An Institutional Culture of Teaching and Scholarship

By: Erica Goff, Director of the Office of Research Development and Administration

“How do we give ourselves grace?”

She asked the question slowly, almost as if she surprised herself.

She was referring to academia, to how much of her experience, both as student and faculty, felt continually competitive; one in which enough is never enough.

She described a “culture of overwork;” a place in which “the more you can pile up … the more impressive it feels to everybody.” She described a sort of chase; for recognition, for awards, for tenure. She said she was “disappointed by the lack of acknowledgement” of her work.

She called it “unfortunate.”

She was one of a group of early career faculty who, as research participants, took time to help me understand their perspective of faculty life, particularly in relation to their institution’s culture and their own sense of success. The stories each shared with me about their experience as tenure-track faculty served as data for my own research. I identified answers to my research questions, and I learned a lot more.

For example, I learned those questions are tied directly to her experiences as an eager graduate student; as a struggling doctoral fellow at one university; a distinguished doc fellow at another; an unappreciated adjunct; and a new tenure-track faculty member. I learned that like all faculty, she was impacted by institutional culture while also participating in that culture.

In order to be accepted in their professional life, to achieve acceptance in any discipline, I learned that faculty must demonstrate a level of competence in and acceptance of the culture’s norms and values; they subsequently pass those norms and values on to their students. Students are subsequently socialized via interaction with faculty and peers, Gardner and Veliz reported, and are “integrated into the department’s activities and the culture of their disciplines.”

I also learned culture matters. While seeking answers to my research questions, I found a new question: What role do I, and my office, play within the institutional culture?

Eastern is a teaching university. EMU is also home to some very impressive research and creative scholarship. There is an acknowledgement that teaching and research/scholarship are of value, not mutually exclusive but reinforcing. That concept is fundamental to what I consider to be the responsibilities of the Office of Research Development and Administration (ORDA) in relation to institutional culture, which is much more than an office that simply moves paperwork and seems to exist simply to say “no” and obsess over rules and policies.

I envision ORDA to be a fundamental component of the culture, a resource for faculty as they seek their comfort zone in relation to balancing teaching and scholarship. The elemental role of ORDA is to help find, build and maintain that ideal intersection of (X) teaching and (Y) scholarship, a fairly individualized space in which each faculty member can feel accomplished, valued and successful, whatever that looks like for them.

So, back to the how: How do we foster a space that affords a sense of grace, of self-validation and of continued motivation?

An institutional commitment to recognition of faculty efforts across the board – across activities, across discipline, across campus– is constitutive. All recognition is meaningful, and some can be fairly simple: A mention in campus press; a university-wide announcement of an award or publication. Some must be targeted, advanced and strategic: Consistent and cohesive investment of resources from offices like ORDA and Faculty Development Center (FDC) to accurately address faculty needs as defined by faculty. It can range from procurement of specialized software to requesting appropriate lab space to advocating for procedure and policy changes. It includes advocacy for meaningful commitments to scholarship in institutional strategy. It is our job to foster, for faculty, a sense of achievement; of being valued; of professional success.

This process is collaborative and cyclical: It is one in which the establishment and clarification of expectations serves to benefit all stakeholders.

You, as faculty, are fundamental stakeholders, charged with guiding students as they stagger through the maze that is higher education. Those students, too, are critical; they are not simply numbers or dollars or opportunities for cheap labor. They are, like faculty, essential to institutional functionality and purpose. Their contributions to and participation in university life and institutional culture are significant, and they too are influenced by that culture.

Likewise, the socialization process for new faculty effectually teaches the norms, standards and values of the institution. Gardner and Veliz described a process in which new faculty “watch and learn how their more senior peers have advanced and succeeded in the unit and receive feedback on their own progress toward the goals of promotion and tenure.”

I’ll save you the boring details about framework and theory and get to the point: When aspects of the student experience, faculty experience and institutional messaging and identity are aligned, both in messaging and in action, all stakeholders benefit.

I also learned something intimately fundamental to the how and the why of academic life. It can somehow be flexible and chaotic at the same time. It is often fueled by passion, for the students and their futures; for the free exchange of ideas; for the desire to contribute to the field, the process of examining that portion of the world to which one has dedicated an entire life and career. It is a commitment to embrace a deeply specific piece of the world, to pick it up and turn it about, to examine it from every possible angle and know it better than anyone.

My own research and passion is intertwined with yours. It is to play a role in and contribute to an institutional culture that recognizes the significance of scholarship and commitment to teaching, while also recognizing and respecting efforts in service. My sense of professional success is directly correlated to my own meaningful engagement with that institutional culture.

Culture requires a team, an intertwining of many voices; individual voices that McDermott & Varenne said are “brought to life and made significant by the other….” Thank you all for allowing me to add my voice; I’m immensely excited to hear all of yours.