenure" in the entire University of California system of 10 campuses, with its almost 11,000 full time faculty.  

I use quotes on the word "tenure" since the UC system does not call it that.  In practice, though, they view it as equivalent.  Teaching faculty can attain a Security of Employment (SoE).  It is offered to teaching faculty at the levels of Lecturer (Associate Teaching Professor)) and Senior Lecturer (Teaching Professor).  Collectively they are referred to as Lecturers with Security of Employment, or LSOEs.  And, in addition, one level below this is Lecturer PSoE, carrying a Potential for Security of Employment (would that be the non-tenure track equivalent of an Assistant Professor?) 

Policies regarding the ranks that carry SoE can be found here, from the Office of the President of the University of California.

Also, a great FAQ is here.  But there is a ton of info out there.  

Some highlights:

• LSOE faculty are expected to do much more than excellent teaching. They have leadership responsibility, not only as teachers, but as facilitators and initiators of instructional development, curriculum design, course structure, teaching methods, new technologies, and coordinating a spectrum of teaching activities. They play a leadership role in teaching in the departments and their disciplines.
• Full-time LSOEs... have the same rights and privileges in the departments and on the campus as Senate Faculty with professorial titles. The primary difference between LSOEs and LRF [ladder-rank faculty] is in the expectation of research and creative activity, required for LRF but not LSOEs. LSOEs are evaluated for their educational leadership and professional achievements. LSOEs and LRF both are evaluated on teaching and University and public service. 
• LSOE’s have security of employment, which is analogous to tenure (see Standing Order of the Regents 103.10: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/bylaws/so10310.html)

Seems rather obvious, no?

Given that the main feature of tenure is to allow the academic freedom of expression in one's field to ensure and secure the creative process is safe from political repercussions, why is this only extended to research-oriented faculty and not also teaching-oriented faculty?  

Why do researchers enjoy freedom of expression in their research AND in the classroom, along with the accompanying job security, but teachers don't even have this security (of employment) in the classroom?  

I am so curious to the answer to that....  Shall we ask?

   

The Sabbatical thing?

 Access to professional development opportunities is a hallmark of most all career-oriented positions in almost any multi-tiered organization.  In the corporate world, managers are always looking for the ambitious within their ranks to excel at their duties and to look ahead for more responsibility, better skill sets, and the idea that where they are now is not where they want to be in the future.  Built into the culture of a healthy working environment are opportunities to learn new skills, take on more tasks, and/or assume more duties than the current job description.  And the truly constructive and nurturing work environments even provide temporary relief from current duties in order to seek new skills and abilities.  The dual reasons of (1) it is good for the individual to keep from going stale in one's job (and one's mind?), to the notion that (2) it is good for an organization if its workers want to ascend the corporate ladder, provide a sort-of win-win scenario of aiding both the worker and the organization. Facilitating the ability of workers to strive for more in their lives and careers, while adding an efficiency to the system whereby as managers leave positions, others can step in immediately to take their place, would seem a no-brainer, really.  Workers with a healthy growth (personal and corporate) mindset add value to the organization when that mindset is met with avenues to put that growth mindset into practice.  

One can easily say that providing access to promotions within an organization is vital to the morale of an organization.  But the idea of providing access to promotion must also include providing access to the opportunities to advance one's skill sets and provide the means to attain the skills necessary for that next level.  Providing a promotion structure without the opportunities to develop oneself professionally means not providing any meaningful access to promotion.  An organization set up that way inhibits growth, stifles morale, and undercuts the productivity of its workers.

Within the Academy, the idea of providing time away from the typical duties of faculty so that members can take the time to focus on research, or other professional growth activities, has been encoded into the profession:  the sabbatical.  Offered in a timely fashion as earned over an interval of years, it provides the space needed to explore new research opportunities, visit other places without the burden of home duties of service and teaching, and generally to achieve relief of the things taxing one's time for the benefit of the person's professional health and well-being.  It is a benefit to the organization to offer its members periods of time off from their constant contributions to the day-to-day operations of the organization, so that the members can develop themselves professionally, turn a job into a career, stay fresh and up-to-date and contributory within their discipline, and make their name a part of the conversation in the various circles outside of the local academy.  

So why is this vital and beneficial practice only afforded to the 60% or so faculty here that are Tenure-line?  Why do TRT faculty, striving for promotion within the teaching or research ranks, looking for ways to professionally develop themselves, see no way to find relief from their high teaching loads and advising duties?  Why is there no way to solicit this relief from the Chairs and the Deans, allowing TRT faculty to visit other places, write a book, direct or produce a movie, or go on that dig (digs cannot come to the university, eh?) How are they to build their career into the fabric of their professional discipline when they are faced with no relief from their 100% effort herein, semester-in and semester-out?  

I have been the direct receiver of the response to this question, "Well, that is what summer is for, right?"  

Hardly....  

Teaching faculty just teach, right?

 I am always amused when someone regards faculty positions with a comment like 

"Well, research (read:tenured) faculty do research and teach, while teaching faculty just teach."  

It comes across just as it sounds, like everyone has the ability to do the classroom thing, while only some of us have the ability to be the big thinkers.  One could discount it not as an intended or meaningful slur, but it does carry weight.  It actually is implicitly used in policy regarding TRT faculty, like when establishing teaching loads (a still as yet un-uniformized or systematized practice here at Hopkins).  In effect, because you do nothing but teach, you need to have a bigger teaching load.  It's what you do.  And here, discipline-specific teaching loads seem to be determined only by a joint decision between a Department Chair or Program Head, and an appropriate member of the Deans Office.  Unless the department or program leadership is TRT (nonexistent for a Department, rarely for a Program), there are no TRT in the room when teaching loads for TRT are established.   

I find myself trying to educate my colleagues on a continual basis (although not very well, it seems) as to what it entails to actually teach like a Teaching Professor.  

Teaching faculty do teach, yes.  It is our craft, and we are proud of our efforts in the classroom, excited by them, intrigued by the whole idea of how to well-communicate our thoughts to a large audience within our local learning communities (each instance of a course each semester).  We study each and every classroom on a continual basis, learning from each lecture and group activity how to better the next engagement.  Every time we teach a course, it is a brand new experience, like the ones before, but all new with new understanding.  Each group of students is different from the others, with a different collective personality, and needs.  We, as teachers, do not teach as much as we mentor, both the individuals in the room, and also the collective "person" that is the class.  Each lecture informs the next, building on the narrative that contains the story of the course.  One can plan out a semester's lectures, but one must replan after each lecture the rest of them.  Every step involves a replan of the next steps.  Every student, to us, is a lone student under our care, even as we use the other students as resources in the class.  The classroom is our laboratory for the continual study of how to transfer knowledge from one to many (and, really, back to the one again!). 

Plus, we wind up mentoring other faculty in their teaching.  I am continually asked to help other faculty in their teaching, step into their classrooms to evaluate and comment, provide supervision and mentorship to post-docs, Assistant Professors, and graduate students.  Yes, we are the experts.  And so much of our expertise is utilized outside of the classroom, as well as inside it. 

Some have said that I teach well.  Perhaps I do.  I do love the classroom.  And I care.  And I am exhausted after teaching two different courses in one day.  It takes great effort to teach a course well.  Precisely because we do not simply step in, talk for an hour, and walk away, offer a few problems for the student to do, graded by a TA.  That would be easy.  But who does things just because they are easy?

Instead, we mentor each and every student for the entirety of the semester.  Teaching two courses (in math) in one semester is a LOT.  Teaching three is insane, and would instantly degrade the entire experience!  

Chairs and Deans need to hear us for what we are:  The experts in the classroom.  We know what we do.  We know what good teaching  is and what a good teaching load should be within our discipline.  Listen to us.

So, maybe is is best to say: 

"Research faculty do research and teach, while Teaching faculty teach and do research."

Are we really THAT different?

A Teaching-Intensive Tenure Track?

If you believe that the case for tenure is one of ensuring academic freedom and a secure employment in which to build a career, and if you believe that tenure is a right and not a privilege, then it becomes quite difficult to argue that those of us in the Teaching Track wouldn't benefit from the freedom to explore controversial topics in the classroom as well as the literature, and to know that one's job is secure from termination based on a whim, a personality difference, or because staffing needs change.  

In fact, the case for a form of tenure for accomplished TRT faculty is an obvious one, except for the rather obvious attempt at a counterargument that what research faculty do is more important all around than what TRT faculty do.  

Jennifer Ruth, Associate Professor of English at Portland State University, argues in a 2015 post in the LSE Impact Blog that the best way to mend the fractured state of academic departments at typical public universities, fractured in the sense of a two or three-tiered hierarchy of tenured research faculty, non-tenured contingent (read: teaching)faculty, and various adjuncts, along with the knock-on effects of weak faculty governance and gross inequities in pay and service demands, is to design and institute a teaching-intensive tenure track. 

Entitled "The Professor Divide at American Universities and How to Fix It — The Case for a Teaching-Intensive Tenure Track", Professor Ruth argues to:

[C]reate a tenure track for full-time faculty hired and promoted on the basis of excellence in teaching, and require that the vast majority of faculty be hired onto this track if not hired onto the other (original) one.

The recognized need for academic freedom of expression is not just a research-oriented endeavor. The ability to speak freely in the classroom is also critical.  So why should only research-oriented faculty have that security in the classroom, while teaching faculty do not?  Couple that with the freedom to push against administration within shared governance bodies, enjoyed by tenured faculty.  Is it proper for teaching faculty to have to worry about their next contract should they have something to say in shared governance?

Professor Rubin makes a case against rolling contracts, as well, in that they just do not provide meaningful academic freedom.  The possibility of termination based solely on viewpoint, still exists, whether it is immediate or delayed until the next contract renewal. 

The value to the university of highly accomplished teaching faculty, whose excellence and innovation in the classroom has never been properly and quantitatively measured above a few shiny awards and applause at small gatherings, would most likely shock many at all levels.  We inspire and help students create lives, careers, and legacies.  It's not a job to us.  It's a calling.  I say the system should value us like the students do.  Or at least, value us like "regular" faculty.

This is a good read.  Eight years old, already.  But still very relevant.  

Shall we begin...?

Welcome to what I hope will become a community forum for the Teaching and Research Track (TRT) faculty of Johns Hopkins University.  We are a fairly large group, something like 38% of the over a thousand full-time faculty of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering here at Homewood.  And we are quite diverse, demographically, culturally, and academically.  But we share so much in common and yet hardly talk as a group at all.  Perhaps this forum can begin to change that.  I certainly hope.

I am a Teaching Professor in the Mathematics Department, have been here since 2005, and have risen through the ranks of Senior Lecturer (started as such) and Associate Teaching Professor (around 2013), to Teaching Professor (2019).  I have seen a lot here, and have learned a lot.  

I am also involved, currently serving on:

• The Johns Hopkins University Council, representing KSAS;
• The KSAS Senate, representing the Natural Sciences since its inauguration;
• The Krieger Shared Governance Council, as a sitting Senator;  

Within these bodies I sit on various committees serving not only the bodies themselves, but also TRT faculty in general.  I feel a duty to serve this group since its stature in the Academy in general, and here at Hopkins in particular, very much needs support, advocacy, care, and, truly, a voice.

We, as TRT faculty, are critical to the mission of the university, arguable one of the top universities on the planet.  Teaching faculty are playing a critical role in the implementation of core changes to our educational mission governed by the recent Second Commission on Undergraduate Education (CUE2). And yet until recently, we were still referred to, if at all, as something we are not:  Non-tenured faculty (sometimes "contingent faculty").  Some of us are still not allowed to participate in faculty meetings, still cannot vote on departmental issues, and still have little or no say in local governance.  Job security for us is still very much wanting.  And access to core professional development opportunities are hit or miss for most of us, and nonexistent for some of us.  And yet, we are full-time permanent (read: career) faculty dedicated to and devoted to the cause of our department, our school, and our university.  

However, we are seeing positive changes over the last number of years, and there is a lot of talk about further changes coming soon. Serving on the above bodies, to me, represents access to those who can help to instill the changes we seek.  

And this forum, maybe, can serve as a place to share concerns, stories, experiences, and resources.  I think of this forum as a conduit for information sharing.  

So welcome.  Shall we chat?