A delicate balance: a study of the professional lives of piano faculty in higher education

American Music Teacher, August-Sept, 2003 by Lynn Rice-See

Maturity also plays a part in reorganizing priorities. A professor at a midwestern institution comments, "My children are young--3 and 8 years old. They are my priority. I gave my professional life the priority for many years, but now that I am 44, what seems important has changed." Another professor agrees: "Age and family have brought the realization that what I give as a teacher and mom will have more far-reaching effects than what I give as a performer. Nevertheless, it is vital for me to devote some time each day to my musical art." Louis Nagel at the University of Michigan states: "They [my priorities] have always been family first followed by equal amounts of teaching and playing. I admit early in my days family did not always come first. But that is my goal."

John Salmon of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro responded, "I'm not sure I have totally resolved these issues (balance of performance, teaching and family)! But having recently been promoted to full professor ... gives me the freedom to seek new solutions.... Junior faculty are often expected--by inference if not explicitly--to do it all: teach, serve and engage in high-level creative/research projects."

Since many times women find themselves in the position of offering more child and elder care, the question of gender and its effect on both performance and practice arose. Study results would seem to indicate that any effect of gender is slight, given the small numbers of persons in the extreme ranges, but that men are more represented in the higher categories and women more represented in the lower categories:

Respondents refer to a change in priorities that is consistent with the cross-disciplinary literature of faculty growth over a career: (7)

* "Hopefully, I am less self-centered than when I was a student. My career goal is now to assist students in becoming better teachers and players."

* "My early ambition was to perform; my love of teaching has grown through the years as I've discovered the tremendous rewards there."

* "I feel as though I have a much greater commitment to my teaching now and that my performance has become somewhat secondary. I no longer have the energy to work on large recital programs. I am not willing to go into the classroom situation unprepared."

The discrepancy between full- and part-time salaries prevents some from balancing home and professional life: "I find full-time college teaching to be overwhelming in regards to wanting to maintain my practice and performance and also raise a child. I would so like to work three-quarters or half time, but my university won't permit it."

Numerous other respondents mentioned paperwork as consuming much more time than it should. Michael Gurt speaks for many. "The real reason we can no longer do our jobs has mostly to do with the ever-increasing paperwork burden we are forced to bear," he says. "Consider: At Louisiana State University there are about the same number of students and faculty now as there were when I began in 1987. There are far more administrators and support staff, though, and each of those people is hard at work generating more forms, procedures, regulations, etc. The inevitable result is that more committees need to be formed in order to deal with those procedures, causing additional drain on faculty resources." A professor at a Midwest college agrees: "External pressures I feel include the need to be (over) involved in committee assignments and marginally related community activities. One must reserve a certain amount of time each day to deal with the voluminous paperwork that crosses the desk." Another Midwesterner comments: "The most difficult conflict is not the teaching, but the heavy load of committee work and general paperwork obligations of a college teaching position, which can amount to more hours per week than the teaching load."