At the end of last semester a colleague went on at length at the end of the semester faculty meeting about grade inflation. About how sick he was of new and untrained faculty giving out grades like they were cookies to placate the students.
He was not wrong. But this past week I received a number of aggregated statistics for my department, and the same faculty member had the highest GPA in the entire department. In an average class he was giving 75% As, 20% Bs, and then the rest were failures from withdrawal.
We don't use these stats in any real way; they just come to us through whatever giant tool they use. I will occasionally meet with a new or grad student instructor if the numbers are way out of line with our departmental averages.
But in this case it's a tenured faculty member who holds himself up as a bastion of rationality, morality, high societal standing, and educational superiority. He wants it both ways: to appear as if he alone holds the line against the horde, and to please his students with soft and unearned grades.
I have another year to serve as chair but as I've shared a bit over the past while, I cannot get my head around the profession like I once could. Students, faculty, staff, and administration all just annoy me, and I know it's not healthy, not with the official start of the semester just a month away.
This has all happened so fast.
Hi Fab!
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if this would help, but it has helped me with similar feelings. I am not in a place where I can retire, and I had to find a way to get back to not hating nearly everything about my job. Soooo---I made time for tutoring. That's it. When I did that, I really did feel better. Especially last year. The one-on-one connection with students who really need the help---it was wonderful!
I worked it so I tutor people in the developmental area of our college---so I am tutoring folks who need lots of help. I find that makes me feel even better. If you don't work in a place with a large population of this type of student (I get the feeling you work at a really prestigious U) perhaps you might get the same feeling of having done some serious good if you volunteered at an organization helping newcomers here with literacy, or something like that. You have the skills to make a profound difference in people's lives. I have found that using those skills to do that, or at least try to do that, has made a very real difference in the way my frustration at academia affects me.
A colleague of mine equates chair anxiety to DEFCON levels. As a guess, you're just about to go DEFCON 2?
ReplyDeleteThe chair job really is not fun. All the responsibility for herding the cats and no authority to use the stapler on the screw-ups. You have my sympathies.
But know that you are not alone. Reflecting on my previous chairs:
- 1st, 18 years ago, has turned into the bitter old silverback
- 2nd retired immediately after being chair
- so did 3rd (which is NOT to say that the position drove these two out..rather that they fell on their own sword knowing they had their whole retirement to 'recover')
- 4th took a leave after, went to 1/2 time and is now retiring,
- 5th's term was extended but then zhe left before finishing to become a dean at a new school
- 6th, railroaded into starting early, had already started wondering "what are we doing here anyway?"
So only 1 has been truly scarred. Most saw it as service. And 1 exploited the Peter Principle for their own advantage.
The 'happiest' seemed to stay so by ignoring the BS and by instigating the small changes for the better that their position let them make (when decisions get left to the chair, the chair gets to decide!)
That and kvetching with a small group of friend-colleagues ( thanks Zooze!)
I, like Bella, do my best when I make time for and focus on the parts of my life that I enjoy the best. For me it's the in class interactions.
What's your favourite part of your career?
I wouldn't last 3 days as a chair. This is an example of why - I would tell myself that I would take it with a grain of salt, but I wouldn't be able to control myself in the moment and I'd call him out in front of everyone, and then I'd regret it.
ReplyDeleteI do crazy office hours because of what Bella says. And after a bad day - I'm more apt to let a student stay late.
I have two colleagues like yours. Actual quotations from one: "we MUST do something about high grades!" Then, "my grades? I can't help it if my instruction is superior and inspires students."
ReplyDeleteI hope your next year is better.
I've seen that behavior where I am as well. Do as I say, not as I do. Plus, the younger faculty may be told by senior faculty that the easiest way to get good evals is to give easy grades. Plus, if you're easy, students don't need to come to office hours and many of my colleagues view that as a win.
ReplyDeleteI had a blast when I was department Chair, because I got to do lots of excellent SHOUTING. Try it, Fab, it's very therapeutic---for you, at least. Don't let anyone HAVE IT who doesn't richly DESERVE IT, of course.
ReplyDeleteSince serving at Chair, I have also evaded being conscripted to to it again, TWICE. Once was when I was the first to sign a vote-of-no-confidence for a Chair who was lazy and dishonest with us: I'd spent more than enough time cleaning up his mess.
A major advantage of being the physics department is that, whenever our Incompetent Dean of Students hassles us about how many D/W/F grades we award, we can give the snappy comeback of THIS IS PHYSICS: if our students can't meet STANDARDS, they become a source of DANGER for the PUBLIC, the LAST thing we want as a PUBLIC university. And they back off, for 2 1/2 days---until they come up with their next abomination, of course.
I did a 3 year term as chair and then got roped into another 3 years, which I recently completed with at least some of my sanity in tact. Since I'm mid-career, retiring after was not an option. But what I did start doing about halfway through was to start looking for younger people to start training up to be future leaders. Not a nice thing to do a junior colleague, but hey, that's how I ended up in the chair's office.
ReplyDeleteRE the grade inflation thing: At my place, we have a custom of periodically distributing a list of everyone's assigned grades. They've always had the instructors' names left on, ostensibly so that each person can pick her/his own out of the group and compare to others. Sometimes we'll discuss these in meetings. This hardly ever results in much change, but the publicity of the data makes it impossible for people to bluster about being a tougher grader than they actually are.
I've been in a department that did something along the lines that Hhh describes. My own department may even have done it at one time -- or maybe that was an outside "service" that was FOIAing the data, and posting it for students to see (the joys of a state school).
ReplyDeleteI know I've drifted upward a bit myself, but at least I don't criticize others (and the main result of my drifting is way too many Bs and B+s; I'm still chary with As).
I both agree and disagree with others on the tutoring/more student contact as a cure. I think that every time I spend an exhausting but mostly satisfying week or two conferencing, and nearly resolve to have conferences at the beginning as well as the end of the semester. Then I get to the stage I'm now in -- with a few straggling students constantly rescheduling and canceling missed conferences, and a few others clingily requesting follow-up on follow-up -- and remember why I don't want to start these patterns earlier in the semester (or at least that I need to figure out how to set better boundaries while still being available for one-on-one help).
And no, chairing doesn't look like fun at all. My own (very, very good chair) has made it clear that (s)he will return with considerable relief to teaching and research after hir present term (and yes, is doing the business of talking with successors and encouraging them to gain relevant training and experience).
DeleteIt's always been a thankless and frustrating job (at least for the sort of people who actually do it well), and I suspect it's becoming more so, thanks both to ever-growing layers of upper administration and ever-growing pressures on both tenure-track and contingent faculty at the department level. It's a classic stuck-in-the-middle position, with less power than it once had, and more bad news to pass on in both directions.
I hope yours at least comes with a recovery sabbatical/research leave, as ours does.
@Fab, it sounds like you're in a lonely position in an entirely fucked up situation. But that's higher education in America, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteIt does happen fast.