Writing Maternity

movin' on up

At my institution, we're in the midst of a conversation about how to re-jigger the committee-assignment process, in part to make sure that more people do more of the work of get to be involved in faculty governance. 

Coincidentally, there was a CHE piece on Monday, reporting on an MLA report that women typically take longer than men to be promoted from Associate Professor to Full. There's something a bit weird in the summary, where they state that:

The report shows that women at doctoral institutions take two and a half years longer than men to reach full professor. The gap shrinks to one and a half years at master's institutions, and the smallest gap—a year is at baccalaureate colleges. A closer look at private independent colleges by the association revealed that women there take three and a half years longer than their male counterparts to advance to associate professor.

I don't quite know what to make of that final sentence: at SLACs, women take only a wee bit of time longer than men to go from Associate to Full, but they take a good bit of time longer to get from Assistant to Associate.  SLACs are doing *well* at mentoring female mid-level faculty, then?  Or are better about rewarding service (which, let's be honest, women do more of than men, much of the time)?  But I do think that it's quite likely -- and a bit strange that the article didn't mention -- that the longer time pre-tenure for women is linked to maternity leave policies, which often include a period of time when the tenure clock is stopped.

Folding that time into a simply calculus of "how long it takes women to reach a certain rank" is misleading, because "time" isn't always the same thing in all cases.  If you've gotten a tenure-clock pause because you've had a child, then presumably it's because you *aren't* doing the kinds of work that would get you tenure.

But what I found most disturbing the piece is the concluding point, the final couple of paragraphs that describe the choices some female academics have made to opt out of the promotion process and stay at Associate because the kinds of work they want to do -- " working with students, preparing course materials, and doing research that involves the community" -- aren't considered "important" enough for promotion.

signs

We don't use the dry cleaner much -- M. l'O works from home and I'm a small college academic, so . . .  -- but I went this morning to pick up a load and was depressed.  The usually full racks are empty and bare, clearly a sign that 1) people don't need so many work clothes cleaned, and/or 2) can't afford to use the dry cleaner as much.  This dry cleaner -- environmentally friendly, to boot -- is a sweet older women, so I'm also depressed at the thought of her lost revenue, which I'd imagine she needs.

Similarly, Tricksy's preschool is consolidating classes: instead of three preschool classes at their other campus, there are now only two; and the two-year-old class at Tricksy's campus has been combined with the older children.  Parents are pulling their kids out.  We're starting to get notices that the district afterschool that Squiss attends has spots open, as well.  All signs that people have lost jobs. 

And that's even apart from the bad news from M. l'O's employers funding sources.

pacing

There's nothing like going non-stop for a while to make you appreciate the moments when things slow down.  Last week, Friday felt like the first day of spring or summer break: suddenly, everything was quiet in the building, and I felt as though expanses of time were opening up.  Then this week hit, but now I'm on the other side of it.  It's different, because tomorrow has several meetings, but today is really all about commenting on drafts.

So, I not only have a moment to link to a bunch of stuff, but to weigh in a bit.  (Almost everything here deserves more time than I can give it -- remember those drafts? -- but here's what I can offer today.)

• Shockingly enough, IHE reports, faculty don't think that students learn as well in online courses as in face-to-face ones.  The statistics are a bit more complicated than that headline version: only 48% of the faculty who actually teach online courses think that students learn less well in them, leaving 52% who think that students learn "just as well" or "better."  IMHO, online courses (and, for that matter, online tutoring) strike me as deeply promising for distance-learning situations but less attractive when used simply to cut costs. 
• I understand -- bureaucratically and programmatically -- the virtues in disbanding the Graduate School at the University of Minnesota (but not the graduate programs), but I also worry about what this means for graduate students' abilities to organize.
• I worry that BC's decision to make sure that all classrooms contain Christian art (ahem, also known as iconography) is a sign of this country's increasing trend toward religious conservatism.  On the other hand, I thought that Kent John Chabotar's piece on how Quaker practices shape college-wide conversations in difficult times quite moving.  (And that might be more about how I feel about Catholicism and Quakerism, respectively, than anything else . . . )
• AP test scores for college credit is a deeply problematic thing for someone who thinks that the modes of inquiry taught at the college level are, generally speaking, necessarily different from those taught in high school.  Their "value" for admissions and standing is also problematic for someone who thinks that we should be working to erase the different socio-economic class makes.
• Geeky Mom links to this CHE piece about Nicholls College adding teaching to certain administrators' workloads as a way to save money.  I agree with her that certain administrators can and should be allowed to teach, but I worry -- of course -- that this type of economizing is just going to further over-burden already over-burdened individuals.
• If you have time, check out jbj's teaching carnival links.
• Anti-Racist Parenting's thoughtful response to how important diversity is in choosing a school for your kid.
• Mommy Wars Bingo (h/t bluemilk)

motherhood, parenting, sharing, academe

Basically, this post boils down to "go read 11D":

Laura has a great set of links, including to two Lisa Belkin pieces: about the anger women feel at their male partners who don't pull their own weight, and about how difficult it is to ask for help with childcare (and domestic labor more generally).  (In the second piece, Belkin also links to Emily Bazelon's piece on women who have chosen single motherhood.)  And Geeky Mom meditates on these issues here.

And then she also links to a good discussion going on at Crooked Timber about parenting, parental leave, and the academy.  The discussion both at CT and at 11D is good, too.

• provisions that will help small private colleges raise money (I realize that we aren't, ahem, the neediest of categories, but it's still worth noting)
• a call for academic bureaucrats to be scholars and intellectuals
• not-too-terribly surprising optimism about what an Obama administration means for the NEH
• bad news about Brandeis.  While it seems clear that the university has not been financially prudent for some time, this strikes me as incredibly sad news.

on the human milk gap

I just read Jill Lepore's spot-on piece about breast pumps (and so much more) from last week's New Yorker.  Here's a taste, but please go read it:

"One big reason so many women stop breast-feeding is that more than half of mothers of infants under six months old go to work. The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act guarantees only twelve weeks of (unpaid) maternity leave and, in marked contrast to established practice in other industrial nations, neither the government nor the typical employer offers much more. To follow a doctor’s orders, a woman who returns to work twelve weeks after childbirth has to find a way to feed her baby her own milk for another nine months. The nation suffers, in short, from a Human Milk Gap."

random higher ed news

In the face of all the worry about college and university budgets, and how either the markets' plunge will affect endowments or the loss of jobs will affect people's ability to pay tuition, the UC president is proposing that the university cover tuition and fees for students whose families earn less than $60,000 per year.

IHE reports that at an AAC&U workshop, they're talking about getting rid of grades entirely -- and replacing them with narrative evaluations.  While I find it hard to imagine this being widely practicable, given how time intensive narrative feedback is, it's attractive.  The big problem with grade inflation/compression, to my mind, is that something that's supposed to mean something actually doesn't: if every student in my class gets an A or an A-, am I actually telling them (or the institution, or the schools to which they apply to graduate school) anything at all about how much they learned.  I don't really think so.

The news about women and education is, as always, complicated and interesting.

good news for English professors

(and not just English professors) from CHE.  I'm not fully convinced by their explanation, though, which hinges on "community-based efforts."  While I'm sure those are a factor, it strikes me that these are also the years of the Harry Potter phenomenon, and I don't think that we should discount that.  I also don't like the piece's coverage of new media and it's (likely) role in all this, and agree with Carolyn Kellogg's point in the LA Times:  "I'm troubled by the idea that laptops are anti-literature. Clearly, much of the time people are staring at their laptops, they're reading."

(H/t, M l'O.)

still raging, that controversy

I wrote a few days ago about the Thanksgiving celebration between HTS West and its nearest southern neighbor.  The conflict came to one head last week, when the School Board decided that the kids shouldn't wear their costumes.  Some parents insisted that the kids should wear costumes anyway, so there were (unsurprisingly) protesters at both schools this morning when the Midtown school kindergartners arrvied at HTSW.

I went.  Partly to support my friend, who I didn't expect to be there, and partly because I felt called to go in a more diffuse way.  I felt called to bear witness.  I was pretty sure there would be a lot of pro-costume people and very few from the other side, and so it felt important to go, peacefully and calmly, to be a presence in favor of non-racist practices.

Much of my above phrasing is deliberately and consciously Quaker, because that's how it felt.  I went to a Quaker school for most of my childhood, and while I'm more Jewish than anything else by heritage and upbringing, the teachings and practice and model of that school have sunk deep.  And the piece of Quaker teachings that has given me the most difficulty since this morning is finding the good in everyone.  I'm supposed to love in everyone.  Really?  Even in them?  Even the parent who mocked Gemstone when her father dropped her off this morning?

Yes, because otherwise it all becomes poisonous.  These people live in my town.  There's only one junior high and one high school, and so we'll all be together at some point.  M. l'O -- more committed to working to change the world than I am, at least on a daily basis -- insists that this is a good thing: it's good not to live in a liberal ghetto of some sort, never having to see people's radical different world views, never having to try to persuade them to understand your perspective.  I'm striving to appreciate that, but mostly I want to crawl into bed and hide.

We are all parents, wanting the best for our kids.  We clearly define "the best" differently, but I did see a lot of parents deeply invested in their children's lives this morning.  And I can respect and appreciate that, even if I disagree with them, even if I think their insistence on the Thanksgiving story as a true, unvarnished moment of historical happiness and intercultural harmony is misled and uninformed.

I've found this post from Quaker Susanne -- who I just discovered, as I was looking for help with this, this evening -- helpful.  And if you're going to hold anyone in the light, hold Gemstone and her mother there.