New School Learning Curve

The first days as an Assistant Professor is filled with adrenaline-laced excitement. The anxiousness and eagerness to get to work has you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. New faculty orientation consumes the first days while you are mentally creating prioritizing your checklist: obtaining your institution login information, your new email address, signing up for your parking pass, meeting with your Department Chair and checking out your new office. Your faculty identification card, office layout, computer setup and business card ordering will happen in a few days. The focus is settling into this career path — making that context switch from your previous status as a graduate student, postdoc or other technical professional to an academic.

The first days as an Associate Professor at a new institution is a seemingly echo of your first days as an Assistant Professor. The adrenaline excitement is replaced with  an excited calm. Prior academic work experience makes that aforementioned checklist unnecessary. The systems integration of your credentials and generation of your new affiliation occurs at the pace of the institution. Your inaugural year teaching, research and service expectations are far more reasonable. The academic life can be summed up by solving the Tower of Hanoi puzzle.

Towers of Hanoi Description
The puzzle traditionally has 3 pegs: starting peg, spare peg and destination peg. The starting peg has a user-specified number of disks with the disks stacked from smallest to largest (largest disk at the base of the peg). The object of the puzzle is to systematically move all the disks from the starting peg to the destination peg, but a larger disk can not be placed on top of a smaller disk. The key to solving this puzzle is understanding that the functionality of the pegs alters as you are moving the disks, e.g., when moving a disk, the starting peg operates as the spare peg, the spare peg operates as the destination peg and destination peg operates as the starting peg.

But here's the rub for any new faculty hire:

1. You don't know the number of disks
2. You don't know the number of pegs
3. You don't know which is the starting peg, spare peg and destination peg.

Initially, you can safely assume there are 3 pegs and 9 disks. For the purposes of this example, the disks are stacked service activities at the top, then teaching and lastly research activities at the bottom.

Disk 1: Institution Collegiality
Disk 2: External Collegiality
Disk 3: Course Preparation
Disk 4: Course Modification and Development
Disk 5: Research Team Building
Disk 6: Publications
Disk 7: Conference Attendance
Disk 8: External Grant Writing
Disk 9: Funded Award Management

Disk 1 &2: Institution and external collegiality — The variety and plethora of academic service-related activities has the potential to consume your days (and nights). Be purposeful of which departmental, college-wide and technical program committees you are a member.

Disk 3: Course Preparation — A class lecture is like Showtime at the Apollo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showtime_at_the_Apollo). Depending on your temperament and talent, you select how you will engage students in the course material via a series of slide decks, problem-based learning techniques, flipped classroom or another method altogether. Each class, you are on stage and the students tell you by their (lack of) questions, body language, (lack of) enthusiasm, etc if your teaching approach has resonated. If you instruct a course that tends to interest students, kudos -- course prep becomes a bit easier. Otherwise, I suggest you invest quality time to determine how to relate the material to your student body. Any course can be exciting when the proper care is given to the learning experience. A teacher's excitement about the materials helps fuel a student's deeper curiosity about the course content.

Disk 4: Course Modification and Development — Course material can become stale and outdated. The fundamental course topics can be presented in new ways, new assessment mechanisms can be devised, your prior experience with the course could render you to change the order of course topics. Course evolution through revision or developing a new course is a necessary activity of any faculty member. By evolving your course, you increase your likelihood of students’ remaining engaged in your courses year after year.

Disk 5: Research Team Building — The talent and aptitude to mentor students in research activity is the hallmark of a great research advisor.  Honestly, experience is the best teacher. You have to learn the balance of motivation and criticism, students' temperament and abilities, work effort and work product. I suggest The Craft of Research by Wayne C. Booth and Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath as good starting points.

Disk 6: Publications — The frequency and quality of your conference papers, journal articles, book chapters and books are common academic metric in assessing a faculty member's national and international influence. The summer months are a great opportunity to complete scholarly work due to the lack of a required teaching responsibility. The co-authorship with fellow colleagues and students is strongly encouraged, in some academic environments, a necessity.

Disk 7: Conference Attendance — Conference registration, attendance and paper presentation are required for publication. The conference talks help keep you current in your field's advances. While the time and cost of conferences can be expensive (see previous post), it is a cornerstone of your branding activities. The reputation for contributing good work to the field and presenting it well will only help in bringing opportunities knocking.

Disk 8: External Grant Writing — When responding to a grant proposal solicitation, the act of actually writing the project objectives, anticipated outcomes, evaluation and assessment plan is a time-intensive, idea-articulation scholarly exercise. The proposal operations can be an added stressor that consists of working with your institution's office of sponsored programs for internal grant submission approval. The coordination of the proposal document, supplemental materials, and colleague collaborations. Grant writing and proposal submission has a high work-effort yielding a low conversion to a funded award, but if awarded, external awards are highly valued in the academic realm.

Disk 9: Funded Award Management — Do your work and do it well.

With great power come great responsibility. ~Voltaire

A funded grant gives the awardees a newfound elevated social currency (aka power) amongst his/her colleagues.  The spotlight turns in your direction to revel in your successes and witness any mishaps. Don't let the award excitement overshadow the necessary work in properly accomplishing the project outcomes.

Healthy "Freak-Out"

Another Independence Day holiday has come and gone ushering in the season of unfilled summer tasks. Instructors made grand plans back in mid-May including but not limited to:

• complete some series of tasks on at least 1 research project
• submit conference papers and/or journal articles
• conference paper reviews
• grant proposal writing for new or continuing research projects
• post-award management of existing funded research projects
• course modification e.g., review your previous course instance and update course materials as appropriate
• course development e.g., design new course offering or receive (new to you) course materials

Sometimes, you make strides toward your summer tasks list. Other times, you can easily and frequently caught up in some other tasks. You are in the middle of what I call a healthy freak-out. The freak-out happens first. Those other tasks consume and eat up your days while leaving your nights to agonize over the untouched no-progress to-do items. Those other tasks are not high impact to your career plan and growth, but you still elect to complete them. or a WOC STEM faculty member, the freak-out experience is exaggerated. Why? Because you, my fellow doctor-sister, are the bridge. Poet Donna Kate Rushin says it best.

The Bridge Poem
by Donna Kate Rushin

I've had enough
I'm sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody

Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me Right?

I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks
To the Ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the
Black separatists to the artists the artists to my friends' parents...

Then
I've got the explain myself
To everybody

I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it
I'm sick of it

I'm sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against
The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip

I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your human-ness

I'm sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long

I'm sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf you your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self

Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die

The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses

I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful

    -from This Bridge Called My Back
             edited by: Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua
            New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983.

You are frustrated by more than your unaccomplished professional milestones, but you know that you can not afford to be paralyzed by it.

You feel a burden to do and to be for others before yourself more times than not.

Stop that.

The healthy aspect of your freak-out happens second. You must sanitize that toxic frustration to green and clean fuel. Let your frustration make you better and stronger. You need to re-focus your energies by finding your balance. There is a time for work, a time for play and a time to do nothing. All parts should be roughly equal. Every day. You can revise your summer task list by answering the following questions:

• What are the high impact items to progress your career?  (e.g., journal article submissions)
• Which task items have impending deadlines? (e.g., grant proposal submissions and conference paper reviews)
• What can you reasonably accomplish in the remaining 6 weeks of the summer?

Originally fount at http://bschoolbabe.com/post/87204327699/how-to-live-your-purpose-i-love-this-graphic)

The image above is one pictorial illustrating what it means to fulfill a purposeful life. Your passion helps you solidify your mission, then your selected profession and vocation goals become more clear. At the center is your ability to find this intersection of your passion, mission, profession and vocation. 

You can do it.

Now, go play -- start executing your revised summer task list in the morning.

#GradingJail

Teaching and student learning can become hefty part of the college professor life. Instructors must consider what are the students’ prior knowledge, students’ expectations, reasonable course topic presentation order, course assessment mechanisms and degree program’s learning outcomes. 

End of term grading (EOT #GradingJail) includes, but not limited to: the duration between end of classes and when term grades are due. It's one of the academic stressors. First, there is a short amount of time to score the last assignment, final project deliverable and/or final-term exam. Second, students seem to all of a sudden know my name, email and office location by end of the term in an effort to meet with me about their performance, or lack thereof, in the course. Third, the non-teaching responsibilities mound as internal and external reports are due to various levels of the institution's administration. But the #GradingJail stressor can be managed. The one and only rule I have to share is protect yourself from the potential disgruntled students and grade appeals. 

Course Syllabus
EOT #GradingJail starts at the beginning of the semester. Here's a highlight reel of my course policies:

• Assignments are due on a <date> at <time>. Any assignment will be penalized 25% of the original possible score if it is turned in within 24 hours of the due date and time.  It will be graded based upon 50% of the original possible score if it is turned within 24 to 48 hours of the original due date/time.  No assignment will be accepted later than that.
• Graded exams and quizzes will not be returned. To review a graded exam or quiz, the student must make an appointment with the instructor. 
• To discuss a grade-related matter, the student must make an appointment with the instructor. The instructor will not discuss any grade-related matter over email or in the presence of other students, unless it’s concerning a team project. 
• A student has one week to inquire and submit an appeal about his/her score after it is posted to Blackboard. After one week, the score will be final. The GTA (graduate teaching assistant) or I will send an announcement via Blackboard when scores are posted. Note: The one week appeal period helps circumvent student EOT point haggling. 
• Life is not True/False or Multiple Choice so neither are any assignments in this course.  In other words, no T/F or MC questions.

Instructor Feedback 
Providing feedback, especially in a timely fashion, is important for student learning. However, students attempt to garner favor at every turn so being savvy to their tactics is must. Hold them accountable and be accountable. Be consistent and tough but fair in your grading. Be prepared to easily (and frequently) answer 5 of 6 information gathering questions concerning your coursework feedback policies.  

• Q1: Who provides the feedback? 
• A1. Instructor and/or GTA
• Q2: What are the feedback avenues? 
• A2. Assessment mechanisms can include homework assignments, labs, exams, in-class exercises, course project deliverables and peer reviews. 
• Q3: When will the student receive feedback?  
• A3. Digitally through comments on graded homework and lab assignments. Face-to-face conversations during lecture, office hours and scheduled appointments 
• Q4: Where will the student receive feedback? 
• A4. For the online submitted assignments, Blackboard or another course management system. For written submitted coursework, comments are hand-written on the coursework so the student must see the instructor to view these comments. 
• Q5: How will the feedback be given to the student? 
• A5. Typed, written and orally. I strongly suggest that instructors devise an evaluation/grading rubric for each assignment. When students argue for points, and they will, you reference your grading rubric. I am in favor of using a matrix-style rubric. The rows are the instructor-defined evaluation criteria and the columns are labelled no evidence, does not meet expectations, meets expectations and exceeds expectations. Then, the instructor can assign the point structure as appropriate. The release of the grading rubric to the students is at the instructor's discretion. 

Academic Integrity and Dishonesty 
As required by every institution, instructors are to include the student plagiarism policy to their course syllabus. My years as a GTA and instructor has taught me the following. Those who plagiarize know exactly what they chose to do. Most of those who plagiarize then expect grace and mercy. I give them none. I suggest you do the same. 

We mark the end of another term. Spring 2014 is put to bed. Congratulations, you survived it. 


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More On Brandeis Marshall's Teaching Credentials

I have integrated my business intelligence expertise into Purdue's CIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum. With over 250 student enrollments, I have incorporated problem-based learning as a central theme into CNIT 39200 (Enterprise Data Management), CNIT 31500 (Systems Engineering) and designed CNIT 49900 (Data Integration on the Web) an elective undergraduate course, CNIT 58100 (Data Integration on the Web) for graduate students interested in information retrieval and CNIT 62300 (Research Methods in Computing) for MS Thesis graduate students. To expand my teaching strategies, I was awarded Purdue's Teaching for Tomorrow Fellowship for the 2013-2014 academic year. In addition, I have participated in graduate research mentorship as a member of 20 committees, 1 of which is a PhD Dissertation committee, chairing 6 MS Theses and co-authored 8 refereed publications with graduate students. I have graduated 5 MS Thesis students to date.