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Taking time to think about expectations for women in undergraduate science

In Guest Blogger on 2013/03/21 at 01:15

Marie-Claire Shanahan, writing from Edmonton, Alberta in Canada.

Decades of research in higher education has sought to understand why students come to STEM fields and why they leave. This has been especially true for women in science degree programs. Efforts such as Sue Rosser’s 1990 Female Friendly Science sought to re-organize science and engineering programs and change teaching practices to attract and retain female students. Drawing on insights from women’s studies and cultural studies, she proposed that they put greater emphasis on cooperative work and practical applications and broaden curricula to include more opportunities to explore the history and culture of science. Decades later, there are still significant gaps in women’s participation and persistence, especially in physics and physics-related engineering disciplines such as mechanical and electrical, despite efforts to overcome preparation deficits, provide role models and mentoring, and build communities for women in sciences.

Accordingly, we must acknowledge this is a more complex problem. There are tangled webs of expectations that influence all students’ experiences in science degree programs. When students arrive on those very first days, they bring with them expectations of post-secondary science education handed down from their families and teachers, in addition to their own. They also run headlong into what their professors, lab instructors and peers expect of them. And sometimes the results are disheartening and hard to navigate.

The programs themselves sometimes create expectations for who students should be. Lars Ulriksen from the University of Copenhagen has described this as ‘the implied student,’ inspired by the literary concept of the implied reader. This is a way of thinking about all of the assumptions that are embedded in any text about what the reader would and should think and feel. It describes what a reader must bring with them to the text to make sense of it. Analogically, the implied student is seen in the set of expectations placed on students by every element of their degree program, from the course outlines to teaching practices to what the professors, instructors, and peers say and do. All of these paint a picture for students of whether their science program is really for someone like them. And it’s here where many female students encounter difficulties in meeting the expectations. Karen Tonso’s 2006 ethnography of undergraduate engineers, for example, illustrates several incidents where students struggle with the strongly masculine expectations associated with the implied student in their program.

In order to understand the challenges faced by women in science, I’ve followed the lead of others like Tonso and Heidi Carlone and thought of these expectations as part of an identity process. As students progress in their science studies, part of the learning process is developing an identity within a scientific community. This means seeing yourself as belonging in the community and, through your actions and abilities, receiving that same recognition from others.For example, Carlone and Johnson (2007) worked with 15 successful women of colour in science, meeting them first during their undergraduate studies and following up six years later when most had moved on to graduate studies or medical school. The ease or difficulty of that path from undergraduate studies to graduation and beyond was largely influenced by how much recognition they received from others, such as professors and peers, about meeting the expectations of being a science student. Those who held strong science identities received heartfelt and positive support and feedback from mentors and senior scientists. In contrast, there was another group of women who began their undergraduate studies with interest and motivation in science but became increasingly disillusioned and frustrated. Despite being strong students, their rocky experiences were reflected in the feedback they received from supervisors and professors suggesting that they shouldn’t be there or were not the right kind of science students.

Taking a similar approach, I had the opportunity to work with colleagues who had led the Persistence Research in Science and Engineering (PRiSE) project, where they surveyed college students nationally about their high school science experiences as well as their attitudes towards science in higher education. We looked in particular at students’ physics identities. Two of the main components were how strongly they felt they met the expectations of physics and how much recognition they received from others about meeting those expectations. Those with well-developed physics identities, and who had received important positive recognition, were at least three times more likely to want to pursue a physics degree. And what was single most important predictor of how strongly students held a physics identity? Their gender. Even when high school experiences, GPAs, and career orientations were taken into account, male students had significantly stronger identities, meaning that they saw themselves meeting the expectations of physics better and received more recognition from teacher, parents and peers. This is despite ongoing research showing that male and female students are not very different in the raw skills that they bring to physics programs (e.g.,Hyde & Linn, 2006). As Tonso’s engineering students found, gender expectations related to masculinity and femininity can’t be ignored when we think about what pushes and pulls students in and out of science degree programs.

These kinds of studies show that the constraints felt by female STEM students, and all students, go far beyond academic preparation and ability. It’s sometimes hard to imagine how expectations like these that come not just from curricula and tests but from every interaction that students have with their professors and their peers can be changed. There are definitely no easy solutions, but it’s important to start thinking about things this way. For example, how can mentorship and development programs not only provide role models and skills but also help students navigate these expectations? How can program leaders and professors begin to ask if there is room to change the implied student that incoming registrants encounter? The first step, at least, is always asking the question.

Marie-Claire Shanahan is an Associate Professor of Science Education & Science Communication at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. When not writing at her blog, Boundary Vision, or hanging out with her students, Marie-Claire is a regular guest host on the science radio program Skeptically Speaking. She also writes about two of her favourite things, science and music, as DJ at the online science pub The Finch & Pea, where she squeezes in as much Canadian independent music as she thinks she can get away with. She tweets as @mcshanahan, can be found on Google+, and reached at mcshanahan at gmail.com.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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Education, Europe, Science and Gender

It’s your thing!: How the European Commission Is Trying to Attract More Women to Science

In Guest Blogger on 2013/02/12 at 08:47

Guest blogger, Curt Rice, writing from Tromsø in Norway.

Note from the editors: Today we start a new offering on our blog: every few months we will have a theme that we ask guest bloggers to write about for University of Venus. These themed blog posts will run month after month on the last Monday of the month. For January, February, and March, our guest bloggers will be writing about gender equality in science fields, and we’re kicking off our series with a post by Curt Rice, the Vice President for Research and Development at the University of Tromsø in Norway.

Dream jobs, 6 reasons science needs you and Profiles of women in science are three of the areas on a website launched last year by the European Commission to encourage teenage girls to consider science as a career—a website called Science: It’s a girl thing!

The EC’s campaign gave me the opportunity to try out an idea for making a so-called teaser clip that would attract attention to the site; I didn’t want to make the clip myself, but I wanted to see what would happen if I just announced a contest. What if I tried a crowdsourcing experiment?

The contest started when I wrote a piece about the campaign that was published at The Guardian. At the end of that article, I suggested a contest.

Maybe crowdsourcing the creation of a teaser – based on the campaign’s website – would be the best way to find out what could tempt teenage girls to study science. Let’s have a contest. Go to the campaign website and find your inspiration. Think about what could be a meaningful teaser video. And then make it! I’ll show the best one at the European Gender Summit 2012. For more details and the official rules for the contest, see The #ScienceGirlThing Contest.

The response was tremendous and the winners were announced in late November.

There were three crucial success factors, but before I tell you about them, enjoy one of the winning videos!

A few people criticized the crowdsourcing idea as a way to get professionals to do work for free. Even though I was thinking more about school kids making videos than professionals, I could understand this criticism. It was then fortuitous when Brian Schmidt, Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, read one of my tweets about the contest and replied that he would donate prize money. I didn’t know Brian then, but he thought the cause was important enough to support, and his contribution was crucial to the success of the contest. Thank you, Professor Schmidt!

Before I continue to the second important factor, enjoy another one of the three winning videos.

The second key development was when the European Science Foundation came onboard as a co-organizer of the contest. Even with something as anarchistic as a crowdsourcing contest, there is a lot of work to be done—setting up a good website, organizing the submissions, getting sensible materials to the jury members, and organizing the announcement of the winners. ESF took on these tasks and made the contest a much better experience than I ever could have done myself. ESF Chief Executive Martin Hynes also added considerable status to the event by joining the award ceremony and mentioning the contest in his remarks at the European Gender Summit.

The final thing that made a difference is coming below, but first, watch the third winner!

The contest received prize money, status, and excellent organizational support, but none of that would have mattered without the investment of the participants and other supporters. The decisions of many individuals to engage is the final crucial component.

There were tweeters and bloggers who publicized the contest, like Joanne Manaster, who put it on The Scientific American site, from which many others picked it up. There were jury members: the European Parliament was represented by member Antigoni Papadopoulou, the European Commission was represented by Laura Lauritsalo, science educators were represented by Cheryl Miller, who also gathered seven bright and influential girls who also judged the videos. The organizers of the European Gender Summit let us use their networking event to show the videos and announce the winners. To all of you I’ve mentioned here, I want to express my gratitude for making this contest a success.

But there’s one more group to mention—the most important one! The crowdsourcing contest generated about 40 submissions. Most of them can be viewed here; they are as varied and inspiring as the three winners and I encourage you to have a look.

This campaign is built on the premise that targeting teenagers is important for having more women at age 30 or 35 or 40 still in science careers. And while there are many women in medicine, veterinary sciences and biology, the situation in physics and chemistry and several branches of engineering is still quite bad. Indeed, we probably need to aim at even younger aged school children if we want the brainpower of the entire population brought to these fields. And that of course is a core issue in this movement. Drawing 90% of the physicists from 50% of the population means by definition that we’re drawing from the bottom half of the pool of men instead of the top half of the pool of women. It’s not an intelligent use of societies’ intellectual capital. This work is complicated by the increased skewing in school performance, to the favor of girls. So, on the one hand, we have work to do to keep boys in school; on the other hand, we want to break down the barriers in particular fields.

To those who participated by making a video, on behalf of myself and the European Science Foundation, as the two co-organizers of this event, please know that your efforts touched us all. You are the future of science and you let us know: Science: It’s your thing!

An earlier version of this post was published as Science: It’s your thing! 3 steps to a crowdsourcing success! at Curt Rice’s blog. To keep up with Curt’s writing on gender equality, open access and more, follow him on Twitter @curtrice.

This post was also published at Inside Higher Ed

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Academia, Culture Change

“Deep Thinking”: If Not At the University, Then Where?

In Guest Blogger on 2013/02/12 at 08:44

Guest blogger, Polina Kroik, writing from Eugene, Oregon in the US.

When I decided to enter graduate school, I was attracted by the prospect of studying topics deeply and having the time and the space in which to do so. I wanted to read Kant, Hegel, Joyce’s Ulysses, and develop a mature and independent understanding of literary and philosophical subjects, an understanding that is so different from the superficial comprehension college students are usually asked to demonstrate at the end of the term.

I have gone through two immigrations and my school and college years were marked by financial insecurity. I studied hard, but found it difficult to focus on humanistic projects that, for me, require sustained attention and some confidence in the future. Though I was reluctant to leave the city where I’d gone to college, a graduate education was the only way to remain on the path that I’d chosen, and to become a mature, independent thinker. Having very little financial support to fall back on, the alternative was a taxing full-time job in the city that would have left me very little time for intellectual pursuits.

During my first few years in graduate school, I was indeed able to read extensively in literature and philosophy, and to develop a deeper understanding of a few of these subjects. Even then, though, I felt that I was somehow going against the grain. Students and some faculty regarded me as too serious, too studious. While I was trying to understand the difference between Benjamin’s and Derrida’s concepts of temporality, more worldly students were already developing their brands of academic criticism and networking with faculty. It took me a while to catch on.

I held on to the idea of developing a serious research project, even as I was learning to play the academic game: to vie for senior faculty’s attention; write conference abstracts that sounded “sexy.” I was never great at it, but I plodded along, keeping pace with most of my peers. The problem was that with all these activities, in addition to the responsibilities of teaching, time was becoming scarce. I was left with only a few hours a week that I could dedicate to research, and those hours were also often consumed by e-mail correspondence or anxiety about an upcoming presentation or application for funding.

In my fourth year, I decided to take my dissertation fellowship and move to Oregon, where my sister lived. I wrote almost all of my dissertation during that year, and remained in Oregon for my protracted job search. I have been teaching at a local community college for the past two years, with working conditions that resemble those of my graduate instruction and of many adjunct instructors. I have been lucky to have health insurance and to maintain a relatively light teaching schedule, leaving some time for research.

I realize that different people enter the academy for different reasons: some love to teach; others might prefer collaborative projects to individual essays; another group welcomes the use of technology in the humanities. I respect all these modes of intellectual work and have enjoyed taking part in them. Yet as I explore alternatives to the mythical tenure-track job—where, so I’d been told, some of the time is dedicated to research and thinking—I find no true alternatives. Apart from (some) graduate programs, there is no institutional framework that supports sustained, independent thinking, thinking that is tied neither to economic nor political considerations.

I would like to emphasize this point in light of a 2010 post by Mary Churchill, suggesting that this type of thinking is the legacy of male privilege. While the association with masculinity unfortunately still exists, there is nothing essentially gendered about sustained, deep thinking. Some of our foremost feminist theorists were and are such thinkers. We would not have the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray or Julia Kristeva had women summarily rejected deep thinking as a masculine activity.

While I support the struggle for better working conditions for non-tenure track faculty–recognizing also that the current conditions are often more onerous for women than men–I have begun to question my personal investment in an academic career. Despite some doubts, I often believed that one only had to work hard enough to be admitted into that privileged, hallowed space of academic research. Faculty still give me that sort of advice from time to time: publish more; apply for another post-doc; attend another conference. Yet I doubt now that after all the concessions and compromises, after all the competitive grasping, I will find support for anything that resembles the free and ethical academic research that I had hoped to undertake.

Polina Kroik received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine in 2011. Her interests include gender and work in American literature, transnational literature, cultural studies, and critical theory. Kroik has guest-edited a special issue of WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society on the topic of “Contemporary Labor and Cultural Exchange.” She also teaches writing part-time at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed

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Academia, Culture Change, Tenure

A New Set of Questions

In Guest Blogger on 2013/01/29 at 04:21

Guest blogger, Natalie T. J. Tindall, writing from Atlanta, Georgia in the US.

In October, I went to see the Pearl Cleage play, What Happened in Paris. During one scene, Evie, the glamorous globetrotter asks Lena, the savvy political consultant if she had ever been to Paris. When Lena said that she had, Evie asked, “Looking for answers?” Lena, responded, “I don’t know about answers, but I sure was ready for a new set of questions.”

At that moment, I felt a chill across my body. Those were the words I needed to hear, the words that explained how I felt about my life post-third year review and post-tenure packet submission.

I am ready for a new set of questions.

What Should I Do With My Life?

I did it the Friday before Labor Day: I turned in my tenure packet–two thick binders of paper and specially numbered dividers–to my department chair. I left the office, giddy. And then reality slapped me in the face. After seven years of scrambling to capture the brass ring, switching jobs and states, and building an impressive (according to others) track record, what was next?

I accomplished and was close to accomplishing what I always said I would do: become a professor and get tenured. I worked hard, so hard up to this point. And now what? And for what?

The quest for tenure sucked the marrow out of my bones. My academic friends called tenure “an emotional vampire”; others had some other choice names that I am too polite to mention. For a long time, I felt cloistered in the cell of my own making. Constrained by the tiny basement apartment that was dark and damp most days of the week. Condensed by my drab office space and my colleague’s expectations. Limited by the research that I believed my mentors, my professors, and my colleagues expected me to do. Cramped into corners that didn’t allow me to embrace some identities that may be seen as contradictory to being a professor. Restricted by the walls I built around myself so that no one was allowed in but my emotions were protected from harm, hurt, danger, and strife. Curbed by the limits I placed on my life of what I could and could not do. Reined in by all the things that other ascribed to my life and who I am.

I was burnt out by my job. I was taxed by the amounts of work I gobbled up for the sake of appearances and the lines they added on my vitae, an increasingly long resume that has charted the progress I made in my research, service, and scholastic endeavors. I was overwhelmed by the heavy investments I made into my career and underwhelmed by my lack of a personal life. As someone told me once at a dark period, you were given 1,000 dollars, and you invested 995 of that in your career.

In other words, I poured myself into my career to the detriment of a lot of other things that make life have meaning. After hearing that, something had to change. I tried shifting the external options in my life before to no avail. I fled from what I believed were toxic work environments, but the toxicity and bitterness remained in my life. I withdrew from the soul-sucking committees and positions that occupied my time and psychic energy, but I kept falling into the same ruts. My personal relationships, built on sand, sank and crumbled consistently. And that something was a person: me.

My academic research on black women and work-life conflict issues made me start thinking about the new questions. I was pulled into this project because the call for papers for a book project intrigued me. I never realized how much this research would alter the way that I think about my career and my life.

The term agency popped up multiple times from the respondents and within the literature. Tindall and McWilliams (2011) defined agency as the

self-created, self-orchestrated, and intentional method of garnering the “power, will, and desire to create work contexts conducive to the development of their thought over time” (Neumann, Terosky, & Schell, 2006, p. 92-93).

Academics exist at the intersection of privileged existence and forced impositions. We have the privilege and ability to shape our lives and choices, yet we often fall into the expectations of what and who an academic should be, get trapped into believing that the guidelines of the tenure and promotion document define us. The life of a professor can become a “second skin” (p. 70), and the identity of being a professor can become the singular role we play and have in our lives. As a participant in my study said, “here we are in the academy because of the flexibility of time, and yet we so discipline ourselves that we blow it” (p. 70).

In hoity-toity academic terms, agency is ” the capacity of an agent (a person or other entity) to act in a world.” In the plain-speak terminology that is required outside the ivory tower, agency is your efficacy to do you. Put even more simply, I had to ask the question: what the hell is stopping me from doing what I want, going after what I want, and getting what I need?

Those are all valid questions that never entered my conscious, waking life until I turned in the packet. Now, I have the task of figuring out the answers. Agency is all about choices, and I needed to re-evaluate my choices within the parameters of my work and my life. Luckily, I have some time to figure that out.

The Start of the Journey

This day is moving day. My life is condensed to a 10X10 storage facility. Everything I have accumulated between my lives in Florida, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Georgia is there. My academic books are in the discarded boxes from a local liquor store. My clothes are in haphazard piles stuffed into gray and purple storage bins. I’ve given away a lot in preparation for this day.

I have packed my life into little and big boxes (symbolically, literally, figuratively and realistically) for most of my life, so cramming my crap into actual boxes wasn’t a big deal.

I am taking off for the winter holidays. I have a few weeks where I am free to do some soul searching and engage in reflexive thought. This is not a taxpayer-funded Eat Pray Love expedition. But I need some time and shape to reconfigure my career and my life. Find something like balance. Figure out my research trajectory that is geared to my interests as opposed to the popular research trends, the research that is expedient and easy to place in journals, the needs of a tenure committee or my department’s expectations. Figure out how to adjust my emotional and physical investment in my institution to match its investment in me.

This research leave is the start of something. It’s fitting that it starts today–the day with a new full moon and an eclipse. The full moon, according to several life coaches and new age thinkers, is the appropriate time to reset, cast new goals and start new projects. This day, I am starting on a new and very large project that I have forgotten in pursuit of my degree, tenure, and titles: me.

Natalie T. J. Tindall is an assistant professor at Georgia State University, where she teaches courses in strategic communication and public relations. She is a fiction writer, knitter, community volunteer, and occasional half-marathoner between her academic writing, teaching, and service. She can be contacted via Twitter (@dr_tindall) and e-mail (drnatalietjtindall@gmail.com).

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed

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Academia, Public Engagement, Scholarship

Risk and Ethics in Public Scholarship

In Guest Blogger on 2013/01/17 at 01:08

Guest blogger, Tressie McMillan Cottom, writing from Atlanta, Georgia in the US.

The young woman is a brilliant researcher. We’ve bonded before over dinner and art. She introduced me to Japanese toilets. That changed my life. She wanted advice and perhaps too a little comfort. Like many of us, she had heeded the call from universities for scholars to demonstrate their value to society through engaged “public scholarship.” It’s not an altogether altruistic call. Money is tight, tensions are running high, and higher education is making a case for its continued legitimacy to an increasingly disenchanted public. A little “show and tell” is one of many ways that we’re trying to shore up our defenses. An ambitious, curious sort, my colleague acted in good faith with disastrous consequences. A rather innocuous Op-Ed had unleashed a negative response from colleagues and friends that caught her off guard. This young woman learned that doing academia in public is risky. It’s something I could have told her. I could have also told her that the risk is not the same for everyone.

She sought me out, in particular, because I may be a bit of a lightening rod for such things. I was well enmeshed in social media and online publishing before I started graduate school. I saw no need once I embarked upon the journey of the latter to discontinue the former. It was also a survival mechanism. Social media was a lifeline for me when, as a first year graduate student, I found myself without an adviser or a clue. I have built professional relationships in virtual spaces that have been invaluable for my career and personal well-being. Many of my closest mentors and advocates started as twitter follows or blog commenters. I have also used public discourse to engage powerful actors in media and academe, sometimes to contribute and other times to agitate. That I have done this as a graduate student strikes some as brave and others as foolish. I’m inclined to agree with the latter even while I encourage more of us to do this work. However, in encouraging scholars, particularly women and minority scholars, to jump into the public discourse we must add a note of caution about the potential consequences. The irony of good public scholarship is that when it is done well it will inspire strong reactions. You’ve not lived until your first Internet hate message. That vitriol is one thing when it is confined to comments on a blog post but when it is coming from colleagues or senior members of your field engagement can have serious consequences. Making public scholarship less dangerous requires institutional commitment, allies, and advocates.

Doing academia in public view is both a powerful tool and a potentially powerful weapon. Traditional academic work is cloaked in layers of organizational process, bureaucracy and professionalism that insulates researchers from precisely the kind of critique public scholarship invites. If someone attacks your published manuscript as trite or ill-conceived, there is comfort in being able to say that your peers judged it noteworthy and a publisher validated it as a valuable contribution. There is no buffer in public writing. As such, your words become you. And for many readers the allure of attacking the writer instead of the work is too seductive to deny. That can be a shock when you are accustomed to the civil discourse, no matter how thin or banal, that governs academic critique.

But, what happens when it is not just the general public that confuses the public nature of your writing with you, the writer, being a public property to be maligned? What happens when academics behave badly in public?

Currently, not much. In part, that is because of the same processes discussed above. Tenured professors and senior researchers with institutional cover and prestige risk very little by tearing down an offending Op-Ed or blog post. While universities are quick to promote public scholarship they are loath to extend their responsibility to include refereeing the behavior of academics in the public sphere. That becomes particularly salient if you are woman or an ethnic minority in academe. There is no shortage of research on the challenges with which minorities and women contend in higher education. A recent forum at The Feminist Wire showcased essays about the health of black women in academe. A theme common to those stories should not sound unfamiliar to UVenus readers: isolation, fragile support networks, low prestige, and micro-aggressions.

I have argued that social media and online spaces provide a means for women and minority scholars to build networks as protective factors against institutional forces that marginalize them. But, I offer that argument with a caveat: doing so is not without risk.

As my friend discovered, there is no ethic guiding public scholarship. And, if you are a member of marginalized group you cannot appeal to your personal networks when you are attacked for your public writing. If you do not have a relationship with a supportive dean in the “real world” at your university then you also don’t have a dean to call when a senior scholar calls you an overly emotional woman because he did not like your Op-Ed. The inequalities women and minorities face in traditional academic models only exacerbates the potential risks of contributing to public scholarship. That is potentially devastating to those who would benefit most from the kind of visibility, credibility, and network building that public scholarship can provide.

I am clear about these risks. I am also clear that, for me, the risk of not speaking in these spaces is far greater. I am deliberate in how I engage conversations that matter to me. That I make that choice is not a reason for accolades and neither should it be a reason to shame those who make a different risk analysis. However, when women and minorities shy away from public scholarship from fear of retribution I am reminded of Audre Lorde who said, “Your silence will not save you.”

It need not be this way. We can minimize that risk. A recent event dubbed “twittergate” offers a model for public scholarship allies. I was, once again, involved in a public debate. This time it was about the ethics of live-tweeting conferences. The debate quickly spun into articles and blog posts, some constructive and others derisive. Some undercut the agency of the scholars involved entirely. All of us involved in the original debate are women and most of us are junior scholars and visible minorities. One news article on the debate credited a comment from one of us to a more senior white male academic. That scholar immediately called out the mistake, even though he was not central to the original discussion. He did it unequivocally and publicly. His comment immediately changed the tone of the debate in that post from dismissive to productive.

Similarly, administrators and academic leadership imploring scholars to engage in public scholarship must extend professional cover to those scholars who take them up on the charge. If universities are sincere about their commitments to being diverse, hospitable workplaces (and I concede that many are not) they must pay particular care to protecting minority scholars and women scholars and junior scholars who do this work. Much of the challenge institutions claim they face in recruiting and retaining minority talent is that being an “only” anything is a stressful event. Public engagement promises a way for scholars to build virtual communities to augment what their home institution may not be able to offer them. Universities that care about retention could go a long way by encouraging that kind of networking and minimizing the risk for those who need it.

The benefits of public engagement far outweigh the risks for me but I am an n of 1. I respect that my colleagues have competing concerns. Public scholarship benefits our institutions and contributes to the public discourse. It’s the content engine that keeps publishers in business and makes social media tools so valuable. Demanding a bit more of our institutions and of ourselves can reconfigure the risk scholars take each time they go public.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Emory University. She has worked in the for-profit college sector and now researches structural inequality, schooling, and labor outcomes. Her blog has been cited by Ms. Magazine’s Bloghersphere, The Nation, Ebony.com, and Racialicous. She speaks frequently on issues of race, gender, inequality, and education.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed

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Culture Change, Higher Education, Learning Disabilities

Learning Disabilities and Academia: The Untold Story

In Guest Blogger on 2013/01/15 at 23:06

Guest blogger, Anna CohenMiller, writing from San Antonio, Texas in the US.

I have been wanting to write about this for a long time but have not known if it was a safe topic in academia.

I have a learning disability and it is something that is generally (almost never) spoken about. I have chosen to keep it a secret because I have had bad experiences growing up sharing this part of myself. A couple of years ago, I thought I was ready to share this information and had even considered focusing my dissertation on students with learning disabilities in academia, but ended up not feeling ready.

Today, it is taken for granted that I can have a learning disability and be a good student. Yet life has not always been smooth sailing, such as in high school when my AP English teacher yelled at me in public about how learning disabilities do not exist, and how I was “making it all up!” People did not understand how I could be a “straight A” student and have a learning disability. It just did not make sense to them. Aside from teachers not understanding, even my best friend did not get it, and eventually our friendship ended.

Fortunately two decades have now passed and some things have changed. I am now ready to share my story.

After high school, I moved a thousand miles away to go to college, and found an incredibly welcoming academic environment. No more teachers who yelled at me for telling them about my learning disability. Instead, most professors were incredibly thoughtful and happy to accommodate me. (As a side note, although it is the law to accommodate students with documented learning disabilities, it does not have to be done happily.) On campus, there was a center for learning disability services staffed with graduate students trained to work with each registered student. Each undergraduate was assigned a graduate student who was our personal support system and advisor. The graduate students received credit for working with us, as well as hands on practice, and we met regularly throughout the semester to see if there was anything they could do for us. I felt good. I felt like I was a responsible student (which I was), who was capable of doing my work (which I could).

In a nutshell, I was treated with respect. In general being treated with respect is a non-experience. Respectful behavior often goes unnoticed; it is the essence of unremarkable, until it disappears. At least for me, that is what happened.

Fast forward to today. The university I attend as a doctoral student has a disability services center, however it varies drastically from the one I experienced in my undergraduate days. My experiences have included ones that were okay, such as being listened to when I called or came into the office. However, my experiences have also included being ignored, talked down to, and having my water bottle removed during a testing session because “you might spill it on your test paper and you are allowed only one paper” (this was told to me in a slow, measured voice which in the best scenario was condescending).

Being treated in this – disrespectful – manner, has left me uninterested in dealing with the disability office and reminded me of my negative experiences sharing with others that I have a learning disability. The fears of being yelled at, ignored, or treated like a child feel exceptionally fresh in my mind.

Yet I know today that this topic of learning disabilities and academia is significant. I believe that it is important to write these words and have others read them. I once saw a documentary that included people who had become famous talking about their learning disabilities and struggles growing up. Their willingness to share and make themselves vulnerable was important for me to see, and I hope this piece will help someone else in a similar way. In talking about my own struggles to gain and maintain respect as a doctoral student with a learning disability, I hope to provide voice for an unvoiced student and perhaps help university policy evolve to a constant level of respect when addressing everyone, including those with learning disabilities.

Although I have had some difficulties with disability services at my university, it should be noted that overall the office has an excellent mission and all of my professors have been exceptional in their support of me and my learning disability.

Anna CohenMiller is a doctoral student in the department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching studying adult education at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She has a background in anthropology, education, and Spanish and is focusing her dissertation on the institutional obstacles to motherhood in academia for graduate students and junior faculty. Anna is an avid artist and examples of her photography can be found at http://Anna.CohenMiller.com. You can follow her on Twitter @annaramona or contact her via email at Anna@CohenMiller.com

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed

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Administration, Higher Education

Who Is This “Admin” You Speak Of?: Some Myths of Alternative Academics

In Guest Blogger on 2012/12/13 at 10:17

The alternative academic career path has recently caught a lot of attention from all angles of academia, in part because of the state of the job market for PhDs and in part because more and more alternative academics are talking about their career paths. However, this does not mean that many in academia know what an alternative academic career entails, especially when oftentimes alternative academics are filed under “staff” or “admin.” These misconceptions open the door for other erroneous views, such as the idea that staff and faculty are on opposite sides of the academic table. We seek to dispel some of those myths in an attempt to bridge the gap between staff and faculty as well as clarify what some alternative academics do.

1. Who are administrators anyway? Many faculty seem to think that anyone who’s not faculty is an administrator. But for example, in Brenda’s Women’s Center, the violence prevention coordinator is not faculty but not an administrator either. Liana’s official title is Program Associate at her school’s writing center. In reality, between the two ends (administrators and faculty) there are a lot of other jobs that provide services to faculty and students. Unfortunately, when conversations about funding in higher ed turn to the financial “bloat” that administrators add, many of these student services get lumped in. Would faculty who complain about said bloat want to eliminate the victim services position (which would not save the university a huge amount of money)? If so, are they willing to fill out orders of protection? Interview young women who’ve been raped, stalked, and sexually assaulted or harassed? If we want to support and retain students who have survived sexual violence, someone has to do this work. If not trained staff, then who? This detail often gets lost in the conversation about bloat.

2. Administrators are evil. Is it true that there are some bad administrators who are self-serving and only out for themselves and don’t care about the institutional good? Yes. But then again, there are faculty and staff who are like that, too. The majority of administrators with whom we interact are well-meaning people. We need to dispel the notion that faculty automatically equates to “good” and “admin” to “evil.” There are faculty who don’t care about students, and there are staff who genuinely try to make the lives of students better…and who get their funding slashed every day. One can disagree and argue about the value of student activities, but the fact is that the people who work there are for the most part genuinely interested in helping students.

3. Administrators don’t know teaching. Faculty members are an important part of the learning process that goes on at universities, but staff members are also part of that process. Many staff members teach; for example, Brenda teaches several courses at her institution. Liana taught before coming to the writing center, and leads workshops on writing on a regular basis. The work they have done in the classroom influences their approach to their work with students outside of the classroom. Moreover, the, the co-curricular work we do is vital for the education of students.

4. Administrators do not engage in research. Plenty of alternative academic folks continue to publish, attend conferences, and conduct research. Although this does not apply to all staff positions, many do or are interested in academic research that influences their work with students. Although faculty may receive more support for their research endeavors, many staff continue to challenge themselves intellectually through research. Our daily jobs can be intellectually stimulating without the pressure of the “publish or perish” culture. We admit, however, that this can easier for staff in non-science fields, as scientific research often requires a lab affiliation.

5. Admin hours are M-F, 8-5. This myth implies that staff jobs are somehow “easy” because we “only” work 40 hours per week (opposed to the 60+ hours some faculty members can put in). While it may be true that one’s schedule is (sometimes) 8 (or 9) to 5, those work hours tend to be jam-packed with meetings, research, appointments with students, workshops, etc. It is also true that many staff jobs require more than 40 hours per week and/or evening and weekend work. In Brenda’s case, for example, evening and weekend events can easily add many hours to the week. And it doesn’t matter if she was at work until midnight for an event — if orientation is at 7:30 a.m. the next morning, she is still expected to be there. Email still needs to be answered and if you spend the majority of your day in meetings, then the email will be answered in the evening or on the weekend. Liana oftentimes has to work evenings and weekends in order to meet the needs of different student populations across three campuses.

Alternative academic positions are a legitimate option post-graduate school but one of the reasons graduate students may feel ambivalent about this alternative track could be related to the idea that staff and faculty are portrayed as being opposed to each other. In reality, it does not have to be an either/or proposition. Libraries, student support services, educational technology all fill in the gaps between opposite ends of the spectrum. Moreover, many alternative academics who are admin or staff turn to these careers because they want to work with students. Eliminating some of the myths around alternative academic positions can help legitimize these careers as well as help faculty, staff, and administrators work together for the good of students.

Co-authored by Liana Silva and Brenda Bethman.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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Higher Education, MOOCs, Online

Digital Literacies 101 – What MOOCs Really Teach

In Bonnie's Posts on 2012/12/13 at 08:14

Bonnie Stewart, writing from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island in Canada.

In my world, fall means back-to-school.

This fall, across the world, back-to-school means MOOCs. For somewhere close to a million people.

When edX launched its first two courses in October this year they had 100,000 people registered between them. Coursera, which alone reported over a million registrants from their April 2012 launch to the following August, are offering over 100 courses this fall. As of September, they had about 680,000 registered for those. Udacity stood at nearly 740,000 registrations to date as of August 2012, with over 100,000 ‘active’ at the start of back-to-school season. And then there are the smaller, more grassroots MOOC offerings like Current/Future State of Higher Ed, which collect a few thousand people around shared topics of interest.

That’s a lot of people, all told.

Many, of course, won’t finish their courses; the attrition rate in MOOCs is notorious. There’s no filter on the front end – people register for free and thus very literally don’t have to buy in to the program of study.

But the scale of those numbers may still have effects.

Because most of those people start, at least. They get some kind of taste for what the particular platform offers, whether the content engages them, how the learning process is structured. They are engaging with – or at the very least coming face-to-face with – what it means to be a digitally literate learner.

Two years ago at this time, there were 1300 or so people enrolled in Personal Learning Environments and Networked Knowledge 2010 – the PLENK10 MOOC. One of the original connectivist model MOOCs, PLENK10 was the only MOOC going under the name that fall. PLENK10′s 1300 registrants were the only people formally engaged in a so-called MOOC at that particular moment.

Two years makes a helluva difference.

And so, while the march of the MOOCs rolls on from its summer of buzz into autumn with the Battle Hymn of Disruption still trumpeting from various corners, there’s something about those crazy, boggling numbers that has me feeling hopeful.

The idea of nearly a million people engaged – however briefly – in the kind of semi-networked learning experience that even the most rigid, traditionally-structured MOOC courses inevitably offer makes me want to believe that we may eventually get our societal minds around the messy, distributed, traceable, remixable, quantified literacies of the digital age.

And that if we do, we may also get our minds around what to do about education.

Not next week. And not in the guise of MOOCs, I don’t think: anyone who hails them as a one-size-fits-all solution is selling something. But maybe, eventually, mass hands-on participation within networked learning environments – where a peer may play as profound a role as a professor and that’s part of the system – may help us get past the impasse we’re stuck at.

It’s a truism that education is broken. We live in a time when across the increasingly partisan camps of politics, that’s one of the few statements you’ll hear – almost equally vocally – from all sides of the fence.

Of course education is broken, at least as a system. The system in its many forms is still predicated, historically and technologically and ideologically, in economies of scarcity and linearity. And as a society, that’s simply not where we are anymore.

As Will Richardson put it recently: “Every day we have access to more information, more knowledge and more people. In many ways, I can’t imagine there has been a more amazing time to learn.

I also, however, can’t imagine a more challenging time for schools.”

Interestingly, schools have tried to change. Pedagogy has offered alternative frameworks for approaching learning for generations now, and schools – across all levels – are significantly different animals than they were in our parents’ generations.

But the aspects of the traditional educational model that are premised in scarcity have proven deeply resilient and self-replicating. A big part of that is about roles.

Familiar modes of knowledge and behaviour by which we define concepts like “teacher” and “student” – and the parts we expect to play when we walk into those roles – operate on the idea that learning is about scarce content and the linear progression by which a student is initiated into its mysteries.

We get stuck in our roles, even more so as learners than as teachers.

Which is where MOOCs and digital literacies come in.

George Siemens pioneered the first MOOCs, with Stephen Downes. He claims that at their core, MOOCs are the Internet happening to higher education.

The Internet makes it possible for things to scale, and to be copied and remixed indefinitely. It changes our concepts of what counts as knowledge, and what counts as education. No longer can higher ed be the bastion of content, because most of the content it contains is actually available on Google.

Even the biggest, most formalized MOOCs, some of which are built on linear talking-head videos and automated grading, change the game a little. Not in the tools. Simply being online doesn’t develop digital literacies terribly quickly or effectively.

But interacting at scale, even in a large network aimed at having the teacher at the traditional centre, does. Because when there are 30 or even 300 students in a course, the teacher can be expected to be the audience for that student’s engagement.

But in a course of 3,000 or 30,000 or 100,000, that expectation fails. Fast. Maybe even fast enough that the students who only dip into a MOOC long enough to get disoriented and confused about the whole process begin to understand that it’s possible to be a student and still be self-directed, not teacher-directed.

To me, is the most important digital literacy there is. And it is the one that will gradually – maybe – bring change to education.

We’ll see. With a million people dipping their toes in the abundance and decentered knowledge of MOOCs this fall, maybe we’ll see soon.

Bonnie Stewart is a Ph.D. student at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. In higher ed since 1997, Bonnie has lived and taught on all three coasts of Canada and in Eastern Europe and Asia. Her research explores social media identity and its implications for higher education. Published at Salon.com and winner of the 2011 PEI Literary Award for creative non-fiction, Bonnie blogs ideas athttp://theory.cribchronicles.com. Find her on Twitter at @bonstewart.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed

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Higher Education, Teaching

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

In Guest Blogger on 2012/11/20 at 22:43

Guest blogger, Monica Miller, writing from Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the US.

Sometimes, I want to be wrong.

I suspected it would to be tough to return to the grind this fall after the glorious summer I had. Particularly, after a three-week gig teaching Shakespeare to junior high students, I wondered how I could (once again) face a first year composition class at the big university where I’m working on my doctorate.

This summer, I taught “Shakespeareance” at Davidson University for the Duke/TIP program. It’s an incredible program—though my last summer as a Tipster was 1988, I’m still in touch with friends from then. Having the opportunity to be on the teaching side of things was an exciting prospect.

And the kids! I had eighteen students in class for six hours a day, five days a week, and three hours on Saturdays. After dinner, the students returned for an hour of evening study. Over the course of the three weeks, we read Twelfth Night, 1 Henry IV, As You Like It, and Macbeth. I loved watching the students adore Falstaff, argue about Lady Macbeth, and write their own endings to Twelfth Night. To be sure, students who are going to give up three weeks of their summer to spend this many hours studying Shakespeare are going to be extraordinary kids. Still, it was astonishing to ask a question to the class and have eighteen hands shoot up.

Also new to me was feeling such a strong connection to my students. Certainly, I work on fostering a sense of community in all of my classes, but being together for such long periods of time for such concentrated study meant that we quickly became a tight group. Plus, it was nice to have things in common with my students—not just as a nerdy academic who thinks it’s fun to study Shakespeare all day, but culturally, too. These kids worship David Tennant and Ian McKellan, they thought the Frye and Laurie skit about studying Shakespeare that my TA showed was hilarious, and quite a few of them have read Terry Pratchett. They told jokes about Cthulhu and Star Trek which I found funny. It was quite a change from my regular students’ references to football and reality television (which I rarely understand).

Outside of the classroom, I enjoyed a different sense of community with the staff, with whom I shared the top floor of the dorm. The first week of classes, we practiced two hours a night learning choreography for the lip sync contest the first Saturday—the result of which was an incredible sense of community. However, it wasn’t just tripping over each other trying to emulate Justin Timberlake that forged these bonds. About halfway through the term, it occurred to me that, though we lived and ate together, I had yet to hear any real negativity about teaching. Oh, sure, there were complaints—twelve year olds who lack parents telling them to shower every day are at times unpleasant to be around in the summer. But I realized that everyone on the academic staff was there because they wanted to teach; there was none of the “teaching is what we have to do so we can get to our *real* work” attitude which so pervades higher education. The combination of students who want to learn and teachers who want to teach was a singular experience for me.

I began to worry what it was going to be like to return to the land of students who resent having to read and colleagues who resent classroom time. Don’t get me wrong – I am fortunate to have many classmates and faculty who value teaching. This year, in fact, our English Graduate Student Organization is organizing pedagogy groups for teachers to share common interests and concerns. Upon returning, my intention was to try to hold on to the renewed love of teaching I found this summer and use it to inspire me in the classroom this fall. However, the first time a student expressed disdain for having to take English classes, and the first time my students rolled their eyes when I had no idea who [insert famous college football player here] was, I felt the gap.

I’m certainly not the first person to ask how to maintain excitement for teaching, I know. However, I want to know if it’s possible to get anywhere near the kind of engaged community that I had this summer in a class that meets three hours a week. Or with my colleagues without resorting to jazz hands?

Monica Miller is working on a Ph.D. in English and Women’s and Gender Studies at Louisiana State University, after earning an M.A. in English from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 2010. Her primary research interests are Southern and Appalachian literature and feminist and gender theory; her current work is focused on the figure of the ugly woman in Southern literature. She blogs about life in graduate school at http://hegemonicbulwark.blogspot.com/.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed

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Alternative Academics, Europe, Research

In (re)search of success

In Guest Blogger on 2012/11/04 at 23:26

Guest blogger, Nathalie Mather-L’Huillier, writing from Edinburgh, Scotland.

As a former biomedical researcher, a field I left in favour of a different career, I was recently asked to act as a speaker at a careers’ day designed for early careers researchers and Ph.D.s interested in (or forced to explore) alternative careers to academia. Interestingly, there were more women than men both in the audience and amongst the speakers. Is it because women don’t mind admitting they are open to all career options, or is it that they have less confidence in their ability to sustain a lifelong successful research or academic career? In fact, I am not sure.

It’s not the first time that I had to present arguments as to why I decided to leave academic research and join the “other side”, (in my case, university administration) and I must admit that I always feel like I am having to defend my corner fairly strongly. But why? Is it because I feel guilty of disloyalty towards my supervisor, the institution which trained me and the funder who paid for my research? (My supervisor, just like my head of lab at the time, took a little time to get used to the idea.) Or is it because I feel the question is only asked because I am a woman. Maybe it is because, deep down, I miss the lab. Well, of course I miss the lab! And the varied nature of research, and that fantastic feeling you get when your paper is published, and the freedom to express your ideas. But as I explained to my audience, I don’t miss being in the lab late at night or the fact that my project was so specialised I didn’t have time to see the “big picture” whatever that might have been!

The other truth about leaving academic research, the thing I think I am afraid to say, is that actually, I did well! I enjoy my job (in the same institution I did my Ph.D. at, by the way). It mainly involves the recruitment of postgraduate research students. What does that mean? Well, amongst other things, I get to speak to students who are considering doctoral studies about what a great experience it is, and importantly, what an array of careers is open to Ph.D. holders.

I love the interaction with students at this stage of their careers, they are passionate, driven and a large proportion thinks (quite rightly) that they can make a difference in the world. Of course, the reality of doing a Ph.D. hasn’t reached them yet and perhaps the difference in the world will be confined to creating “an original piece of research worthy of publication”. That doesn’t mean that they won’t make a difference in the world, it depends of what world we are talking about. Perhaps it will be an impact on just the research world, or that particular body of knowledge but you have to start somewhere, don’t you? While only around a third of Ph.D. students in the UK will end up as academics, their impact to the labour market means that they will continue to make a difference to the world, in a different way.

In my talk at the non-academic careers’ day, I thought it would be useful to give a few tips to those considering alternative careers as a next step and here is what I came up with:

You have amazing transferable skills, even if you attended none of the courses on offer (a short-sighted move in my view), your Ph.D./research experience gave you resilience, negotiation skills, report writing skills, etc.
Don’t aim too high or too low
When applying for jobs, don’t bamboozle employers with jargon/technical speak but make sure you know the keywords/buzz words

What I find amazing these days is that you’ll find Ph.D.s in all walks of life: in industry, in the arts, in the public sector, in the third sector, in university administration…. And as far as I can see it is both men and women who choose these career paths. Maybe women are better at telling the world about alternative careers to research. In conclusion of my presentation, what I really wanted to say and managed to say for the first time in public is, “You haven’t failed. It may be the best option for you!” Do I believe it myself? Well, at least a little bit….

Dr Nathalie Mather-L’Huillier is currently a Postgraduate Research Student Research and Admissions Manager at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), Nathalie has worked in research and graduate policy as well as a researcher in biomedical science. She is passionate about postgraduate education and enjoys interactions with prospective and new postgraduate researchers. Originally from France, Nathalie has lived in the UK (mostly in Scotland) for 17 years.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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