What Does It Take for a Department to Bounce Back from Setbacks?:

6/30/2021

The discussion of the most recent of these blog posts has played with the idea of resilience at the departmental level. Now Bob Kaster points to one crucial condition:
“ I think one of the prerequisites of resilience is a more or less solid consensus that we are working from a set of shared principles toward a shared goal. “
Is he right? How does one develop that “solid consensus? Are there other prerequisites for a truly resilient department (or other organization)?

7 Comments

Andy Szegedy-Maszak

6/30/2021 09:34:27 am

On reading Bob Kaster's wise comment, I was immediately reminded of Dr. Johson's famous observation, “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” [Given the vagaries of electronic communication, I should make it clear that I'm not being snarky.] What I mean is that under the threat of cutbacks or outright elimination, many departments, ours included, have had to reconfigure our majors and reinforce our outreach to students. It would be good if the SCS could set up a forum where we could share information about new approaches.

Karl Galinsky link

7/1/2021 03:35:56 am

Plus ça change . . .
Classics beyond Crisis Author(s): Karl Galinsky
Source: The Classical World , Jul. - Aug., 1991, Vol. 84, No. 6 (Jul. - Aug., 1991), pp. 441-453
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4350910

Pensées

7/1/2021 10:18:56 am

Outstanding essay. Tough to accept that it was written in 1990 because it could just as well been written last week. Also tough to accept is that the basic recommendations made there are still the right recommendations for today. It's a shame they were all apparently ignored, as they're apparently being ignored today.

Pensées

6/30/2021 02:15:12 pm

Here are three answers to Bob C.'s three questions about Bob K.'s one statement:

1. Is he right?

Yes, if by "resilience" we mean bouncing back to something recognizably similar to the way things were, especially since his statement presupposes bouncing is still possible. (Melted rubber doesn't snap back.)

2. How does one develop that “solid consensus?

The easiest way is at the point of hiring or reappointing colleagues who see things your way, or who you assume will do so as time goes on. Any deviation from that point is trickier. And it's not necessarily the moral way to go about it, either (though it may be).

Apart from that, departments should regard themselves like a stock portfolio: forget the gains and losses of the past; what does it look like now, and where do you want it to go? In other words, we should be talking within departments about common goals much more often than we do. Referring back to dusty documents of yesteryear for today's concerns will surely make everyone unhappy, because universities, student populations, student debt, and a whole bunch of other things are constantly evolving.

3. Are there other prerequisites for a truly resilient department (or other organization)?

Having faculty begin to regard themselves more as colleagues and less like NFL free agents -- always cultivating or awaiting an outside offer -- would go a long way toward building group cohesion. This is a real problem at all the fanciest places.

Andy Szegedy-Maszak

7/1/2021 09:53:08 am

Following up on some of the other comments, I have only simple suggestions. There should be no hierarchy, or as little as practically possible. Untenured faculty and full-time visitors should be included from the outset in departmental deliberations. Likewise, in terms of who teaches what, faculty at all ranks should be teaching elementary, intermediate, and advanced classes. This is probably the case at most institutions now, but I do remember a time when junior faculty were disproportionately expected to teach intro languages and other "service" classes. Significant Others, partners, whatever one wants to call them, should be invited to departmental events, both academic and social. Like I said, simple.
I realize there's more than a trace of circularity here: get everyone committed by having everyone feel included. I also know that I've been uncommonly lucky in that my department has been, with one glaring exception, a peaceable kingdom. I'm describing my own experience.

Karl Galinsky

7/1/2021 02:03:01 pm

Andrew and Pensées,

I sent replies earlier today via my iPhone but they bounced back as undeliverable so I'm back on the laptop. Bob, could you check where the hangup is in the highways and byways of this blog connection; one thing I can see is an old invalid email address: [email protected]. edu. Use [email protected].

Andrew, I agree with a lot of what you are saying; more (recuperated) detail to follow. So, quickly, back to you, Pensées, re your first posting:
Thank you for your kind comments on that article. I am less pessimistic than you are - there are many good people out there doing good things, esp. in the non-fancy depts. where the action really is. They tend to get drowned out by the grandstanding bocas grandes. So I didn't want to come across as as vox clamantis in deserto: these colleagues on their own have been doing several things mentioned in the article and others that are suited to their particular institutions and contexts, which is always the key.
Partly in response to the CW piece I wa invited by the post-apartheid Ministry of Research in South Africa for two weeks at the suggestion of the SA Classical Assoc. to evaluate programs there and
make recommendations for the future. Ditto a good number of US universities. I had done so previously esp. for the Assoc. of Depts. of Foreign Languages, which is one of the two main branches of the
MLA, when I was elected to a three-year term on its EC and served as it chair for one year. Sidebar: yes, there are relevant professional organizations - definitely more professionally staffed and organized at the time - beyond the APA/SCS and Classics Depts. can join up. It does make for a wider horizon; there are many shared issues- among those the SCS will not address is the continuing overproduction of Ph.D.'s that makes it easy for employers to replace tenure-track and tenured faculty with term lecturers. But grad depts. don't want to disarm unilaterally and teaching a small grad seminar certainly is more comfy than 300 undergraduates that may not be as admiring and obsequious.

In short, there is a lot that can be done and I am not buying into the current narrative of the STEM creatures gobbling up humanities budgets and faculty lines because wickedness triumphs over virtue. Rather - and hence my emphasis on outreach -more in my response to Andrew - both within one's institution and beyond. As is clear again from the tenor of the discussion of the current malaise, self-involvement and self-importance, perhaps endemic to the culture, are on full display. So when it comes to what got so many programs or classics at large into their predicaments: while these folks stand in front of the mirror they might as well do it for a good reason - hers is one reason for their woes.

Hasta pronto - need to run.

Karl Galinsky

7/1/2021 08:11:42 pm

Andrew,

I agree with much of what you are saying. Dept. governance: when I was chair, was all asst., assoc., and full professors on any issue, from curriculum to hiring to recommending raises (university regulation on the latter was that that you could not actually vote above your own rank but you could be included in the deliberations. And: everyone had to teach a large lecture course, which also made the allocation of grad seminars equitable. Of course pt. 1 of this quickly fell into desuetude, as we say politely, post illud tempus. After all, what are lecturers for, right?
Another phenomenon that stood out in program reviews was poor management - what a dirty word, I know - and leadership skills on the part of dept. chairs; it's a major factor in the lack of preparedness for ongoing and new challenges. Some universities have instituted some preparatory workshops, at the other end is the "me and my cronies" modus operandi (e.g. exec. committee rather than entire dept.) At most universities resource allocation is a dog fight and citing Cornel West only leads to a lazy entitlement mentality (I am NOT referring to the Howard U. situation). Resources go to depts. and programs that have a clear road map or concrete vision of where they want to be 5 or 10 years from now that's realistic and innovative in the institutional context. And again: out reach, outreach, outreach. If you don't cultivate Latin teachers and their students don't expect the latter to sign up for your Latin courses. And a letter or phone call to your president from a prominent attorney, doctor, or banker in your town or the alumni base will be more effective than scads of whiny self-righteous letters from professional colleagues when you need support.

There is so much more but I'll stop here. There is a lot that can be done and it should be part of any graduate training, too. It's one of the things tenure is for - tenure is a means to an end rather than an end in itself, as evidenced by the high number of permanent assoc. professors throughout many humanities programs.

Lots of challenges (remember Arnold Toynbee?) , then, and lots of opportunities.

What Does It Take for a Department to Bounce Back from Setbacks?:

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