TCAC
August 1999 Report Index
Index of Responses
| UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, BOTHELL |
August 16, 1999
Dear Professor Rose:
I have studied the August 1999 Report of the Tri-Campus Advisory Committee and find it to be a most significant document. As you know, I took this job as a senior professor in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences )IAS) at the University of Washington-Bothell (UWB) last year, moving from the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO), where, for twenty-six years, I was a member of a nationally recognized, award-winning program. I also taught courses in seven different departments. Thus I have had broad ranging experiences--from UNO's metropolitan campus to the land-grant research university in Lincoln.
I was interested in the University of Washington-Bothell (UWB) position because of the reputation of the UW campus as a whole and because of the caliber of faculty in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (IAS) at UWB. I was also interested in the mission of UWB, which gives priority ot the primacy of the student-teacher relationship. I was hired, in part, because of my national work on the advancement of the role of teaching and learning within institutions of higher education. (I have, for example, recently had two articles accepted fro publications in September 1999 in widely read places--The Chronicle of Higher Education and Change magazine). At UNO I worked in a multicultural program originally designed by Dean Hubert Locke and so brought significant 4expertise in multicultural education. I cam prepared to refine and "export" the work going on with teaching a nd learning and interdisciplinary studies at Bothell to the national scene. What I have found at Bothell is the embodiment of ideals and principles espoused but not practiced on many campuses. I was also interested in institution building, especially the programmatic aspects concerning interdisciplinary studies and IAS's multicultural focus.
After a year on our campus, I have found that the balance between research, teaching, and service is highly skewed toward service. I have grown very concerned about this. Let me use my own case as an example. Two weeks after I arrived I was mad coordinator of Society, Ethic, and Human Behavior, the largest concentration in IAS at UWB. In this role, I recruit and supervise adjunct professors, among other responsibilities. In IAS, I was the only senior faculty member in a non-administrative position, which meant that I sat on all tenure and promotion committees and reviewed all cases campus-wide. (One of these committees took hours of my time, including late afternoon and Sunday meetings. But such work paid off because the case was settled amicably rather than through an even longer and more costly grievance process.) I mentored 7 assistant professors over the year and was asked by 4 others from other departments for mentoring. I reviewed two faculty members in another department of renewal of their third-year contracts. Because the current chair of Personnel took a well-earned sabbatical, I chaired that committee during Winter and Spring quarters; and because there were no other senior faculty members, I reviewed all the tenure and tenure-track faculty files for merit recommendations as an advisor to the Chair. I also served on Faculty Affairs, chairing that committee in the fall; Academic Affairs; and the Steering Committee. I was on two search committees--for the IAS chair and for a position in American Studies. In my first quarter, when I was teaching 90 students and preparing a new course (without a teaching assistant, I was asked to take major responsibility for developing a masters program (which I declined).
I felt obliged to carry out these service activities because if I did not, they would have fallen to the chair (who was already working 70 hours per week) or associate or assistant professors concerned about promotion and tenure. Since I was mentoring the untenured faculty members, I knew what such time commitments would have meant for their careers. Their efforts were better spent in writing Tools for Transformation grants, I thought, than in reading application files. And they were questioning whether or not they could stay in an institution that demanded so much from them in terms of service.
I have learned that my service duties were not different from the original faculty members who started UWB. In twenty-seven years of university teaching, even in a special program with high service demands, I have never given so much time and effort to service. I believe that the load is extraordinary and unsustainable.
For me, this lack of balance creates the kind of moral distress I describe in my article to be published in the September/October issue of Change magazine. As a senior professor and mentor to young faculty, I am obliged to read files carefully; to weigh and deliberate upon policies and procedures, as they records of the faculty members will be measured by them; to insure fair hearing; to write good job advertisements; to meet with and encourage new faculty in their academic endeavors; to attempt to resolve misunderstandings and communicate across differences; and to think in terms of what is best for the present and future students in our program. This takes time and a kind of mindful alterness to faculty, procedures, student needs, and program development. The moral distress comes from wanting to do the right things to sustain the integrity of the program/campus and wanting to do the right thing to sustain myself as a scholar. How can I continue such a heavy service load and myself to be a model for balance? And as I encourage the younger faculty to spend more time in research, who will pick up these governance duties, other than myself? Although there will be four full professors in IAS this Fall, one is retiring the next year, one will be on sabbatical for most of the year, and the other has the responsibility of building a new science program from the ground up. And each time new faculty members arrive on our campus--this year there are two, next year three--they need mentoring. Who will do this work? And I am worried about gender dynamics; namely, that it's easy to see me, a senior woman (and the only one except for the chair) as the most appropriate for such relational work inside the department and campus.
I could continue to take on such a large service role, but the price is too high. First, my research time is compromised, and the system does not recognize service in the same way that it does teaching and research (nor should it). For another, working internally in the program and campus prevents me from making important community, state, and national connections. For example, George Bridges has asked me to be part of the teaching/learning efforts on the Seattle campus, but I do not have the time. I have not been able to do other important outreach activities, such as writing grants, joining the Carnegie project on the advancement of teaching, and so forth. I believe that the Bothell campus is a model for higher education of an institution that intertwines teaching and research with integrity, and I feel eager to make national links for the campus. But I can't do that if I am buried in departmental operations.
In conclusion, I am very concerned about achieving a balanced faculty contribution to the campus as it grows. The move to a new campus will add new duties to our already heavy loads. The faculty members across the university are very able teachers and researchers, and their teaching and research efforts have created a strong institution. We need relief from the pressures of service. The next two years are a turning point: if th resources identified in your report are forthcoming, the institution will be vibrant and dynamic learning environment. The steps proposed in the report will help re-balance our workloads. Please let me know how I can help in the implementation process.
Sincerely,
Diane Gillespie
Professor
Copies to:
Stan Slater
Linda Watts
TCAC
August 1999 Report Index
Index of Responses
