The Academy

This post is about the importance, and necessity, of graduate students getting their work “out there” into the community, upping their Google factor, and generally presenting themselves as scholars.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about as I become graduate faculty.

While older faculty and many universities still don’t recognize the ubiquitousness and power of the net, graduate students should be taking advantage of the online world to promote themselves. One way they can do that is through their own blog. However, many graduate students don’t have enough information, work, or time to do that. So what could be done instead?

In the Medieval Middle suggests that graduate programs create and maintain a graduate student blog, either internal only (which would not promote) or external, and encourage but not require posting from the graduate students.

I think this would be a great way to promote both the individual students and the degree program as a whole.

If there were limitations on posts, in terms of interest or scholarship, the blog could also hold a higher standard and perhaps garner more cache for the students through a limited “review” requirement.

What do you think? Would having a graduate program blog, where your best work was posted and discussed, have been a help to you?

Have we left the Industrial Age and the Information Age and moved into a new era, the Conceptual Age?

Think about it. Other than our classrooms, what else is all about cogs in a row now? Are those jobs still in the US? Nope. They have been outsourced. We are past that age. What about information? Isn’t that a rare and valuable commodity? Nope. It’s all on the internet and anyone can have access to an “expert” quickly. So what age are we in?

I have been listening to A Whole New Mind. While I have only heard the theoretical chapters, for some reason, those have expanded in my head and I see all kinds of relevance and practical applications in my teaching and my own work.

In the book, Daniel Pink says that we are in a new age: the Conceptual Age. And the elements that are not going to be able to be outsourced in this age are:
design
play
empathy
meaning
narrative
symphony (This means the big picture. Not just the second violinist, but all the violinists and how they work with the cello and the viola and the drummer and the percussionist and where do those bells fit, anyway?)

Having been reading The Innovator’s DNA, I would add:
innovation

These are the elements that I am going to be focusing on in my teaching because I am convinced that most of my students are going to be out reconfiguring work so they can stay employed. Having some notion of which direction to reconfigure it in will be helpful, I believe.

I always begin my classes with my credentials. I do a sort of mini-résumé (though if I am teaching business writing I use a full one). I tell my students that I worked hard to get my PhD and that they are the only people who call me “Dr.” I have never had any trouble with people calling me Ms. or Mrs. I’ve never felt slighted because they call the guy with an MA, “Dr.” and me something else–because that hasn’t happened.

Thus it was with great surprise that I learned during new faculty orientation that this has been and continues to be a problem with the student population here. It was interesting to learn that not only the faculty member who has been here twenty+ years, but also a second-year female faculty member has had issues with this.

I suppose that I have been short-circuiting that issue (remember I taught here before) and that it has not been a problem because I clearly spell out my achievements and my expectations.

I hope I may also impact that happening in my students’ other classes, as I tell them that they can always call someone Dr, even if they aren’t, but to NOT call them Dr when they are is an insult. Maybe my students call everyone Dr. I hope so anyway.

It seems that the question of self-promotion in academia is coming up more often (or I am noticing it more often).

Speculative Diction on blogspot.com has an article called “Shameful Self-promotion vs. Meritocracy.”

This blogpost was written in response to the Times’ How Not to Get Left on the Shelf article. It also responds to Dr. Lee Skallerup’s post Shameless Self-Promotion.

It’s not just a discussion of the arguments about whether academics are successful if they don’t have a general audience. In fact, while it starts there, I don’t think that is the meat of the argument at all.

One point that I thought was very truthful and telling was an almost-throw away line on blogging and social media in the academy.

The suspicion of self-promotion is also part of the reason that blogging and other social media activities are often dismissed by academic colleagues and peers.

My university is very positive towards blogging and social media activities, but many people use the social media specifically for work. (I have not figured out how to separate the two, but I would really like to create a second facebook account and migrate my colleagues and work-related acquaintances over to that one.)

Not only are self-promoters more successful, but so are graduate students whose supervisors “push” their students’ work actively. Ever wonder how so-and-so managed to get that article published in a good journal, or a helpful research assistant job, or an item that showcases their work on the faculty web page? Committee members and supervisors can help with this too, behind the scenes, and it’s in their interests because your success reflects back upon them.

This is an important thing to remember as a graduate student and it is something to keep in mind when teaching graduate students. If my students are successful, my work also gets a wider audience. Thus it is in my own self-interest to encourage and market my grad students as strongly as possible.

(So, if I ever get any grad students, watch out. You may come to feel like they are a member of your family from all the promotion on this blog and other places.)

Women in general are less likely to claim expertise, which can be a detriment when it comes to succeeding in an academic career and a public profile. Female graduate students are more likely to suffer from “Imposter Syndrome” and to lack the sense of self-value that helps them develop crucial professional networks.

To some extent, I don’t buy this. I think everyone is likely to suffer from Impostor Syndrome.

However, I know that I have been far less at ease in claiming expertise than, for example, my husband. In fact, my sons often claim more expertise than I do, even in fields I know, simply because they are so sure they know everything. (Grin.)

But this is actually a problem because I am fairly sure that I blew an interview once by saying that I am a “pretty good” teacher. I am not the best teacher ever, but I am dedicated, consistent, responsible, and engaged. That’s a lot better than many teachers I have known over the years. I am also actively engaged with my students both in and out of the classroom. … When I say “pretty good” what I really mean is “not the best teacher ever, but amazing, nevertheless.” That’s not how I phrase it though.

I particularly liked the closing paragraph:

Let’s try to avoid allowing self-promotion to be one of the “dirty secrets” of the academy, something to be sneered at or reserved for the egotistical and vainglorious, something that “real” academics don’t do; after all, what’s a book launch for?

When I have a book launch, I will definitely let you know.

I was reading a blog from Swarthmore.edu and found an article by Easily Distracted entitled, Polenta Soup and the Terrible, Awful, No-Good Cost of Higher Education.”

What I thought particularly intriguing was the argument in favor of tenure:

Tenure itself costs little, by the way. Or more precisely, it costs nothing compared to the idea that you’d just keep extending the contracts of strong teachers and researchers until retirement. The cost of tenure is institutional and programmatic, not financial: it keeps a university from responding rapidly to changing trends in knowledge. Arguably, this is a good thing independent of its costs. Some believe that an important responsibility of academia is the conservation of intellectual traditions as opposed to chasing momentary trends. Tenure is only a financial cost if you want to follow the growing norm in white-collar labor of firing people when they’re in their fifties even if they’re still doing great work simply to save on their salaries. Maybe that is what some people want, to have everyone in the same miserable situation except for the billionaires. I’d rather see if the whole society can’t go in the opposite direction and increase job security for most people.

There is more at the original article. It’s an interesting read.

I am not a great Twitter user. My tweets are still sporadic. Some days I will tweet every two minutes and then I will disappear for weeks at a time.

However, today I feel like interacting with Twitter and the reply button is insufficient as I am a writer (and verbose) and the minimal characters are sufficient for eliciting a thought but not discussing one.

Mary Beth Hertz (mbteach): Instead of banning, I wonder if schools could require a crash course in responsible use of social media for teachers #edchat

My new college is focused on innovative use of technology. What this means is that approved classroom use is ubiquitous (or expected to be). However, what that classroom use of technology looks like is less clear.

Do we have one word quizzes where students text me their answers?
Is it surfing the net for definitions?
Are we attempting to put together research on the fly in the classroom?
Am I using digital storytelling to connect with my students?

Tom Whitby: At one time in education it was okay for teachers to hug students. Those days are gone. #Edchat

My college used to be (twenty and thirty years ago), the kind of place where teachers would hug students. In fact, hugs were almost required in student to student interactions. However, today they counsel us against hugging. Don’t even touch the students, since you don’t know what they will feel is appropriate.

And I agree with that, as I am often touched by people I am not comfortable with (waiter directing me to a table, greeter shaking my hand).

However, I still miss the hugs. I wish the hugs were possible. I wish the world were a less litigious and painful place so that hugs were sweet and encouraging rather than fearful and potentially-abused physicalities.

Students Getting the Right Amount of Sleep Have Higher GPAs… I wonder how I can introduce that fact to my freshman. I wonder how I could make it real to them. (Maybe ask them to note when they sleep? Then tell them why afterwards?)

The AV Club: Watching TV is taking years off your life, according to scientists nobody asked.

I don’t watch television. So I guess I have extra years. And I certainly don’t watch television like my students, while talking to friends, writing their homework, and IMing the folks back home.

Watching television can be part of your life. It can be your life. I don’t recommend that, though. The argument, and the AV Club’s response appears in this article.

I wish I could always post on every single interesting tweet. But then I would never get that book review finished, or my classes prepared, or even my dinner eaten.

Dr. Lee Skallerup argues that women who promote themselves are seen as bad female academics. She has information to back this claim up as well.

This makes me ponder whether I have been self-promoting sufficiently since rarely has anyone mentioned that I should back off or back down.

Hmm. So how should I self-promote? I have sent my summer activities in to my department and my college. I have also sent a longer version to the department blog.

I definitely need to do more with Twitter. Here Dr. Skallerup is an icon to follow.

Do you announce where you are presenting? Do you ask for feedback?

I need to think about this some more.

Community College Spotlight talks about How Much Debt for a Degree?

If you want to see something scary, read that.

Then think about the fact that those are averages. I personally know someone who owes $85,000 for a BA and MA. Ouch.

According to Douglas W. Texter, in a Chronicle article, Academic English Is Not a Club I Want to Join, it is full of angry female tenured professors and very few men who act like men (in the modernist sense of the term).

Much of how he described himself resonated with me, though I am three years early for Gen X and my parents were also Boomers, but non-traditional ones.

I saw the article because someone on Twitter pointed it out, annoyed with his discussion. “I forgot that what English departments really need is masculine, intellectual swashbuckling.”

But I think part of the annoyance may have resulted from his loose use of the term and a lack of understanding of his point.

I don’t relate to angry women, though I know some. Angry women aren’t great role models for me; I understand their positions, but don’t relate. Certainly I knew a lot about the academic world before entering it. My grandmother earned a BA from Berkeley back in the 1930s. She had two Master’s and was asked to recuse herself from the PhD application process because a man would need the position more. But my grandmother wasn’t angry. She kept learning and teaching and growing all her life. She is my role model.

I went to graduate school because I loved to study, wanted to teach, and thought that writing was something I could persuade my students was important for their lives. I didn’t go for equity, though I know many of those angry women are the reason I didn’t have to.

What Texter appears to me to have been looking for was someone who engaged with the culture as it exists now in ways that he thought were interesting. Both my previous and my present college have plenty of people in the departments who would have delighted Texter, had he had the privilege to meet them. Many academics, however, are wrapped up in the game and seem locked in an ivory tower just as isolated as Sleeping Beauty ever was, with thorns of their own creation. I think that is what he is talking about.

Some might say the article is a rationalization for his lack of success in the tenure-track positions, but I think that many brilliant scholars and great teachers are going begging for adjunct work these days. Does he really need a rationalization? I don’t think so.

Plus, he doesn’t just say what he wanted, he gave examples. He wanted people who had a wider audience in mind, people who weren’t focused on tenure, people who were interesting to him. Yes, he characterizes it as intellectual swashbuckling, but I would have LOVED to have had my grad classes be anywhere near as scintillating as the conversation among my Mensa-level brilliant friends on Dante’s Inferno at a restaurant. They weren’t, though. They were good, solid education but not invigorating and engaging. That’s what I think he was looking for.