Taking the Temperature of the University: Observations from three Department Chairs
Presentations made at the FAS Senate Meeting on Thursday, November 19, 2020
Mr. Jacobson introduced the topic of “Taking the Temperature of the University: Observations from 3 Department Chairs” and noted that the FASS wanted to get a sense of what different departments were experiencing during these unusual times. They were given suggestions of what to report on. He introduced Verity Harte, chair of Philosophy to begin the discussion:
Ms. Harte noted that she also has an appointment in Classics and is a scholar in ancient philosophy, however she cannot claim to speak for the division of the humanities, and doubts we would get the same answers from each of her colleagues. She then spoke on the three topics that Mr. Jacobson invited the chairs to speak on - the general morale of faculty, staff, and students in our department; the impact of the freeze on our operations; and the status of graduate admissions for next year.
Morale: Ms. Harte noted that one of the things that is difficult about chairing remotely is the lack of readily available, natural means by which to gauge morale generally, especially, she finds that amongst the student body, whom she does not meet with regularly, they have been pretty and understandably reluctant to add more zoom meetings for check-ins. So, with this caveat, she said that beyond what can be expected, given the national and world situation, morale is better than she might have expected. Her principal concerns, she said, are graduate students and staff. They are two groups represented in her department who are relatively-speaking less integrated into community activities and less automatically subject to attention by university (given the lavish attention paid to students in the College and the attention ladder faculty, especially tenured ladder faculty, can claim by virtue of the security and authority of their positions, who get quite a bit of attention). She noted, as a relevant aside, that her department faculty only includes one faculty member who is from the instructional faculty ranks, and that person is also an Associate Head of College.
Impact of the Freeze: She was not sure whether the question is about the freeze on hiring (which it turns out there isn’t), the salary freeze, or the budgetary freeze. Ms. Harte noted that the Department of Philosophy has no funds of its own and has been on an effective freeze of its General Appropriations operating budget for the last seven-eight years. This, she said, certainly has an impact on our activities, though in the past year or two we have been able to request and receive funds for basic departmental activities such as sponsoring community events, supporting graduates, supporting new (and modest) departmental prizes etc., and she believes this will now be incorporated into the department’s GA. She has not heard commentary on the salary freeze from her faculty. In terms of hiring, she noted, Philosophy received word that a search request that was put in last year (which received no response last year in light of Covid shutdown) can proceed this year - this is a junior search in applied ethical and/or political philosophy, broadly construed, and he position has just been advertised.
Grad admissions: Ms. Harte said that the department will be running graduate admissions this season and noted that last year, we voted as a department to offer all graduate students in our program a full year extension (we did this before it became clear they would all be eligible for this anyhow). She said they are doing this by underwriting these extensions, per the graduate school’s requirements, by reducing our entering class. We are, she said, already under our TAPS of 30, and students who typically graduate from our program within six years (not infrequently in five, sometimes even in advance of this). This year we will target an entering class of four rather than five, and we anticipate doing the same next year.
Mr. Jacobson introduced Karsten Heeger, Chair of Physics. Mr. Heeger said he will report on impressions he has as chair of Physics both within and outside of his department, noting that these are his own impressions and that he is not speaking for the entire community. He said one of the biggest challenges he sees and feels necessary, is to make sure that everyone in our community is supported and feels supported– students, postdocs, staff and faculty. He noted that 2020 has been challenging on many levels, and the pandemic has tripled the burden for those who are already doing a lot in the department, such as holding up service and mentoring, and it has amplified those who need extra support, which creates a very challenging situation, and we see this among students, postdocs, staff and also faculty. He said it is also important to recognize and articulate that everyone is more inefficient, with their workload higher, he said that the fatigue is real. He said we see among the faculty with them struggling to focus on the research and proceed with all the things that we want to do and need to do besides teaching and so on. He said that the mental fatigue is real, and that other factors such as load at home are also burdensome. He said that we are seeing that those who have and are holding up the department community at many levels really feel overwhelmed, and particularly for women faculty and faculty of color, we need to work on and recognize that this is real. In this context, it has also been discussed that the typical means we have for faculty recognition are not appropriate because it is something that is hard to measure and recognize, and he noted that we have to think creatively how to deal with this. He said that coming up to the end of this semester, there is also realization that this is something that has been with us for nine months, it will continue, and simply pushing through as we did in the spring semester is not going to be sustainable and we have to find ways to make sure that we can sustain it for at least another six or perhaps nine months or a year – who knows? He pointed out that clearly our students, and everyone around us, gets the best when the faculty are at their best, and so there is really interconnection in the community. He said he also worries about the grad students and the postdocs – how do we support them and how do we mitigate long-term impacts, how do the grad students who started on-line navigate grad school because they are missing many of the interactions that they usually build in their social network and in the department, and how do we mentor and support postdocs who want to take the next step in their career? He also very much worries about the long-term. He noted that on a daily basis, how do we focus on the next semester and keep operations going? He said this is clearly going to be a multi-year challenge – how do we deal with professional development and satisfaction in the out years, and we have to acknowledge that this is going to be a long tale to this pandemic. He thanked our deans and the Provost’s office for everything they have done and are doing to help us with childcare support and the various programs that are being put in place, and he feels that it is important to realize that we all have to work together to make it work. As chair, he said, he has learned a lot working with our students and postdocs and staff to learn about their situations, and between faculty chairs and university leadership find ways and creative ways to make it through the next months and years. Next Mr. Heeger remarked about morale and work on diversity equity inclusion that are going on in many departments and noted that this has been an extraordinary and most unusual year, and it is an opportunity and mandate to act now on these issues in our field. He has seen a lot of good engagement and a lot of work in his department and in neighboring departments. He said there is a lot of culture work that needs to be done on the department level, but it is clear that we need the support, recognition and commitment from the highest level to make sure that those who are shouldering much of this work don’t get burned out and are recognized. He said as far as the impact of the freeze, there has been some suspended searches, however overall it is probably less than what many of us expected in the spring. He said that specifically in his field, it is important to recognize the work that has gone into some of the past searches that are currently suspended. Sometimes these are multi-year searches, so if we can resurrect them, it will be beneficial to the department and impact on how people feel on their past work on these search committees. Clearly, he said, we want to be competitive with our peer institutions, and quite a few of them are actually searching this year in preparing for the post-pandemic world. Regarding grad students, he said he does not know if there will be an impact on the department, and that ,we are currently looking at our grad students needs for next year, both teaching and research needs. He thinks about how to support a TS need as an important question and coming back to the well-being of our grad students and how to ensure that the workload of the students does not exceed the nominal TF hours during the pandemic is important. He said the important issues are to focus on the well-being of our students and our community at large.
Mr. Jacobson introduced Tony Smith, Chair of the Economics Department. Mr. Smith thanked the FASS for the opportunity to speak on his perspective of what is going on in Economics. He noted that the morale in the department is surprisingly good with all things considered. We are doing our activities and things are happening - classes are taking place and students are writing their dissertations. Morale, therefore, is relatively good. However, he said he is worried about on-line teaching for people in large classes, with 8 classes with over 100 people and one class with 454, he thinks that on-line teaching, especially in large classes, is very difficult and much more work than normal, and this is true even in cases where he has tried to double up professors in these large classes and they are doing almost as much work as when they were teaching by themselves. He said this is a difficult time for staff – we have about 20 staff across the Cowles Foundation, the Tobin Center, the Economic Growth Center, and the Department of Economics, and he sees stresses for staff. He noted that coming into the office and being part of the community is just a part of life, and more so for staff, so he worries about this. However, he said that overall, the staff is doing well even though it is especially stressful for them. He said that he is also concerned with the graduate students, especially early year grad students. He said they have set up a new mentoring program this year – they used to just mentor students formally from the third year, however now there is one-on-one mentoring for all students starting in the first year. Overall, he said, it is not so bad and we are getting our job done. He reported that the impact of the freeze is being handled well in Economics. He noted the department has a lot of instructional faculty and in the spring and they were all renewed (negotiating with them one-by-one) and this also included those who teach just one course. He noted that there is also a new pre-doc program that was set up in the Tobin Center that is in its second year and has 40 pre-docs. He said this is the department’s counterpart to the post-doc science program proposal, and it is to increase diversity in economics and to increase the pipeline of students in the PC programs. And, he said, it is fully funded. Regarding ladder faculty, he noted that it is at about the same level as last year, perhaps a little less junior and a little more senior. But, he said, the senior hiring is what we were planning pre-Covid and centers around what President Salovey called in his message in October around data and evidence-based, policy-relevant social science research, partly with the new Jackson School, so we are engaged in hiring new faculty for the new Jackson School. Also, he said, we have in the department a new Tobin School for Economic Policy that focuses on domestic and economic policy research and engages with practitioners as well, and we are working to hire faculty in public economics that can further the mission of the Tobin Center. Overall, he said, there has been a reasonable amount of activity. Mr. Smith noted that he is sympathetic with the letter from his colleague Mr. Geanakoplos regarding long-term perspectives that emphasizes that there is a short-term budget focus and that we should be thinking longer-term. He said that maybe that is changing and that we do have a relatively solid position relative to some of our peers. He does not think that the hiring that we’re doing right now is super bold the way that the letter might recommend, but at the same time we are doing a lot of active searching in important areas to meet University goals. Mr. Smith then mentioned admissions, and graduate students, and how our students are going to do in the job market this year. He said we typically have about 20 students who enter the market each year, and we are fortunate to have a very good placement record, and we basically place everyone, mostly after six years, occasionally after seven, and sometimes after five. He said that this year, he is concerned, and you can look at the centralized placement/recruiting adds in a centralized location, and for academic positions it is down by about half, and business opportunities look strong and many of our students go into consulting and business, and he is not sure about government. We were concerned this year, and we offered just for our current set of students in the market, and additional year of funding and a second shot at the job market if they were not able to find jobs. The idea was to encourage everyone to go in the market, look for a job, and if they could not find one, we will have them back for an extra year and have them have a second shot with the full support of the department. This year, he noted, they are funding six students with an extra year of funding and paying for that through an admissions reduction of one student, and we’ll see what happens in the following years. We are encouraging the students to perhaps take a job that is not their “dream job”, or perhaps a job in another field, or for foreign students, suggest going back to their home country. In terms of admission targets for next year, he said that we’re down a little this year because we had more deferrals than normal, but the graduate school is working with us to make our admissions target a little larger than normal to make up for that deficit. Of course, he said, in the future if many of our students don’t find jobs and we support them with a seventh year, we’ll have to make an adjustment. But for now, the graduate school is supporting us to make sure we have a robust class for next year.