2008 MLA Convention Blog: All that Glitters
27 December 2008
Part One
The Gold Room in the Fairmont Hotel is a visually stunning room that has hosted some of San Francisco’s most prominent social events. Today the distinguished guests are chairs of departments of English, languages other than English, and comparative literature; they have gathered to discuss issues that concern them. Their first activity: reviewing the statistics on job listings in our field. The number of job postings in the MLA’s Job Information List are projected to be down 21% in 2008-09. For English language and literature, the drop is expected to be 22.2% and for foreign languages, 19.6%. Most department chairs report knowing of searches canceled either in their departments or in other departments on their campuses.
On another level, the recently released report on the academic workforce (http://www.mla.org/report_aw) is generating energetic discussion. David Bartholomae, who chaired the committee that produced the report, talked about the need for us to think about the two-part structure—research faculty and teaching faculty—that many institutions have adopted. The report charts in fine detail who is doing the teaching (full- or part-time, tenure-track or non-tenure-track) and points the way toward better practices. Between the decline of available positions this year and the erosion of full-time tenure-track positions in the academic workforce overall, we are facing a situation that demands our advocacy and action. There is a session (478) on the report on 29 December, 10:15-11:30 a.m., in Continental 3 at the Hilton. It’s really important to learn about these issues, and I encourage everyone to attend (and to share the report with your colleagues, deans, and provosts).
One department chair at a small liberal arts college made the point that parents should be looking at “who is doing the teaching” when they choose colleges with their sons and daughters. Will there be enough full-time professors to give extensive office hours, write letters of recommendation, mentor students throughout their undergraduate years, and so forth? Another question the chairs are discussing: what can we do to strengthen the humanities at a time when everything is being tightened? As a profession, the chairs say, we are facing an unpredented situation. How can we make budget cuts without doing damage to the long-standing American tradition of providing humanities education to the largest number of students possible, at the highest level of quality possible?
Another chair commented that all faculty members are “in it together, and it’s essential that we support one another and advocate for working conditions for every faculty member.” “The MLA can help,” said another chair. The MLA produces research, best-practice documents: the best thinking of our profession has gone into formulating goals, and we need to aspire to getting there. Catherine Porter exhorted the group to “make an appointment with your dean,” bring the MLA’s research to your administrators, and encourage them to make decisions based on the standards set by those in the field. That’s really great advice. You’ll find all our policy statements and research at www.mla.org, especially here: www.mla.org/resources.
And that concludes the first part of the chairs meeting. They are now adjourning into breakout rooms, and I’m breaknecking it back to the Hilton for my next event!
Part Two
This is an exciting moment for me, I have to say. Over sixty community college faculty members have gathered at the Hilton for a workshop designed especially for them. The MLA’s Committee on Community Colleges came up with the idea for this workshop as a way of serving the needs of community college faculty members, who have asked us for more convention sessions that are relevant to what they do. The Executive Council received this idea enthusiastically and set aside funds to support session applicants so they could attend. And here they are, from all over the country, working with Jerry Graff and Cathy Birkenstein-Graff on “the central move of academic writing.”
Jerry and Cathy emphasize the importance of looking for the “they say/I say” moments in writing and in conversation. Students who familiarize themselves with these moves in speaking are likely to recognize them in writing, too. Faculty members can benefit from knowing these moves not only to help our students learn them but also to make their own communications more effective.
It’s good to see colleagues who have been members of the Committee on Community Colleges. They share a special relationship, since they are in the minority among MLA members. Too often, community college colleagues suppose that the MLA does not provide enough of what they need to justify being members. As the members of the committee can attest, the MLA is a “large tent” under which all participants can find a place. They tell me they enjoy planning sessions for the convention and promoting conversations among community college members. Their contributions to the association’s publications matter a great deal to the academic community at large, and we are a richer MLA because of what community college professors show us. As more and more graduate students look to community colleges as a great place to develop a career, we can ask for assistance from our colleagues who work there and know (and like) the ropes.
Comments
Thomas Blair
City C of San Francisco
28 Dec 2008, 12:24 am
Subject: Ideas for Visiting San Francisco for MLA Members
Tips for MLA Members for Your Visit to San Francisco
San Francisco offers you a wide array of points of interest. Here are a few suggestions:
If you haven’t been to San Francisco in a while, you may want to see
• The new De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, and across from it the newly built Academy of Sciences, which just opened.
• The Asian Art Museum near City Hall
• Performances at the Opera House (Xmas: the Nutcracker)
• The rebuilt Ferry Building at the foot of Market St—a food hall and restaurants including the well-known Vietnamese restaurant, the Slanted Door
Nice walking and shopping areas: Union St., the Fillmore near California, Chestnut St.
A few restaurant ideas:
• Near Union Square: Anjou (French, moderate), Scala’s Bistro (moderate, Italian/Calif.), Fleur de Lys (French, expensive),
• Near the Embarcadero: Boulevard (French, expensive), Slanted Door (Vietnamese, moderate), Yank Sing (Dim Sum, moderate), Zinnia (Calif, moderate)
• Pacific Heights: Café Majestic (Calif., moderate), Quince (Italian, expensive)
• Castro St area: L’Ardoise (French, moderate)
Don’t forget to ride a Cable Car, visit the Legion of Honor Museum (perhaps the most beautiful museum site in the country with a show from the Berlin State Museums), take in a movie at the Castro theater, tour Alcatraz, and have a walk through Chinatown. For evening fun, try “Beach Blanket Babylon,” a musical revue.
Getting around: take BART in from the airport if you’re staying around Union Square.
You won’t need a car. Walk and take public transit.
Stacey Lee Donohue
Central Oregon Comm C
28 Dec 2008, 1:32 am
Subject: They Say, I Say
To put into practice one of those “academic moves” (admittedly, one of the simpler ones) we discussed in today’s Graff/Birkenstein-Graff workshop:
Rosemary celebrates the fact that “[i]t’s good to see colleagues who have been members of the Committee on Community Colleges. They share a special relationship, since they are in the minority among MLA members.” And, as one of those past members, I strongly agree!
And, while it is true that we community college instructors are a minority in terms of MLA membership, opportunities such as this workshop are an excellent way of getting more of us engaged with the MLA—to see the MLA as an organization that is working to provide opportunities for us to be active participants within the organization, to share our particular expertise, and to learn from each other.
I look forward to future workshops like this one: those where community college faculty can exchange ideas that are particular to our often (but not always) shared institutional missions, and the addition of workshops that allow us to engage with our colleagues at other teaching-centered institutions—and, yes, that’s ALL academic institutions, I hope.
David Forrest Stout
Portland Comm C, Sylvania Campus
28 Dec 2008, 2:05 am
Subject: Community College Workshop
The depth and range of conversation in the breakout session that ended today's CC workshop was a testimony to the insights into teaching and learning that community college faculty can bring to the MLA. Community college faculty are, indeed, a minority of MLA members, yet they teach, according to one report, almost two thirds of American college students basic composition and second (and third) languages.
Students from our community colleges who transfer to more traditional MLA colleges and universities succeed and persist to graduation at higher rates than their peers who started out at 4-year institutions. We would all do well to listen to the community college instructors who prepare these students so well.
Today's workshop was a good start. Next steps should include offering workshops by community college faculty with a track record of excellence in pedagogy. It's not enough to say that more community college faculty should attend the convention. We must make the convention and the larger MLA a place that welcomes the rigorous discourse about effective teaching that takes place among community college faculty on a regular basis.
Jane Harper
Tarrant Cnty C, Northeast Campus
28 Dec 2008, 12:50 pm
Subject: Community College Workshop
Those of us who represent community colleges in the MLA environment were exceptionally pleased to be selected as a group for the first MLA Convention Workshop in the new format. Jerry and Cathy Graff provided a stimulating introduction to their "they say/I say" method of encouraging thoughtful student writing. Working groups of faculty followed the opening session with spirited discussions of potential uses of the writing templates in both English and languages other than English.
"They say" that two-year institutions are poorly represented in MLA. "I say" that, while that may be true at present, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Faculty in community colleges have spent some years in determining the roles/missions of this segment of higher education; now we are stepping up in greater numbers to share our experiences, our successes, our missteps to larger audiences. All of us in higher education are noting changes in student populations, preparation and readiness for college work, motivations and expectations for college degrees, student work loads and family responsibilities, financial insecurity. We can all learn together how best to use our information, skills, resources, and best practices to enhance student learning outcomes.
We have much to learn in the MLA. Likewise, as the MLA continues its development in the 21st century, the organization can profit from the energy and enthusiasm and skill and knowledge that this new generation of teacher/scholars brings to the table.
Elizabeth M. Schwartz
San Joaquin Delta C
28 Dec 2008, 11:27 pm
Subject: Contributions from community college members
To follow up on Jane's comment, the MLA is profiting tremendously from contributions by community college faculty members; I am pleasantly surprised to find CC members listed as presenters throughout the MLA Convention program. It's great to see more and more of my community college colleagues bringing their scholarship and expertise (both on teaching and on their particular disciplines) to the Convention.
Sean Patrick Murphy
C of Lake Cnty
31 Dec 2008, 1:11 pm
Subject: Our Breakout Session
Our Breakout Session
Cathy Birkenstein and Jerry Graff’s presentation at the MLA’s first (of many, we hope) Professional Development Workshop for Community College Faculty Members underscored the mutual benefits of professional exchange.
The MLA can benefit from the heavy teaching loads of community college faculty in any number of ways. We at community colleges have logged many more hours of classroom time than have our counterparts at research-extensive, research-intensive, and various four-year colleges and universities. As such, members of our group were quick to point out that two-year college faculty regularly hold colloquia dedicated to pedagogical discussions that grow out of the vast experience of two-year faculty members. On a less formal basis, we share effective strategies with each other on a catch as catch can basis, all in an effort to reach our students more effectively, to encourage their identities as scholars. Self-promotion does not earn us merit pay, so keeping classroom successes a secret only hampers the collegial atmosphere members of the breakout group noted as an intellectually sustaining part of their teaching lives at their institutions.
Along the lines of collegiality, one of our group’s members suggested sending an email to home departments to organize lunches to discuss They Say, I Say. Grassroots efforts may well trump more formalized (read: hierarchical) efforts to encourage professional development and to persuade two-year faculty to see the MLA through different lenses.
The MLA, too, must consider different lenses. What exactly is academic discourse? One professor asks his students to locate literary criticism pre-1970, a strategy that enables his students to read the peer-reviewed articles with understanding. We might re-consider jargon in light of exclusivity and inclusivity.
The MLA can also place some of its considerable resources into studying the MA degree in the manner it has exhaustively studied the PhD. Although many two-year colleagues anecdotally report hiring PhDs, I suspect such colleagues are often located in urban areas. Statistics must guide policy, and the National Center for Educational Statistics indicates that 13% of two-year college faculty members hold doctorates, while 5% of part-time faculty members do. Additionally, more than 2/3 of classes at two-year colleges are taught by adjuncts. If the MA is the degree of choice for two-year faculty, we need to ask questions about the nature and structure of that degree, since the complexities of the contemporary community college strongly suggest traditional MA curricula will not prepare future faculty to model comprehensive knowledge of a discipline and incontrovertible commitment to lifelong learning. A national organization such as the MLA can lead such a discussion and study, helped along, of course, by the Committee on Community Colleges.
Lastly, the MLA, we agreed, would do well to move beyond sessions that have ossified into tradition: the three papers, read to an audience, leaving little time for interactivity. We would love to read papers in journals, silently, to ourselves, with coffee at our sides. We would love to attend a Convention with more workshops, roundtables, colloquia, and pedagogical symposia considering developmental writing, introduction to literature, cross-sector partnerships, town-gown relationships, communitarians within the academy, and composition (with coffee at our sides). We would also welcome pre-Convention workshops, followed by linked sessions.
That said, I think I speak for everyone in the breakout group when I extend a thank you to Jerry Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, Rosemary Feal, and Elizabeth Schwartz for working so hard to make the MLA the big tent that it is. We look forward to Philadelphia.
Sean Murphy
College of Lake County (IL)
smurphy@clcillinois.edu