faculty at work, The

Academe, Jul/Aug 1998 by Long, Cynthia D

Eighty-fourth Annual Meeting

Sessions Address Role of Junior Faculty, Service in the Academy, and Other Topics

THE ACADEMIC LIFE OF A JUNIOR FACULTY member has always been marked by struggle-the struggle for tenure, the struggle to publish, and the struggle to earn the respect of colleagues. Today, however, junior faculty are fighting to succeed in a constantly changing environment in which expectations and responsibilities are blurred.

The panelists in "Junior Faculty, Loyalties, and Generational Issues," one of two concurrent panels held on June 11, agreed that junior faculty today often have no idea of what is expected of them. They are told they need to publish more without having "more" adequately defined, and they are expected to serve on committees without being told how such service will fit into tenure evaluations. They believe their prestige and economic power have diminished while they are subject to higher standards and more competition. With added demands for research, teaching has become marginalized and the opportunity to mentor students curtailed. Time constraints and insecurities about finding a tenure-track position contribute to a lack of loyalty to institutions and generational tensions with senior faculty.

Beyond discussing the problems of junior faculty, the panelists identified possible solutions. An obvious wav to increase institutional loyalty, they argued, is to hire more tenure-track faculty and to put an end to the profusion of part-time appointments. Another way to ease uncertainties about expectations is to create specific mission statements that spell out the role of junior faculty and clearly define the standards for achieving tenure.

If it were up to the panelists in "The Faculty at Work in the Community: The Civic Mission of the University," held on June 12, tenure decisions would place more stress on seivice and less on research. As the mission of the university has become more commercialized, the traditional commitment to public service has been lost, panelists said. The notion that higher education has a civic mission is distinctly American (Princeton's motto is "Princeton in the nation's service"), and the country's colleges need to renew their commitment to public engagement while fighting efforts to treat educational institutions like corporations. To accomplish this, however, internal incentives and rewards must be changed so that service, research, and teaching are appraised equally in tenure evaluations. The panelists said that professors today are only congratulated for their service, not rewarded for it. They therefore called on American higher education to challenge the prevailing understanding of scholarship and research by asking the question, Knowledge for what?

Other panels focused on subjects ranging from accreditation to technology. The videotape Degrees of Shame: Migrant Workers of the Information Economy was shown in a session on the proliferation of part-time appointments. The videotape revealed the difficult working conditions endured by part-time professors and pointed to the need for organized action to improve the working lives of such faculty members. (Copies of Degrees of Shame can be purchased at a discount by those who plan to use it to organize faculty on campuses. For details, call 513-8612462.) Other annual meeting sessions included "Intellectual Property Rights"; "Your Department-A Home Away from Home?"; "Diversity on the Campus: The Educational Benefits"; "Working with Accreditation"; "Teaching at a Distance: The Report on Distance Learning"; "Working for Academic Renewal: Using the AAUP Kit for Organizing on the Issues of Part-Time and Non-Tenure-Track Faculty"; "Lobbying in the State Legislature"; and "The Faculty at Work in the Public Schools: Teacher Training and Certification."

Resolutions Presented to the Eighty-fourth Annual Meeting

Distance Learning

THE RAPID PROLIFERATION OF DISTANCE LEARNING PROgrams throughout the United States in recent years portends a potentially dramatic transformation of the academic enterprise. As the report on this subject that the Association's Committee R on Government Relations authorized for publication in the May-June 1998 issue of Academe makes clear, "Distance learning, used properly in its various modes, can enhance the learning experience and increase access to higher education for a wide variety of potential students." The report goes on to warn, however, that "distance learning, even used properly . . .. raises a number of issues that have to be examined carefully, to determine its impact on faculty, students, and the learning experience in general."

One such issue with which the Association is particularly concerned relates to the faculty's fundamental role in shaping the conception, development, and delivery of distance learning programs. According to the AAUP's Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, "The faculty has primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction. . and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process.... The faculty sets the requirements for the degrees offered in course, determines when the requirements have been met, and authorizes the president and board to grant the degrees thus achieved."