Passive Aggressive Holiday Greetings

I'm not sure if it's because of the holidays or if it's just coincidence, but so far some of the students that I have had in the fall semester have decided to let me know that they're dissatisfied with their grades with passive aggressive holiday greetings.

Every semester, I have a few students who believe that they deserve a better grade. I generally offer those students to meet with them in person or to explain via email why they deserve the grade that they earned. At the end of the fall semester, there has been always one or two students who choose not to have me explain why they earned that grade and instead choose to send me a message along the lines of that it is not up to me (the professor) to judge, but that only God can judge the actions that we take in life. Then they tack on a line about wishing me a Merry Christmas.

If God would like to grade the exams and papers and judge these students, please Lord, go right ahead! Until I receive that sign from Him, I will continue to "judge" the students.

Dress for Success

In high school my classmates and I wondered why one of our teachers always dressed in a suit and tie. None of the other teachers dressed nearly as formally as he did (actually many of them dressed quite casually). Mr. M. answered that he was dressed for work. He responded, "School is my work and you dress in a suit and tie for work." That was that. He was very old-schooled that way. We all thought it was rather puzzling and eventually we got him to wear a t-shirt and jeans for Fridays, but every other day he wore a suit and tie.

I didn't realize how much his words affected me until I became a professor. When I was a college student, I didn't give much thought to how my professors dressed. Some of them were more formally dressed and others were very casual (one professor was famous for teaching in flip flops). But when I became a professor, I put in much thought to how *I* was going to dress.

Mr. M. explained to us that he dressed in a suit and tie as a sign of respect for us students. You dress up for important events and he dressed in a suit and tie because he believed that we deserved that type of respect. He took his job seriously and his clothes as a *symbol* of that respect.

It's not that I don't think professors who don't dress up don't take their jobs seriously nor do they not respect their students, but looks are symbolic. As much as we can say that we should "not judge a book by its cover," we do, whether it's looks or a just how a paper is turned in -- neat and crisp or sloppy and crinkled.

I don't wear a suit to class, but I do make sure that I am dressed neatly and professionally when I lecture. The students do appreciate it (enough to make comments on my student evaluations). I do think it makes a difference when a professor lectures in a neat outfit compared to when a professor lectures in a sweatsuit.

Professor or Personal Tutor

What is the professor's role in helping students? Obviously we're there to teach. Obviously this entails that I show up to class, lecture, ask questions, answer questions, and do other teaching activities (give and grade assignments, exams, and so forth).When you have a student who's seriously behind all the other students, just how much help and support are you expected to give?

My colleagues' policies range anywhere from "It's not my problem if it happens outside of these prescribed hours" to "Personal Tutor." I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't mind setting aside time for a specific appointment with a student to go over difficult material, but I don't set this up as a regular occurrence. When a student clearly has severe problems with completing the work, I refer them to other services, such as the writing and tutoring center. My personal feeling is that in those situations the problems in my class are symptomatic of a deeper underlying problem of poor preparation. The only way to fix it is with lots of additional work outside of the course material. While I'm happy to provide occasional help outside of class/office hour, I also don't believe that it's a part of my job description to be a personal tutor for the student.

On rare occasions, I feel slightly guilty about this. You hear those stories of the teacher who really cared and went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that the students succeeded, you know, meeting before and after school, on weekends, investing a lot their own personal money and time. Everything-including-the-kitchen-sink-to-ensure-that-the-student-succeeds work ethic that win praises and a TV-movie-of-the-week, maybe even a full length film if it involves poor ethnic minorities in a gritty part of a town or a bleak rural outpost. While I certainly do admire the dedication of those teachers and I certainly do care that my students succeed, the truth is I don't care enough to give up my weekends for it. I already find it painful enough to give up several lovely Saturday afternoons to grading and I get paid to do this. I certainly won't do it for something I don't get paid for.

Once in a while there's some discussion about the failing students and what we should do about them. Inevitably someone (another prof, admin, a student representative) brings up that the professor should tutor that student until he/she does better. Theoretically I might be okay with this idea if 1) the College provided me with additional support to do this work, and 2) if it were only one or even two students. If you consider that it's perfectly possible to have up to a 1/3 of the class failing and multiply by the number of classes I teach, it quickly becomes apparent that practically speaking this is not going to happen.

Regardless, I feel that my job is to be a professor. Not a tutor. This means I draw a line at how much outside help and support I provide students. Occasional appointments -- yes. Every week outside of office hours -- no. If this means that I am a bad professor, well, I can live with it. I can live with showing up to class on time, giving a really good lecture, grading assignments and exams, having office hours, making occasional appointments with students, and going home.

The State of Hellos

Last week I had a very pleasant moment, when a student poked his head in just to say hello. That was it. It was just a hello and I loved it. When I was an undergraduate, aside from my senior thesis advisor my senior year, there was absolutely no professor with whom I would have felt comfortable enough to say hello, unless I had some business at hand. I love that my students feel comfortable with me and that they do want to have contact with me for no other reason, other than to wish me a nice day -- that their need for me is not just based on "I NEED MAJOR HELP NOW!" panic that I usually see.

This is very different from a different type of hello that I'm getting from a colleague. I'm starting to dread seeing this colleague's presence in the hallway because a hello from this person is not just a simple hello, but the start of a long and overly-winded, pointless conversation on nothing. I like chitchat just fine, but when I'm usually quite busy when I'm on campus and I don't have time for idle chitchat. Also, I don't particularly care to talk about the issues that this colleague wants to talk about. I'm not in a position to cut off the chitchat because of the "issues" that came up for my reappointment file. One of my weaknesses, according to the committee, was that I needed to be more collegial and spend more time talking with my colleagues. It's not that I was being rude, but they noted that I did not spend enough time making small talk with my colleagues.

Now I need to add making chitchat on my list of things-to-do. Should it come before or after teaching, research, and service? So far, it's been coming after those three items, which means that often at the end of the day, I haven't gotten around to doing it. I guess I need to re-prioritize my duties.

Balancing Act

Research, teaching, and service are the three components of professorial work. The teaching part everyone is quite familiar with. The research part less so, but people know about it and have some sort of vague idea of what it might be (usually involved benchwork and beakers and copious amounts of dry ice -- I think the dry ice is what makes it all science-y). The service part is something that people outside of academia have no idea about. Even as a grad student, I only had a vague notion of what service was. I just understood it as my advisor went to (mysterious) college-wide committee meetings and was a committee member for different grad students as they were going through qualifying exams and their dissertation.

How these three components are balanced depends upon the institution that the professor is at. My friends at research institutions are expected to have a 45% (research) - 45% (teaching) - 10% (service) load. I haven't asked my friends at SLACs what their load is expected to be like, but it would definitely be less on the research and more on the service.

No one ever told me at my institution what the expected break down to be, but looking roughly at the hours that I put in in a typical week, it's 50% (teaching) - 40% (service) - and 10% (research). Actually, I would very reluctantly say that the 10% for research is probably an overstatement. I can recall plenty of weeks where research was simply not possible given my teaching load.

Etiquette

Rightfully or wrongly, I do believe that academics are held to a higher standard than a layperson. We do have more education than the average person. We are leaders in innovation, technology, and thought. Academics have a huge role in society in creating new products, arguing new ideas, and changing current culture.

We're still human.

And when I see academics behaving in very (ill-mannered) human-like ways, I'm very disappointed and surprised. Granted, I believe that all people should have good manners, but somehow seeing someone with so much education who should "know better" behaving in a boorish manner just exasperates me more than someone who isn't as well-educated.

I've seen some pretty ridiculous behavior since becoming a professor. Email fights about the proper spelling. Or name calling over a misperceived slight in a tone of voice. Or accusing a colleague of purposely misspelling another colleague's name out of spite. I understand that we all can't get along all the time, but if we're going to fight, I wish it were a fight worth having.

Stretched thin

It's not unusual that in a small department that a faculty member is the sole representation of that particular subdiscipline. This is a bit of a problem when that faculty member is responsible for all of the courses in that area, which proportionally speaking is greater than that faculty member's representation in the department.

I represent X% of the department. All the courses that I'm theoretically responsible for represent X + 15% of the curricular offerings. Our department desperately needs to hire another faculty member, preferably in my area or at least in the subdiscipline that's closely related to my area, but we're in a hiring freeze. And the next faculty search that we're going to have when we do finally get to have it has already been slated to hire another faculty member in subdiscipline Y, which is already overrepresented in our department. But they need the hire too because they're getting more students into that area, so it's not a vanity hire. The department is just too small for the number of majors that we have.

Why SLAC?

I think that I get asked this question demonstrates the bias that academia has towards Tier-1 research institutions. I don't mean that professors in those places don't get asked why did they choose their profession, but that question is always posed in terms of being a professor versus being some other professional. Whereas for me, the question is posed in terms of why a professor of SLAC versus a professor at Research U? No one ever asks a professor at Research U, "Have you ever considered a being a professor at a SLAC instead? Why didn't you go for that type of position?"

Tenure-track positions at Tier-1 research universities are rarer than tenure-track positions at non-Tier-1 research universities. It is far more likely that if you decide to continue on in academia that you'll get a position at a non-Tier-1 institute.

But this isn't the reason why I am at a SLAC. When I was asked why I chose to apply to SLACs, I answered honestly, "It's a personality-environment fit issue." As a student I thrived in these large impersonal institutions, but it didn't appeal to me as a professor. While I love research (and truth be told, I do miss it dearly and wish I could do more of it during the school year), I didn't want the stress of managing a lab and grants. In order to be at a high caliber research institute, you have to really want it -- a fire in the belly as one of professors had put it. I may have had that fire at one point in graduate school, but it went out. I stopped wanting it a long time ago (something my adviser may have realized before I did).

I love teaching. I love the fact that I really get to develop a relationship with my students that go past a single semester. As an undergrad, I rarely had the same professor twice. Here, it's common and expected that I will see my students again and again. I love when I walk around campus, I see my students and they yell out, "Hi, Professor!" And because I know I am going to see them again, I am really driven and motivated to teach the very best that I can because if I don't fix the problem this semester, I'll see it again next semester. And there is the incredible high that I get when I see a student making progress. It's the same high I get when I see really cool results from a study that I conducted.

Interview Questions Part I

When I was out on the job market a couple years ago, I noticed that there were two questions that I was always asked: 1) Why would I want to apply to small liberal arts teaching college? and 2) Do I think I can handle winter?

Why would I want to apply to a liberal arts college?
This question I felt was a fair one to ask, especially considering my background. I did not have a liberal arts college as my background. It was anything but that. It was a fair concern to see if I understood the traditions of a small teaching college compared to a large research university. Except for my English classes, I believe my smallest class in college was about 150 people. It was pretty typical for me to be in a class with about 300-500 people as a student. As a student, both as an undergrad and grad, I went to large research universities and I completed my postdoc at a highly competitive research institute. My entire background was concentrated more on research than it was on teaching. Not to say that I had no experience in teaching, but definitely the focus and emphasis was on research.

I felt in some ways, however, that my background was held against me. I was warned of this, but as it is often the case, it's one thing to be told and another to have it experienced. There was this odd insecurity about being a small liberal arts college and the faculty members I met questioned my sincerity in wanting a teaching position. I got this strange message and feeling that they felt that they weren't good enough for me. I find some amusement in this because I remember as a grad student when we had our part in the interview process, how incredibly pompous we all were. We were rather dismissive of many scientists (including some who are now very prominent in our fields) saying that they didn't do "XX research." XX being the type and quality of research that we and our advisors did. The job talk and teaching skills were irrelevant in the interview process. What we (and I suspect the search committee as well) looked at was at the publication record. What did they publish and what were they saying in their publication? We prayed on the altar of research.

I laugh at our hubris now. We were so full of it and conceited. Academic jobs are d*mn hard to get, even at the non-Tier 1 research levels. People who have been out on the job market know this and whenever I say that I just got this position, I'm greeted with a wholehearted congratulations. A tenure-track faculty position regardless of where it is is nothing to sneeze at.

Anyway, I felt that search committees were uncertain about me considering my lack of background in the small liberal arts colleges, which I felt was a bit unfair. What was I suppose to do? Not go to a cheap state university that provided excellent education and instead take out a huge loan to go to a private SLAC? Deny myself the opportunity to learn and train under the best scientists and go to a smaller research university that doesn't have a long history and record of excellent training? I remember feeling a bit uncomfortable because of my pedigreed academic degree. I always tried to be the best that I could be and to be in a situation where this was seen as a minus was something new.

I didn't answer the question of why I wanted to make the switch, but I'll do so in a later post.


Do I think I can handle winter?
This second question was something that I found a bit ridiculous. Again, my past was being held against. Having grown up in a perpetually warm climate, I think people were under the impression that I was a hot house flower. I repeated had to remind them that I had left my childhood home and that currently not only do I live in a much colder climate, look I'm thriving too.

I really don't know of any other job where this type of question would actually be a legitimate concern. Can you imagine a Fortune 500 company looking for a CEO saying, "Oh, look Candidate Y is terrific, but geez, he/she grew up in Hawaii. I don't think we should hire Candidate Y because we're in Boston."

Academia is a funny world. Subtle things like family ties do play a role in hiring decisions. A job search is a lengthy and expensive process. You want the candidate to stay once you hire them. Generally people do stay because academic jobs aren't easy to come by, but people do leave, and you do need to replace them. One of the reasons why people leave is because they find something that closer to home. So if you have family ties to that area, you bring it out and wave it all over the place in your interview.

I did find a place that wanted me, despite the fact that I didn't have a SLAC background nor am I from the area where I work.

Introduction

I chose The Littlest Professor as my moniker because I am the youngest and the smallest faculty member of my department. I'm a tenure-track professor at a small liberal arts college located in the middle of nowhere. I'm chronicling the challenges and the joys of my career because I don't want to forget. I've kept diaries on and off and whenever I look at back my old entries, it brings back memories that I had forgotten. Those memories are always poignant and I would like to keep a record.

I've looked at a few other academic blogs and I noticed that all feel compelled to assert their authority and expertise in an anonymous fashion like saying, "I attended a Highly Selective Liberal Arts College for my BA/BS and then worked with Hot Shot Scientist at Ivy League U for my Ph.D." And since I've never been much of a rebel, I will follow suit. I attended Big State University for my BA, next Famous Tier-1 U for my Ph.D., and then for my postdoc I went to Elite Think Tank in a foreign country. Sometime during my postdoc, I decided to shift gears and got a position at a Small Liberal Arts Teaching College. Yes, it was my choice and decision to make this shift. Yes, the culture shock between Research U and Teaching College was incredible. Far more so than living in a foreign country. In fact, I think I still might be shell-shocked.

I still know that I made the right decision.