The faculty activity surveys are now out of our Personnel Committee's hands. As suspected, the departmental asshats have outdone themselves in portraying their sorry excuses for a life as meritorious academic performance. Who could have guessed that a dog-and-pony show at a local elementary show counted as scholarship? Or that instructional technology included faxes and emails? Or that one could chair a committee which, in fact, doesn't even exist? There's a certain low pleasure to calling bullshit on pathetic bilge like this, but it passes quickly. I wish somebody at 901 South National could do something about these asshats - like institute a post-tenure review process. But traditionally, a crack on the head is what you get for asking.
Now that I've finished working through my pile of faculty activity surveys, I have a sneaking feeling that this go-around may turn out badly. I would love to be wrong, as I was last year. But things are changing quickly at dear old 901 South National. Familiar old troughs are being shut down or diverted, and sinecures (at least most of them) eliminated or turned into real jobs. Not everyone is happy about this fact, least of all the departmental asshats. I can't say I'm exactly thrilled about each and every change, either - the new cost center model, for example, has turned scheduling into an exercise in prayer and guesswork. But then, I'm not obligated to be thrilled. Since I'm still too young to retire, I have to adapt.
That said, I had still better catch up on the asshats this year. Or I will smite them even harder next year.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Half A Person
According to this Associated Press article, American universities are producing too many Ph.Ds. No big surprise there. No doubt they are producing far too many Master's degrees, too. Graduate programs are a growth industry everywhere - including at 901 South National. For the university, graduate programs are a win-win situation. Graduate programs are a time honored yardstick for evaluating a university's intellectual clout. Graduate students are not only fun to teach because they tend to be the cream of the crop, but they also provide useful slave labor for big departments with multi-section General Education classes. And thus is the corporate approach satisfied.
The benefit to the students is rather less impressive. When I began graduate study more than a quarter century ago. Even then, my professors (while quite supportive overall) warned me that grad school was a crap shoot and had been even when they were college seniors. The road to the professoriate is even more parlous now: the odds of landing a job on successful completion of the Ph.D. are far worse, and the chances of racking up prodigious student loabs is far greater. I do what I can to impress my students with these unpleasant facts, but it would be hypocritical of me not to support those students who sincerely want to take a shot at grabbing the rubber ring.
The AP article also calls attention to the growing trend of hiring adjunct faculty to do the work of permanent (or tenure-track) faculty. I suppose you can't blame the universities for hiring cheap labor in a buyer's market. It's a very solid business decision. My department hires its fair share of adjuncts. Some homegrown, some Ph.D, some faculty spouses, some moonlighting secondary teachers, some retirees - whatever we can find. I feel very sorry for most of them. The pay isn't great, the benefits are nonexistent, and chances of landing a permanent job at 901 South National are miniscule. Basically, an adjunct is half a person. Even the really good adjuncts - and many are very good indeed - burn out or get fed up with the injustice of this virtual caste system. But the University doesn't really care, because adjuncts will always turn up. Do you have a vacancy for a back scrubber?
I also feel sorry for the students. Missouri State University supposedly exists to produce educated persons. Yet the intensified focus upon research and meaningful community service keeps dragging permanent faculty out of the classroom, to be replaced not with new faculty lines, but... more adjuncts. Some good, some not so good - you pay your tuition and take your chances. Our students deserve better than that. There is no reason why the University Administration can't come up with some funding to convert at least some perennial adjuncts to lectureships. No research or service duties - just fifteen hours of classroom time plus five office hours per week. Good for the adjuncts, good for the students, good for the University. But will it happen? I'm not holding my breath. It's not the sort of thing that looks sexy in a publicity release.
The benefit to the students is rather less impressive. When I began graduate study more than a quarter century ago. Even then, my professors (while quite supportive overall) warned me that grad school was a crap shoot and had been even when they were college seniors. The road to the professoriate is even more parlous now: the odds of landing a job on successful completion of the Ph.D. are far worse, and the chances of racking up prodigious student loabs is far greater. I do what I can to impress my students with these unpleasant facts, but it would be hypocritical of me not to support those students who sincerely want to take a shot at grabbing the rubber ring.
The AP article also calls attention to the growing trend of hiring adjunct faculty to do the work of permanent (or tenure-track) faculty. I suppose you can't blame the universities for hiring cheap labor in a buyer's market. It's a very solid business decision. My department hires its fair share of adjuncts. Some homegrown, some Ph.D, some faculty spouses, some moonlighting secondary teachers, some retirees - whatever we can find. I feel very sorry for most of them. The pay isn't great, the benefits are nonexistent, and chances of landing a permanent job at 901 South National are miniscule. Basically, an adjunct is half a person. Even the really good adjuncts - and many are very good indeed - burn out or get fed up with the injustice of this virtual caste system. But the University doesn't really care, because adjuncts will always turn up. Do you have a vacancy for a back scrubber?
I also feel sorry for the students. Missouri State University supposedly exists to produce educated persons. Yet the intensified focus upon research and meaningful community service keeps dragging permanent faculty out of the classroom, to be replaced not with new faculty lines, but... more adjuncts. Some good, some not so good - you pay your tuition and take your chances. Our students deserve better than that. There is no reason why the University Administration can't come up with some funding to convert at least some perennial adjuncts to lectureships. No research or service duties - just fifteen hours of classroom time plus five office hours per week. Good for the adjuncts, good for the students, good for the University. But will it happen? I'm not holding my breath. It's not the sort of thing that looks sexy in a publicity release.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
This Charming Man
Last month, I observed in this post that the University's name was apparently mud in many corners of the Ozarks. To judge from yesterday's University news release, the administration has also read the handwriting on the wall.
No doubt the Community Caravan will be a great big traveling dog-and-pony show on the order of the alumni and athletic caravans. A parade of the University's highest salaried personalities and demipersonalities backed up by the Best Band The Missouri Taxpayers Can Buy. But I have even less doubt the voters and taxpayers of Southwest Missouri will greatly appreciate the attention and the effort. So why pamper life's complexities when the administration does something so boldly and obviously right?
SPRINGFIELD – Highlighting the interdependence and saying “thank you” for past support are the two major goals for the first Missouri State University Community Caravan, which will focus on eight locations in the first three weeks of April. The theme of the 2008 Caravan is “What the Public Affairs Mission Means to You.”
University officials will work with local planning committees to plan a day-long event that will include these elements: one or more civic/economic impact events; school visits; media contacts; visits with individual donors and alumni; and an evening event for prospective students and their parents.
This charm offensive is, I think, brilliantly conceived. While I'm sure the usual suspects have already been tasked with the appropriate grunt work, this can only have been the President's idea. God knows the usual suspects never came up with anything like this during the previous administration.
No doubt the Community Caravan will be a great big traveling dog-and-pony show on the order of the alumni and athletic caravans. A parade of the University's highest salaried personalities and demipersonalities backed up by the Best Band The Missouri Taxpayers Can Buy. But I have even less doubt the voters and taxpayers of Southwest Missouri will greatly appreciate the attention and the effort. So why pamper life's complexities when the administration does something so boldly and obviously right?
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Sing Your Life
The last week of Christmas vacation is upon us, which means it's time to compile my faculty activity survey for calendar year 2007 - otherwise known as the old merit pay application. Unlike the average asshat, I have never resented having to walk right up to the microphone: I have always put in at least as much as I have taken out. It looks like 2007 has been one more year I have staved off the descent into asshattery. Even so, I'm already starting to get angry about the likeliness of getting hosed out of merit pay in order to keep the looters somewhat mollified.
I have to admit that contrary to my expectations, I did pretty well on the old merit pay for calendar year 2006. Not only did I catch up somewhat on the asshats and other looters, the departmental merit process was far less acrimonious than it apparently was elsewhere on campus. For this I credit the department head and, to a lesser extent, the personnel committee chair. God knows I was expecting World War Three. The most important factor, however, was that the merit pay wasn't allocated in integers. That is, faculty were assigned an integer from 1 to 5 for teaching, for research, and for service - but the "final scores" were assigned on the plus/minus system. Instead of the 15% "5s," 35% "4's" and 48% "3's" forecast by the planning document, faculty could receive a 5, or a 4+, or a 4, or a 4-, or a 3+... and so on. More gradations in the final scores allowed finer differentiation in merit pay. An elaborate quartile system was built in to ensure "equity," but on this count I have to point out that certain people are in the lowest quartile because they deserve to be in the lowest quartile.
My concern is that the looters have had a year to figure out how it can finagle the new system. Finagling the system to get their "fair share" is what they do best: they consider inventing released time boondoggles and importunate pleas for equity adjustments far more gratifying than developing new curriculum or, heaven forbid, learning something scholarly and new. I predict an onslaught of minor syllabus tweaks and bogus committee service, all painstakingly documented but amounting to less than zero. The process will have greater urgency this year if merit pay is (as I suspect) to be allocated by integers this time, and not fractions.
My department has a bad habit of not calling looters out on crap like this. Last year I played nice like everybody else apparently did, even the asshats. Not this time. It's not a matter of the money, either. I make enough money. Sure, I wouldn't mind making more money. But money isn't why I got into academia. If I find myself locked into the same integer with the asshats and the rest of the looters, there will be hell to pay. But first I have to make sure that I have exercised due diligence by providing an accurate assessment of what they're up to when they sing their lives. We'll find out what happens with that.
I have to admit that contrary to my expectations, I did pretty well on the old merit pay for calendar year 2006. Not only did I catch up somewhat on the asshats and other looters, the departmental merit process was far less acrimonious than it apparently was elsewhere on campus. For this I credit the department head and, to a lesser extent, the personnel committee chair. God knows I was expecting World War Three. The most important factor, however, was that the merit pay wasn't allocated in integers. That is, faculty were assigned an integer from 1 to 5 for teaching, for research, and for service - but the "final scores" were assigned on the plus/minus system. Instead of the 15% "5s," 35% "4's" and 48% "3's" forecast by the planning document, faculty could receive a 5, or a 4+, or a 4, or a 4-, or a 3+... and so on. More gradations in the final scores allowed finer differentiation in merit pay. An elaborate quartile system was built in to ensure "equity," but on this count I have to point out that certain people are in the lowest quartile because they deserve to be in the lowest quartile.
My concern is that the looters have had a year to figure out how it can finagle the new system. Finagling the system to get their "fair share" is what they do best: they consider inventing released time boondoggles and importunate pleas for equity adjustments far more gratifying than developing new curriculum or, heaven forbid, learning something scholarly and new. I predict an onslaught of minor syllabus tweaks and bogus committee service, all painstakingly documented but amounting to less than zero. The process will have greater urgency this year if merit pay is (as I suspect) to be allocated by integers this time, and not fractions.
My department has a bad habit of not calling looters out on crap like this. Last year I played nice like everybody else apparently did, even the asshats. Not this time. It's not a matter of the money, either. I make enough money. Sure, I wouldn't mind making more money. But money isn't why I got into academia. If I find myself locked into the same integer with the asshats and the rest of the looters, there will be hell to pay. But first I have to make sure that I have exercised due diligence by providing an accurate assessment of what they're up to when they sing their lives. We'll find out what happens with that.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Nowhere Fast
Another thing I'd want a (Faculty) Center for Teaching and Learning emphasize is the intelligent use of technology, both on-campus and in distance learning. Rounding up the usual suspects for a session or two at the Showcase on Learning is getting this university nowhere fast.
Blackboard is hardly a solution. More accurately it's another instance of the corporate approach to fixing a problem. Spend scads of money on an out-of-the box solution which 1) promises all things to all people, and 2) is so complicated that nobody knows how to make it work. Expect the peons to figure it out on their own, or not. What the hell. Like the cornfield ballpark in "Field of Dreams," management built it and they were supposed to come. Whether they came or they didn't is not management's problem. And if nobody is playing ball, it ain't management's fault.
Blackboard is serviceable for posting assignments and grades, and I have to admit that it runs a lot better now that the help desk has been upgraded. But Blackboard's alleged cutting-edge functionalities like discussion boards and podcasts are buried so deeply in the bloated interface that the students can't find them. When the students actually find the discussion boards and the podcasts, they are so user-unfriendly that the students don't want to use them. The idea of using Blackboard to administer quizzes and exams is interesting, but where am I going to find a room with 50 computer stations? Or am I supposed to trust the kiddies not to peek at their textbooks and lecture notes?
Don't even get me started about Blackboard's ballyhooed new wiki and blogging functionalities. since I have no doubt that they will suck far worse than what I already use. Blogger.com does the job just as well as any of the more ballyhooed information management systems, better than most, and is absolutely free. The great majority of free wiki products, on the other hand, are worth exactly what you pay for them. I would guess that the average MSU faculty member is familiar -however barely - with Wikipedia, but nobody seems to be making their students wikify things. An opportunity is being missed.
I am also appalled by the obvious distance between the faculty and the instructional technology staff at this university. The average MSU faculty member, I still suspect, barely comprehends that there is a whole world out there besides PowerPoint. The few faculty on this campus who could train their colleagues in newer instructional technologies (like the joys of wikification) are either too busy or too alienated to do it. The university will have to count on its staff as never before. It's crucial that these talented and dedicated people feel affirmed and honored for their contributions to the production of educated persons. If you build it, and convince them to come, it's still not worth a damn unless you get them to play ball there.
Blackboard is hardly a solution. More accurately it's another instance of the corporate approach to fixing a problem. Spend scads of money on an out-of-the box solution which 1) promises all things to all people, and 2) is so complicated that nobody knows how to make it work. Expect the peons to figure it out on their own, or not. What the hell. Like the cornfield ballpark in "Field of Dreams," management built it and they were supposed to come. Whether they came or they didn't is not management's problem. And if nobody is playing ball, it ain't management's fault.
Blackboard is serviceable for posting assignments and grades, and I have to admit that it runs a lot better now that the help desk has been upgraded. But Blackboard's alleged cutting-edge functionalities like discussion boards and podcasts are buried so deeply in the bloated interface that the students can't find them. When the students actually find the discussion boards and the podcasts, they are so user-unfriendly that the students don't want to use them. The idea of using Blackboard to administer quizzes and exams is interesting, but where am I going to find a room with 50 computer stations? Or am I supposed to trust the kiddies not to peek at their textbooks and lecture notes?
Don't even get me started about Blackboard's ballyhooed new wiki and blogging functionalities. since I have no doubt that they will suck far worse than what I already use. Blogger.com does the job just as well as any of the more ballyhooed information management systems, better than most, and is absolutely free. The great majority of free wiki products, on the other hand, are worth exactly what you pay for them. I would guess that the average MSU faculty member is familiar -however barely - with Wikipedia, but nobody seems to be making their students wikify things. An opportunity is being missed.
I am also appalled by the obvious distance between the faculty and the instructional technology staff at this university. The average MSU faculty member, I still suspect, barely comprehends that there is a whole world out there besides PowerPoint. The few faculty on this campus who could train their colleagues in newer instructional technologies (like the joys of wikification) are either too busy or too alienated to do it. The university will have to count on its staff as never before. It's crucial that these talented and dedicated people feel affirmed and honored for their contributions to the production of educated persons. If you build it, and convince them to come, it's still not worth a damn unless you get them to play ball there.
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