GenX women in higher ed from around the globe

Posts Tagged ‘Philippines’

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Confessions of a Field Research Addict

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2012/05/25 at 00:32
Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from Iloilo, Philippines 
At a recent International Studies Association panel presentation about military mergers, I was asked how I got access to the ex-combatants-turned soldiers in Mindanao with whom I did a focus group discussion. I am often asked this type of question by foreign audiences, and my standard answer is: I have built a considerable personal network within the armed forces and have a decade of field experience in my belt; I know who to call or send text messages to. By comparison, I never get asked this sort of methodological questions by Philippine audiences, not for lack of critical spine, but because  field  exposure is considered de rigueur in any Social Science research project.

A colleague, who is now Assistant Secretary of National Defense, once told me he likes my work better than another similarly-inclined “strategist” whose conceptual anchor is notoriously rusty and whose data is suspect. He says the empirical data I bring gives an “added value” to my work. In retrospect, this is standard research practice to academics in my University. There’s an emphasis on primary data– interview, focus group discussions, and  direct observations. That this primary data is secured at a heavy cost (think days of fieldwork in remote and inhospitable locations; literal armies of survey enumerators tasked to hop household-to-household; hours of facilitation with bureaucrats to secure FGD participation) is commonplace where I come from. There’s an implicit understanding even about what it takes a lot to earn your “research” wings, including  a close brush or two with guns, long hours of trekking (forget about public transportation; there’s none) and a several nights of un-hygenic situations. None has beaten the record of my anthropologist-colleague Dr. Alicia Magos whose pioneering research on the Sulod-nons’ (indigenous people of central Panay highlands) oral tradition of epic chanting required her befriending communist rebel commanders and military officers alike at the height of insurgent conflict in the area in the late 1980s.

My research interest (civil-military relations) makes field research comparatively less interesting, but edgy. I have been accosted by armed militia; conducted an FGD with paramilitaries in a remote mountain-village and interviewed a group of coup plotters in an East Timor prison. From a battalion-size force that  responded to a mudslide in Southern Leyte province to  a mobile platoon chasing after communist insurgents in central Panay island, I encountered various faces of the armed forces. I listened to stories of losses, despair, courage and optimism among men and women in uniform, ever conscious of my reflexivity and ethical position. I have done fieldwork research in conflict areas in Mindanao, where most of my colleagues fear to tread. I have a heightened sense of adventure but am not reckless, relying on advice by trustworthy local field assistants who have a keener sense of the spatial politics of an area than I do. Where my “Chinese-like appearance” or my foreign-sounding surname may invite kidnapping threats, I don’t go.
But where I can take risk, I will not let others do so under duress or on promise of remuneration. I have been recently engaged as area field supervisor to a handpicked team of 8 to conduct focus group discussions, interviews and community observations throughout the Visayas region for a bilateral foreign aid-funded research project on anti-poverty. During the training for the field teams attended by representatives of the funding agency, I put up a protest over their supposedly randomized selection of field study sites because they did not cross check their selection with the security data of the Philippine military and police. Arguing both from a methodological perspective (how truly representative is their site selection, where poverty is not cross-checked with armed conflict indicators) and from the point of view of my crew’s safety, they finally caved in and changed one study site in Eastern Samar, but not the sites in Negros Oriental tagged by my military friends as “security threatened by communist rebel groups.” A small victory but meaningful, particularly since the overall project leader (a close friend) is even more gung-ho a field researcher than I was! To someone like her who has traipsed across communist front lines in Bicol province, I am a wimp.
I have never aspired to be an armchair academic, not after I had my first field research experience at 21. At middle age, I still have the physical constitution and energy to visit remote places in my country for research. I hope to continue doing this, surpassing even my field-research be-medaled friend Rufa who at over 60 is still running her racket across Mindanao. We belong to the happy sisterhood of indomitable traveling researchers. May our tribe increase!

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed

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Dreaming Away in the Winds of Change

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2012/05/04 at 01:46

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from Iloilo, Philippines

During the ritual of Strategic Planning that my University holds every time a new President is put in place, a new “goal” was announced: we were going to become a research University. Accordingly, a flurry of new programs were created to support publication-driven research projects, particularly targeting ISI-listed journals and reputable publication houses abroad. Publish or perish, which has been the mode since the 1990s just got deadlier and at the same time, more lucrative. Multiple monetary rewards await those who labor and toil according to these new rules (e.g. $1200 per published article in an ISI-listed journal; 3-year Scientist designation with a $10,000 bursary; foreign travel support to disseminate research findings, etc.) and those who don’t likely are confined to the dust of humdrum teaching unable to cross ranks.

To me, this is welcome indication of a new work ethic. My previous U Venus blogs have been mantras about scholarship being a key element in the academy and how some University policies (e.g. teaching overloads, not requiring publication as an output to research grants, etc.) create disincentives to building such a culture of scholarship.  As Division chair, in particular, it is an added boost that the current crop of University officials support efforts at my level to curb teaching overloads, provide funding for mentoring initiatives in research proposal preparation and journal article writing workshops, and generally push the faculty to re-focus their energies.

I rejoice in the fact that I am not a lone wolf among my colleagues. Recently, I have been invited to collaborate in an interdisciplinary, inter-campus, multi-year competitive research project on water governance involving 4 Philippine sites. I was also involved in crafting a new research program called Mentoring Initiative which will pair Scientists like myself one-on-one with a junior colleague to do a publication-driven research project on a smaller scale. Through this window, I hope to continue my work on civil-military relations in the Philippines, with the end view of inspiring another colleague to follow on my research interest.

There is a silver lining to this cloud of optimism. University officials are counting on the new pool of money available from within to entice faculty members to research and publish. The tagline “who wants to be a Philippine millionaire?” brandied about by one official may not work given the even MORE lucrative research and training consultancies that many of my better-positioned colleagues are involved in. The financial rewards for consultancies from foreign NGOs and institutions like the World Bank are ridiculously high; but with no added value to the University. Colleagues who do this don’t publish scholarly works, nor do they have proprietary claim on the data they gather. Sadly, this line of work is the typical money trail where pandering to funder themes and goals is the name of the game. To this group, the push for a new research ethos by the University has no effect.

There has never been a better time, at least for me, to be at my University. I could get more monetary rewards for the work I do without prostituting myself to the whims of donor-driven projects. I also am providing a better template to my junior colleagues about what being a University Professor is all about: scholarship NOT money for money’s sake. Doing research to make a contribution to the body of scholarly work; participating in the discipline or specializations conversation via peer-reviewed publication. The money is incidental, not the primary goal.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed

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Who’s Afraid of K-12? Musings on University Life after 2018

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2012/03/30 at 07:04

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from Iloilo, Philippines.

Beginning school year 2012, incoming Philippine first graders will toil through 12 years of basic education instead of 10 years; high school freshmen will clock in 6 years rather than the usual 4. The two year addition is supposed to bring our students on par with other school systems in the region, and will also stream students into the more rational vocational versus college bound tracks that fill employment demands. While our legislature cooks up the sort of curricular changes and mandates for these two additional years, universities like mine fret and worry about the impact all of this would bring.

Over the past several months, I have donned my administrative hat as our faculty deliberated the assumption of having no college freshmen intake in 6 years time. In our planning horizon, this  is a major event. For a small undergraduate program like ours at the Division (made worse by consistently under populated majors like Community Development, History and Sociology), this is like doomsday. We have to quickly design a transition away from teaching (12 units or four undergraduate courses is the regular load per semester in a 2-semester year) simply because there will be fewer students to teach. While about 1/5 of my faculty is set to retire within the decade, simple Math tells me we will still have extra hands with no teaching load. What we do with these extra faculty is a cause for speculation. My Dean tells me they’ll be “downloaded” to teach General Education courses for high school; a Vice Chancellor says they’ll be compelled to do research consistent with the shift towards a research university; others say we will simply NOT fill in the vacant slots left personnel attrition thereby staving off supply.

I recently attended an orientation seminar for the Commission on Higher Education Technical panel for the Social Sciences, which advises the government body on aspects of tertiary program policies, criteria and guidelines. One of the presentations dealt with the proposed changes on the General Education curriculum (mandatory for all undergraduate programs) in view of the K-12 development. As an administrator, it is another bad omen: there will be even fewer GE courses offered and undergraduate programs are expected to be cut in length: 5 year programs into 4; 4 year programs into 3.

Like everything else in the Philippines, planning is not taken seriously. There is no transparency of information about what is going on to aid planning. It is amazing to me that this K-12 will start in June, yet no law has been passed (our lawmakers are too busy with the impeachment trial of the Supreme Court Chief Justice) nor is the Department of Education ready to divine how this feat could be carried out. There is that sense of “pakiramdam” (feeling through), with the expectation that no policy is set even if backed by the current President because after all, he will be gone from office in 4 years. And so, the system will expectedly muddle through.

This is obviously not a good time for any college administrator. I cursed the day I agreed to be chair when I had to produce actual figures for the 5 year budget plan, from personnel to maintenance and operating expenses. How much does it cost to run the Psych lab? My secretary’s original appointment is a lab technician? How many of my pool are willing to remain as a teaching faculty or be a research faculty? If my routine bureaucratic tasks are not enough, I now have to rally my young faculty to switch gears away from teaching into research and publication as a lifeblood. Down the K-12 road, there’s no other choice.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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Academic Busking: Philippine Style

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2012/03/05 at 00:41

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from Iloilo, Philippines

Academic conferences offer opportunities to test-run ideas before like-minded colleagues, to network, and to key into conversations within one’s discipline or specialization. For many academics, it’s an integral part of the job. In my University’s promotion system, considerable weight is given to presenting papers at academic conferences. Whether local, national or international, conferences provide venues for institutional promotion– a chance to showcase research outputs from our little corner of the world.

Despite its assumed importance, little support is available for conference participation in my perennially cash-strapped University. Priority is given to paper presentation (rather than mere attendance); financial assistance is capped ($500 dollars maximum for international conferences; roughly $220 for local/national conferences) and access is limited (once every two years for international and once a year for local/national). Within my Division, where there are some funds available, guidelines were further drawn to only award it to Instructors and Assistant Professors on a first-come-first-served basis.

Regardless, there is a strong ethos to “democratize” access. Conferences within Asia tend to be less cost-prohibitive with the wide availability of cheap airfare and accommodations. Most Asian countries also do not require visa for Philippine nationals.

But for many of us, the chance to present a paper to a US or European conference is almost out of reach– unless you do a version of academic busking, which I will elucidate:

1.      Apply for other travel grants for paper presentation in international conferences.

There are small pools of money available from government agencies, private institutions and foundations. The key is knowing where they are and applying ahead of time. In my years of busking, I know of at least three in the Philippines: Commission on Higher Education (every 3 years), Philippine Social Science Council (every 3 years) and Asia-Phil (every year). Like my home institution, the funds are limited but they allow, sometimes require, counterparts– that is parallel applications for funds elsewhere.

I am a “regular” grantee of these institutions. In fact, I reserve funding applications to these three bodies only to my “must-attend” conferences: American Political Science Association (APSA), Inter University Seminar on the Armed Forces and Society (IUSAFS), and Asian Political and International Studies Association (APISA). I reserve the funding from my home institution for the Philippine Political Science Association (PPSA).

2.     Use your Third World origin to get a conference fee waiver or subsidized accommodation. 

Travel grants by conference organizers are becoming rarer and rarer. Of those that still offer them, your Third World credentials would be a plus factor in getting the grant. I received APSA  and APISA travel grants in ALL my sorties. They probably have me in a permanent roster somewhere as a perennial applicant-in-need.

If there is no explicit mention of a grant, try conveying your need to your contact person; ask for a waiver of conference fee or a free or reduced rate for accommodation. In my experience, they are very receptive. Often, they have extra hotel rooms or University facilities with subsidized rates.

3.     Piggy-back your conference paper presentation to a research fund application

Dissemination through presentation in an academic conference is an acceptable research budget item. Unless the donor specifically prohibits this, include it along with a justification that research results are best utilized when made public and widely circulated, either through paper presentation or through publication. Donors like an image boost; having their name included in your paper is attractive.

A variation of this is a round-table or a panel presentation proposal. If your research budget allows it, presenting as a group always carries more impact (hence a bigger sell to donors) than an individual presentation.

4.     Plan ahead to decide which conference(s) to go to and tie it up with other personal/business activities.

Planning is key to make sure you have financial backing lined up for conference paper presentation. Calls for paper abstracts come 6-12 months ahead. Outside travel grant applications carry their own deadlines. Airfare is cheaper when purchased several months ahead, as do bookings for cheap hotels.

If you’re smart, you’ll be able to “stitch” together a seamless travel itinerary that also  will allow you a day or two of sightseeing, maybe do library research, visit family, or hold a business meeting. My travel abroad for conferences is usually like this. Because I have to fly to Manila to catch an international flight, I bookend travels with official meetings for which I am able to get a free domestic air ticket.

Living in scarce times should not be a deterrent to professional growth. There are ways to defray travel costs to attend a conference. But there’s no such thing as a 100% free lunch– you must always be prepared to shoulder some of the cost, which is a worthy investment for networking and getting peer-feedback on the quality of your work.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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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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