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06/15/2004 Archived Entry: "ivy tenure"
The Chronicle maps out tenure issues in the Ivy League. A few interesting points regarding tenure in the Ivies, but one of the most perplexing is why granting tenure to junior faculty is not deemed a good move. The whole point of hiring on the tenure track is to make an investment in the institution's future. In essence, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are training and developing junior faculty to take over at other schools. Does that make sense?
But the Ivies maintain their own mystique regarding academia. I was lured into that mystique as an undergrad looking to transfer and as a job candidate my first year out. Academics, in general, finds inspiration in the Ivies. In an old Chronicle piece on writing instruction, Eric Schneider wrote, “When [the Ivy League] does something, all the other institutions perk up their ears.” We see that in rhet/comp; contemporary composition owes its status to Harvard's English A. But are the Ivies the best model? Not really. Following the Ivy model is almost like embracing WAC: there is the feeling of progress and the reputation of success on the table, but the result has little to do with the realities of academia, intellectual work, or anything else occurring outside the closed system set up. The Ivies don’t represent the network; they foreground the closed system. In an age when tenure requirements must be revised, the Ivy model has felt compelled to keep them rigid. They harm themselves, of course, but other institutions often turn to the Ivies for inspiration and, thus, perpetuate bad policy across the board.
As I move into my second tenure-track job, I'm glad to know that Wayne's chair has used the MLA position paper on publishing a book to argue against the rigid book requirement. No doubt most of us want the scholarly book published, but the reality is presses are cutting back, libraries are cutting purchases, and publishing is shifting focus. The Ivy model won't suffice in this situation (or in many others). The Wayne model (or emerging model) is a better one.
Replies: 6 comments
Hey John
Really good references. Thanks. I'm going to check them out!
Posted by j @ 06/16/2004 09:09 PM EST
The Committee of Ten reference should be 1890s.
Posted by John @ 06/16/2004 09:04 PM EST
Harvard played an important role, but I think it's exaggerated because it's been the most documented. Yale's daily themes was an important influence. Michigan also established an early pattern with Charles Mills Gayley who then went to U C Berkeley where he shaped the English comp program--and the whole department. He's the one who brought extension learning to UC--and the US, I believe.
The second chair of English at UC Berkeley was Edward Rowland Sill, educated at Yale, a poet and a character. He'd regularly ride his horse in the Berkeley hills--and he was an innovator in curriculum. He wrote Matthew Arnold for ideas, for instance.
My point is the history of comp has been told from the New England standpoint without reference to intersecting and interacting influences. Gayley participated in the Committee of Ten in the 1990s, so the shaping of the curriculum had lots of sources.
Here's a timeline I did on leave back in 1989:
http://faculty.deanza.fhda.edu/jocalo/stories/storyReader$164
[you need to include the $164 in the URL]
Posted by John @ 06/16/2004 09:03 PM EST
Yo John and Bradley:
Actually, I would say Harvard invented contemporary composition. English A was the response to how to evaluate writing as opposed to oral recitation. And while the emphasis was on superficial matters (handwriting, spelling), what's important was
a. a recognition of a communicative shift (finally, from oral to print assessment)
b. a set of standards regarding what students write about (the prompt) which has carried over into all composition programs ever since
I'll have to check the Kitteredge out since I'm not familiar with it.
Posted by j @ 06/16/2004 08:47 AM EST
I'd say no contribution, but certainly some "contribution." After all, most of us are still in English departments, and the curricular models, not to mention T&P guidelines, tend to trickle down from the Ivies. Less so in the past couple of generations, perhaps.
Duke & Stanford, when pressed to consider comp, pursued a hiring process much like the one that the article describes--plucking Harris and Lunsford respectively. I don't know much about their programs, but I'd be hard-pressed to point out the substantive difference between being on an impossible tenure-track at an Ivy and being a postdoc at Duke, except that Duke doesn't seem to head fake its postdocs.
Posted by cgb @ 06/16/2004 02:14 AM EST
Good points. I'm trying to figure out if you were being ironic in crediting rhet/comp's status to Harvard's English A. Just about the same time, Kitteredge offered his Shakespeare course and initiated the process by which literature came to be revered over rhetoric and philology in English departments.
My own work on the history of Freshman English in California suggests that the entrance of engineering, business and agriculture to the university led to reducing the language components of the undergraduate curriculum, and creating what has become first-year comp. I'm not aware of any contribution made by Harvard or Yale to composition in the 20th century. Even now, Stanford and Duke are doing much more interesting things in writing than the Ivies.
Posted by John @ 06/15/2004 09:24 PM EST