Clearly, those of us who have survived, for better or worse, as women in academics, and specifically, in the Sciences, know full well that even though it *should not* be happening according to the statements and policies of out Universities and Professional Societies, inequity and frank discrimination are still a part of our lives.  I remember so clearly the meeting in which, as a graduate student, my PhD advisor said once when I disagreed with him, respectfully, about a lab issue, that it must be “that time of the month” for me, since I spoke up for myself.  Needless to say, I found another advisor.    Then there was the time when I was offered a prestigious postdoc fellowship in a great immunology lab, only to be told by the PI, “Well, we’re glad to have you, but please tell me you’re not going to crap up your career by doing something stupid like getting married and having kids”.  Time to move on-  again.

I wish these stories were isolated cases, but from my conversations with many colleagues, sadly, they are not.  We’ve all know for a long time that the academic pipeline is leakier for women than for men, and even leakier for members of underrepresented minorities.  Numerous studies have, over the years, tried to identify the variables that lead to greater loss of women in academic science departments.  Inside Higher Ed did a great piece reporting on the findings of a National Academies of Sciences panel formed to examine existing studies in 2006. 

Among the panel’s findings:

• “A series of cognitive and other studies “have not found any significant biological differences between men and women in performing science and mathematics that can account for the lower representation of women in academic faculty and scientific leadership positions in these fields.”
• Although women fall out of academic science at nearly every stage of the pipeline, women are underrepresented on faculties even in fields in which they have reached relative parity. They make up only 15.4 percent of full professors in the social and behavioral sciences and 14.8 percent in the life sciences, despite having earned more than 30 percent and 20 percent of the doctorates in those fields, respectively, over more than 30 years.
• Women are “very likely” to face discrimination — sometimes deliberately but often inadvertently — in “every field of science and engineering. (Minority women, the panel notes throughout the report, often face a double whammy.) The discrimination results from a combination of built-in biases that make them less likely to hire a woman than a man with identical accomplishments, of evaluation criteria that “contain arbitrary and subjective components that disadvantage women.” For instance, “characteristics that are often selected for and believed … to relate to scientific creativity — namely assertiveness and single-mindedness —” are both given greater weight in hiring and promotion than traits such as flexibility, diplomacy and curiosity, and “stereotyped as socially unacceptable traits for women.”
  • From Inside Higher Ed, 9/16/2006, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/19/women

Depressing, huh?  I especially think the last part of these excerpts, addressing the fact that traits of assertiveness and single-mindedness, critical in science, are looked down upon in women.  This speaks to gender differences in how men and women are socialized to communicate.  One book (and now website) that does, in my view, a really nice job of discussing these differences and providing strategies for women seeking to develop stronger communication styles is Women Don’t Ask:  Negotiation and the Gender Divide (http://www.womendontask.com/_.  Although I hope things are changing, my experience has always been that assertive men are often viewed as “Strong, decisive, and clear-minded” and assertive women are viewed as “Aggressive, b*tchy, and pushy*.  In the close halls of the academy, it only takes a few perceptions of one (male or female, for that matter) as difficult, non-collegial or entitled for some serious damage to be done to one’s ability to get a fair shake in the political world of the University.  It does mean one cannot succeed, but if the wrong people get fed up with a junior faculty member, the path to tenure and success can be rockier than it needs to be.

The good news, however, is that I am optimistic that things are looking somewhat brighter in the academy for women than they did when I was a junior faculty member (12 years ago)-  more of us have made it through the ranks and are in positions of administration where we may be able to help pave the way and improve climate.  Senior academic women and administrators can work to educate our colleagues in the senior ranks and actively and personally support younger women experiencing “learned helplessness”. Learned Helplessness is Psychological phenomenon in which lab animals (or people, frankly) learn through direct experience that no matter what they do, their behavior and performance does not translate into the expected or desired outcome, and then, when contingencies change such that those efforts could or would make a difference in outcome, the subject is too tired of trying and failing to try again. Most of us who are female (and male, for that matter) academics have experienced this phenomenon to some degree; our success is only due to being helped up to try again by a senior mentor, and having that renewed effort may off. Sadly, even trying yet again cannot always overcome frank discrimination and inequity, but with the help of some of us who have weathered the storm and have taken positions in Universities that may be able to catalyze some positive change, overcoming learned helplessness in the academic world may be a little easier, and strong women and men can be recognized for their clarity of thought, commitment to science and academics, and their ability to contribute great things to the changing academy.

At a time when many companies and Universities are either freezing hiring plans or reducing them, the jobs that are open are even more competitive than usual.  For example, the typical academic job (tenure-track assistant professorships) in my area, Psychology, typically bring in 75-100 applications, but this year, there are many more.  The competition is stiffer for the few jobs that are out there, whether in academic or in the corporate world.   This is especially true for academia, as many of the jobs out there are tenure-track; Universities look very carefully for new colleagues as we are making a 7-year pre-tenure commitment, in general.  

As the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in my college, I spend a lot of time looking at CVs and interviewing job candidates for positions all across my college.  It is a privilege to meet these potential colleagues, but I am continually amazed at the variability in how folks approach job interviews, and the apparent lack of understanding of the simple fact that how you present yourself in an interview matters.  This blog entry is aimed at providing a few core “best practices” for doing job interviews in academia and beyond.  It could be titled “Don’t do Dumb Stuff that Assures That You Will Not Get a Job.”  The take-home message is that you need to put your best foot forward now more than ever if you want to be competitive for that job you want. 

Dumb Thing #1:  Dressing Down   

Especially in academia, there seems to be a misconception that what you wear to a job interview does not, or perhaps should not, matter.  I’ve had several aspiring Assistant Professors show up in my office, to interview with the Dean’s proxy, in this case, wearing jeans.  Sometimes it’s jeans with a sport coat, and other times it’s jeans and a fleece.  Neither one presents the required level of professionalism;  remember that an interview is a 2-way street in which not only are you looking to see if you’d like to work at a certain company or university, but the organization is looking to see if they want to hire you instead of, perhaps, hundreds of other people.  It is so easy to make a stronger first impression by dressing up a bit, even if once you get the job you do not have to.

Dumb Thing #2:  Failing to Prepare  

Don’t show up to a company or university without having spent some time learning about them.  Websites, printed literature, and blogs are easy ways to learn about the mission, vision, and values of the place you’re visiting.  I’m stunned at the number of job candidates who come into the interview with me without knowing basic stuff such as the types of degrees offered in the department in which they’re interviewing or the name of the Dean of the college.  Asking questions about the fundamental characteristics of the organization, such as “How many students does the colleges serve each year?” or “What is the focus of the company right now?” are simply ways of saying “I don’t care enough about this job opportunity to have done even the minimal prep for this interview.” 

Dumb Thing #3:  Being too Familiar  

Dear Job Candidate, 

Thanks for applying to our posting, but I want to follow up on our interview with a few clarifications.  We are not friends.  Do not speak to me like you know me and I am a buddy of yours from graduate school.  It is no more appropriate for you to ask me who my kids are or what my spouse does that it is for me to ask you those same questions.  I am interviewing on behalf of the Dean to see if you would be a good addition to the college, and you should ask me intelligent questions about the University and college.  Also, you might want to talk less about your sister who lives at the ski area and how it would be great if you got this job so you could hang out with her more in favor of talking about why you want to come to this University.  Best of luck with your job hunt.

Best regards,

Associate Dean Mary

Dumb Thing #4:  Arrogance

It’s true that you may be interviewing at several companies or universities, but know that most likely, hundreds of people applied for this position and the ones who are being interviewed are as good as or better than you.  Do not take it for granted that the job is yours and ask questions that suggest that we would be lucky to get you.   For example, statements such as, “The last company I worked for was really inflexible with letting me work from home.  I hope that won’t be a problem here.” or “It will be critical for me to be able to determine my own teaching schedule each semester, as I really don’t like teaching in the mornings.” do not work in your favor.  (Yes, someone said the latter to me in an interview recently).   It’s certainly important to get information that you need, but remember that you are trying to sell yourself as well as check out the suitability of the company or university to your needs.

The Take-Home Message:  Use that Big Brain of Yours!!!

These four things really are common sense when you stop and think about them.  The goal, of course, is to present yourself in the best light possible and distinguish yourself in a positive way from the other applicants.  Be yourself, but do show the appropriate level of respect for the folks you’re talking to.  Remember that they are talking to you and a whole bunch of other bright, eager people; you should be working to distinguish yourself from the others and show that you would be the best choice.  Of course you deserve the job, but if you present poorly, you’ll lose it.  

There’s a lot of discussion at my university these days about “changing the faculty reward system” to better reflect modern faculty work. Our institution, like many around the country, is developing definitions of faculty work and tenure and promotion criteria which move away from the typical “Big Three” of research, teaching, and service toward integrated models of faculty activity. We all know that faculty don’t work in the solitary way they used to- they connect with each other, the community, corporate entities, and others to apply the knowledge and training they have to both address problems and expose students to that process. Gone are the days of the solitary biologist in the lab with the bacterial cultures, working alone to determine and manipulate growth curves. Today’s biologist is in the field with the environmental scientist, the chemist, and the public health researcher figuring out how the bacterium got there, why it’s growing where and how it is, and estimating its impact on the water supply. It’s interdisciplinary research, of course, but there more to it than that. It’s the service-learning class in which students are supposed to apply what they learn in their Sociology lectures to work they do in a shelter for battered women and children. These integrated activities are hard to quantify in the traditional Big Three frame, so clearly, we need to find a way to quantify and evaluate these “new” types of faculty work. As the Associate Dean who runs my college’s tenure and promotion process, and an interdisciplinary scholar in my own rite, I’m on board with this, but I have a deep, dark secret- I’m a Stanley Fish fan.

Although I agree that we need to modernize the way we see and reward faculty work, I have a deepening concern about our approach. Finally, I’ve named my unease, and it is akin to a theme laid out in Stanley Fish’s new book, “Save the World on Your Own Time.” When I utter Dr. Fish’s name in the halls of my university, it’s almost as if I’ve made a disparaging remark about someones mother, but there are fundamental aspects of his view that must be integrated into our discussions of faculty work. 

Dr. Fish says many things in his new book, many of them provocative and controversial (BTW, I highly recommend the book to the thinking academic-  it is one of the most invigorating and sometimes maddening reads I’ve had in a long time).  The particularly germane kernel from the book is that faculty work must still be scholarly “faculty” work, not social work, political work, or personal work without clear and definite connections to real, rigorous scholarship.  Faculty work, done on behalf of the university, as innovative and interdisciplinary as it might be, must still be rigorous, scholarly, and deeply grounded in the discipline(s) in which we teach and do research, even as we cross boundaries and venture beyond the walls of our labs and classrooms.  The focus of the conversation regarding “valuing modern faculty work” has shifted from this fundamental tenet of making faculty scholarship, clearly and broadly defined in terms of rigor and quality, accessible and meaningful in the larger context of society, to essentially finding ways to accept any activity faculty decide to undertake and name as “scholarship” as a valued activity in the tenure and promotion process.  We are on the brink of becoming overly-inclusive in what we accept as valued faculty work; unless we are deliberate and careful, we will find ourselves utterly unable to objectively measure the scholarly performance of faculty members, or to meaningfully discriminate among them for tenure and promotion.  If we’re not gutsy enough to insist on rigor and objective measures of scholarship in these new definitions, we will become the stewards of institutions in which it is difficult to delineate tenured faculty members from community activists, social workers, clergy, politicians and journalists.

In our enthusiasm to value diverse and innovative faculty activities, we must not lose sight of the fact that all activities are simply not created equal.  There must be a measuring stick, a rigorous, empirical, scholarship-based measuring stick, that assesses the value and quality of the work faculty undertake. For the sake of illustration, I offer 2 examples of a “service-learning course”. The contrast here reflects the variability in implementation of approved courses that I’ve observed in the name of “diverse faculty work” in my own college:

CASE #1: Dr. Smith’s section of an approved Psychology service-learning course combines in-class work focused on generating research questions from peer-reviewed primary literature, with a service learning component in which the students volunteer in a battered women and children’s shelter while they are gathering observational data to test hypotheses generated in class. Students then examine the dataset, address the hypotheses they generated, and complete research papers and presentations based on their data and the literature.

CASE #2: Dr. Doe’s section of the same approved Psychology service-learning course takes a different approach. Students meet in class to talk about their expectations of what will happen and how they will feel when they go to the shelter to work. When they return to the classroom, they write “reaction papers” about their feelings and experiences and class discussions focus on what they think the causes of the Sociological challenges faced by the people in the shelter might be, and how they as citizens might help to solve them. They write a final paper based on these discussions and their reaction papers.

Case #1 demonstrates a scholarly approach to a service learning course, and Case #2 does not. As we expand or view of what faculty work is and should be, it’s critical that we learn the lesson illustrated by these cases; that not all “innovative, creative, and integrative” faculty activities are created equal. It’s great to find ways to value the great work faculty do that crosses and blurs the boundaries of the training I, for example, received 20 years ago, but there must still be a real, definable, scholarly anchor for valuing and evaluating these activities, and that is the part of the conversation that’s missing right now.

For tenure and promotion to retain their value, they cannot be entirely customizable, “one-size-fits-all” propositions, adaptable to the self-defined scholarship of each faculty member.  Tenure and promotion are not and cannot be a feel-good exercise.  We must tenure only active and highly competent scholars, innovative or not, and to assess their acheivements, including those that cross boundaries and mix things up a bit, using hallmarks of true scholarship that are accepted and defensible to our peers and society.  

For higher education to evolvein the way we dream it will, we must create a balance between creativity and quality in faculty work. The challenge is to be flexible enough to appreciate and value innovative and high quality work, but also to be bold enough to set a high bar for our faculty to make sure our students have the experience they deserve.

There- I’ve said it.

This morning I’m sitting in the airport preparing for a Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences (CCAS) Personnel Development workshop for Deans. I’ve been really looking forward to this chance to get together with old and new colleagues to discuss, struggle with, and hopefully find some possible strategies foe dealing with several increasingly thorny faculty development, retention, and engagement issues. The folks running the workshop asked us to put forward a couple of case studies we wanted used as discussion points for the 2 day meeting, with the goal of increasing the likelihood that each of us participating could come away with more than the realization that others are facing similar problems, but rather with some action steps to try to move things forward.

Needless to say, I thought of way more than 2 case studies, but only submitted 2, that are currently near and dear to my heart from both a faculty development standpoint, but also from an organizational management and faculty engagement standpoint, especially for our non-tenure-track faculty. Curious to see what others think about these:

CASE #1: PROFESSOR DEADWOOD WAS AN ACTIVE, ENGAGED SCHOLAR WHEN SHE WAS A JUNIOR FACULTY MEMBER, BUT SINCE RECEIVING TENURE AND BEING PROMOTED TO FULL PROFESSOR SEVERAL YEARS AGO, SHE SIMPLY SAYS “NO” WHEN ASKED TO STEP UP AND SERVE HER DEPARTMENT, COLLEGE, AND UNIVERSITY. DISCUSSIONS WITH HER DEPARTMENT CHAIR, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR GOODFRIEND, ABOUT DINGING PROFESSOR DEADWOOD IN HER MERIT REVIEWS HAVE BEEN FRUITLESS, AS CHAIR GOODFRIEND DOES “NOT WANT TO MAKE WAVES” IN THE DEPARTMENT, AND SO SHE CONTINUES TO GIVE PROFESSOR DEADWOOD VERY HIGH ANNUAL REVIEWS DESPITE HER COMPLETE DISENGAGEMENT. THE DEAN’S OFFICE IS CONSIDERING INCLUDING THE DEGREE TO WHICH CHAIRS USE THE ANNUAL MERIT PROCESS TO “MOTIVATE” SENIOR FACULTY TO TAKE ON THE SERVICE LOAD THAT IS EXPECTED OF THEM, BUT IS CONCERNED THAT SUCH A POLICY WILL BE SEEN AS MICROMANAGEMENT.

CASE #2: THE NON-TENURE TRACK FACULTY ON OUR CAMPUS ARE SEEKING A SERIES OF TITLES THAT WILL BETTER REFLECT THEIR ACTIVITIES AND WILL HAVE RANK ASSOCIATED WITH THEM. FOR EXAMPLE, CURRENTLY OUR COLLEGE HAS INSTRUCTORS AND SENIOR INSTRUCTORS (ALL ONE-YEAR CONTRACTS), WHO CONTRACTUALLY DO TEACHING, AND ARE NOT REQUIRED OR ENCOURAGED TO DO RESEARCH OR SERVICE. THE REQUESTED NEW TITLES WOULD INCLUDE “ASSISTANT, ASSOCIATE, AND FULL” RANKS AND REVIEW OF RESEARCH, TEACHING AND SERVICE, BUT STILL WOULD BE ATTACHED TO ONE-YEAR CONTRACTS AND PROMOTION WOULD NOT BE ASSOCIATED WITH A PAY RAISE. THE CONCERN IS THAT IN THE PAST, OUR COLLEGE HAS BEEN SUCCESSFULLY SUED BY NON-TENURE-TRACK FACULTY WHO CLAIMED, THAT ALTHOUGH THEIR CONTRACTS DID NOT REQUIRE THEM TO DO RESEARCH AND SERVICE, THE FACT THAT THEY CHOSE TO DO THAT SHOULD MAKE THEM ELIGIBLE FOR TENURE. ALTHOUGH THE COLLEGE VALUES IT’S NON-TENURE TRACK FACULTY A GREAT DEAL, THE LEGAL ISSUES SURROUNDING THE CURRENT DISCUSSION ARE WORRISOME.

These struggles are major ones in academia, where title and rank are not necessarily accompanied by large monetary support, and where there is essentially no accountability for poor behavior or lack of partiticipation once a faculty member is tenured. Moreover, mid-level administration is constrained, largely, by its upper levels (here is a place where business and academia come together), and even innovative ideas that may be useful in engaging faculty and other colleagues that are not tied to money, but rather, have prestige or recognition of seniority associated with them, require extensive vetting, legal consideration, and sometimes, end up being analyzed away through committees, budget analysis, and compliance audits.

Having said all that cynical stuff, I am still excited about this conference, because for me, half the fun of my job is trying to find solutions to problems like these that *will* work and will not get us into hot water (warm water, fine, but not hot water). Flexibility in thinking and possibility-driven discussions have to happen, even if 90% of them don’t result in something workable. I hope to come home with some flesh for the bones of the ideas I have and some insight from others dealing with situations like those I describe above. Sooner or later, we have to find solutions to these problems, even if they are small steps that start to shift seemingly intractable problems.

Hope springs eternal!!