Seasick, Yet Still Docked

A while back I was bemoaning the status of Freshman Orientation at 901 South National. I was particularly appalled with the lack of worthy faculty members interested in teaching IDS 110 as it still exists. For all of the sound and fury and memos and committee meetings, nothing important seems to have changed. The newly launched program is seasick, yet still docked. A look at the IDS schedule for Fall 2008 explains why.

Most of the sections with a listed instructor are taught either by staff or by Instructors. I don't mean this to disparage the staff or the Instructors. In fact, their willingness to take on one or more sections of IDS 110 demonstrates an admirable commitment to the University's stated goal of "producing educated persons." I know from personal experience that some University staff have quite a bit to offer in such a setting. The same is true for those Instructors whose names I see listed. Their contributions are just one reason why I support the institution of a "Senior Instructor" rank. I would also like to commend those full-time administrators, including the Provost herself, who have signed up. They're obviously not doing it for the money.

I am not at all enthused by the prospect of graduate students and per-course faculty teaching IDS 110, but apparently such will be the case. Not good. And even then, roughly one third of next fall's 150-od sections of IDS 110 remain uncovered. That's nothing short of appalling. More members of the tenured faculty need to be involved, for the students' sake and for their own sake. Much as they have to learn about our peculiar academic community, we have a great deal to learn about their lives and plans and ways of thinking. "Been there, done that" just doesn't cut it. Some of the faculty - too many of the faculty, still - are asshats. Some already have their dance cards pretty well punched. Why aren't more worthy members of the tenured faculty willing to get involved?

One problem is the bad will engendered by the Church Lady's turn at the helm, which may well take even more years to wear away. Another problem is that the current director of IDS 110, while apparently a pleasant and earnest young man, is not himself an academic. His ability to cajole and/or browbeat faculty into teaching the course is therefore compromised. The job calls for an faculty evangelist, not a manager. And finally, there is the matter of inadequate compensation. The staff and the Instructors are usually so sadly underpaid that they will literally work for food. In the case of the worthy tenured faculty, it's usually wiser to focus on enhancing one's merit pay (which rolls over from year to year) than it is to go all out for a mere 600 bucks after taxes.

Supposedly, we should be doing this because we are passionate teachers, devoted to our crucial role at 901 South National. But let me offer an example. Michael T. Nietzel obviously aspired to become a college president. Now that he is a college president, he is doing a good job at it. It's also pretty clear that he enjoys being a college president. The MSU Board of Governors doesn't presume on this last fact. It wants him to enjoy being the president at 901 South National, not somewhere else. Accordingly, the Board pays him a salary consonant with the importance and the quality of his work. Likewise, the Central Administration should not presume that faculty ought to teach IDS 110 because they enjoy being teachers. If IDS 110 is a priority, the administration will have to pay accordingly.

Break Up The Family

The annual Public Affairs Conference is once more in session at 901 South National. This year's theme is "Conflict, Violence, and the Will to Change." I am sure this year's conference will accomplish its purposes just as well as last year's conference did. The annual appointment of a Provost Fellow charged with designing and setting up the conference was a good idea. It has brought a much needed breath of fresh air to the University's most prominent Public Affairs initiative: new leadership every year, new energy and a new focus every year, and so on. But it also brings up - yet again - the question of where the Public Affairs mission is headed. In fact, even the Standard commented on it this week.

The current Public Affairs Mission website isn't much help. The definition to be found there will become a teenager this coming November.

On June 15, 1995, Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan signed into law Senate Bill 340 which gave Missouri State University a statewide mission in Public Affairs. This mission defines a primary way in which a Missouri State education is different from that of other universities and one way by which we educate our students to imagine the future.

As a public, comprehensive university system with a mission in Public Affairs, Missouri State University’s purpose is to develop educated persons while achieving five goals: democratizing society, incubating new ideas, imagining Missouri’s future, making Missouri’s future, and modeling ethical and effective behavior.

Much of the uncertainty is due to the lack of faculty buy-in which pervaded just about all of the previous University administration's initiatives. President Keiser was clear on why he saw the Public Affairs Mission as important, and on what he thought it should include. He just as clearly wanted individual academic units and individual faculty members to find and develop their own roles within the Public Affairs Mission. But the overall faculty morale on campus was not, shall we say, one of feeling empowered.

The first Assistant to the President for Public Affairs was Dr. Donald Landon. His track record as a well-respected department head gained the Public Affairs Mission instant credibility; his strenuous efforts to get faculty involved were largely responsible for whatever traction the Public Affairs Mission gained on campus. The second Assistant for Public Affairs was Dr. David Dixon. Not a well-known campus figure like his predecessor, his well developed relations with the local not-for-profits helped the University build bridges to the community at large. The third Assistant for Public Affairs was Dr. John Strong. Scion of a prominent donor family, he was a very junior associate professor when appointed. His charge was to serve as the "catalyst" which would make the Public Affairs Mission permeate the entire campus. Very little catalysis took place. The position was abolished and its holder returned to the ranks.

It was indeed time to break up the family. Unfortunately, there remains little or no active direction for the Public Affairs Mission. The Provost's recent tripartite reformulation of Public Affairs as "Community Engagement," "Cultural Competence," and "Ethical Leadership" is an appropriate starting point. Even so, much remains to be spelled out under each of the three rubrics. And that will require leadership. Neither the President nor the Provost should be expected to steer the Public Affairs Mission: they have more than enough to keep them busy with their day jobs. I'm not sure that the task requires an full-time administrator with a full-time administrator's salary. I am positive that the task is too much for a succession of annually appointed Public Affairs Fellows. Somebody at 901 South National is going to have to step up.

Unless the Public Affairs Mission is not provided with appropriate leadership, and soon, it will wither insensibly into a chain of conferences and photo ops and bilge. Old and comparatively jaded as I am, I would consider that a shame.

You're The One For Me, Fatty

I don't normally spend much time wondering about the fate of this or that college basketball coach, even when the coach is employed at 901 South National. I don't deny that they work very hard to promote the University's "brand." But assuming that we are in business to "produce educated persons," the University gets a considerably bigger bang for its buck out of me than it does out of Barry Hinson.

Still, I can't help but feel sorry for the guy. He's been employed here for what seems like forever, and handled with class the slings and arrows cast at him for his somewhat undistinguished track record. It's not his fault the NCAA selection committee sneers at multidirectional schools. Nor is it his fault that Springfield, MO - site of the 1906 "Easter Offering," in which three innocent black men were lynched - is not exactly a big draw for urban black kids with mad hoops skillz. Finally, it's not his fault that Charlie Spoonhour, Cheryl Burnett, and (to a certain extent) Steve Alford raised the bar so high. Unrealistically so, in my opinion.

The University President came to 901 South National from the University of Kentucky, where men's basketball is a religion. He is already building the temple down on JQH Street. Yet it's open to question whether the fans will come to see what is increasingly viewed around town as a lackluster product. The decision whether to keep Barry Hinson around is going to be one tough call. That's why the University President makes the big bucks. And he's welcome to 'em.

Me, I would keep the guy around, if only because there's no guarantee that 901 South National could reel in anyone better. Spoonhour was replaced by a gibbering idiot with a propensity for dropping the F bomb at the top of his lungs during games. Burnett was replaced by an Aryan control freak. Hinson would be only too happy for the chance to soldier on - some hope and some despair, but old Barry just keeps on doing his best. And I respect that.

Do Your Best And Don't Worry

This week I received the surprising news that as far as my department and department head are concerned, I had a very good 2007 indeed. As I indicated to my department head, I had been expecting far worse. The merit score is still far from a done deal; the department heads now have to make their cases to the College Dean. From there it goes to the Provost, who has proven herself quite capable of not signing off on things she's not completely good with. And only God (that is, not even the University President) knows what kind of a raise my exalted merit rating will net me. So I won't be holding my breath. The most important thing is that I did my best for dear old 901 South National last year... and it didn't go totally unappreciated.

What I hear from elsewhere is far less happy. The residual discontent from last year's merit process, along with the drive to repackage, repackage, repackage, has apparently been eating away at faculty morale. Now that the culture of accountability has lodged itself into workload discussions, the circle of yowlers is expanding beyond the asshats-n-looters community. Wait until the University adopts (as I am sure the University will) an "activity reporting solution" called Activity Insight. Those of us who walk right up to the microphone to account for our time will be happy for anything which helps streamline the process. The asshats will be up in arms. With a little luck, maybe they can be coaxed to get off the stage.

Get Off The Stage

The hammer came down on the Social Work program this week. Four tenured faculty members were "reassigned" and an associate professor appointed as the new, permanent program director. To judge from the discussion on the News-Leader's online forums (which has been extensively edited at least once), the controversy is far from over. Obviously the University is going to take a huge salary hit, as will the overall reputation of the University faculty: we'll all be regarded as asshats and looters now. On the other hand, I don't see anything else the Administration and the interim director could have done. The Social Work program's fabled toxicity had been festering well before the changing of the guard at 901 South National. A quick, painless, surgical fix was out of the question. As best I can tell, the next best option was cutting the program's losses and moving the project forward, and that is what the University did.

The hammer also apparently came down on the Academic Development Center this week. In her Spring Semester update to faculty and staff, the Provost included among positions "reorganized, with a savings of 50% or more" the Director of the Academic Development Center. If I have interpreted the handwriting on the wall correctly, the Director has returned to the Education faculty, where I wish him the very best. It also means that the University is serious about developing a Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. It will be interesting to see how a director is selected: there doesn't seem to be time for a nationwide search, which means the lucky person is already here at 901 South National. How I hope it's not a looter and/or an asshat; I'd hate to keep saying that the language they constantly prate says nothing to me about my life.

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.

The Youngest Was The Most Loved

Our department has made a new hire this month. As word has it - I avoid getting involved in searches involving this segment of our faculty - our future colleague is promising, personable, and happy to be aboard. All the things one looks for in a new tenure-track person. I never even asked what our future colleague wangled by way of a salary. One of the other candidates had demanded a salary about $5000 less than what I am making in lo, my third decade at 901 South National.. Another candidate had basically demanded "Find me a job for my spouse." Hiring one of your top choices in a seller's market can get expensive. I hope the department salary structure didn't get knocked too far out of whack. There is a world-class junior asshat in our department who will unleash a whining unto God or the University President, whichever of Them responds first.

I myself used to get quite bothered by this sort of salary compression issue. But with the passing years, I realize more and more how lucky - or blessed, or whatever - I was to land in a tenure track job at a time when the bar was set so much lower. Sure, the department was run by the asshats when I arrived. But as long as probationary types like me acted friendly-like, didn't whine about a 12-hour teaching load and didn't threaten the asshats too much with the publication records we were forced to compile, tenure and promotion were no big deal. I had to plead with our then-department head to be given a third-year pretenure review. The response was "We like you! You'll do fine!" They did like me. Then. The response I got when I went up for promotion to professor was something different, but that is another cycle of posts.

Now, probationary faculty are confronted with a mind-numbing sequence of hoops to jump through: codified departmental and collegiate tenure and promotion guidelines; annual evaluation letters from the personnel committee, head, and dean; the rumblings from Carrington Hall that the standards will continue to go up, up, up as 901 South National becomes even more excellent than it already is. This on top of excelling in teaching, service and research at all times, and acting friendly-like to the tenured faculty. Know what? It's all too easy to gripe about how bad we had it when we taught 15 hours per week, published a book a semester, and sprinted to and from work, uphill in both directions. All too easy to compare salaries and whine that the youngest was the most loved, when in fact the mountains of released time and inflated salaries can't begin to compare with the pressures new hires live with every day of their probationary periods. In fact, as much as I genuinely love what I do for a living and as grateful as I feel to make a living doing it, I sincerely doubt I'd even go to grad school today if this gray miasmic haze of uncertainty and blind chance was what awaited me when I finished.

I Can Have Both

What prompts people to volunteer for committees which have nothing to offer except for tedium and yet another golden opportunity to make 901 South National look good, free of charge?

I never wanted to have both. Heaven knows I'm not paid enough even to consider it as an option.

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle

For more than a decade, IDS 110 and its Honors counterpart, UHC 110 have been providing the freshmen of 901 South National with their introduction to college life. None too well, for the most part.

The previous administration had rightly seen the need for such a course, and ponied up the resources to develop and staff it. Unfortunately, they selected as program director someone whose only qualification was having chaired (satisfactorily, for the administration's purposes) the Faculty Senate. A professor of "Administrative Office Systems," no less... a glorified typing teacher who looked and acted like the Church Lady. Within her first year as director, the Church Lady's control-freak tactics had run off 90% of the committed and enthusiastic faculty members who had crawled out of the woodwork hoping to help the poor little freshmen assimilate to college life. Soon IDS 110 was taught only by staff members and a handful of faculty members who were desperate for the money.

The kids hated the class too. They were frogmarched through every chapter of the IDS 110 textbook, which was authored by (you guessed it) the Church Lady herself. They snoozed through the stultifying group lectures about the evils of alcohol, drugs, sex, smoking, and whatever else the Church Lady considered worth worrying about. By semester's end they were well on their way to a profound cynicism about 901 South National and everything it was hoping to offer them. The original version of IDS 110 was literally worse than nothing at all.

There was no question of making changes to IDS 110. Not only did the Church Lady defend her turf like an irate mama badger, she was the BFF of the one person the University President was known to fear. Mrs. University President. It took two years' worth of surveys, reports, and committee meetings for the Church Lady to see the handwriting on the wall and begin the practice of addition by subtracting herself from the employ of 901 South National. IDS 110 soldiered on as best it could, somewhat bereft of direction while the current administration took the University in hand.

In keeping with the current administration's emphasis on student success, IDS 110 is being retooled yet again. Administrators of all levels are signing up to teach sections of the new and improved course, and have been tasked with "nominating" worthy and interested faculty members to teach other sections. The course carries a small stipend of $1000. A section of UHC 110 pays $1500. Another student success initiative involves "learning communities" consisting of a dorm floor's worth of students and a faculty member who becomes (I guess) their faculty big brother or big sister for a semester or two. I have been approached to participate in both initiatives for next year. I enjoy doing things like this, and have done them in the past, sometimes even without extra pay. Nor am I necessarily adverse to doing things which will redound to the greater glory of 901 South National.

But before I decide - well, I know I'm not going to teach the UHC as a matter of principle -I would like to know one thing. Will my contribution to bona fide University initiatives benefit me professionally? If so, how? Just about anything would count. Even the right to boot the asshat of my choice right in the ass, even once a month.

Certain People I Know

At 901 South National, you don't find committee work. It finds you. That is, if you're worth a damn at serving on committees. I'm hardly the most assiduous Servant of the University; my name appears exactly twice in the 2007-2008 Committees Handbook. That handbook, of course, doesn't list College or Department Committees. Nor does it list the instances in which faculty members are pressed into doing something because everyone else who could do it is already too busy, and the others are too lazy or too stupid, or both. Here's a quick guide to the certain people I know on these committees.

Saints: These are the true believers. 901 South National calls, they answer. They can't say no, even if they are already overcommitted to start with. Lookthem up in the Committee Handbook index and you will see five to ten separate numbers after their names. I know a few of them, some very well. They include gifted teachers, gifted scholars, and people who are accomplished at both teaching and research. I just don't get it.

Sycophants: These people sign up because it gives them something to do instead of teaching or doing research. If they do it long enough, they may get a job as director or full-time administrator of Something Really Important, where they get to sit in a big office wearing nice clothes and telling a secretary what to do. Or, at the very least, a drastically reduced teaching load and a graduate assistant. Some are Usual Suspects. They can also be described as the highest echelon of looters.

Saps: The saps tend to jump in if and only if it looks like nobody else will take on a given task. They are respectably cynical about their place in the 901 South National community. Most wouldn't consider becoming an administrator or the director of Something Really Important for double their current salary. Most would much rather do research, or teach, or both.

Barbarism Begins At Home

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

These Things Take Time

One promising - literally - initiative on this campus is the "Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning." It sounds like a wonderful thing. Provided, of course, that it can be located. Although the "Faculty Center" has been described as a "virtual center," the closest virtual resource center I could find was the Academic Development Resource Room. While other University documents - such as the Provost's page on SoTL,- reference the "Faculty Center" and/or its Fellows,"a full list of the Fellows is nowhere to be found on the University website. Evidence of the "Faculty Center's" effects on the quality of teaching is likewise absent to date.

I'm not faulting the Central Administration on this. The Associate Provost for General Education and the Assistant Provost for the Extended Campus are extremely busy people and, I suspect, have a good handle on what needs to be done. I understand these things take time. I'm not personally looking for the cavalry. Nor am I in any big hurry. Nothing's going majorly wrong in my classroom. Whatever can be improved upon will be tweaked appropriately. I don't need any help - at least not from the usual Carnegie/SoTL suspects - in designing my new class for the upcoming semester. If I cared about studying Educational Design or Motivational Student Psychology, I would have done it as an undergraduate. As with the dear old Showcase, the language that they constantly prate says nothing to me about my life.

What would I like to see at a "Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning?"For one thing, spaces - both physical and virtual - where faculty members can talk about teaching without necessarily feeling compelled to label their conversation as the almighty "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." In the late 1990s I participated in an impromptu discussion group with faculty from four different colleges. I went primarily because I enjoyed meeting with colleagues and sharing experiences with them. The benefits I obtained over the two years I attended the group were substantial - but secondary. I think a sense of community can be built among faculty, but not if it is forced on faculty as a mandate.

I would also like to see the "Faculty Center" led by a real, live, practicing teacher. Not by a staff member, no matter how capable. Not by one of those semi-administrative looters who routinely cadge released time for dressing in nice clothes and going to meetings. Not by one of those armchair theoreticians who publish reams but can't teach their way out of a paper bag. Not by one of those hothouse flowers who hasn't taught undergraduates in more than a decade. Of course, most (if not all) of the real, live, practicing teachers I would have in mind would run screaming from an administrative job - especially one that would take them out of the classroom. I can't even imagine the patience required to sit through the endless meetings with people dressed in nice clothes. But maybe one of them could be talked into taking one for the proverbial team.

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?

Stop me, oh stop me

Prominently featured this holiday vacation on the MSU website is a little banner announcing the Academic Development Center's 19th Showcase on Teaching and Learning. Given that it's holiday vacation, I assume the banner will remain in place until the 19th Showcase on Teaching and Learning actually transpires on 9 January 2008. The casual visitor might be forgiven for thinking it is a pretty big deal. It showcases teaching, and learning, and is the nineteenth in a series. The very existence of an Academic Development Center on this campus would indicate that MSU is serious about quality education, right? Stop me if you think you've heard this one before.

Even a quick look at the ADC website suggests the Showcase is not the big deal it's cracked up to be. The content hinted at by the ADC website's left-hand navigation bar promises more than it delivers. One can choose from "professional development resources," or "learning communities," or even a conference on the "scholarship of teaching and learning" to be held a year and a half from now right here at MSU. Whatever the "scholarship of teaching and learning" is or isn't, it has never repaid the effort I have invested in trying to comprehend it. For example, the ADC website proudly features an article entitled "Integrative Model for Learning and Motivation in Higher Education." The article's authors, which include the ADC Director, undoubtedly worked very hard on it. But the accompanying graphic also - unwittingly, I'm sure - illustrates my stupefaction with the entire concept:

It looks like somebody decorated a dartboard with buzzwords: hit the bull's eye and win LEARNING PROCESSES AND OUTCOMES! Again, I'm sure the article is a major contribution to its field. But how it applies to anything I do in a classroom is utterly beyond me.

As for the development resources, the ADC offers seminars, learning committees, workshops, and - drum roll, please - the Showcase on Teaching. I have never attended the Showcase on Teaching, but I have been presenting at it since the last century. It used to bring together a mix of teachers with things to show off and support staff with new tools to offer, and it once attracted a representative audience of faculty. These days it is pretty much the usual suspects talking about the usual stuff to a rather specialized audience. Tenure-track faculty attend it because they have to attend everything, and attendance is taken (by social security number, no less). Administrators attend it because it would be churlish not to attend a showcase on teaching. Everyone else there attends it because they want to rub elbows with administrators. There are some interesting presentations scheduled the 19th Showcase on Teaching - but only one of them would add to what I already know. I think I'll be spending my time on something more meaningful - like a killer round of Bookworm.

Unloveable

From time to time, the powers that be Missouri State University let on that they are not exactly feeling the love from the community at large. Usually, the coldness is blowing down from Jefferson City: either the Legislature is screwing MSU, or the Governor is, or the Coordinating Board for Higher Education is. Democrats punish MSU for being in a Republican part of the state. Republicans punish MSU to get even with the whiny liberal professors. As a matter of fact, MSU has been getting screwed for years. The slice of the funding pie we receive from the CBHE is rather smaller than the piece of the pie - credit hours taught, degrees granted - produced by this particular state university. And women never really faint, and villains always blink their eyes...

There is plenty of resentment to be found right here in the Queen City of the Ozarks. Always has been. Coming here from a college town where the university basically is the city, I was taken aback by the locals' vitriol toward "Sodom and Gomorrah on the corner of Grand and National." Over time, I came to see as partially true the local belief that college professors are pathological whiners out of touch with how the real world works. Unfair, yes. Totally unfounded, no. Still, the institution itself has not helped its case much either.The Emily Brooker case brought MSU national notoriety. Spring 2007's furore over Dr. Michael Hendrix raised a stink statewide, as has the recent flap over the Strong Hall Christmas tree. It seems like a valid time to ask just how MSU presents itself to the local community.

So I clicked on the Community link featured prominently on the MSU home page. I was shocked into shame to discover the relationship between university and community expressed in exactly two paragraphs.

The community of Springfield and the Ozarks supports Missouri State by attending campus events, cheering Bears sports, and interacting through many other activities.

Missouri State also supports the community through its statewide mission in public affairs. Community outreach programs through public affairs research centers, adult continuing education, distance learning courses, public broadcasting, and telecommunication linkages with other metropolitan universities utilize faculty expertise and skills to address state and community problems.

Great. The community cheers for the Bears, and in return we give the community public affairs. It dawns on me that if this is the best MSU can do at justifying itself to the local community, we really deserve all the opprobrium we get. And if the best MSU can do to remedy the situation is appoint a blue ribbon committee packed with the usual suspects, I'm going to give up defending my job as a lost cause.

You Just Haven't Earned It Yet

I barely recognize the Honors College any longer. When I taught my first Honors sections back in the late 1980s, they were smaller (about 60% of the normal class size) and the students expected to be worked harder. Not only expected it, enjoyed it. Being an Honors student was a big deal and so was being a member of the Honors Faculty. Not all applications were accepted, and not all of those accepted stayed accepted. I myself felt honored when I got to teach an Honors section.

But things changed. One common way for a college or university to make itself look good is to trumpet its Honors program. The bigger the better, even if there's not enough brains to go around. Not so much the kids, although over the years there did seem to be a few more marginal students than before. No, there was a shortage of "stations," as the then-dean used to put it. First, the number of "stations" was increased by adding extra students to each section. By and by, additional Honors sections were added as individual departments felt able to do so. I am told that the Honors College reimbursed departments for offering Honors sections, although the exact nature of the arrangement still escapes me. Over the years, I must have brought a fair amount of money into my department that way. Whatever. I was still just genuinely honored by the chance to teach in the Honors College.

I honestly can't say just when I stopped being pleased to teach in the Honors College. Even though additional Honors sections had been added, the number of "stations" in each section crept upward. In his unending quest to grow the program by adding more and more "stations," the then-dean of Honors College insensibly exercised less and less scrutiny over the faculty providing these "stations." Quantity counted more than quality.

The situation has not improved with time, as a quick glance at the Honors College's official list of outstanding faculty demonstrates. Most of these people are in fact outstanding teachers and scholars. Some are decidedly not. The official list includes adjunct faculty, retired faculty, and even one full-time member who boasts an Ed.D. from Nova Southeastern University. Absent from the list is last year's dean of the College of Arts and Letters, despite a teaching load which consists exclusively of one Honors section per semester. But absent from the list are several long-time Honors Faculty members who have won various University awards for teaching and/or research, but no longer teach in the Honors College. Not what I would call true excellence.

I don't question the administration's sincere intention to "upgrade" the Honors College. The proverbial rising tide lifts all boats, et cetera. The time, trouble, and money expended in renovating Scholars House, instituting three endowed chairs, and founding a new Honors academic journal all demonstrate good intentions. Yet to me, at least, these initiatives address only tangential concerns. The Honors College already has more students than it can effectively handle with the resources - Honors sections and qualified Honors Faculty - it currently has. Until the Administration addresses this very real need - an outside review would be an excellent start - I am concerned that its efforts will amount to little more than window dressing.