Wading Through

The hardest part of writing this post has been deciding what is relevant and what is not. I suppose that is really the hardest part of any writing. And, of course, the longer I put off posting the more there is to post. Maybe it works best in sections.

Committees:
Yes, Dr. Snarky is leaving, but she has agreed to stay on my committees. As long as the paperwork is filed by the end of the semester she can stay a part of the committees as a 4th outside person. That means I had to find a 3rd member of the Graduate Faculty to be on my committee. Of course I am not the only grad student working with Dr. Snarky, so within days of her announcement all the other faculty that do even remotely close things had been snatched up by other people. Fortunately, Dr. ____ (it’s too early for a name, I’ll insert one when it comes to me) from related department and I met to discuss a summer reading project and we hit it off. She agreed to be the 3rd person on my committee. (There will be a post about Dr. ____ sometime soon. Maybe that is when she will get a name.)
Of course all of this requires stupid amounts of paperwork to pull off, but it’s do-able and keeps my universe in something close to a working order.

(This gets really long. I tried to figure out how to do a cut, like I can at lj, but it involves codes and things. So, until I have the time to figure it all out, just skip what you want. I'll hide the longer posts later. )


Personal Ramifications
At first I greeted Dr. Snarky’s announcement with mild annoyance. I constructed quick “alternative” plans and thought everything would be fine…of course, it wasn’t. Having done my MA here at M.U., Dr. Snarky is the person I’ve worked most closely with for the last four years. Now, it clearly wasn’t smart to form such a bond with a junior faculty member, whom I’ve known to be unhappy in her job for quite some time; however, she has good friends here, a cadre of junior faculty who have bonded, and I thought she would be able to stick it out until tenure. I cannot quite articulate the hole that her leaving (and the possibility that she wouldn’t be on my committees) created. In reality, I could find other people to do the work that she does with me, but it wouldn’t be the same. She has seen my work develop and as a consequence understands the way I think and write differently than anyone else. She always seems to push my thinking in good ways. The week before last, when I wasn’t sure what would happen with my committees, or who I could get to work with me, was particularly bad. I was on the verge of tears for days. Finally, I ended up in tears about a tangentially unrelated subject in Dr. Snarky’s class, which is definitely a post for another day. Still having everything settled (the paperwork is in the department secretaries hands and lists are on their way to being constructed), doesn’t really alleviate the sadness. I guess this is my first inkling as to why, as the C.P.’s Cool Victorian Mentor puts it, “all my academic friends are on anti-depressants.”

Institutional Ranting
“Our faculty/department is in transition.”
That is the mantra that everyone in the department, grad student and faculty alike, uses to tell themselves that it is all okay.
Our Department Head was hired in two years ago. We’ve made three new hires this year and have, I think, at least two more new hires next year. None of those hires counts towards replacing Dr. Snarky, nor do they account for the two other jr. faculty who did not pass third year/tenure review, and so will probably leave soon. It also does not account for the fact that Dr. Snarky is not the only jr. faculty unhappy here (i.e. more resignations over the next two-three years would not be surprising). Amidst all the retirements, resignations and what not, there are also several faculty members who have received prestigious grants and fellowships that allow them to take leaves and sabbaticals to further their own scholarship (at least two are gone this year, two will be gone next year).

Right now we are a department with heavy faculty representation in an area where there are currently only two PhD students, and maybe 3 MA students, studying. The major areas in which PhD students are studying are not currently well covered by the faculty (and many of those faculty are the ones taking leaves and sabbaticals). This is creating a problem for the students like the CP and I. My search for someone to be on my committees was sudden and unexpected, and I had to go outside the department to ask someone I’d never worked with before to be on my committee. However, the CP, and others who came in at the same time as us, are trying to find faculty members to serve on their committees, and they are having a hard time.

Yes, the faculty are over extended. They are teaching overloads. They are taking on more graduate students. However, when it comes time to make our committees, we should not be faced with a faculty that is routinely saying “no” to committee membership. As I have mentioned before, our program is promoted as a four year program, which means that after 18 credit hours we have to file the paperwork to form our committees. The fact that all the PhD students who came in with the CP and I need to form committees at a time when the faculty is “in flux” is not our fault. There is certainly not the funding available for us to stay on an extra year while they figure it out. Yet, the CP and others have all faced rejection when trying to find faculty members willing to work with them.

Aside from the fact that we don’t really control the timing of when we need to set our committees, what irritates me the most is that this is happening to “our class.” As a class we have really made service to the department and the university a standard for graduate students. Our departmental graduate student association was started three years ago, but it is really this year, under a board membership primarily from our class, that it has really become a presence. (See – In Service to What for some of what our association accomplished) Particularly this year, they’ve focused on making our departmental organization a presence around campus. All of what we’ve done makes our department look good. It makes it look like somewhere worth coming for the paltry stipend that we receive. Yet, the CP and Medieval Woman have been forced to file paperwork with a ‘tentative’ committee, because of faculty issues.

Although my own issues are resolved, it makes me irate for them. The icing on the cake of this frustration is that there doesn’t seem to be any inclination for the faculty to take a look at themselves individually or as a group. The mentality seems to be that once the new hires are complete everything will be fine. There is no recognition that a discussion should happen about why all this new hiring needs to happen. Why is it that jr. faculty don’t want to stay? What is it about this department that is so “collegial” and friendly that gives it such a high turnover?
Granted I am not on the faculty, this conversation could be taking place in some circles; however, I have a pretty good ear to the ground and this conversation doesn’t seem to be occurring. We could/should have an amazing faculty, but we don’t/won’t until these issues are addressed. Until then, what are we honestly supposed to tell the new recruits we are asked to lunch with?