Should Faculty Hires Be Expected To Live Nearby In Non-Diverse Communities?

[spork]

[. . . ]

It is not surprising that a person who has made her career pontificating about the experiences of others in countries in which she has not lived would write an article pontificating about the issues which she has not experienced in locations in which she has not lived.

[. . . ]

I love this. I wish all academics wrote this well.

In case it's not clear, I'm being serious.

[backatit]

Whoa waitwaitwait. She commutes to Champaign from Tampa?!

Seriously. Tampa? Tampa?

What are your perceptions about Tampa? Other than that it's a really long commute to CU :). 

[polly_mer]

Yes. I also forgot to note that we both work at teaching-heavy institutions. A one-hour commute makes participating in campus events much less attractive -- a campus guest speaker in the evening means not getting home until 9:00 pm. There are many small institutions that penalize -- either explicitly or implicitly -- junior faculty who do not establish a "presence" on campus by attending these events.

From the institutional side, a fast way to undermine a tiny campus that bills itself as high contact between students and faculty is to have a large number of faculty away from campus except when they are teaching.

A related fast way to undermine the tiny campus that bills itself as having a fabulous, old-school liberal arts experience is to have very few speakers at all and have those speakers on campus mostly when no one is around.

The tipping point at Super Dinky College was when about a third of the faculty were commuting from 2+ hours away, about a third of the faculty were commuting from 0.75-1.5 h away, and about a third of the faculty were under 10 minutes away.

Dependent care can be ameliorated for even a tiny campus when someone takes that as a primary concern.  I've been on campuses where planning for evening/weekend events included either planning for paid childcare of a preregistered group or having a valiant family member or two wrangling all the kids of a given age so that one dropped off where the relevant age group was.  Super Dinky College had monthly faculty meetings that ended at 5:35 because so many of us had to go pick up kids from the great after-school care program that closed at 6.  Similarly, coordinating elder care also can be a thing for those evening/weekend events; with planning, one can run parallel good programming at the college and the nursing home (etc.) so that everyone enjoys the program they are attending and timing rides is convenient.

An additional helpful action was purposely making MWF 11-13 a combination seminar/after-seminar discussion groups in the dining hall.  This situation meant that faculty could actively participate in the life-of-the-mind aspects while they already were on campus and thus likely had dependent care.  The dining hall was also open to families, so it wasn't all that unusual for some of the evening programs that appeal to all ages (e.g., Lessons and Carols in the chapel, musical acts) to start with a meal in the dining hall and then go to the program.  Blocky was far from the only kid who got to attend many fine offerings that were either chaotic outside or community-based-inside and he made a good friend in an octogenarian with Alzheimer's disease who would sit next to him and smile, possibly because he remembered when his child-who-is-older-than-I-am was that age and dragged to these college offerings.

Another helpful action was to plan more of the open houses during the week when the local high schools were not in session.  Again, people likely would have already been on campus with planned dependent care because we were generally open with classes in session when the HSs were having some kind of break for a minor holiday, teacher prep day, or extended parent-teacher conferences that spread over three days.

However, even with these accommodations, the provost's office had to go speak with certain individuals about how they were not doing the job we had that was 4/4, high contact with students, and actively participating in aspiring-to-be-life-of-the-mind community.  For this conversation, interestingly, the people who were fabulous faculty and who felt very strongly about ensuring students had a diverse campus that supported life-of-the-mind activities tended to live in town and be very active in all the activities, even when those activities were evenings and weekends.  Those folks made weekend/holiday trips to the big city for their own reasons, but truly lived with us and became part of the community.

The people who lived farther away and tried to minimize their time on campus generally were not nearly as devoted to supporting a diverse student population and were more likely to be people who visually fit into the local community, but wanted an urban experience instead of our person-to-person, unique-individuals-interacting experience.  Those people tended to focus on research productivity that might get them the next job somewhere "good" instead of succeeding at the job we had that was heavy on teaching and service.

It was pretty clear early on who had a devotion to the idea of checkbox diversity being good and who put skin in the game to support the unique individuals enrolled in the campus with an inclusive, welcoming community helping everyone succeed based on their unique needs and backgrounds.

[Conjugate]

And it's unlikely that she's expected to show up on Saturdays three times a semester to hep try to sell the university to prospective students.

Though at UIUC she is likely expected to show up on Saturdays maybe twice a year to help give Prelims and Quals, or do defenses. In my department, Prelims and Quals were Saturday experiences.

because she found the community boring.

Let's not downplay that the choice also included the bonus of living with her spouse! 
A one hour commute is probably worth the price of having a good job AND living with her spouse!

Yes. I also forgot to note that we both work at teaching-heavy institutions. A one-hour commute makes participating in campus events much less attractive -- a campus guest speaker in the evening means not getting home until 9:00 pm. There are many small institutions that penalize -- either explicitly or implicitly -- junior faculty who do not establish a "presence" on campus by attending these events.

See, that's even a problem at my little town, where my spouse and I live 10 minutes drive away. As a result, we haven't gone to an on-campus play, concert, or game for years.

[Parasaurolophus]

Whoa waitwaitwait. She commutes to Champaign from Tampa?!

Seriously. Tampa? Tampa?

What are your perceptions about Tampa? Other than that it's a really long commute to CU :).

Mostly that it's a very long commute. But also that, apart from warm weather and beaches, it doesn't really offer much more than Champaign does, or any other closer commute, like St. Louis or Cincinnati--let alone Chicago! It just doesn't seem worth the commute at all.

[backatit]

Whoa waitwaitwait. She commutes to Champaign from Tampa?!

Seriously. Tampa? Tampa?

What are your perceptions about Tampa? Other than that it's a really long commute to CU :).

Mostly that it's a very long commute. But also that, apart from warm weather and beaches, it doesn't really offer much more than Champaign does, or any other closer commute, like St. Louis or Cincinnati--let alone Chicago! It just doesn't seem worth the commute at all.

I would have to think it is somehow family related. I used to live there, which is why I was curious. It's a nice small city; pretty diverse, with a lot to do (although the beaches have no surf, which sucks).  Nicer in the winter, maybe, but miserable in summer.

[Kron3007]

Whoa waitwaitwait. She commutes to Champaign from Tampa?!

Seriously. Tampa? Tampa?

What are your perceptions about Tampa? Other than that it's a really long commute to CU :).

Mostly that it's a very long commute. But also that, apart from warm weather and beaches, it doesn't really offer much more than Champaign does, or any other closer commute, like St. Louis or Cincinnati--let alone Chicago! It just doesn't seem worth the commute at all.

I would have to think it is somehow family related. I used to live there, which is why I was curious. It's a nice small city; pretty diverse, with a lot to do (although the beaches have no surf, which sucks).  Nicer in the winter, maybe, but miserable in summer.

It's funny for me to hear Tampa referred to as a small city.  I was there recently and while it is not a massive city it is pretty big by my standards, but I guess this is all relative.

I remember when I started my undergrad it was in a city of about 100 000.  Coming from a town of a few thousand this was moving to the city for me, but I clearly remember other students referring to it as a town etc.  Funny how much perspective plus into this.

[Golazo]

I'm glad Polly reports that people in her small town were welcoming to outsiders. But that's not the case in a lot of places. I know that in my experience at small failing liberal arts college, both much of the town and much of the faculty had a "you're not from here, so you can't understand and won't ever be included" attitude. And we presented as pretty similar in race and religion to the dominant group except for not having the regional accent and did some of the local stuff. The author is way over the top. But its also important to acknowledge that some of these small towns are pretty closed shops, sometimes even within the university.

I also wonder if "face time" is often used as a metric for faculty utility because other things are harder to measure. I'm not in my office that much beyond my office hours, but I am very responsive. If the soccer coach wants me to meet with a recruit interested in basket-weaving, I'll make it happen. If a student needs feedback or advice or a letter of reference etc, it happens quickly. Need to schedule a committee meeting on a day I'm not on campus-- I'll change my schedule or teleconference. On the other hand, some of the most useless faculty I've ever dealt with, both as a student and a professional were always in their office and on campus but couldn't produce anything (leading me to get panicked email from a student needing a letter of reference the next day). Certainly the faculty member an hour away may need to work hard to be accessible, but ultimately what we need is faculty to produce as teachers and advisers, and I've had very good support from faculty doing the commuter model, and some of my best colleagues do this too. I also think that the face time model has people looking for all kinds of ways to game the system and figure out what "counts."

That said, the author lost pretty much everyone's sympathy with the absurd suggestions and general tone. Suffering from exclusion in a small town of 5,000 is pretty different from the author's plight, as is teaching a 1-1.

[backatit]

Whoa waitwaitwait. She commutes to Champaign from Tampa?!

Seriously. Tampa? Tampa?

What are your perceptions about Tampa? Other than that it's a really long commute to CU :).

Mostly that it's a very long commute. But also that, apart from warm weather and beaches, it doesn't really offer much more than Champaign does, or any other closer commute, like St. Louis or Cincinnati--let alone Chicago! It just doesn't seem worth the commute at all.

I would have to think it is somehow family related. I used to live there, which is why I was curious. It's a nice small city; pretty diverse, with a lot to do (although the beaches have no surf, which sucks).  Nicer in the winter, maybe, but miserable in summer.

It's funny for me to hear Tampa referred to as a small city.  I was there recently and while it is not a massive city it is pretty big by my standards, but I guess this is all relative.

I remember when I started my undergrad it was in a city of about 100 000.  Coming from a town of a few thousand this was moving to the city for me, but I clearly remember other students referring to it as a town etc.  Funny how much perspective plus into this.

Well, considering that my other city is London... :D It's all relative. I much prefer cities the size of Tampa, but the heat in summer will do you in. And the hurricane risk is real - I lost my home somewhere else a few of years ago to another hurricane, hence the partial relocation.

[polly_mer]

But its also important to acknowledge that some of these small towns are pretty closed shops, sometimes even within the university.

For the sake of example, I'll do the flip side reality of seeming unwelcoming in a very sparsely populated, isolated place.  None of this is aimed at Golazo as an individual; I am very interested in rural education and thus have some observations backed by data on the realities of why perhaps someone who comes from outside might be better off taking some other job than trying to join a closed community both for the aspiring faculty member's benefit and the students' benefits.

I grew up in very small town with no college, but definitely closed to newcomers in the most friendly way. In that situation, we don't decide to accept or reject based on whether another outsider would indicate the outsider visually fits in a group photo.  Instead, we run everything based on personal relationships that were formed in early childhood, possibly our parents' or grandparents' early childhoods.  We know literally everyone we encounter at the grocery store, library, movie theatre, and school and how that person fits into the social structures (personal, family, and professional).  I've been away almost 30 years at this point, but when I look at various town and regional public boards or do a quick skim of the newspapers, I know nearly all the names still for the adults and can see who had kids/grandkids.

The relevant analogy is having someone unknown sitting at a table in one's home; even if one is hosting the family reunion outside for 50 people, one is going to notice the stranger when one has been interacting with the other 49 people multiple times monthly for one's entire life and one is now middle-aged.  The statement of "you'll never truly fit in here" may be a polite and friendly statement of that reality.

Revelant for the person moving for a faculty job at the small college in the small town, nationally, most college students enroll at institutions within 50 miles of home (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/03/when-students-enroll-college-geography-matters-more-policy-makers-think).  At a small, undistinguished college, your classes will be almost entirely students who came up through the local public schools.  The highly motivated students who value education tend to go to much better postsecondary institutions much farther away and never come back because there's nothing here for them.  The people who remain are self-selected as those who either like their lives as they are or lack the imagination/will/ability to work hard enough to get something else. 

It's entirely possible to have a town/gown split even when the vast majority of the individuals in town value education because the concrete daily activities differ so much from the expectations of the handful of outsider professors.  In a small enough, isolated enough place, good enough middle-class jobs that span a solid portion of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook just don't exist in the same way they do even in modest urban populations of 50k-100k.  The lack of jobs for a college-educated trailing spouse is the same lack of jobs that the new college graduate will face if they want to stay locally.  Thus, choosing education, nursing, criminal justice, social work, general business that includes some accounting, or something broadly applicable to human services like psychology that has good local internships is evidence of good critical thinking skills based on the adult lives around them. 

The middle-aged returning students may be focused on expanding their minds; many of the local students who have enrolled and will participate as good students likely are more thinking about the value of curated knowledge from a professional educator in a formal experience than many of the individual pieces of knowledge or processes being taught in the general education program in a purposeful effort to have an educated citizenry.  General education may be interesting to individuals, but when disconnected enough from daily life, those tidbits remain intellectual curiosities that are possibly useful for conversation starters or Jeopardy! answers, but not really affecting anyone's lives in a deep and meaningful way.  This is true for STEM general education every bit as any other general education requirement and isn't necessarily limited to the very small town if enough students from those small towns with no college go to the regional public in the bigger city (10k-30k) still within the fifty mile drive.

Thus, even among people who value literature, music, and art in their lives and want to have deep meaningful conversations about the purpose of life, the life that the outsider professor keeps holding up as normal doesn't fit with lived local experience or may be very undesirable.  For example, the lack of professional, high quality childcare in town may be a strong reflection of how few people in town truly have single-field professional careers outside the home for most of their adult lives.  Living in a system of personal favors with integrated lives across various boundaries instead of formal, monetary exchanges in an impersonal economic sphere that is separate from a social sphere tends to produce a very different mindset and daily activities to ensure that one is successful enough in the predominant system.

I can remember one career services person at Super Dinky who repeatedly told students that their families would still love them if they moved a couple hours away to the city where jobs exist.  The problem isn't a lack of love so much as the mover-awayer losing the known barter system without earning enough income to make up for that support through paid interactions.  Let's not forget that if the capable young people leave for the city, then pretty soon we don't have enough contributing young people for the barter system to continue to be vibrant or at least sustainable.  One way to kill a town is to have the young people leaving in droves (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-graying-of-rural-america/485159/ ).  The educated people who read the papers, draw lessons from literature, and can in general apply critical thinking out in the wild know that sad fact.

For the leaver, the costs don't end at the loss of the supportive community.  Living among strangers who could do anything based on what television and the newspapers indicate can be very stressful for someone who is used to being surrounded by very predictable people even if Ted is a know-it-all jerk and Marge won't shut up about how the roundabout put in 10 years ago ruined that other intersection that started with a traffic light when built.

The converse of the small town nothing to do is the big city nothing I want to do.  I've been in situations with four newspaper pages of weekend activities and nothing worth the time or energy more than my weekly visit to the library and possible weekday night trip to the smallish theatre with a sale that night.  Everything I want to do depends on unique people who may pass through the group on a longer timescale, but people I know as individuals, so I look forward to seeing them.  When one's entertainment has always been specific individuals doing specific activities usually at someone's house, the entertainments available in the city even for free may be emotionally unsatisfying.  The point wasn't, say, playing cards; the point was being with other humans who accept one as one is with something that doesn't rely on personal drama for emotional swings between highs (shot that moon!) and lows (I had three trump; how did you end up with all the slightly higher cards?).

For the college experience that should focus on the life-of-the-mind activities, if anything, the local people who are writers, artists, and performers are more likely to be here because the cost-of-living is so cheap that a part-time job to supplement irregular income is reasonable to maintain a comfortable home with adequate supplies and possibly raise a family.  Generally, if those folks wanted to be in the city, then they would be in the city because they are still categorized as outsiders, even after 20 years here.  Thus, students and even faculty/staff derived from the local region are unlikely to be swayed by an argument for studying certain subjects that relies on the soft job skills that may help one get a job other than teacher, nurse, police officer, or social worker.  Yes, literate enough, numerate enough people who know how to work the barter system and the paid transactional system will succeed here; it's not clear what additional benefits accrue to majoring in a liberal arts fields when being hired for a local job is mostly the result of what a specific person at the potential employer thinks of you, your family, and your friends rather than relying on the impersonal process that involves review of transcripts and resumes.

Even for many of the folks who treasure their college years for the valuable liberal arts education, book clubs, community theatre/music, and a couple trips a year to the Big City for museums, opera, and fine dining are sufficient.  Those folks live here for a reason or else they would live elsewhere because they know about the outside world.  Therefore, whatever the outsider faculty member is trying to model for students as normal for middle-class lives that conflicts with observed reality or casually mentions to colleagues as lacking in town will be met with puzzlement because life is satisfactory here for those of us who are here and fit, even as the long-term outsider.

For example, I lived in small college town A for about 5 years, moved around the US for 3 years including three additional cities, and moved back.  A newcomer welcomed me as a fellow newcomer just recently from a big enough city with an internationally renowned university* and immediately started in on what she had discovered during her similar transition.  I managed to refrain from saying more than once, "I've never had that food item.  Thus, I don't feel the lack of it in the grocery store and local restaurants".  I managed to refrain from saying, "I don't feel the lack of that particular type of entertainment because I went once as part of a school trip when I was a child". 

I managed to refrain from saying, "You're talking about shopping as entertainment; I make a list for when we go to the city twice a year and buy then.  If it's more urgent than that, I go to the desk in town where Shirley will help make a Sears-Roebuck catalog order that I can pick up on Thursdays."  I did invite the newcomer to Saturday board games at my house and Thursday dollar night at the movie theatre (motto: if you haven't seen it, then it's new to you, even if it came out six months ago).  I told her about the upcoming twice-per-year book sale at the library and that being a paid-up Friends of the Library member meant one can look through the selection on Friday night before it opens to the public.

Literature can help understand such situations, but only if people really grasp that SPADFY and those folks enjoy their "normal" because of their values, ethics, and experiences.  Failing to do so as the outsider, even in the absence of racism, anti-Semitism, or other systematic discrimination against bad, stupid, smelly, whatever outsiders, makes that outsider's life harder than it has to be.

Under that situation where most college graduates will remain in the area, it's not clear what value checkbox diversity brings to the campus, let alone why the campus should be paying extra for travel, subsidizing child/elder care, or otherwise making huge accommodations for faculty who need to move from elsewhere.  This is especially true in fields where the regional comprehensive is awarding graduate degrees to people who have the relevant content knowledge, want to live in the area, and know how to blend that content knowledge with the realities of life as the students know it.  Knowledge of this reality  is why I really want to know how people spent the years between earning their own college degrees and the present; people who have lived as our students do and value that lifestyle will be better fits here and do better at the non-classroom parts of the job than folks who view our students as other who are thinking wrong about their own lives and values.


*Otherwise known as top 5 graduate program that I briefly attended for doctoral studies and we left because we hated the city and I had attempted to change fields to work with a particular big name.  The research was great; the classes to be credentialed as someone with the world-class background in this field were not worth the effort to me.

[ciao_yall]

All this conversation reminds me of the tech buses. The cool kids want to live in San Francisco but their jobs are in Silicon Valley. So there are these giant buses to schlep them an hour down the freeway. The buses clog the streets. The rents go up like crazy.

Now I lived in Silicon Valley and it was great - bars, restaurants, nightlife, plenty of diversity even back when we rode our dinosaurs to work. Yeah San Francisco was a bit more glamorous, but not worth an hour on the freeway.

These days to suggest to my neighbors that they live there - my goodness, you'd think SV was a cornfield with the theme from Deliverance playing from speakers hidden in the scarecrows! And the buses "keep all those cars off the freeway" so they are better for the environment.

You know what else keeps the cars off the freeway? LIVING CLOSE TO WHERE YOU WORK!

Don't get me started about the fact that we live across the street from a Whole Foods and a Safeway and they still have their groceries delivered. Remind me again how that is green? Oh, they recycle the cardboard boxes after removing all the plastic wrap. SMDH.



   

[backatit]

I also find this discussion interesting in terms of the other discussion on here about face time and its importance to career trajectory. I teach fully online, and my face time is somewhat minimal, but that helps my commute (not really due to any of the choices on this thread - I COULD technically move closer to work now, but the choice remains - WHOSE work - my partners in London or mine in the US?). We both work remotely and spend time at the other's job site (we're in similar areas) when we have meetings. I am sure my career has probably suffered somewhat, as has his, but the tradeoff has been pretty good so far in our quality of life and work/family balance.