The Good, the Bad and the Necessary
Well…as the fall/spring academic year comes to an end and the summer begins, I have been thinking a lot about my own perspective shift over the course of this year. Allow me a few moments of (perhaps narcissistic) self-refection and then I will get to the part where I share information that I have learned: concrete stuff that might be helpful.
Long story short, I end this academic year as Faculty Fellow happy. Happy because, while not perfect, our university is thriving in a really difficult climate. Our university continues to experiment, to achieve, to improve in many areas. Of course, too, and at the same time, our university struggles to keep up with what is demanded of us from the state, and, the nation really, given the nature of so-called transformations in higher education (including the pressure to quantify and crunch numbers). These transformations hit some of us harder than others, notably humanists, those in the arts, and of course contingent faculty members across disciplines. [To be fair, I am not sure what it means to be a professor in a STEM field now; perhaps it is not all roses and chocolates.]
Let me begin with the good stuff going on and end with the challenges in responding to pressures from above.
The Good Stuff
As you may know (or not know if you are like me and do not pay much attention to announcements sent out to all faculty and staff), FIU is one of the latest campuses to get the Ashoka University designation http://ashokau.org/programs/changemaker-campus/. Here is the announcement that I would have missed every other year: http://news.fiu.edu/2016/02/ashoka-u-selects-fiu-for-changemaker-campus-consortium-2/97310.
FIU is among the latest designated as an Ashoka University. This is pretty cool. It means that FIU – students, faculty, staff, all of us – are part of a global network of universities that seeks to impact its community and beyond in positive ways through inventing, marketing and transforming the way students learn and imagine their work lives after graduation. The idea is that our students, mostly undergrads, will be able to take classes on community and civic engagement, social entrepreneurship and innovation, get internships, participate in seminars, bring their items for social good to the market, and all by the time they are 25 (or something). It means that fellows from the Ashoka network may well visit our campus and interact with our students and faculty. It means that we, faculty, will be able to be supported in teaching in areas that directly engage the community (and not only those in the School of Business, but each of us), whether confronting huge trends like climate gentrification or solving problems through invention and innovation. Even we humanists can think about providing context for these efforts and skills for communicating them. Simply put: pay attention as this is coming……or already here. [Or, if you are staunchly averse to market-based solutions, then turn a blind eye; either way I am sure your millennial-age students will be intrigued.]
Another favorite of mine is the recent support for faculty research in the humanities. We humanists are, you see, a really cheap date and in need of a little love and care. Speaking of the changing university in the 21st century: who cares about the humanities. How are we relevant? And again I say: who cares?
Well, allow me to suggest that we should all care, and not simply out of moral obligation and not just for the ways in which we can enhance the research that our STEM, our Business and others colleagues are engaged in. But, because damn it, we can help educate our students in writing, reading, speaking, thinking and all of that good stuff. We can teach them to be sensitive human beings to the world around them and to be skeptical of anything that they read or hear or watch. That is what we do; we prepare them for the workforce, and, by the way, we produce PhDs. All of this moves metrics in the right direction.
You may have seen an email floating around about New Funding for Humanities Research. I am proud of this. Proud that we have a Provost and Research Office that recognize how the Humanities are under attack, how the university must support them, and how we – humanist researchers – can help the university through teaching, mentorship, research, publication, PhD production, postdocs and, ultimately, fame and recognition through our collective good work. We also can work with colleagues in other fields, whether art, social science or natural science. So, is it not gratifying to see our work valued at the highest level within our own institution through the granting of funds for our research and teaching? Whether you applied or not, get one or not, is it not a step in the right direction?
How can we be thriving in these ways – Ashoka and Humanities — given the noise in the background (really foreground!) that our leaders must respond to in order to secure state funding and make all of the above possible?
The Cost
One way that our leaders have chosen to keep us, each of us, on the right path toward all that is BeyondPossble2020 is a little something called ComPASS, or, Communication Protocol for Accountability and Strategic Support (ComPASS). These are meetings focused on using data to make informed decisions to meet the goals set by our leaders and our collective strategic plan.
Hey, have you heard of it? But, before I describe this process to you, let me ask each of you to reflect on the following question: what would you do in the Provost’s shoes? How would you herd the academic/scholarly/pedagogically-minded cats to produce the results that must be produced to ensure that we have jobs, our students have an excellent education and that our institution continues to pulse along and even thrive?
If it were the later 1920s or 1930s and we were in Moscow, St. Petersburg or Petrozavodsk, this process (ComPASS) would fall under the category of “самокритики” or “self-criticism” or some such. I am sure there are other cultural references I could use, but this is mine. Apologies. I am making no moral equivalents. I promise. ComPASS is basically a mechanism for being sure that Deans and Deanlets are accountable and are working toward moving the metrics to reach the university’s BeyondPossible2020 goals that will ultimately help FIU stay in business and thrive. If you did not get a chance to watch it on TV, basically, the President, the Provost, and sundry Veeps literally line up to ask questions of each Dean. The Dean, unable to answer everything, turns to her people (although usually his people) to present strategies for meeting certain metrics (say retention and graduate rates). After the formal presentation is made, the leadership asks questions. The questions are meant to elicit concrete solutions and ultimately to lead to concrete answers; resources are allocated (or taken away, I suppose) and then the next Dean is up….
This is a process, a system, a mechanism for keeping deans and their chairs and their faculty members accountable and oriented toward the collective goals laid out in the Strategic Plan…more to come…this summer.
What do you think? And happy summer…. whether teaching, researching, or just chilling out. Enjoy!
Rebecca