Let’s talk about faculty

Author: Kathleen Almy

I’ve been known to go “there.” Meaning, I don’t shy away from the tough topics that need discussion but tend to stay behind the scenes. Commiserating behind closed doors and smiling through gritted teeth are the norm in higher education, but they do little more than provide an illusion of cooperation. Today’s blog is going to share some truths from someone in the trenches on both sides of the aisle, to mix multiple metaphors. Let’s go there.

First, a note on me. I was a full-time math teacher for 20 years, nearly all of which were at a college. I still teach at my old college but now as an adjunct. So my background is one of primarily being full time faculty. I’ve served on nearly every committee my college had. I taught almost every math course we offered, and developed nearly 10 new ones. I supported my faculty union and went on strike in 2015 when we couldn’t reach agreement on our contract. I’ll spare you my CV, but in short, I was an active and committed faculty member. So I get the faculty perspective well, which is a good thing. But I don’t always agree with it because I’ve been on the other side, administration, sometimes known as the dark side in faculty circles. More than a decade ago, I was the developmental math coordinator at my college. I ran our program, which was over half of our department’s offerings, and supervised almost 30 adjuncts. In the past two years, I ran a statewide implementation of a legislated initiative, transitional math. That work was as a state-level administrator with many facets but a key one being the point person for over 700 high schools and 48 community colleges in a state where all teachers are unionized and there was no state budget for two years. In those positions and others I’ve held, I’ve worked with many high school and college teachers and administrators as well as other staff members. I don’t claim to know everything about faculty and their relationship with others on and off their campuses, but I have a pretty good grasp of it through many experiences, both successful and ones less than successful.

“Faculty are the constants at colleges. Administrators are the variables.”

Back to the issue at hand: faculty. They can be the best resource and engine for change, or they can be incredibly difficult and the largest impediment to change. Because of the second possibility, some administrators are wary, even afraid, of faculty and will go to great lengths to avoid working with them if possible. Why is this?

College faculty hold a tremendous amount of influence and power, although they don’t always recognize it. They are the connector to students. They are smart and extremely well versed in their subject matter. They are the knowledge source for a content area, both creating it and sharing it. They are what gets taught, what gets changed, and what gets done. Some will disagree citing the importance of administrators and student services staff. Without question, administrators and student services are crucial to the success of a college and its initiatives. But they are not the engine that faculty are. I don’t say this in a haughty way to boast my role when I was full time faculty. I say this as a both a positive and a negative. When faculty are on board, initiatives can take off and have real impact on students. That can also happen when administrators take the lead, but the difference is staying power. Faculty are the constants at colleges. Administrators are the variables. Faculty know that if they wait long enough, an administrator and the accompanying initiative will leave. Who doesn’t leave very often are faculty. So if they are onboard and engaged, they can not only lead an initiative, they can make sure it continues long past the initial excitement and funding.

So, yes, faculty can be the engine that propels change. They can also use their knowledge and enduring position to stop initiatives and the possible good that could have come from them. That level of influence is a two-edged sword. In math particularly, this dynamic is alive and well. Are faculty doing this to be deliberately difficult? I’ll be transparent. Some are. The vast majority are not. Most faculty are working out of a position of concern for students but with a different lens than administrators. They are also working off a set of assumptions about math, learning math, student success, placement, and courses. Some of those assumptions are outdated and wrong. But some are not.

For example, can corequisite remediation work for many students? Absolutely. This study is one that compelled me to completely change my view of it. Is corequisite remediation the savior for all students including those who are functioning at a fourth-grade level? No. But unless administrators and policy makers hear from those on the front lines, they may not know that there are students seeking college degrees who can barely read and cannot multiply 2 x 3. Who knows this reality well? Faculty.

Is remediation effective? On the whole, no, based on 40 years of data. But there are definite successes within it. Does developmental education need to be removed? No. It needs to be streamlined, updated, modernized, and rebuilt. More on that in an upcoming blog.

“Many supposed data-driven decisions are not made using data. They are made from emotion.”

Getting faculty to be at the table when policy is discussed is key to a policy being sound and having the potential to be used and last. But faculty can be incredibly difficult to work with, particularly math faculty, and argumentative, especially when data are involved. Let’s go there: many supposed data-driven decisions are not made using data. They are made from emotion. This is true of both administrators and faculty. No side is blameless. I sometimes chuckle at seeing the reactions to the same study and set of data. We all bring our biases to the table, and we don’t use data in a pure way. We use it to reinforce our beliefs and move forward our agendas. That’s a sweeping generalization that surely has exceptions, but it does have plenty of truth as well.

Knowing that each side can be distrustful of the other, have different perspectives and agendas, and are likely to use data in a way that supports their position is not exactly cause for celebration. But this is the reality of change in higher education. Ten years ago, I was an unabashed idealist about change. Now I’m a weathered and experienced realist. I absolutely know that change can happen even in dysfunctional settings with little funding, but it is a slog. It can be wearing, no doubt. But like I tell my students, keep your eyes on the prize. In this case the prize is a student reaching their goals in a system that works for them and with them. Standards are still present, and rigor is the norm. But the cogs of the machine work together instead of in opposition. 

I do believe it’s possible to have both: improved completion rates and retention of standards. Will we get to incredibly high college completion rates, say 65% or 70%? Not necessarily. If you teach, you see why firsthand. Even if your college has every wraparound service known to man, has engaged faculty using modern pedagogy (and andragogy) and curriculum, and has plenty of funding, you still would not see massively high completion rates. Because those of us who work at colleges don’t control all the variables, including the most important ones: student motivation and engagement. But, let’s not give up our work. Would all of those circumstances improve completion rates? Yes, without question. There is just a limit to how high they’ll go. If faculty and administration can agree work can and should be done but with realistic goals, a lot can change for the better.

I’ve opened a can of worms here with ideas that I’ll return to many times in this blog. Faculty and their role are, to me, one of the greatest assets to getting change to happen in colleges. The secret is involving them and not avoiding them. How do you do that? How do you find people who aren’t afraid to have those hard conversations with faculty and challenge their assumptions? You enlist other faculty. I’ve seen it time and again in my career to work well for initiatives that I and many others have led and have endured. This premise is what I’ve founded my company on: the power of practitioners. That includes administrators and faculty. Both groups need each other, even though it can be a challenging relationship.

If you are an administrator, assess how you are involving or avoiding faculty. Where can you make changes in their participation? If you are math faculty, assess how you are contributing to or working against an initiative. If you are actively working against a reform, I challenge you to ask your administrator for a meeting to discuss the reform. Share your perspective but be open to hearing theirs. We can’t make progress in any direction if we don’t work with each other. 

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