GenX women in higher ed from around the globe

Posts Tagged ‘Philippines’

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Social Capital in Academia

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2012/01/19 at 02:16

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from Iloilo, Philippines.

The advent season invariably leads me to engage in a self-reflection on whether (and to what degree) I have been naughty or nice. Oftentimes, I am very confident I have done more good deeds than bad, mainly because I have little occasion to potentially do ill to somebody. As long as I did things on my own (as a professor, researcher and writer), my actions bear little direct consequence to others. I would like to think I have a modest amount of social capital after being in the academic profession for 20 odd years, which I could bank on in case I veer towards the naughty territory.

But my social capital account has seen some tectonic movements in the past year. On the credit side, I would like to think of points gained from the many social events I pursued in line with my being Division chair: arranging a memorial for a retired faculty member who passed on; celebrating the Deanship and the Scientist award given to colleagues; welcoming a colleague who returned from a leave of absence; attending a funeral for a parent of a faculty member; hosting student events such as the Best Undergraduate Research award and a graduation reception; and throwing several parties at our house marking the start and end of the school year. A big plus also came from my unerring attendance to University events: graduation, opening ceremonies, alumni homecoming, foundation day celebrations, lantern parade, etc. Where I use to “disappear” from the University social scene to do research field work, or attend a conference or meeting, I now find my schedule sufficiently “freed” to make room for exponentially-expanding social obligations attached to the chairmanship.

On the debit side of my social capital ledger are losses due to the bitter struggle against a faculty member who wanted concessions pertaining to faculty loading (she eventually resigned); junior faculty members who now feel “small” because I made public their student evaluation ratings; a falling out with a colleague from a collaborative project whose leadership style and decisions I strongly contested (she no longer talks to me); and a foreign colleague whose proposals for a co-authored journal article piece I turned down without saying so (he was very upset because I didn’t answer his emails).

I would like to think I have also added on to my social capital after having introduced some worthy managerial innovations. The Division yahoo group is buzzing with exchanges of information, queries, responses, well-wishes and even debates. I have collected each of my faculty members’ mobile phone numbers for collective text message sending. Weekdays, weekends, nights and early morning (I am up at 5am doing “office” stuff on my computer); I engage my faculty and staff. I am told when any of them is sick, on errand somewhere, traveling or in some kind of trouble. I doggedly tracked down and followed personnel, mundane (e.g. updating the faculty contact list) or quixotic (seeking “corrective” promotion, something NOT previously done in the University’s history) concerns. I introduced transparency in ALL of the Division’s transactions from conference attendance grant applications to faculty loading. I feel I have established sufficient trust that I can confidently expect timely and substantive output from faculty members when I ask them to. Alas, the yahoo group medium also sank some of my social capital. A yahoo group for a regional project I was involved in yielded less than satisfactory outcome: my natural inquisitiveness and demands for transparency were seen as un-collegial and high-handed. Several members simply tuned out.  I don’t expect them to come rallying in support of future proposals from me here on.  My virtual musings at University of Venus, which keyed in academic issues to on-the-ground realities of my factual University, equally earned me admiration and admonition. Two former bosses told me my writing was too spicy and bear little circumspection but the current one says he enjoys reading them. At least I can expect some accountability from here on (lest they want to get written about!).

Political Scientists have argued that social interconnectedness and its premise of generalized reciprocity are linked to positive collective human endeavors. Whether addressing poverty or reducing crime, things get done better where social capital is present. In the academe, one must be ready to earn or burn it accordingly. There is always the next year to start all over again.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed. 

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The Importance of Classes

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2011/02/10 at 04:46

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from the Philippines.

On the 3rd of January, I showed up bright and early for my Comparative Politics class and was peeved that only 1/3 of my students showed up. One student who was due to deliver an oral report said she wasn’t ready because “she didn’t think I would hold classes that day.” I was similarly aghast that many of the faculty members from my Division were also absent that day. The Arts and Sciences building felt like a ghost town–the habitués having decided they needed an extra day to recuperate from their holiday hangover.

This is, sadly, part of a larger cultural malaise besetting my home institution– the tendency NOT to take classes seriously. This is indicative in the way administrators set meetings, consultations and celebratory occasions within class hours (7am to 5pm, Mondays through Fridays) and suspending classes to give way to them. Apart from early January, faculty members routinely do not hold classes on the first week of the semester (arguing for attendance in “opening exercises/programs”) and a day before and during the Christmas Lantern Parade. Many also routinely miss classes on account of moonlighting activities (our professors are poorly paid). While it is standard to require the holding of make-up classes for these absences, many times faculty members are not as judicious given difficulties of scheduling. And so they just send the students away with loads of additional assignments and film showings. Predictably, students also imbibe this lackadaisical attitude; they anticipate these “informal” class holidays and go on long vacations, show up late in classes and max out their quota of 7 unexcused absences.

Read the rest at Inside Higher Ed (link here)

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Naming Assumptions

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2010/09/09 at 22:32

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from the Philippines.

For women in the academy, one’s name is akin to a passport which under no circumstance must you tamper with. Your reputation as a scholar is attached to your name, which when subjected to a Google search, may yield only a few or a substantial number of hits depending on if it is correctly remembered or spelled. Unlike men, marriage pressures women to decide whether or not to make this changed civil status a separate “name reality” from their professional one. It is a tough choice to make.

Within my age and professional cohorts, I am a statistical outlier. First, I wanted a name that reflects a connection to my husband, a fact that some of my more liberal colleagues find counterintuitive. I also wanted my maiden surname spelled out to honor my local roots. Upon marriage in 2003, I conveyed this individual name preference in an official form to my university and government pension authorities. That I continue to receive communications in various permutations–“Dr. Arcala-Hall”;  “Dr. Alcala(sic)-Hall”; (medical) “Dr. Hall” suggests that my form possibly got sucked in a black hole (read: lost) or simply fell on deaf ears (read: ignored). Why is this is so? I blame feminism-infused university administrators on a crusade to hyphenate female faculty members’ names for this debacle, as well as spelling-challenged bureaucrats who mistake my maiden name for that of a more famous former Environment Secretary (Dr. Angel Alcala). As for the confusion between a medical degree and a Ph.D., “doctors” more often conjure men with stethoscopes rather than a female, book-wielding scholar like me. In the Philippines, my battle with bureaucracy and convention over my married appellation is like Don Quixote challenging the windmill. It is at times exasperating and downright comedic.

Adding to my woes is the fact that I have an obviously foreign surname, which never fails to draw unusual attention in our neck of the woods. Often, the reaction I get from colleagues range from “Why are you not in America?” to “When are you going back to the US?” indicating the built-in prejudice of Filipino wives of Americans whose only end-and-be-all is to get a green card. In several foreign fellowships I had applied for, I was “flagged” and asked to “prove” my intent to serve my home country given that I am married to an American. On the positive side, my name card tickles curious minds: the military General who spent some time grilling me about how I met my husband and why we chose to live in the Philippines; residents of a remote upland village dismayed by a motorcycle-driven woman (!) who came to interview paramilitary members rather than dispense medical services (easy to assume with someone named “Dr. Hall”); or a colonel from Mindanao surprised by me, an obvious local, coming to do research (she was expecting a blond woman, perhaps). In my area of research which is civil-military relations, I often have to dodge concerns that my husband is into covert operations (again, a natural assumption amongst many Filipinos whose limited encounters with Americans are either those in uniform or retirees).

It gets more complicated. Spelling out a middle name in the Philippines invites further speculation about your familial and ethno-linguistic origins. For a married Filipino woman, the maiden name is not a statement of sacrosanct individuality, but a window to a vast network of real and imagined connections. It opens doors, makes getting interviews a whole lot quicker and builds instantaneous trust, which a foreign surname simply could not muster.

These brushes with bureaucrats over my name will likely continue ad nauseum, but now I carry it with a grin and an unfailing patience. After all, I am one of only three Political Scientists in the entire country with a foreign surname and the only one in my entire university who insists on not being hyphenated. Uniqueness has its many rewards.

This post was also published on Inside Higher Ed.

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The Exodus: Philippine Academics Who Never Return Home

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2010/08/04 at 09:23

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from the Philippines.

There is something about the air in America that seduces the senses. To those who have never been to the land of milk and honey, the scent one encounters in opening the ubiquitous balikbayan box (Filipino care packages) is a close proxy. It is intoxicating, tempting and proven to induce reckless behavior among even the well-intentioned foreigner, even serious academics.

During the orientation for Philippine Fulbright grantees in 2009, one message was driven home like a hammer: there is no way around the two-year home residency requirement attached to a US exchange visitor (J1) visa. Not even marriage to a US national would waive this requirement. This point had to be made because the grantees included young academics, particularly women, who on record seem to be more prone to romantic liaisons while abroad (myself included). The spectre of Fulbright grantees violating their visa terms is a serious concern for an institution whose thrust is to encourage people to go back and contribute to their country’s betterment.

Academics are no exception to the hordes of Filipinos wanting to immigrate to the US to get a job (any job) that brings one closer to the middle class aspiration of a home, car/s and a 401k. Even the most ardent nationalists quickly realize how hopeless the Philippines is after spending some months abroad. No blackouts, free wifi, relatively cheap food, travel opportunities, all those green bucks– at some point one gets seduced by the idea of a First World lifestyle. When the built-in-support network of US-based relatives is added to the mix, Filipinos get braver in facing visa violations. It’s easy to be convinced by kin who tell you that it’s sheer stupidity to return to poverty back home.

To my home university, this brain drain has exacted a heavy toll. I know of at least 8 faculty members who were sent to obtain graduate degrees in the US, Canada and Australia and who have never returned. They disappeared from the grid as soon as they found a foreign citizen they could marry or as fast as their spouses or children could obtain dependent visas. No shame in stringing the university with false promises of returning after completing their degrees. No honor in turning their backs against the tens of thousands of dollars that the university spent to support their studies. No guilt over the thought that they have singlehandedly blacklisted other faculty members from ever being considered for future grants, given the stigma of their institutional affiliation.

To American Ph.D. holders who lament the dearth of tenure-track positions and the growth of adjuncts, the case of Filipino academics who reneged on their promises to their home universities but went on to establish successful academic careers in the US presents an interesting juxtaposition. How should their personal choices of economic betterment be weighed in against our (Philippine) values of honor and debt of gratitude? Is individual scholarship more important than the ethical/moral obligation to the collective? Do US universities even consider these points when hiring?

Case in point: A Filipino-American scholar, who unbeknownst to me was a reneging fellow from our Fisheries College, was to deliver a lecture under Fulbright auspices at our university. My colleagues from the Fisheries College raised a ruckus about this and boycotted the event. I also learned that the same colleagues rejected his earlier request for my university to be his Fulbright host institution. Clearly, this person is either insensitive, had permanent amnesia that he has legal obligations with my university or worse, totally convinced that his stellar scholarly achievements in the US would conveniently make up for his past unethical conduct.

I tend not to fault people for their “lapses of moral judgment” but with reneging Philippine academics, I take exception. Professional success is never a good substitute for a clean conscience, particularly in the business of “professing.” When I was dating my husband, I told him unequivocally that if he married me, he’d have to relocate to the Philippines permanently. It was non-negotiable. I take pride in being the Fulbright Philippines’ poster girl of an academic who returned home and never regretted it.

This post was also published on Inside Higher Ed.

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Newbies and Oldies: Seniority in the Philippine Academe

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2010/07/05 at 09:00

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from the Philippines.

The Philippine academe is home to many vestigial Asian values that may prove unsettling to many foreigners. Professors are always “Sir/Ma’am (first name)”; students almost never challenge the instructor-professor; and seniority is as important as rank in determining one’s position. To be a junior faculty is to be caught in this web of conundrum– you have a power relationship with students who are almost your age cohorts but that relationship is subsumed under the greater inequity of the seniority system, which puts you at the bottom of the pecking order amongst faculty members.

In my home university, most young recruits join with just a fresh BA. Being instructor therefore is akin to a teaching assistant in the US (although you handle the class independently). Within a couple of years, you get a Master’s degree on the University’s dime in Manila or overseas. After completing, you get promoted to be Assistant Professor and with publication, given tenure. This system creates incentives for young faculty members to “slave away” with the institution  given the prospect of free graduate education and a stable job. But before all the lofty initials at the end of your name,  a newbie has to prove herself/himself worthy of all this monetary investment.

Joining my department as an instructor in 1991, the informal culture of “seniority” was driven down like a hammer when the class schedules were decided. For five years there, I was assigned  7:00 am and 4:00 pm classes in our Miagao campus (40 kilometers from the city) requiring that I sleepover in one of the dormitory transient rooms (or suffer commuting in the wee hours of the morning or late at night when flagging a bus/jeepney is a game of chance). I also was assigned classrooms with oven-like ambient temperature–sucking up all your energy in a one-and-a-half hour class– and after which you’ll have to sprint 500 meters across pouring rain or sweltering heat to the other hill (!) where your next class is going to be. A fate worse than death is being assigned to teach in the Miagao campus four times a week, which meant again enduring the hour-long commutes (one way) in jeepneys whose young drivers imagine they’re flying an airplane. It’s a literal “hair-raising” experience; one emerges out of this jeepney ride devoid of any composure.

The junior faculty’s bane extends to committee assignments. Comprising the pool of unpaid and un-complaining labor, newbies are given menial tasks like food planning for social events, acting as ushers/emcees in programs, to being all around entertainers in university functions that require an “intermission number.” For instance, one of the committee tasks given to me was to buy a roasted pig and transport it 40 kilometers to the venue. Because you’re closer in age to your students than other faculty members, you are elected to be a member of the faculty softball team during the annual intra-university sports competition or recommended as adviser to a student organization that hold many-a-late-night activities (for which you are required to chaperone).

Some of you reading this may think it is an unjust and an unfair system. I did not then, and I do not now. Being at the bottom of the ladder did not look bad for I was young and had no better use of my time (certainly NOT for research and publication). To operate with a few hours of sleep and endure hours of horrible commuting were litmus tests to my stamina and dedication to the profession. The committee assignments were opportunities for building friendships with other faculty members, many of whom fondly refer to me still as “Tata” (young girl). The socials with students enabled me to develop a taste for steamed oysters downed with ice-cold beer.

Now in my middle years, with a PhD and almost two decades of teaching experience, I am considered a senior member of the faculty. I know I have earned my place because I get consulted on my class schedule and room preference (not earlier than 10am; no later than 2:30pm; no class at the oven rooms). After confidently writing to my Chancellor to please refrain from assigning me to any “frivolous committee” (I said it was an utter waste of my degree), I have only been given curriculum and advising assignments. I get speedy responses to follow-ups on my paperwork; I am allowed to go on research fellowships, field visits and out-of-town meetings with less bureaucratic scrutiny.

I have no need for unions to represent my so-called rights as faculty member. Age is a great leveler. To those who choose to grow old in the academe, investing as it were enormous sweat equity in building the institution and the human connections that define it, payback is necessary. To those who are just joining in, gear up and prepare for a heavy dose of humility.

Rosalie Arcala Hall

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For Better or For Worse: On the Dynamics of Research Partnerships

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2010/06/11 at 09:00

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from the Philippines.

In the Asian circuit, I have often wondered how true and lasting friendships are made between professors/academics from different countries who, if they happen to belong to the same discipline or with the same research interests, only occasionally interact in yearly academic conferences. I have observed that by far, the strongest cross-country bounds seem to be between those who went to the same graduate school abroad, e.g. the Cornell mafia; the Australia National University cohorts, etc.– representatives of the cosmopolitan centers of Asian/Southeast Asian studies. I see them now, professors in their 60s and 70s, good friends sharing the highs and lows of their careers and family lives.

I wanted to be one of those professors whose life is more than just the sum of peer-reviewed publication. I wanted to build lasting friendships across the seas, to host (and be hosted) for stimulating dinner conversations and travel jaunts, to make a collective difference and build institutions that matter in my region. I want to be able to call on friends for beer/coffee/lunch when I visit their cities or when I am in need of a week-long retreat in Bangkok, Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing or Tokyo.

My ticket to this dream comes through collaborative research projects, seven of which I have already undertaken. In all but two, I was the key proponent, which meant the task fell on me to do the legwork of preparing the proposals and “selling” them to these prospective collaborators. After getting the funding, it also became my task to manage the small grants by myself (alas, with no staff support) and to make sure the output and other deliverables (midterm reports and what not) come through. My partners came from various backgrounds– men/women with PhDs; Indonesians, East Timorese, Chinese, Burmese, Filipinos; academics, artists and NGO leaders– and with whom I had little connection prior to the projects.

I am a born romantic. I believed these projects would foster linkages and cross disciplinary gaps; having scholars who otherwise would not in a million years read about each other’s work or its pool of sacred literature, come together and hammer out a common framework and methodology. They were also crash courses on cultural diplomacy. As I discovered belatedly, collaborative projects of this kind are rife with the dangers of conflict, tension and irreparable damage in personal relationships.

Research partnership in many ways is like marriage. It is a commitment to openness and negotiated outcomes. Where it involves field research, it means living together in close quarters 24/7 and putting up with personality quirks and inflated egos. After all, those Ph.D.s and professional accomplishments don’t count for nothing! It involves making decisions about personal worth measured in terms of remuneration and publication credit. For some partners, the process was smooth, with others it was rough sailing because of deep-seated convictions of the inviolability of one’s disciplinal theoretical and methodological creed. I spent countless sleepless nights and shed some serious tears over these conflicts. My record of working with women with PhDs has been better, because tensions could be easily resolved by an appeal to our common concerns for our family (bringing the husbands along in some of the field visits; buying presents for each other’s family etc.). I have had considerable trouble with the men, to whom I was perceived as too alpha female and with whom I simply could not relate because they rarely talk about their families (no mention of wives etc.). In some cases, the tensions go away with a handshake, a hug or a drinking session; in others, they linger like an evil spirit in need of exorcism.

In my balance sheet, the research partnerships yield more credits than debits. I have gained better appreciation of the nuances of reflexivity in doing research (c/o Joy); of the need for ethics in dealing with communities as subjects (c/o Myfel); of the richness of serendipitous data gathering (c/o Medelina); of the inherent possibilities of integration through art (c/o Jay). I have bursted in many ways from the confines of Political Science and institutionalist-thinking. I now have a roster of candidates for “true and lasting friendships” through whom I have learned how to effectively employ wit versus charm against stubborn colleagues (Tere); to purge malevolent feelings with genuine laughter (Ed) and to steer conversation towards food when everything else seem hopeless (SG).

The drama of research partnerships is rarely visible in the final report or joint publication, but they are journeys well captured in the photos and records of email exchanges.

I hope to have sustained opportunities to renew these friendships by remembering those journeys of mind and spirit amidst the spectre of post-tsunami rebuilding in Aceh; the remnants of communal conflict in Dili; the grave silence of the mudslide site in Southern Leyte and the awesome beauty of Batanes.

Rosalie Arcala Hall

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On writing (and resisting the urge to spill red ink over it)

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2010/05/03 at 09:00

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from Visayas, the Philippines.

One of the fundamental skills I gained going through graduate work in the US is how to write in English. While classmates in the US were baffled at first by my ease in spoken English (I grew up under a Marcos-era public school dual language instruction system- English and Tagalog), I wasn’t aware of the quality of my written English until I reached the dissertation stage. In the company of peers (including Mary Churchill) in this “dissertation clinic,”  I became aware that I am too “infected” by the Filipino intellectual penchance for complex sentences and obscure words that the ordinary English speaker can’t relate to. It was a humbling experience to discover that after a combined 10 years of undergrad and graduate instruction, I was a poor writer. Granted, English is NOT my first language. But there shouldn’t be any reason why I couldn’t articulate myself in a manner understood by American academic colleagues.

It was a humbling and liberating experience to have my paper’s form (rather than just content) subjected to criticism by colleagues and professors alike. It released me from the bondage of writing “above people’s heads,” which until then I thought was a hallmark of an accomplished academic.

Coming back to the Philippine academic scene as a journal editor and a senior thesis adviser, I am confronted more than ever by this deadly writing affliction by professors and students alike. Manuscripts  abound with paragraphs after paragraphs of phrases strung together but containing no central argument; paragraphs so badly organized they do not make logical sense when read sequentially; sentences that assert with no proof of evidence or citation. I am amazed to find that their writing styles are so different from the ones I am accustomed to (in foreign journals); a fact affirmed by foreign reviewers who are as frustrated as I am reading said documents. In the last 3 issues I edited, I have tasked authors to re-write complete sections (often eliciting further comments from my long-suffering husband who thinks I spend way too much time editing these papers).

My senior students are similarly infected. They are so insecure about their English writing ability  (or perhaps wrongly instructed to think so) that they openly plagiarize statements from books and other reading materials. It is a sad reality for a cohort of supposedly “creme de la creme” of Philippine college students from the region. In my 5 years of handling the senior thesis course, only a handful can write properly. It has become such a problem that I have resorted to strong measures of having them write sections of the manuscript IN CLASS (without their books in sight) just so they could earn confidence in their writing skills. Every session begins with a writing drill, hammering lessons about the effectiveness of  simple sentences and simple words.

I posit that this situation arose from people’s inability to make and take criticism of one’s written work. It causes people to lose face and suffer “shame.” As such, rather than openly sharing their manuscripts for others to read (in my international circle, this is most welcome), many of my colleagues simply don’t. Students also do not have their classmates read their pieces (I strongly encourage my thesis writers to have a friend NOT from their discipline read their draft as a test of clarity of arguments.) While many of my colleagues agree that our students suffer from this malaise, majority wash their hands on the problem by refusing to do grammar checks in student papers/exams (not their job, they argue but English teachers!) or just blame the poor public education system that breed this bunch of semi-illiterate undergrads.

I have never been one to give up on a worthy cause. I want my students and colleagues to  experience that sense of wonder and love for the written word, like I did many years ago in that dissertation clinic. And so year after year, I wage a never-ending battle for simplicity in writing to those who are “brave” enough to bring their manuscripts to my attention. I have an endless supply of red ink pens (I am known in circles as Bloody Dr. Hall) for marking and plenty of early mornings/late evenings to invest in making more persons better at conveying their ideas.

Rosalie Arcala Hall

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Tales of Academic Life in the Periphery

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2010/03/09 at 10:51

For the past two decades, my home institution adopted the standard of “publish or perish” despite initial protests from the faculty who correctly argued excessive teaching load and an insufficient journal database as deterrents to this lofty goal. But ultimately, it caught on; leading to greater interest in research and the revival of otherwise moribund university journals. However, the faculty’s research-to-publication ratio remains low and also unsurprisingly parochial (i.e. publishing only in the university’s own journal). Rather than setting ambitious scholarship, much of the faculty has chosen the easy path by limiting themselves to institutional grants or government-funded projects.

This is not an indictment of the quality of research choices or output by my colleagues, but a critique of the “culture” around research and publication which has developed in many universities whose faculty members were forcibly led to the gruesome survival of the fittest test inside the academe. To better understand this unique culture is to remind many that the academic profession (at least for public universities in the Philippines) is poorly paid. Between research and a teaching overload, the latter is preferred by most whose key concern is feeding a family in real time. The university’s 4-4 teaching load and short (1 month) summer break does not lend itself to the time-consuming requirements of an empirical research (field visits; travel) or serious writing for proposals or manuscripts. To this I add the “curse” (or blessing) of localism– the myopia of being contented as a regional academic powerhouse serving a predominantly local clientele. I imagine that many professors from non-country capital locations also imbue this vestige of “peripheralism,” which induces an irrational fear to test their mettle in the national/international scene. This combination creates a framework of incentives that push research and publication activities toward “money-making.”  It is not unusual in my part of the world for research budgets to be deliberately “overly padded”; to require purchase of computers, cameras and mobile phones; to generate a dubious paper trail of “expenses” and pseudo travels all in a grand scheme to skim off part of it for personal benefit. Even for international fellowships (with stipend), it is not uncommon for colleagues to subsist on cup noodles for weeks on end to build a financial  egg nest after completing their fellowship.

My encounter with this “culture” was no less shocking. I was told by a colleague matter-of-factly that she built her house from the proceeds of two research projects funded by the university. I “inherited” a government agency funded research project  on a nearby island whose budget was so outrageously overblown that it’s equal in amount to my then-research in Aceh, Indonesia (think 15-minute boat ride versus international travel). There’s one who spent a $6000 research grant by taking his wife on a 2-week holiday in Pusan and not bothering to spend a single cent on an interpreter or research assistant while in Korea. A one-time Chancellor had to suffer embarrassment from foreign hosts when it was discovered that our own exchange fellows have not been staying at assigned hotels but bunking up with students at dormitories to save on hotel money.

I strongly confess to being an “oddity” in this culture, maybe because I am not compelled by a middle-class imperative to earn beyond my meager Professor salary (thanks to a well-earning husband). All but 4 of my 12 research projects (past and current) have been foreign-funded, competitively awarded and internationally-vetted, with parsimonious budgets religiously spent on air tickets, competent research assistants/translators and modest per diems. I have no house or a car to show the “profits” of these endeavors, but I have proof in the book, journal articles and conference presentations I have made based on these projects.  Most of all, I have treated research partners and assistants within the ethical bounds and expectations– paying them justly and according to market rates (including an overpriced $600 for one-week engagement by an assistant in East Timor). In my seven year research career, I have remained good friends with research partners and in good terms with funding institutions (who I discovered would gladly keep pouring money on you once you’ve proven yourself).

In this long and winded narrative, what I see as an “obvious” pathology in the research dynamics of my home university is perhaps reflective of an unrecognized Western ethnocentrism on my part. I am unfairly judging my poorly-positioned colleagues by standards of academic success perhaps reserved for their better-paid counterparts in the US, Europe or Singapore. Their “economics” are vastly different from mine.They choose to be and are happy with being “a big fish in a small pond.” They may not have extensive research credentials or have not traveled as widely; but then these things are secondary to what is more important in the scheme of things: family. There’s little attraction to overseas research because it takes them away from their families and comfort zone. Such is only to be endured where the financial largesse is considerable to offset these personal costs. In the great struggle of balancing personal life and work, they have made the bargain.

By contrast, here I am:  overworked, over-extended, over-traveled and struggling even harder to meet academic standards intended for colleagues in Western universities with a research thrust. My adviser summed it up: “You want to be perceived as a colleague who happens to be in the Philippines, NOT as a Philippine colleague.” I have always treated my being “Philippine” as a backwater label, which I must repeatedly overcome. Every time I return to my teaching job in Iloilo, I am torn by feelings of listlessness and frustration. Clearly, my home institution is increasingly becoming less “homey” in the professional direction I am envisioning myself heading. A rupture is most likely in the horizon.

Rosalie Arcala Hall

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