The posts by the senior lecturer in English explore university labor issues and include advice for how to talk to non-tenure-track faculty and creative ways to think about faculty hiring.
Paula Patch, Senior Lecturer in English, has published four guest blog posts for Just Visiting, a bi-weekly blog featured in Inside Higher Education. Patch’s posts explore university labor issues and include advice for how to talk to non-tenure-track faculty and creative ways to think about faculty hiring.
Each post is comprised of pragmatic discussion of university labor issues as well as Patch’s personal reflection on her career. In "A Job by Any Other Name," Patch reflects on the nebulous way in which non-tenure-track lines are defined:
“Positions like mine remain mostly invisible. Rarely in any discussion — in the organizational documents published by the MLA, the CCCC, or the Council of Writing Program Administrators or in the media reports published in Inside Higher Ed, the Chronicle or even The New York Times — is any distinction made between nonpermanent non-tenure-track faculty and permanent non-tenure-track faculty. This under- or nonrepresentation can be just as damaging as misrepresentation — indeed, it is a misrepresentation of the full scope of life and work off, or indeed free from, the tenure track.
"It also ignores the agency — the existence and role of choice — that some of us have in choosing to make a career off the tenure track.”
The four blog posts are as follows:
"Who Is Teaching Your Students and How Can You Support Them?"