Hatful of Hollow

The raison d'être at 901 South National is, as famously stated by the previous President, "the production of educated persons." I quite agree, even though it's not always been clear that the Central Administration does. Were this the case, how would the Administration explain its massive outlays of money on wasteful excrescences great and small - like the mediocre basketball teams, the ghastly football team, the oversized marching band, and the Center for (fill in the blank)? I suppose most of the Centers for (fill in the blank) confer at least some benefit on some subsection of the student body. But as long as all of the academic units are being converted into cost centers, why not convert the marching band, the basketball teams, and the football team into cost centers too?

I have fumed elsewhere on this blog about the corporative approach marking many of the usual suspects' well-meaning attempts to raise the level of teaching: Blackboard(tm) bloatware, the Academic Development Center, the late and unlamented Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. I have also railed against the asshats who can't, or can't be bothered to, teach their way out of a paper sack. It's about time I also dump some of the blame on the primary, front line producers of educated persons... the faculty at large. Including yours truly.

If there's one issue that raises faculty hackles faster than merit pay, it's teaching evaluation. One can always blame the Provost, the Dean, or the Department head for any given merit pay inequity. But teaching evaluation cuts to the core of what the average faculty member is at 901 South National to do. It reaches into the castle keep, where every faculty member is King or Queen, with all of the authority and privileges thereby conferred. Seen in this light, it's easy to understand the faculty's reluctance to evaluate itself critically. Mix in the merit pay factor - the results of teaching evaluations can and will be used against one - and the issue becomes one no sane person will go near. I should know. I once served on a University teaching evaluation committee. I met interesting colleagues, did my fair share of the work, and helped produce a set of recommendations that accomplished doodley-squat. A couple of years later, the Faculty Senate Chair called me and refused to get off the phone until I agreed to serve on another such committee. But I got the last laugh. I never attended a single meeting.

That is just one of my personal crimes. I stopped reading my numerical student evaluations years ago, because my department has never normed them. There have been semesters (not under the present Administration, though) when I didn't even give evaluations. It seems that the others in my department share my attitude toward student evaluations: only a couple of colleagues used them in their merit pay applications. It's all a pretty big joke. Oddly enough, I still read the students' written evaluations very carefully. Just last semester, one of my students called me out big time. And quite rightly so. I'm working hard to address it, and I'm confident that I am succeeding. Maybe there's hope for me yet.

Any serious form of teaching evaluation will require peer evaluation. Not surprisingly, that idea makes most faculty run off screaming, and not just the asshats. Let an intruder into the castle keep? Most faculty would answer "Get real." Then factor in the time and trouble involved in constructing and administering a viable peer teaching evaluation program. Can you say SoTL? Even though I've been known to drag colleagues, students, and random passersby into my classroom, that's where I run off screaming. That's where I join the asshats in their incessant chant (incessant bleat, is more like it) of THAT'S TOO MUCH WORK.

In my heart of hearts, I still care about producing educated persons. I firmly believe that constructing and administering a viable peer teaching evaluation program is crucial to that goal. I guess I'm just waiting for a sign to tell me why I should put my gluteus maximus on the line to help accomplish it... instead of holding on to a hatful of hollow.

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.

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.

What Difference Does It Make?

Criticizing the so-called "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning" these days is like setting an American flag on fire with a flaming baby seal . SoTL, as it is fondly known to its devotees, is a fixture on university campuses literally around the world. I just wish I could figure out what the hell it is. I'm all for reestablishing teaching as a priority. Teaching is the reason why I entered academia. But I can't get excited about the jargon and the breathless testimonials and the prospect of endless meetings chock full of "Kumbaya." That's why my career as a Secondary Education major ended before my first day of college. Why should I give valuable time to stuff like this?

The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning - or CASTL, as it fondly calls itself - was founded in 1998 to "build on a conception of teaching as scholarly work." You can read all about it right here. In 1999, SMSU hopped on the CASTL bandwagon with coffee and doughnuts and press releases and hours of meetings attended by well-meaning faculty members, many of whom were among the institution's finest teachers. Copies of Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered and Glassick's Scholarship Assessed were stacked like cordwood in the Academic Affairs office, waiting for someone or anyone to take and read. After all due deliberation by the well-meaning faculty members, the following definition of SoTL was arrived at:

The definition of the scholarship of teaching and learning at SMSU, as established by the faculty in 1999 is: A systematic exploration and evaluation of teaching and learning processes that involves ongoing dialogue, documentation, and dissemination of results.

"Established by the faculty." This disingenuous phrase is typical of the way that CASTL and SoTL were more or less crammed down the University's throat. It suggests a wellspring of grassroots involvement from a wide range of faculty constituencies. Nothing could have been farther from the truth, although one would never have known it from the torrent of news releases about "distinguished off-campus visitors" and "Campus Conversations" and "SoTL Fellows." CASTL was in fact nothing more than useful window-dressing: it could just as well have been called the Potemkin Academy. While the CASTL Steering Committee preached to a continually shrinking number of the already converted, Academic Affairs went on its merry way managing the production of educated persons. CASTL, like the Academic Development Center, was a typical corporate approach applied to whatever was wrong with the teaching here. Buy something, throw it at the problem (hint: the real problem was faculty morale), and forget about it. If the problem persists, it's not management's fault.

If only Academic Affairs could have been bothered to lead.

This perception is not unique to Missouri State University. Eileen T. Bender's 2005 Change article, "CASTLs in the Air," offers a detailed review of CASTL's progress to date. While fundamentally sympathetic to CASTL and its goals, she is ultimately realistic about its achievements.

Thus even these optimistic CASTL exemplars must acknowledge the continuing gap between their own transformation as Carnegie Scholars and the un-transformed academy at large. The central idea of teaching as scholarship is parroted today by campus spokespersons--but their words are not matched by changing policies.

That observation is not only echoed but even magnified in reports and observations drawn from the rank and file of the professoriate across institutional types. When we move from the rarified air of CASTL and its scholars, a somewhat more discouraging picture emerges about the actual penetration of SOTL into the deep structures of academe.

Has SoTL actually penetrated into the deep structures of Missouri State University? What difference does it make? The official CASTL site at http://www.missouristate.edu/carnegie was last edited August 31, 2005: the date of the Great Name Change. It directs questions about CASTL to the email of a faculty member who retired from the Biology Department in 2006. Clicking on the "Discussion Group" link gets you an Error 404 page. The 2007-2008 Committees Handbook contains no sign of a CASTL steering committee. Here is what President Nietzel had to say about SoTL in his 12 September 2007 Report to Campus:

And finally, we want to look at the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Faculty need to have the opportunity to compare and contrast different strategies of teaching and to see what we learn by conducting research on our own scholarship.

So much for CASTL. The President obviously knows what SoTL is, but he doesn't see many signs of its effect here. So what difference does it make? It makes none. What is the next flavor of SoTL going to be?