Is GirlProf in control of her schedule?

Interesting question - am I in control of my schedule? As a professor, I do have the option to schedule certain meetings and tasks; I am also subject to the schedules and availability of others. University and Faculty level committees are usually scheduled far in advance and without consulting every member affected -- so, no control. If a PhD committee needs to meet, the chair needs to coordinate three professor's and the student's schedules - therefore, I have some control, but not unlimited control. My classes are scheduled by others, as are division meetings. So, when I look over my daytimer, I have some discretion over the times not affected by University, Faculty and Division level committees and meetings, centrally scheduled courses, and "found" times for group meetings. In reality, that doesn't leave too many discretionary time slots.

When I do have unscheduled time, I have to schedule my other tasks:
1. Editing an academic journal
2. Writing papers, chapters, articles, my blog
3. Conducting research
4. Writing reference letters, external evaluations, peer reviews
5. Reading scholarly literature
6. Meeting with research team
7. Presenting at conferences
8. Updating my website
9. Responding to email, phone calls, mail
10. Finding and acquiring good sources
11. Planning for teaching
12. Grading student assignments
13. Responding to student work
14. Watering the plants in my office
15. Sharing the odd coffee or lunch with colleagues

Most days it just feels Busy, Busy, Busy.

Hammer time

Unfortunately, "U Can't Touch This!", isn't heard much around my faculty lately.

So wave your hands in the air
Bust a few moves
Run your fingers through your hair

Our dean just shared the bad budget news via email; not that much of it was a surprise. Cuts to this and increases to that. Cuts to administration, cuts to teaching releases. Double the cost for research-funded course releases and higher teaching workloads.

This is it, for a winner
Dance to this and you're gonna get thinner
Move, slide your rump
Just for a minute let's all do the bump, bump, bump

To be fair, the bad budget news said something like, "maybe, perhaps, I hope, crossed fingers, with the stars in alignment, there will be no increase in course loads", but I think we all know what that really means... If faculty "step up" and volunteer to have their graduate courses chopped, or "step up" to volunteer for the crushing workload courses elsewhere in the faculty, to take one "for the team" -- we will all be just fine. The euphemism is "differentiated workloads".

I think we are all ready to be unsurprised when our teaching loads do, in fact, increase this Fall.

Give me a song or a rhythm
Make 'em sweat, that's what I'm given 'em
Now they know
You talkin' about the Hammer, you talkin' about a show

As I have argued elsewhere, there are going to be unexpected implications for teaching quality, research productivity, and student satisfaction when all of the cut, cut, cuts and increased workloads begin to make their way though the Faculty. If the faculty workload in "good times" is already killing the workhorses, what is it going to be like around here in "uncertain times"?

NOTE: Thanks to Stanley Kirk Burrell (aka MC Hammer) for one of the best dance songs ever, "U Can't Touch This" -- I jived with you in high school, and my kids dance to you now.

What GirlProf did at work on Two Tuesdays, a Monday and a Wednesday

One Tuesday
9 - 10:30 Meeting, PhD student's supervisory committee
11 - 1:00 Oral exam, PhD student's candidacy
1 - 2:15 Meeting, research group and PhD student
2:30 - 4:30 Meeting, a university steering committee
4:30 - 7:20 Teaching graduate course
Instead of "where is the beef?" you might ask, when do you have lunch? Or take a bio break?
If I got paid by the hour, I would have clocked 10.5 this day (12 hours if you include travel).

Another Tuesday
9 - 11:30 School based research
12:00 - 4:00 Faculty admissions meeting
4:30 - 7:20 Teaching graduate course
Another 10.5 - 12 hour leisurely day for the girlprof, not that I am complaining...

Here is a Moderate Monday earlier in the year:
9 - 11 Post webpages for two courses
11 - 12:00 Meeting, PhD student
12 - 1:00 Meeting, research colleague
1 - 2:00 Meeting, research team
2 - 3:00 Meeting, PhD student
3 - 4:30 Research seminar across campus
Evening shift: Drive children to two different sporting activities, again, Not complaining.

Or a wacky Wednesday:
8 - 10:00 Prepare & submit ethics proposal
10 - 11:00 Meeting, masters thesis student
11 - 12:00 Writing an editorial
12 - 1:30 Meeting, faculty associate dean
2 - 4:30 Research proposal and refine instruments
4:30 - 6 Grab dinner and drive to off-campus meeting
6 - 8:30 Meeting, school board
This was a 12 hour day, plus 1.5 hours of driving.
Not complaining; this is just my life.

Why do I share a few glimpses into my "female faculty member's daytimer"? Public perception of the academic faculty member's workload is usually characterized by "student-faculty contact hours" - so, if I teach 9 hours a week, three courses, what the heck am I complaining about, right?

My goal in offering these glimpses of what surrounds teaching three seminars is to provide context for the claim that an academic career is rarely a 9 - 5 job - perhaps few non-union jobs achieve this mythological ideal. Further, what is left out of my daily description is more important that what is left in. For example, two to three nights a week, and every weekend, my husband and I chauffeur our children to various skating, club and hockey activities. I tend to read and respond to dozens of emails a day in my "free hour" before the kids wake up in the morning (usually from 5:30 - 6:30 am) and after they go to bed at night (post - 9 pm).

In the current "hiring freeze" and uncertain economy, issues to do with faculty workload and organizational stress aren't visible on the radar; however, I argue that workload, organizational stress, and aiming for career / family balance should be key issues that get discussed alongside the important issue of bringing expenses and revenue in line.

Administrators in higher education, like our own President Harvey Weingarten, are concerned about the budget. Higher education leaders who are looking for ways to "trim the fat" tend to direct their gaze at the highest "expense line" -- which happens to be faculty & staff salaries and benefits (85% of budget in some faculties). It seems economically promising to increase class sizes, increase teaching loads, offer fewer courses, slim down academic programs, reduce faculty sabbaticals, offer no course releases and many other attempts to "balance the books".

Each of these "budget" decisions has major implications and a range of potentially unforseen impacts on the quality of student's experiences and for faculty workload and stress. Consider, if we burn out the faculty members who do the research, teach the courses and participate in collegial governance, then what kind of higher education legacy are we going to leave for the next generation, let alone this one? What kind of research will be conducted by faculty who are already working 10 - 12 hours a day in "good times" when they have to work 12 - 14 in "uncertain times"? Any guesses about the quality of undergraduate student experiences, and the attentiveness of graduate supervision if the numbers that each faculty have "contact time" with Double?

I believe Faculties of Education are under a particular kind of stress -- in Alberta, we are currently facing a dire teacher shortage and a greying population of teachers. Yet, the Faculty of Education flies under the radar for plum funding and extra resources. I have talked about the problems with creating an Education McFaculty elsewhere, which is a related issue, but I am worried that our current economic crisis and the top-down decisions that are being made to deal with a shortfall in funding, are going to damage and change the Faculty of Education and the University as we know it.

At the same time that higher education is lurching from this economic crisis to the next, we are beginning to understand that even in good times, EVEN IN GOOD TIMES, the academic life is a tough haul. Graduate students learn first hand about faculty workload and stress levels, and choose to opt out of research intensive careers and reject the academic fast track. So,

Great book about the jerks at work...

Robert Sutton, author of Work Matters blog, has written a great book about broken organizational cultures and how we might begin to fix them or at least survive them. The book has a provocative title, "The No Asshole Rule", which has garnered as much attention as the content. Mind you, I am the mother of two small boys who enjoy endless giggles and find much amusement in the words "poo" and "fart", so I can understand how some types might pay more attention when a "body opening" word is used in the title of a book.

However, if you can get beyond the title, or if the title is the ONLY reason you picked up the book, the purpose and message of the book is great. "The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't" is well worth a read because Bob Sutton offers some strategies and solutions for building a culture of civility within an organization. One rule is, No Assholes Allowed - Be careful who you hire.

Those who know me are aware that I am a champion of free speech, so one part of the story of this book that I find REALLY interesting is the attempt to censor or silence people who use the word "asshole". You can read about this uproar on Sutton's Work Matters blog: Weird Censorship Part 1 and Part 2.

Canada's Advisory Panel on Research Ethics and Community Engagement

Millions of higher education and Canadian tax dollars are invested in campus-based Research Ethics Boards (REBs) and the Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics each year. In fact, untold millions have been spent on REBs across Canada in the last 10 years since the first Tri-Council Policy was launched. What evidence do we have that this money has been well spent? In short, how do Canadian researchers evaluate whether or not human research participants are any safer now than they were 10 years ago when the first Tri-Council Policy and Research Ethics Boards were implemented across Canada?

Recently, a group of ethics experts, lead by the Secretariat on Research Ethics, have been touring the country to spread the word about Dec 2008, TCPS Draft 2nd Edition of the Tri-Council Policy Statement on Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, and to gather feedback through community consultation. There must be a healthy budget for Research Ethics -- unlike many other meetings I have attended in the past few weeks since the 0% budget was handed down on this campus, at least people were offered a drink and a muffin.

I attended the meeting held on my campus, entitled "Chart the Course of Ethics in Research Involving Humans". There were many good questions asked and issues raised by the three dozen or so participants. Among the issues raised were: (i) the imbalance of power between the REBs and researchers, REBs and graduate students; (ii) accountability of the REB - to whom does the REB chair report, what are they required to report, and the autonomy of the board; (iii) changing the view of the Tri-Council Policy as "minimum standards"; and, (iv) the role of REBs in the scholarship of teaching. A few copies of the 150+ page draft policy were available, and can also be downloaded from the Panel on Research Ethics (PRE) website.

First, two quotes will provide context for my questions to the chair of this consultation session.

From Draft 2, on balancing risks and benefits: "Modern research ethics, for instance, requires a favorable risk-benefit balance - that is, the anticipated benefits should outweigh the foreseeable harms." (p. 14).

From Kim, Ubel & De Vries (2009). Pruning the regulatory tree: For human-subjects research, maximum regulation does not mean maximum protection. Nature, 457, 534-535. "It is unethical to support a system that creates a significant financial, scientific, clinical and ethical burden with virtually no counterbalancing good" (p. 535).

My question to the Susan Zimmerman, who chaired the consultation session, was three-fold:

1. In the context of a consideration of the risks-benefits of REBs, what evidence do we have that human research participants are any safer than they were 10 years ago before we started to review every proposal to do research? In short, what evidence do we have of benefit? The Answer: None.

2. More importantly, in the context of faculty researchers and graduate students who have to submit all protocols for review, a somewhat time-intensive and resource intensive process, what evidence do we have of the type and scope of harms that have resulted from the current Tri-Council Policies and their implementation by campus-based REBs? In short, what have we LOST by the present process?

3. What are the chances that a protocol designed to evaluate the harms inflicted on researchers and graduate students would be approved by a campus-based REB? Not likely...

The discouraging reality is that Canadian researchers (and tax payers) have NO evidence that the research ethics review policies and systems that have been created are any more or less effective in protecting human research participants than doing nothing. There has been no data collected on the benefits and harms of research ethics boards and research ethics policies. No data - no evidence. One might think that the government would want some form of accountability in place to ensure that these dollars for research ethics were well spent...

On some campuses, mine included, there is some record keeping about number and type of protocols reviewed, the approval and refusal rates, and how long this process takes. This information does not tell us anything about benefits and harms. What this type of assessment does NOT capture is the harm to graduate student research, to junior faculty tenure trajectories, to senior faculty's promotion plans, and so on. We do not know the extent or depth of emotional, financial, professional, and academic freedom impacts of the REBs on researchers and graduate students. We do not know how many junior faculty and graduate researchers have been counseled to "avoid that type of research because it will never be approved by the REB". We have no reliable measure of the harmful impact or the benefits of the current system of autonomous REBs on the research culture, the research innovativeness and the research productivity on campus. We simply do NOT know the extent, nature or scope of the benefit-harm relationship.

However, for the past decade, REBs have handled and judged hundreds of thousands of research ethics proposals. Hundreds of thousands of researchers and graduate students have had their proposed research scrutinized and dissected and pronounced upon as "ethical or unethical".
So, Canada's Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics is traveling the country gathering feedback and views on its latest draft. I think it is well past time that we institute a thorough and indepth program evaluation; Canadian researchers need to collect and collate meaningful data from researchers and graduate students about the burdens and benefits of REBs, and the impact of same on the conduct of research with human participants across disciplines. Researchers have to design and implement an ethical and effectiveness review of REBs to determine whether there is significant counterbalancing good from the significant burdens of ethical review.

I was encouraged by the attendance and tone of today's research ethics consultation on campus. The consultation was a great opportunity to hear from the many voices on campus who are holding the Advisory Panel and the current REB to account; I just hope that the right people are listening and this good momentum translates into positive action for research ethics on campus.

Freedom of Speech and Alberta Human Rights Commissions

To Lindsay Blackett, MLA, and Sun Columnist, Rick Bell,

Thank you for taking such a strong and principled stance on freedom of speech and the need to reform the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission.

I agree with Ezra Levant's view, Mr. Blackett's "words are stirring; and if he follows up in like-minded deeds, he truly will be a hero for everyone who loves freedom -- freedom of speech and religion, freedom to dissent from conventional wisdom, freedom to be yourself, no matter what political correctness demands. Freedom to breathe!"

As an academic journal editor and professor who believes that freedom of speech and freedom of expression are cornerstones to a democratic society, I am encouraged by this new MLA's courage to speak publicly and openly about the need to reform the "kangaroo courts" that Alberta Human Rights and Culture Commissions have become.

In a recent CJLT editorial, I wrote "unless free speech and freedom of expression are better protected in the online and print media world, then whose voices will be heard, whose will be silenced, and who will decide?"

Further, "... Canadians must continue to enjoy open and unfettered access to both the popular and politically correct opinions, and those that some might find unsettling or even contemptible. If parts of the knowledge base are suppressed or silenced, if only politically correct opinions, perspectives and ideas are sanctioned, then our ability as researchers, teachers and as citizens to hear the voices we might never hear (Siemens, 2002), to identify inaccuracies, to expose faulty arguments and to challenge unsupported claims is compromised. I am an educator who believes that free speech and freedom of expression are too important for Canadians to give up just because preserving these rights for all citizens might make some of us uncomfortable, or expose us to views we would rather not hear. I am genuinely concerned that the rights to free speech and freedom of expression in Canada are under attack, and that current and future rights will erode unless researchers, journal editors and scholars from across disciplines advocate for the preservation of free speech and freedom of expression across all delivery media."

Rick Bell's column highlighting Blackett's views is a win for advocates of AHRCommission reform and those who regard freedom of speech to be a Canadian right and responsibility.

Sexy Faculties, and the McEducators?

The Alberta Government has (been forced to?) cut its funding to universities, investments are in peril, and so, faculties and departments across campus have been asked to tighten their belts. Along with the president of our faculty association, I cannot help but wonder whether the burdens imposed by the university's current financial situation are being felt evenly across campus. Has each faculty been asked to deal with the same financial constraints and to make the same hard decisions?

In Education, we have had several meetings about how to bring revenue and expenses closer together in order to balance the budget. Thank you to our Dean who is making this process as transparent as possible.

As we address the "spending problem" that appears to plague this Faculty, all manner of expenses are being scrutinized for potential efficiencies, including administrative overhead, staffing and workloads, release time and research, academic program offerings and class sizes. On the other side of the equation, new forms of revenue are being considered, current forms of revenue are being analyzed for increased potential, and good ideas are emerging across departments. Revenue generation and reduced spending have become the new normal for higher education in these uncertain economic times.

One by-product of these discussions about finances has been debate about the relative "valuation" of different disciplines and faculties across campus. Is the teaching and research done in certain faculties and departments "more valuable" than that done in others? Who decides? And, does the money flow in certain, and perhaps predictable, pathways on campus?

In these perilous economic times, I worry that the Faculty of Education and education professors are going to be written off as the McFaculty by others on campus. When administration gets a 6% increase in funding from the province, and sends a 0% increase to the Faculty of Education, what does that say about our "value" to the menu of offerings on campus?

I want to share one small story to illustrate my concern. In the context of a discussion about research funding, and how much a faculty member in education is "worth" versus a faculty member in engineering or medicine, a colleague mused that the valuation of these two types of professors is "very different" given the willingness of industry to invest in R&D. When pushed, this colleague admitted that it would cost "much much more" to fund an engineering professor's research and teaching time than an education professor's time. Wow. I have rarely felt so discouraged and so disappointed in the same instant.

As an educational technologist, I study and tend to admire inventors and designers of new systems and products; I appreciate how new technologies both improve our world and also bring new challenges. However, I also wonder whether it is appropriate and wise to rank engineering and the health sciences higher than education, and the social sciences, on campus. Why is there 9 NSERC dollars invested for every 1 SSHRC dollar? What makes engineering so sexy for research funding and endowments? It certainly isn't the engineers... (!) Okay, that was uncalled for...

The bias of the national funding agencies, like CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC, tend to be reflected in how different faculties are "valued", and therefore funded, on campus. Industry and government sponsored funding agencies still pour buckets of money into engineering, science and the health sciences, and I suspect that campuses follow suit. A miserly trickle of funding barely addresses the thirst in education, the social sciences and the humanities.

I believe that teachers and researchers in the Faculty of Education change the world for the better. As an education professor, I work with enthusiastic and innovative beginning teachers who inject new blood in the teaching profession; new teachers who cultivate creative and inspirational ideas in their classrooms; scholarly and dedicated young professionals who make a difference in their communities. Idealistically, I still believe that when you teach a child, you change the world; when you educate a beginning teacher, the potential impact of this work is exponential.

Education professors work closely with graduate students who are designing, developing and evaluating innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Through individual research, through the academic journals we publish, through the collaborative work we pursue with colleagues, and along with the graduate researchers we supervise, education professors create new knowledge and ideas about what makes teaching and learning work well, how to change present systems and policies and governance, and how to design innovative new processes as technological, social, cultural, political and economic systems change our world.

I believe professors in education make a positive difference in the world; first, through the teachers we graduate and the children whose lives they touch, and second, through the research we conduct and the new knowledge that we contribute to the world. However, despite the role education plays in the world, is a challenge to attract government or industry's attention, let alone their research funding for the Faculty of Education - society continues to need more and better teachers each year, education professors, along with our colleagues in social science and humanities, continue to study and investigate ever more complex learning needs and problems faced by an ever more diverse and global society, and we face greater hurdles than ever in funding our programs. In these perilous economic times, will we see government, industry and public re-investments in education? As we make tough financial decisions on campus, what will be the impact on the already beleaguered Faculty of Education?

"Welcome to teacher preparation and graduate research! Can I take your order?"

"Do you want fries with your BEd?"

"How about an apple pie with that MEd or PhD?"

$$$$$

Thank you, please come again.