ࡱ> VXU ^bjbjVV 5l<<UH  cccccwww8 ,w%cccvccL`XwN$0%r"c %  ): Appendix II. Selected Qualitative Responses on Junior Faculty Task Force Questionnaire (2005) Questions 1-3: Coming to UMass Boston. The orientation was not as helpful as it could have been. Not specific enough in most cases. Too much general info all at once on too many topics. Would be helpful to have 2 orientationsone immediately introducing to campus services and immediate concerns (teaching issues, problem solving) and one later (e.g., beginning of spring) doing more long term things. There was a panel on tenure at the new faculty orientation. Panelists warned incoming faculty to focus on scholarship and be careful about advising and service loads. This was good advice, but impossible in practice given the realities of heavy teaching, advising and service. Other aspects of the orientation (not including benefits) were barely adequate. There were hundreds of things that I had to find out about on my own through trial and error. The orientation was excellent in outlining the benefits available to me and my family. However, I felt it fell short of helping me better understand the tenure process and the expectations for research, scholarship, and service. Although I realize things vary depending on discipline, more concrete instruction/advice would have been helpful. For example, having faculty who had been recently tenured talk about best practices would have been appreciated. The highlight of the orientation was the faculty panel. Maybe a few junior faculty/recent hires could be on that panel to talk about their first year adjustments and give advice. They could even have their own panel. The orientation I received tried to cover too much in too short a time. My suggestions would be to divide the orientation into themes and spread these over a longer period of time. Possible themes would be salary/retirement, teaching issues, funding opportunities, academic expectations and evaluations, etc. My orientation did not address any concerns about scholarship and teaching (including the balance between the two, course reductions and buyouts, etc.) It would be ideal if each new faculty member could have periodic, say once a year or once a semester meeting with a HR rep for the first few years. I dont even know what I dont know when it comes to things like retirement plan options, health care options, investment opportunities (tax-deferred accounts), etc. I was less than satisfied by the introduction, such as it was, to campus facilities and services. It is not always easy to figure out who does what at UMB and we never really got a good introduction of the role of the different offices. It took me four weeks to get an internet connection in my office. Getting a key wasnt easy either. These simple practical matters should not take so much time for new faculty trying to get organized with new courses. I felt overwhelmed and slightly under-informed about things (something I only realized as time went on). It might be that our individual departments can be urged to do some orientation for new faculty as well. I felt very welcomed to the university and my department. The orientation covered a lot of material in an efficient manner. . . . I would suggest a walking tour of these areas (the library, campus center, copy center); this would help orient faculty to the campus and help break up a very long day of sitting. Questions 4-8: First Semester/First Year When I arrived I think its safe to say that if I had expired on the job, two colleagues might have noticed. I was saddled with three new courses meeting three times a week in my first semestera practice that no longer happens in my department. We have great departmental clerical and administrative support. But we have to pay for our own photocopying because of the low departmental budget. This amounts to hundreds of dollars a year out of pocket. Because of scheduling and workload, I NEVER get to see or talk with junior faculty outside my department unless we are serving on the same committee. I have been pleasantly surprised at the degree to which the colleagues in my department have made me feel at home. There is good camaraderie, with genuine interest in what everyone is accomplishing scholastically. I have the good fortune to have found two mentorsone for teaching and one for research. I am very satisfied with the way my department has both welcomed me and provided me with mentoring. The mentoring is informal in nature, but I find the senior and soon-to-be senior faculty more than willing to help me traverse the hurdles of academia. I would simply like to see more junior faculty forums and colloquia. Additionally, I would appreciate it if the junior faculty research presentations could occur on different days/times during the semester. My teaching schedule has prevented me from attending them this and last semester which is very disappointing. My primary difficulty with the initial orientation concerned the absence of any explicit guidelines with regard to research support. For example, when I was negotiating my contract, and indeed until I arrived on campus, I had thought that the start up money would be given to me in a lump sum at the beginning of the first semester. I therefore moved in and set up my office under the assumption I would be getting a check a few weeks later to cover costs. I was shocked when I was told first, that the start up money came out of a general fund that required a great deal of bureaucratic maneuvering to access, and second, that most of my expenses were not covered by it. I havent applied for any internal funding beyond this (i.e. the Healey grant etc.) because I dont trust the fact that the money will actually be forthcoming and I dont want to go into debt like I did at the beginning of my first year. . . .A similar set of guidelines regarding research leave and how to request it would also be useful. Im afraid to apply for larger external grants after hearing stories from my junior faculty colleagues about how they were given grants and had to turn them down because of bureaucratic issues with their departments or with the ý. My department couldnt be more welcoming and supportive. Our clerical staff is very overworked, so it makes sense that we take care of our own photocopying and other paperworkthough the machines are primitive and unreliablewe definitely need paid access to the UMB copying services. I have received very little mentorship. I dont feel like I need a lot of guidance, but when you dont receive any you dont feel very valued. There has been no discussion of teaching schedules, academic expectations, advising, etc. In addition, when I started there was no Department handout on how to make copies, use the phone, order supplies, etc. This simple nitty-gritty stuff eats up valuable hours and could be explained simply in a standard document given to new faculty. It was incredibly frustrating badgering administrative staff with questions and feeling that you were constantly reinventing the wheel. Generally, my department provided good support to me during my first semester, especially regarding teaching load. There is no clerical support to speak of. TAs are not really available, ordering supplies is baroque, research (grant preparation support, in particular) assistance is absent (with the notable exception of the wonderful Stan Bolatin, but now I just realized that he has been disappeared from the ORSP staff pagean alarming development. My department was very accommodating with the teaching schedule and committee assignments during my first year. There really isnt much of a campus or social life at UMB. Very little is done to make new faculty feel welcome and to promote social and intellectual interaction. The junior faculty forum does provide an environment for junior faculty to share their work, as do other working groups. The support for this kind of development should be coupled more consciously with other forms of support. . .it varies by department, with those who have strong advocate-type chairs and senior faculty obtaining more and varied forms of support (e.g., more start-up money, research assistants, salary, course release, etc.). Start-up should be allowed to be used toward summer salaryor else we are forced to work full time for free during the summer, to keep our research programs going, while applying for the ever-harder-to-get major grants. Social development has been fostered by junior faculty colleagues on our own. Ive learned a lot about different opportunities and strategies in informal talks with my peers. They have been extremely important. The lack of funding and difficulty of access to some basic support is a bit of a shock. Specifically, I think the following issues need to be explained more clearly to new faculty: 1) how to purchase and set up your computer and email account; 2) how to do photocopying when the department lacks a photocopier; and 3) if travel to conferences is funded and how to go about getting those funds. A new faculty person coming from another institution or from grad school might be shocked to learn that they will have to pay for their copying at Kinkos and pay for their own travel to conferences. I think the Junior Faculty colloquia are a good step towards creating a cross-campus culture. However, I think there could be a purely social meeting (such as a lunch or pre-dinner drinks at the faculty club) at the beginning of each semester. Questions 9-12: Ongoing support and development Teaching seems undervalued while simultaneously expecting excellence. Although I was granted a CLR in my second semester, and was encouraged by my department to take a CIT seminar (with an attendant CLR), I felt I had to take an unpaid leave in order to make headway in my scholarship. Having come from a campus that paid 100% for travel expenses, even though the system was having a difficult time financially (University of California) I was very surprised and disappointed to see how little is available for travel to conferences to present papers. Additionally, funding was paid very quickly at UC, so that our credit cards were not overly burdened. Even something as simple as our work here as readers for the WPE took a long time to get funded. There seems to be a disconnect between research expectations and research support. Given that most public and private granting institutions have made cutbacks in the money available to applicants and that publishing has become more competitive due to financial constraints in book and journal publishers, junior faculty are even more reliant on their institutions to help support their scholarly work. The internal resources available at UMass doe not appear comparable to other research institutions. Additionally, the teaching load is high when you consider the research expectations. . . .To be honest, I question whether I will be able to be both an excellent teacher/mentor and an excellent scholar given the time and financial restraints (not to mention meeting my service requirements). Finally, I would like the University to consider pre-tenure leaves to give junior faculty the best chance of attaining tenure. Wholly inadequate context for producing publicationslack of course releases, pre-tenure sabbatical, and day to day infrastructure support (as minor as photocopying and travel support to all conference presentations) make doing my job very difficult. I am always overwhelmed. The course release in the first year was really useful. If it were at all possible, though, I would have preferred a regular load the first year and a pre-tenure sabbatical instead. Im hoping that the university will implement pre-tenure leaves comparable to other universities with our research expectations. Its very difficult to find out how to get internal funding/release timewhats available, who is eligible, how to apply, etc. These procedures need clarification. This could be covered at the orientationbetter still, what about a handbook that explains research support? A new faculty handbook would be fabulous. We also need more travel fundsits crucial that we give papers at conferences, and hotels are more expensive than transportation. Im worried that I will be unable to afford to participate in some of the most important conferences in my fieldthese sorts of worries get in the way of our research. There should be course releases to support grant application preparationthere is supposed to be something like this in the proposal support grant, but it is so narrowly defined (only supporting the writing of the grant, that is, just the typing); it doesnt support, for instance, the period during which one needs to collect pilot data in preparation for the typing up of the grant. This may be suited to certain disciplines, but not mine. . . I have no idea how much $ is available to me each semester or each year for travel and I would appreciate transparency on this issue, and I dont have any colleagues at other institutions whose travel is reimbursed sans money for lodging. The most expensive part of any presentation is not travel and not registration, but the cost of the hotel. As a new faculty member eager to build a reputation I can hardly afford to attend more than one conference per year. Thats a problem. Ill build a reputation, but Ill go broke in the process. I am very dissatisfied with the administrative and financial support regarding research activities. There is no centralized source of information. It all is extremely inefficient! It is extremely time consuming to manage grants. There is no incentive to compete to get external funds. There should be a support staff at the ý level. I had no course release when I arrived and the possibility for it has been presented as nearly impossible. If there are opportunities for course release/funds, can they be advertised more clearly? I just did a UMB website search (typing in liberal arts, research, funds, etc.) and couldnt find a page that listed the Colleges grants, deadlines, and application forms. At other institutions Ive worked for, there was an amount of travel funding that was yoursthere was no need to apply for it by a certain deadline. Isnt there some way to implement a system for conference travel that doesnt demand applications? Questions 13-17: Moving through the personnel process It was clear what the submission should look like (format, etc.) but what is expected for positive/exceptional review is not at all clear. The criteria for the AFRs keep changing. It seems every year we have received new guidelines. I am particularly dissatisfied and concerned because the criteria for the tenure review keep changing. I have just completed my 4th year review process and only now learn that departmental service does not count as excellence in service. Now I must demonstrate leadership at the ý level. Nor is it any longer sufficient to have completed a book. In the last year, word has come down that I must show significant process in a project that did not originate in my dissertation research. Given that I have done significant new research in addition to my original dissertation research in order to develop my current book project, I find this new hurdle unsettling. My department chair has been very open about the review process for tenure. Additionally, faculty members in my department have been exceptional resources about the process. However the process beyond my department remains nebulous. For example, I am interested in how often department recommendations get overturned at higher levels. What are the real expectations at higher levels of the university when it comes to tenure. Have standards changed over the last few years and is there an expectation that this trend will continue? I am much clearer now re expectations, but I was not made aware of the degree of publishing expectations during the interviewing process nor during my first yearIve slowly learned how much more is expected by listening to others. I wasnt prepared for Research I type publishing standards. Again, some sort of explicit guidelines with regard to the 4th year review an tenure process (in writingthe meetings are helpful, but a guidebook would be more so) would be nice. Some examples of past tenure files or 4th year reviews that were successful would be useful as well. One suggestion would be have a couple of members of the department designated as junior faculty mentors. In my Department, junior faculty mentorship is left to the Chairs discretion. Often the Chair is not the most knowledgeable person about grants, administrative issues (like maternity leave), and teaching concernsyet no one else is available. This can lead to getting bad advice or no advice at all. I think more explicit discussion of criteria for tenure (including the review process) needs to be offered. Some of the discussions and forums with faculty who have gone through the process of fourth year & tenure review have been somewhat helpful, but the criteria for tenure remain vague and global. In general I think the departments and especially the ý (at the behest of the Dean) has gone out of its way to reassure new faculty about the fairness of the promotion and tenuring process. Im very glad that the administration, at all levels, continues to pay attention to the impressions and concerns of junior faculty. Communication with the departments chair and personnel committee regarding reviews and tenure are fine. I have not heard much from the rest of the university (until a few weeks ago). Until recently, there were no formal conversations around fourth year review and tenure. The lines of communication have been open, but junior faculty must know what questions to ask of our department and dean. There have been informal discussions (and rumors) across the university. Junior faculty and the dean have recently made formal discussions and workshops occur. This is a wonderful development. I do hope departments see this as a way to open up an ongoing dialogue and not feel they must be on the defensive with the questions and concerns junior faculty raise. However, it is not enough that we begin to know more of the details of what will be expected of us and that our department and dean will be there to advocate for us when were up for reviewthere must be more done in the way of support (financial, mentoring, advocating, course release, etc). . . Faculty coming up for tenure now and in the future are clearly required to have a broader and lengthier record of scholarship than those of the prior generation who obtained tenure. Strategies and support must change accordingly. .. and, as I mentioned before, this might require that the older generation of tenured faculty be re-socialized to understand the possibilities of support and strategies that are either available or necessary. I am very lucky in that I have a great department chair. I feel as though the annual review and 4th year review were clearly explained. I feel as though this process has been made as supportive as possible . . . For the tenure process, there could be clearer and more readily accessed guidelines concerning timelines and publication expectations. . . Other issues: There is a severe generation and culture gap in my department between the junior and senior faculty [whose]most serious manifestation is the split attitude toward research. I think it would be helpful to explain to Junior Faculty what Committees there are across campus and how do you get access to them in order to fulfill service requirements. Much as I dislike requirements, it might be healthy to require Jr. Faculty to meet with Chair yearly (or second and fourth year) on progress, to assure that communication occurs. I have had both good and bad experiences at UMB. Generally the Deans Office has been helpful, and I have found this a valuable source of support. My Department has generally been supportive, but folks offer mostly words of encouragement. There need to be more mechanisms in place that really encourage Junior Faculty to be happy and productivethrough feedback on the AFRs, regular meetings on scholarly productivity and concerns, guidance and support in the grant writing process, a sense that Junior Faculty are valued. I have experienced very little frank and open discussion on teaching schedules, criteria for promotion, plans for the Departments future, etc. UMB demands that Junior Faculty find out almost everything on their own, which comes across as being incredibly unsupportive. To be honest, high expectations with a corresponding lack of support, is frustrating and discouraging. The issue of gender/race and teaching, as well as gender/race and support must also be part of the discussion around support and tenure. Its been documented that women, particularly women of color, are viewed, treated and judged differently and more harshly than our male colleaguesby students and other faculty. People of color must also contend with added responsibilities that arent always shared by others. As you know, there are many wonderful aspects of UMBthe mission, the teaching emphasis, the collegialitythat make it a great place to work. I think part of the groups discussion should consider how to maintain and build on these qualities, making them more apparent to new faculty. Finally, I would reiterate the need for a clearer way to list/advertise junior faculty information. 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