“Morale” is defined as one’s emotional or mental condition with respect to cheerfulness, confidence, zeal, etc., esp. in the face of opposition, hardship, etc. According to Dictionary.com, anyway.
I’ve been thinking about morale, because apparently faculty morale on my campus has been in the dump for many years before all the recent SHTF.
It seems to me that morale, at bottom, is more or less about power and trust. It’s about who has power and how that powerful person or people are perceived to use the power, and whether they are perceived as trustworthy. If a situation is miserable, but the people in power are right there with everyone else, choosing to suffer with them instead of using their positions to acquire comforts, working to resolve the situation for the benefit of everyone, then morale will remain high for quite a long time. If the people in power are perceived not to be participating in the suffering, but to be making excuses for problems, blaming others for problems, or feathering their nests at the expense of others, then clearly morale will tank very fast.
What I’m wondering is, how can a unit like mine contribute positively in a situation in which faculty feel this hurt, this stepped on, this powerless? We need to avoid two things: being seen as stooges for the administration (“There there, it’ll be okay, nice little faculty, shutthehellup and just teach your huge classes”), and getting mired in the tarpit of toxic discontent.
For the record, I’d like to state that I’m just as likely to lose my job as anyone else right now — I’m a temporary faculty member and, frankly, teaching centers are a frequent target for apparent savings during times like this. So I’m not speaking from a position of administratorish security here. I care about our faculty, the university, and what we do, and I want this crisis to have, ultimately, some positives. The only way we will get the positives is to make them for ourselves because surefire no one else cares whether faculty are happy or not; other people have their own damn problems.
So in thinking through the morale problem, it seems to me that the following things help when the situation totally sucks: having some control over some aspects of life, hearing genuine gratitude and appreciation from others, having lots of information and not many surprises, and succeeding occasionally at something. There are probably more things but these floated to the top.
I’m still thinking through what the faculty center can offer. We certainly have plenty of informational resources about effective teaching tactics for larger classes, time management, stress management, conflict resolution, and so forth. We have people who are smart, sympathetic, and (I’m pretty sure) good listeners. We definitely appreciate faculty’s work. We understand that ultimately the university’s mission is education, and we know the partnership that has to exist between faculty and students to produce education. We know that faculty have a lot of choices, and we can help them negotiate those choices.
What we don’t have is any more information about the situation than anyone else, any more control over it than anyone else, and definitely no more influence over decisionmaking at a higher level than anyone else. Our “thank you’s” to faculty don’t come from the right place, and throwing a party just rubs it all in.
So what can we do? I know I have a couple of very fine and dedicated faculty readers here; any wisdom you have to share would be much, much appreciated — and that’s one thank-you that I really can say.
4 responses so far ↓
Bardiac // June 27, 2009 at 8:48 am |
It sounds like you’re doing a good job though the faculty morale is low.
Here, I wish that I wouldn’t have the feeling that our teaching center folks automatically think I’m incompetent and pretty much say so out loud. But it doesn’t sound like you do that at all, at least not from the helpful responses you’ve given me.
guitarsophist // June 27, 2009 at 12:51 pm |
The faculty center that Peggy and Victoria run is absolutely terrific and has the respect of the faculty.They have great ideas, offer wonderful resources, and work really, really hard. It’s just that there have been years and years of cuts on the instructional side and none to speak of on the administrative side.
Given that situation, it is hard not to see the administration’s efforts to increase “learning-centeredness” as being aimed at simply increasing faculty productivity, or “doing more with less.” If you learn to teach more effectively, they will simply give you more students to teach until you are back in the same place again.
Part of the problem, I think is a general de-specialization that is going on. I recently discovered that to teach science in high school all you have to do is pass the appropriate CSET. English majors, psychology majors, and philosophers are teaching science. In the university, faculty are now routinely asked to teach out of their specialties. In our English Department, because we have gone from 32 full-time faculty to 17 in a little over a decade, the medievalist is teaching Milton and World Literature, the World Literature person is running the composition program, and almost everyone is teaching children’s literature. I think similar things are happening in other departments. Arguments about program quality fall on deaf ears. It is as if they think that the knowledge is in the books, so it doesn’t really matter who guides the students through the books. Professors have no respect because they are seen as mere classroom facilitators.
The current crisis has been long in the making, and will not be fixed easily or quickly. Someone said on the faculty union discussion list that this was a crisis of politics, not budget. California is the sixth largest economy in the world. It can certainly pay for better schools. The question is whether the people want better schools, roads, bridges, and other public services enough to pay for them. And of course, there is the other question, the one that Victoria started with, do they trust their leaders to spend their money wisely? This crisis will never be resolved until they do.
Sorry, I meant this to be a shout out to the Faculty Center and it turned into a rant.
Victoria // June 28, 2009 at 4:21 am |
Thank you both very much for the kind words! I will endeavor to deserve them always.
Bardiac, I bet your center people wonder why they have a problem with participation. Eeesh. My main problem that I need to work on is, er, now that I’ve claimed to be a good listener, listening for a long enough time instead of immediately jumping in with a bunch of ideas for solutions.
GS, admin is a little behind the curve on educational trends, for sure. Faculty knew a decade ago that “learning” means having the *students* do things rather than the lecturer doing everything. So I think admin is not perhaps malevolent as much as just slow to catch on. (Am I going to get in trouble for writing things like this on my blog??)
The de-specialization is certainly troubling in a very serious way. In another way, it may have a positive aspect, in that if handled well (!!) perhaps disciplinary silos and methodological schisms might ease out a bit. Fwiw…
I guess the thing I should do is, the best I can do. I can look harder at what we’re doing and see where there are needs for information and avenues for that information. A couple things I’d like to encourage more participation in: writing circles (this is just for GS!
), mid-term student feedback which is always useful, and really robust course design. Maybe course design will be my next post.
Hope you are both having a good restful weekend.
guitarsophist // June 28, 2009 at 9:37 am |
I don’t think that administrators are malevolent. After all, I am one, of a lowly sort. I do think that administrators often misunderstand what learning and knowing are. In the knowledge factory, they just want to keep the conveyor belts moving, and the product coming out. They think that the professor robots are recalcitrant, obstructionist, and prone to malfunction, which they are, as they should be in such circumstances.
I think a discipline is a world view and a way of life. It’s not just a lump of information. And “learn by doing” can quickly turn into atheoretical learn by trial and error. It does matter who teaches what and how.