What does it mean to be an academic at UJ at this time?
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Presentation on 22 March 2016 to UJ’s Accelerated Academic Mentoring Programme Retreat at Kievietskroon, Pretoria
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What does it mean to be an academic at UJ at this time?
- 1. W H A T D O E S I T M E A N T O B E A N A C A D E M I C ? C A R I N A V A N R O O Y E N Presentation on 22 March 2016 to UJ’s Accelerated Academic Mentoring Programme Retreat at Kievietskroon, Pretoria
- 2. W H A T D O E S I T M E A N T O B E A N A C A D E M I C A T U J A T T H I S T I M E ? Source: own photo
- 3. Source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ciUl5Nt-Kvc/U-AaQ27MKnI/AAAAAAAADZE/Il_KHNJTySw/s1600/justice-fish.jpg A B O U T M E
- 6. M O S T E X C I T I N G W O R D I N A C A D E M I A ?
- 7. M O S T T E R R I F Y I N G W O R D I N A C A D E M I A ?
- 8. W H Y A R E Y O U A N A C A D E M I C ?
- 9. W H O D O Y O U W A N T T O B E L I K E , A S A N A C A D E M I C ?
- 13. The word ‘university’ is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means “community of teachers and scholars”. In modern usage the word has come to mean “An institution of higher education offering tuition in mainly non-vocational subjects and typically having power to confer degrees…” Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University
- 14. • Uni as an anxiety machine - Richard Hall • University as “the slugfest of competitive self- advancement” (Bowles 21 March 2016) due to neoliberal university Source: Spooner 2015
- 15. • Modern university as post-colonial intervention • Liberate education from epistemological & pedagogical domination (The Open Library of Humanities 2015) • University as a commons - include collective governance & collective ontology (rather then personal ontology)
- 16. Source: http://www.radiantsurvivor.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/just-being.jpg / B E C O M I N G
- 17. Source: http://wannabehousewifey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/valuing-friends.png V A L U I N G
- 18. Sharing & caring Source: http://images.huxiu.com/article/cover/201412/30/084541898435.png
- 20. Honesty & integrity Source: http://www.kre8insights.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/brutal-honesty.png
- 21. Awareness, mindfulness & engagement Source: http://www.nithyananda.org/sites/default/files/teaser_images_article/total-awareness.jpg?1321926088
- 22. Open minded & scepticism Source: http://img.memecdn.com/Sceptic-baby_o_134260.jpg
- 24. Learn & teach Source: http://themetapicture.com/baby-owl-learning-to-fly/
- 25. – J O H N N Y A P P L E S E E D “Type a quote here.” Source: http://lh4.ggpht.com/-N1Ybp3XYckc/VL0rWAUW7hI/AAAAAAAAAZA/YnyTlT0Z6mQ/754a50d2-a234-4456-a52e-aaca2030b87d.jpg
- 26. “Teaching does not instruct or transmit information, it embodies and exemplifies the commitment to thinking …In thinking we do not just passively register the world, we transform it by making it the object of thought, i.e, an object that can be questioned and changed.” - Jeff Noonan (2016)
- 28. Source: http://www.classroom20.com/profiles/blogs/visions-of-students-today “The new divide will be those with wonder and curiosity and those without.”
- 31. “To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin.” ~ bell hooks
- 32. Gardner Campbell’s taxonomy of student engagement Source:https://www.flickr.com/photos/noiseprofessor/25870028341/
- 33. Teaching as a community-based endeavour Source: http://blog.goodbarber.com/photo/art/grande/6865210-10494570.jpg?v=1406802219
- 34. – B E L L H O O K S ( 1 9 9 4 : 1 2 ) “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.”
- 37. Supervise: Being a mentor Source: https://charuzu.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/mentor-mentees2.jpg
- 38. Supervise: Sparing partner Source: http://www.scifighting.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/boxingsparring.jpg
- 39. Academic citizen & being collegial We’re running together!
- 40. Dog loves hot tub Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iacVZyP-74k
- 42. C H A L L E N G E S S U G G E S T I O N S &
- 43. Busy - I have no time! Source: https://diamonddish.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/stopwatch-hand.jpg
- 44. Work / life balance - true for you? Source: http://www.brucesallan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/This-Modern-Life-comic.jpg
- 45. “There is a lot of activity that an academic undertakes that acts as ‘glue’ holding together the whole scholarly practice”~ Martin Weller (2015) Getting & giving support
- 47. • ‘Metric assemblage’ (Roger Brown): ways in which academics are monitored & measured in contemporary audit culture of entrepreneurial university; quantified self • “People routinely talk in terms of journal labels rather than discoveries” (Oswald quoted in Fullick 2014) Does it count? Must it count? Source: blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/01/13/the-academic-quantified-self/
- 48. Hierarchies
- 49. Gender roles & control Source: http://s3.scoopwhoop.com/anj/UNcomics/592602695.jpg
- 51. – K A T E B O W L E S 2 A U G U S T 2 0 1 5 “ways of grounding everyday professional choices in personal rather than institutional values.” Source: http://musicfordeckchairs.com/blog/2015/08/02/service-as-a-service/
- 53. Scholarship of integration (Boyer 1994) Source: http://www.encorekb.com/assets/images/tin-can-telephone.jpg
- 57. Expect Murphy’s law! Source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/- GXeoTvpvW_4/U9KpPPbnBHI/AAAAAAAABWA/gFr3Zyj65J0/s1600/murphy's+law.jpg
- 64. "to begin always anew, to make, to reconstruct, and to not spoil, to refuse to bureaucratise the mind, to understand and to live life as a process-live to become“ – P A U L O F R E I R E
- 65. Noam Chomsky, in his essay ‘The responsibility of intellectuals’ (1976) stressed that the responsibilities of intellectuals “are much deeper” than the average person because of “the unique privileges that intellectuals enjoy.”
- 66. • What is YOUR vision for being an academic / of the university / UJ? • What is OUR vision for being academics / of the university / UJ? • i.e., who do we serve?
- 68. Share your ideas with me On Twitter: @carinavr
- 69. A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S • Bali M 2016 Hidden scholarship: Achievements academics don’t report. Blog post on ProfHacker on 14 March. http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/hidden- scholarship-achievements-academics-dont-report/61834#disqus_thread • Barnett R 2011 The idea of the university in the twenty-first century: Where’s the imagination? Yüksekö¤retim Derghisi (Journal of Higher Education) 1(2): 88-94. http://www.yuksekogretim.org/Port_Doc/YOD_2011002/YOD_2011002004.pdf • Barnett R 2015a Thinking and rethinking the university: The selected works of Ronald Barnett. Rutledge: London • Barnett R 2015b Glimpsing the ecological curriculum. http://www.aall2015uow.com/speakers/ronald-barnett/ • Bowles K 2016 Standing room only. Blog posting on Music for deckchairs on 13 March. http://musicfordeckchairs.com/blog/2016/03/13/standing-room-only/ • Bowles K 2016 Heresy and kindness. Blog posting on Music for deckchairs on 21 March. http://musicfordeckchairs.com/blog/2016/03/21/heresy-and-kindness/
- 70. • Boyer EL 1994 Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching • Brew A 2003 Teaching and research: New relationships and their implications for inquiry-based teaching and learning in higher education. Higher Education Research & Development 22(1): 3-18 • Chan K 2015 The 3 things I didn’t know I’d love about being a prof. Blog posting on Chans Lab Views on 9 August. http://chanslabviews.blogspot.co.za/2015/08/the-3-things-i-didnt-know-id-love- about.html • Edmundson M 2015 Why we need to resurrect our souls. The Chronicle of Higher Education 17 August http://m.chronicle.com/article/Why-We-Need-to- Resurrect-Our/232369/#sthash.FXch6noE.dpuf • Fong B 2014 Cultivating ‘sparks of the divinity.’ Liberal Education 100(3): 28- 35 • Fullick M 2014 By the numbers. University Affairs 3 July. http://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/speculative-diction/by-the-numbers/
- 71. • Giroux HA 2015 Higher education and the politics of disruption. Truthout 17 March. Available at http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29693-higher-education-and-the- politics-of-disruption • Krampe F 2014 "Failure is always an option" - even for scholars. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140915075306-107871991-how-we-are-not- dealing-with-rejection-in- academia?utm_content=buffer593f7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com& utm_campaign=buffer • Martin B 2011 On being a happy academic. Australian Universities’ Review 53(1): 50- 56 • Mda Z 2015 2015 Graduation ceremony speech CUT Honorary Doctorate on 18 March. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xnz1hWWOrI • Morrish L 2016 Stress and the kindness of strangers. Blog posting on Academic Irregularities on 10 March. https://academicirregularities.wordpress.com/2016/03/10/stress-and-the-kindness-of- strangers/ • Mount A et al 2015 For slow scholarship: A feminist politics of resistance through collective action in the neoliberal university. ACME: International E-journal for Critical Geographies
- 72. • Mulholland N 2013 Shift happens. Journal for Artistic Research 3. https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/28573/28574 • Noonan J 2016 Ten theses in support of teaching and against learning outcomes. Blog posting on Jeff Noonan: Interventions and Evocations on 6 March. http://www.jeffnoonan.org/?p=2793 • Nussbaum M 1997 Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Cambridge: Harvard UP • Osbaldiston N & Cannizzo 2015 Academic work/life balance: Challenges for theory and practice. Blog posting on the AustralianSociological Association on 20 August https://www.tasa.org.au/academic-worklife-balance-challenges-for-theory-and- practice/#.VdvNLY3NLFs.twitter • Parfitt E 2010 Lessons for new professors. Inside Higher Education. Available at https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2010/05/28/parfitt • Sen A 2015 India: The stormy revival of an international university. The New York Review of Books, 13 August. Available at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/aug/13/india-stormy-revival-nalanda- university/
- 73. • Spooner M 2015 Higher education’s silent killer. Briarpatch Magazine 1 September. https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/higher-educations- silent-killer • The Open Library of Humanities 2015 https://about.openlibhums.org/2015/05/14/cfp-the-abolition-of-the-university- deadline-nov-1st-2015/ • Thomas PL 2015 More on critical pedagogy, critical thinking, and the Other: “Critical pedagogy wants to know who’s indoctrinating whom”. Posting on 17 August on the blog ‘the becoming radical’. https://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/more-on-critical- pedagogy-critical-thinking-and-the-other-critical-pedagogy-wants-to-know- whos-indoctrinating-whom/ • Weller M 2015 Scholarship can’t afford itself. July
Editor's Notes
- I looove water! And justice. First temp academic job as junior lecturer at RAU in 1996, whilst busy with Hons Permanent post from 1997 Involved in numerous research projects VC’s teaching excellence award in 2009 Completed PhD in 2012 Became HoD in 2013 Supervised numerous postgrads I am on sabbatical for most of this year!!
- Now, let me learn something about you. Who can read this? You are awesome!
- 1) To make a difference 2) Curiosity Chan (2015) on a blog posting reflecting “Why I am still a prof?” added to this the freedom to fail.
- My mentors: Carl Sagan Passionate and communicating complex science to public and children.
- Tressie McMillan, prof in Sociology at Virgiania Commonwealth University Passionate & justice!
- Watch this. Then in your collaboration pods (groups of four), come up with a correlation between video and academia.
- University as an idea an as an institution. Changes in idea of university: for 100 years the idea of uni was the metaphysical university; universal attached to uni, such as reason, liberty, understanding, dialogue, emancipation (Barnett 2015:17, 20). Then the research university which is now becoming the entrepreneurial university. “The idea of the university, therefore, has closed in ideologically, spatially and ethically” (Barnett 2011:89).
- Contemporary uni shot through with contradictions. Audit-culture - “measurement and a new rise in managerialism to market in order to complete the “3M” trifecta of a fully neoliberalized academy” (Spooner 2015). Triple threat of evaluation, isolation, and overwork.
- Where does UJ’s Global Excellence and Stature (GES) drive fit?
- Who are you as an academic? authentic self (me loving water and researching water) mobility & mooring reliability integrity resilient leader & manager mindful - aware of own place in the world, without passing judgement academic citizen: academic citizenship “according to Bruce Macfarlane…author of The Academic Citizen: The Virtue of Service in University Life (2007), it is “the glue that keeps academe working”.
- What values define who you are as an academic? Where do these values come from? Robert Merton in 1942 identified what he regarded as the four norms of science (these can be considered as values for academia): communism universalism disinterestedness organised scepticism
- “a willingness to freely share the products of intellectual endeavours …We do research to benefit mankind, not to make money from it” Collaboration, cooperation. Open educational movement
- Academic honesty: Plagiarism - Eminent sociologist Zygmunt Bauman accused of self-plagiarism “he apparently recycled significant chunks of his previous works in his later ones, given that he has published a book every six months for the past 25 years. That output is all the more remarkable given that he will be 90 in November”. But also stop the conspiracy of silence about stress of academic life, as “management-by-metrics toxicity spreads throughout the sector”; “struggling to fulfil impossible obligations" (Morrish 2016). Let’s admit to feelings guilt and anxiety. Is academic life compatible with quality of life?
- Academic freedom with responsibility Are you paying attention? Do you listen? Transformation in HE: #Rhodesmustfall #Luister (Com)passion Also self-awareness and reflection Alice Dreger resigned because interference
- Questioning everything! “Being critical is about self-awareness, empathy, and the perpetual state of questioning the nature of assumptions in the context of how those assumptions work to perpetuate power as well as to deny power” ~ PL Thomas (2015)
- What do you do as an academic? What is your ‘real’ job? How do you behave?
- Start with your own learning. Learn before you teach.
- Michael Wesch
- Learning as soul-making: about “developing the internal landscape of students’ lives” (Bobby Fong 2014) “Nussbaum (via Fong) articulates the aims of college as, first, developing students’ “capacity to critically examine themselves and the society that has formed them”. Second, “exposing students to the unfamiliar […] to encourage [them] to appreciate the occasions when they are uncomfortable with the strangeness of the world”. This encounter with “strangeness” leads into a third goal, the development of “empathy, the capacity to place themselves in the situation of others”.” (Martha Nussbaum 1997). Let’s be amazed! Let’s inspire wonder and curiosity!
- The sleeper - by Michael Wesch Start with who, why, how and lastly what. Rather than conventional what, how, why and who. “No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship” - James P Comer, professor of Child Psychiatry at Yale University Look at the questions that burn in their souls. Leave a legacy of relationships - “I care more about the people my students become than the scores on the tests they take.”
- Takes courage to teach and learn with students.
- Parker Palmer’s book The Courage To Teach: “The highest form of love is the love that allows for intimacy without the annihilation of difference.” “As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together.” “Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.”
- Practices values of curiosity, honesty / integrity, open-minded & sceptical. Advancement of knowledge Be productive: Peter Higgs, British physicist who gave name to the Higgs boson, believes no university would employ him in today's academic system because he would not be considered ‘productive’ enough. Got Noble prize in 1980 and again in 2013. (http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system?CMP=share_btn_tw) - Feeling like a fake? Will be caught out? - average rejection rate of journals is some 90 per cent (Krampe 2014) Honest (negative?) CV - indicate rejections Research collaborations - about relationships imposter syndrome SOTL
- About relationships of trust and respect
- From admin tasks within department & uni, to professional associations, editorial boards, external assessor, etc. Be involved in a community - with department, UJ & beyond it About relationships! Networking - awkward & uncomfortable; develop PLN; online portfolio surround self with people that see glass as half full
- Have fun!
- In groups of four, what we can do about the challenges we face in being the academics we want to be at UJ. Allocate to groups focusing on teaching, research & academic citizenship.
- Time management: is about prioritising: if you don’t give, it will take E.g. How get in middle of stream with writing (write every day). Being ‘lazy’ and slowing down. “the need for a socio-cultural shift towards slowing down the pace of work, life and consumption, improving well-being”. “Time-pressure can be a symbol of status and flaunting it can represent one of the few socially acceptable forms of conspicuous self-aggrandisement available. Time-pressure can reduce the time available for reflexivity, ‘blotting out’ difficult questions in a way analogous to drink and drugs. Time-pressure can facilitate a unique kind of focus in the face of a multiplicity of distractions. If we accept that priorities are invested with normative significance (i.e. they matter to us in direct and indirect ways) then prioritisation can be pleasurable. This can take the form of people who rely on deadlines to ensure things get done. More prosaically, it can undercut procrastination by leaving one with finite temporal resources to utilise for non-negotiable obligations. Time-pressure can leave us feeling that we are living life most fully. If the good life is now seen as the full life then living fast feels like living fully.” (Carrigan 2015). The Plashing Vole “championing of ethical mediocrity” - need a culture of kindness. “There’s too much to do in too little time with too little money to be world-class in everything we do. What we can and should do is recognise the limits of what’s possible and encourage people to do their best – and I don’t just mean that managers need to do better. We all need a little more humanity.” The Plashing Vole Cardigan M 2015 Life in the accelerated academy: Anxiety thrives, demands intensify and metrics hold the tangled web together. Blog posting on LSE’s The impact blog on 7 April. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/04/07/life-in-the-accelerated-academy-carrigan/
- What constitutes ‘leisure time’ for you? True for you: Reading academic papers construed as part of leisure activities. “I love my work, but I hate my job.” Job is tiresome, tedious and bureaucratic (Osbaldiston & Cannizzo 2015). Look after your health; look after your family & friends. “Roger Burrows (2012) offering criticism of, respectively, ‘the hidden injuries of neo-liberal academia’”. “feminist scholar Ros Gill suggests that a ‘sacrificial ethos’ silences stories of stress and insecurity”. For Slow Scholarship, written by Alison Mountz and colleagues, about “a feminist ethics of care that challenges the isolating effects and embodied work conditions inherent to the increasing demands placed on academics within the neoliberal university.” Foreground collaborative, collective, communal ways forward (Mountz et al 2015:2).
- Dehumanisation. About being collegial Shut-up-and-write Co-teaching #ujhtl When do you send your emails? Hidden scholarship: “my impact being defined through the peripheral activities: recommendations, mentoring, feedback, extracurriculars”. Report annually on: 1. “Scholarly Resilience (or Persistence): measured by the number of times you recover from journal rejections to one of your articles, get up again, revise and resubmit to another journal. It takes a lot of energy and self-belief to pick oneself up after a stinging rejection.” 2. “Impressive Collaboration: it is incredibly disappointing that in much of academia, single authored works are more valued than multi-authored work – because multi-authored work demonstrates so much more skill in working with others and can produce so much more valuable knowledge. Collaborations are all the more impressive, I believe, when they are unfunded and between people in different parts of the world.” 3. “Peer Review: Sure, there is a space somewhere where you can write that you conduct peer review for journals or conferences; but it is not something prominent.” 4. “Informal Support: How many times have we informally read someone else’s work to give them feedback or help them brainstorm? This kind of peer mentoring is essential for early career researchers, and even beyond. It is a learning experience for both, and yet not valued in the sense that for example supervising a thesis is (difference in scale notwithstanding)”. (Bali 2016).
- Reminds of discourse of “unproductive housewife”.
- “Almost 50 years ago, in 1967, Noam Chomsky published an essay called “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” in which he stressed that the responsibilities of intellectuals “are much deeper” than the average person because of “the unique privileges that intellectuals enjoy.”” (Spooner 2015)
- We should force uni to take moral responsibility.
- Some days it feels like I have only battled! Professor Stefan Grimm of Imperial College committed suicide in December 2014 after threatened to be fired after performance review for 2 years. Was productive with publications but didn’t have ‘expensive enough research’ (£200k p.a) even though had highest number of grants at uni - publish AND perish. “If the expectations of academic pace and productivity are making work unsafe for some, shouldn’t we look harder at the values of the institution that causes these pressures to seem reasonable to anyone?” (Bowles 2016). Need practices of self-care. Can being committed be self-harm? Tumblr site on Academia is killing my friends - stories of abuse, suffering and exploitation. http://academiaiskillingmyfriends.tumblr.com/
- Like hands are tied Public scholarship, e.g., networked scholar
- Boyer (1994:16) identified four functions of a scholar: scholarship of discovery (research), scholarship of integration, scholarship of application, and scholarship of teaching. Scholarship of integration: making connections across disciplines, beyond the uni Move beyond teaching versus research. Look at teaching-research nexus: Through communities of practice with our students. Phrase ‘research’ used 1st time in 1870s in UK by reformers who wished to make Cambridge & Oxford “not only a place of teaching, but also a place of learning” (Boyer 1994:15) Inter- and transdisciplinarity
- Learning expeditions; from choosing majors to choosing missions (Stanford Uni 2025)
- Homework as a social justice issue!
- Sometimes we’re just looking the wrong way. Phrase the problem differently.
- Very hard on ourselves. Good enough
- Chill more!
- being and becoming an academic is so much more than having a PhD.
- Heart and mind!
- hooks b 1994 Teaching to transgress:
- Uni is about the common good, engaged in a collective manner with other academics and students, in a caring and respectful manner. Let’s build relationship - be off to the pub!