Writing and Publishing at Teaching-Heavy Institutions

In today’s post, I wanted to take a look at research at teaching-heavy institutions. Before moving forward, I wanted to explain my motivation in writing this. First, as more and more job seekers seem to be taking an interest in colleges with heavy teaching loads, including two-year institutions, I thought hearing the views of someone at a heavily teaching-focused institution might be of some value. I also hoped to hear from others who teach at such colleges about their own experiences and views on writing.

I will organize this post around several questions that have arisen in discussions with other faculty at similar institutions or others who are seeking employment at these sorts of institutions.

First, a word on what I mean by teaching-heavy schools. I have in mind schools that both have a heavy teaching load (let's say, 4-4 or higher) and also see themselves (as reflected in tenure requirements, contract specifications, and culture) as concerned solely or almost solely with non-research requirements. If we think of colleges as falling along a spectrum, my own institution is firmly toward the teaching side. It transitioned from a 2-year institution to one offering 4-year degrees about a decade ago, but the requirements for faculty and the cultural norms have remained the same. The load is 5-5-2 (2 in the summer) and the tenure process involves significant scholarship of teaching and learning. (We must attend many pedagogy seminars and workshops, and we must submit about 300 pages of research examining elements of our teaching, but there is no push for anyone to publish any of it.) There are no research requirements for tenure or in our contracts other than the pedagogical writing we need to do for the tenure process. I know of other colleges with 4-4 loads that also require little or no research and involve lots of interaction with students outside of the classroom. I think of these as teaching-heavy as well.

What are the downsides for writing in this environment?

There are a few, I think. First, there is no pressure to publish, and for many of us (myself included) it is easy for writing to get pushed onto the back burner if there is no pressure. Second, it can be difficult to find others in our institutions who wish to be actively engaged in research. This can make those of us who wish to write feel a bit alone. Third, we tend to have smaller departments, and so have less opportunities for the sort of engaged philosophical discussion that can inspire writing projects. Fourth, at some of these institutions (certainly at mine), there is almost no opportunity to teach courses related to our research interests.

I cannot move on before saying something about the difficulty of finding time to write when teaching as heavily as many of us do (some tenure-track faculty at my school teach overloads that brings them to 18 courses a year). One thing that makes life easier at a school like mine is that there are very few preps. Because of this, it is possible to try to find some time for writing, even with a large teaching load (but probably not 18 per year). One thing to note is that one’s ability to find this time will vary from year to year. Some years I could make time for lots of writing. This past academic year, I barely found time to write up any blog posts at all, let alone articles or book chapters.

What are the upsides for writing in this environment?

First, since there is no pressure to publish, we are free to take on topics that we care about. We need not publish in mainstream journals on mainstream topics. Want to write a straightforward contribution to an ongoing discussion in epistemology, submitting it to Synthese or Erkenntnis? Go ahead! Prefer to write something on the relationship between the moral epistemology of Jane Austin novels and reactive social media culture, publishing it on your blog? That is fine too.

Additionally, we can afford to take risks, like drafting an entire book without a contract in hand. Although failure to find a publisher might be personally crushing, the losses in opportunity cost will not sink one's chances of tenure.

Will editors refuse to publish the work of people from such institutions?

I am not sure how much institutional bias there is against people from these sorts of institutions in particular. I do suspect that there is a large bias in favor of people from leiteriffic research institutions, but I am not sure whether any fine distinctions are made between someone at a school requiring a roughly equal balance of teaching and research on the one hand, and people like me at a very heavily teaching-focused school on the other. To be honest, in many cases editors might not be able to tell the difference based upon the name of the institution. I must say that I was worried about this issue before I approached a publisher with a book manuscript. One example is not a trend, but I was lucky enough to secure a contract from a good publisher while at my present institution. My impression is that my institutional affiliation was not opening any doors for me, but it wasn’t slamming them in my face either.

I do wonder whether there might be additional bias against a subset of teaching institutions: those whose names includes “Community College.” Not all community colleges do include this as part of the name. Is it tougher going for people working at institutions clearly labeled as community colleges? I don’t know, but I think it might be. Most of the people I know who both work at community colleges and publish quite a bit work at schools without “Community College” in the name, but perhaps this is a coincidence. I would be curious to hear from others on this issue.

I suppose there are other challenges as well, things like research leave, travel funds, opportunity to engage with others in colloquia, library resources, easy access to pre-submission feedback, etc. I haven’t discussed these at length both because I think institutions that balance research and teaching (for example, satellite state colleges) share these same difficulties, and because I have seen them discussed before.

For those who teach at institutions somewhat like mine, what am I missing? What are the pros, cons, and complications that come from trying to write and publish at institutions that are heavily focused on teaching?

For those curious about teaching at a school like mine, but who hope to continue (or begin) publishing, are there any questions you have?

Comments

[Michel]

Thanks for the post, Peter! I've just started a position that's almost exactly like yours sounds, and it's reassuring to hear that others have and have faced the same struggles I'm only just learning about.

One of my particular frustrations has been not feeling like I have the time to finish up some of the research projects I started before getting this job, especially since research is where I find most of my professional rewards (so to speak). On the other hand, I know I just have to get through these first few summer courses, and then my preps are done for the forseeable future. Still, it's reassuring to hear other people saying as much, too! I need to learn to be OK with putting projects on hold.

[Amanda]

Interesting post, Peter. I am very impressed by anyone who teaches that kind of load and still manages to be at least somewhat active in research. I don't think I could manage that.

Since you directed your post at those at schools like yours, I would add that it is probably also relevant to those at different kind of institutions but that have teaching heavy positions. Permanent lecturers at my school teach a 4-4 officially, but the vas majority of them also teach extra classes over summer. And while you might think it would be easy for them to find people to work with, large institutions can be surprisingly isolating. I would imagine this is even more so when you work with TT persons who might not respect you as a researcher (I would like to think this isn't true, but reality can be harsh..)

A different question: once you have your prep done for a class, about how much time do you spend preparing. For instance, suppose you are teaching two courses of intro to ethics, and you have taught this many times before. How would you prep for a class like this? Just curious - as I know I am not very efficient with class prep myself.

[Peter Furlong]

Preps are an interesting thing. Although I teach only a few preps, I find myself repeatedly redesigning the courses to better fit the needs of the students (and in some cases, my needs as a teacher). Some of the readings I include in my intro class I have taught for a few years now. In such weeks, I don't prep at all. I know the readings like the back of my hand, have in-class activities that seem to work well, and find that additional preparation yields no results. With many of the other readings I use, things are a little more complicated. I might change the reading out to a different one, which involves lots of prep first trying to find a perfect reading, then (often, at least), writing up an introduction to go along with the reading and writing up a list of review questions (so they can self-assess) and what I call "questions for further reflection" to get them thinking beyond the reading. The introduction and the questions will then be added to the reading. Finally, I will need to spend some time thinking about how to approach the topic in class. All of this takes a while, but the amount of time varies so widely that I would be hesitant to put a number of hours on it.

Although all of this takes lots of time, there is flexibility in terms of when I choose to redesign parts of my courses. If things are not working at all, then I will need to change things now. What most often happens, however, is that I am less than fully satisfied with some aspect of my course. In those cases, I can redesign now, if I have time, or put this off until a future semester so that I can focus on some other area at the present.

At other places I taught, students were better prepared, so course preparation was easier. But, when I had new courses thrown my way, I needed to prep them immediately. In my current situation, more consistent and thoughtful redesign is needed, but if I don't have time to do it today, I can fall back on the methods of previous semesters. Moreover, if I ever find myself perfectly happy with my courses, preparation time will be virtually nonexistent.

[DS]

I think this discussion makes clear how important it is to really examine the 'faculty handbook' if it is available online before accepting a job at a teaching focused institution, or making sure one asks lots of questions in the interview, especially if one has the luxury of turning down a position. There are lots of things to consider:
How easy is it to get a course reduction?
How much travel money is there if any?
Are there sabbaticals?
What is the pay structure for teaching summer courses?
Are faculty overloads encouraged or discouraged at the institution?
Do you get a course reduction/extra money when you develop a new course?

At some CCs, one nominally has a 5/5 load, but it is very easy to get course reductions for other activities. E.g., I took on managing the philosophy adjuncts for a course reduction, and I am glad for it! At other schools, not so much. The only CCs I have heard of requiring summer teaching in one's contract is Florida, and one would hope that the pay reflects a year round contract.

That is a key question as well: is your salary enough for you to NOT teach a course during summer if you want to?

I teach at a CC where the pay is pretty good and it is easy to get a course reduction, so I have a 4/4 load and summer teaching is completely optional. Last summer I received 'course development money' to work on prepping a class that had never been offered at the institution before. I don't know how many institutions have something like this, but it was pretty nice. I have been pretty productive in my research, but I am also very organized when it comes to my course preps. The ability to teach one or two sections online also frees up time for research/administrative responsibilities, once you have really constructed your online course, which is a good bit of upfront work (but it really pays off, time wise). Pretty much every CC offers online classes as far as I know.

For me, the biggest drawback of my CC position are: lack of good library access; we don't have sabbaticals; no real colleagues (I'm the only full time philosophy faculty member). My old CC job had sabbaticals, but I was still the only full time faculty there. However, it was much harder at my old CC job to get a course reduction. So there are definitely trade offs!

[Amanda]

Thanks Peter. I would like to get to the point were at least 1/2 of my pre-taught classes involve no prep time. But I find I keep spending time adjusting group assignments because the class sizes change and so on. I also need to have better confidence that I can run a course without reviewing everything.

[Peter Furlong]

DS: Yeah, I think there really is a lot of variety on things like this, and only some of it is clear from the faculty handbook. To take just one example, you mention course reductions and overloads. Even if we know what the course load is at an institution, the standard practice at an institution is also telling. Sometimes, as you mention, it is relatively easy to get reduced course loads. At other institutions (including mine), this tends to happen less. To be honest, the norm is for tenure track and tenured faculty to teach overloads. I think 14 and 16 courses per year are probably the most common for full time faculty in Arts and Humanities at my campus. Most faculty try to teach four courses over the summer instead of the required two. This is for two reasons. First, if we need to be here anyway (and even with two courses we are required to be on campus at least four days a week), it seems worthwhile to throw a few more courses in. Second, if we teach four courses over the summer instead of the required two (together with full service requirements), our pay is boosted by something like 20% (the percentage is complicated, and changes based upon other factors). This is much better than overloads during the fall and spring, where the pay is around $2,200 or so.

I mentioned the travel funds in the more recent thread, but the long and short of it is that we can apply for up to $1500, but it isn't guaranteed, and more importantly, we often will not know until a month or so before the conference whether we will get funding (which makes committing to present difficult).

We do have sabbaticals; we do not get anything in return for developing new courses. As you mention, we also have the opportunity (sometimes the requirement) to teach online.

[Peter Furlong]

Amanda: I think getting to that point is key. If I could streamline preps a little bit more, that could really help me. Obviously, this is even more important when one has more preps.

One thing I didn't mention earlier about preps is that although we only teach a few different courses, we teach them in different modalities (face to face, online, and for some, as hybrids), and in different lengths (16 week, 10 week, and 6 week). Both modality and course length, at least in my experience, can really require pretty radical changes to a course. My intro course, for example, changes about half of its readings between the online and face to face modes. As DS noted, prepping online courses the first time takes a lot of time, but then most of the preparation disappears. I am redesigning an online course now, and I think the prep for it, even though I had already selected all the readings for it, is probably about 4-6 times as much as doing a face-to-face course for the first time, maybe more. I don't think this would be manageable with many different online courses, but at the moment I am only teaching a single course online. If I teach this online course 15 times before I completely overhaul it again, the prep time doesn't seem so bad.

[Peter Furlong]

DS: Sorry, you also mentioned salary. My school follows a salary schedule, which is publicly available here:

https://valenciacollege.edu/employees/human-resources/compensation.php

From what I can tell, salaries widely vary in this sort of institution, largely (but not entirely) due to cost of living. I had interviews at a few similar schools in southern California when I received my present offer. The pay was considerably higher (I think about $20,000 more), but I doubt they had anything close to the purchasing power that I have in central Florida.