academic coach

Should We Use Editors?

In a post about working in cafes (an environment which many of us find condusive to writing) Wanna Be Ph.D. revealed that she is a non-native English speaker  -- which I would not have guessed from the eloquence of her blog.  She wrote:

"I really must say that writing in English is for me like playing the violin while wearing gloves. I keep searching for words, for phrases. I know I could write 5 times faster in My Native Language."

Here is my reaction to Wanna Be's post:

"You certainly blog like a native English speaker.

"Still, I advise every non-native english speaker I coach to find an editor -- preferably another grad student from an english department or similar humanities field. Regular use of the right copy editor will lead to marked improvement in your writing -- because you'll learn to avoid your most common mistakes. I have one coaching client who started paying another doctoral student to copy edit her dissertation when she was an ABD.  This smart academic is now a 3rd yr t-t prof at an Ivy and sill using the same person to edit her soon-to-be published book...."

I use an editor (but not for blogging, as I'm sure you can tell!)  I found my editor by sending an email to the administrative secretary of the journalism department at UNC.  Since I work by phone with long-distance clients so much, I wanted an editor I could meet with in person sometimes.  Before choosing Grace, a masters student with the quickest red pen in Chapel Hill, I tried two other folks at the same time.  It was really useful to see how different people edited the same article and Grace proved to be the best fit for my needs.

In the past few months, I've gotten several emails asking whether I edit academic work (I don't) and whether I know of any good, professional editors of academic material (I don't, but wish I did.)  Here's an example of such an email:

"Dear Mary,

I continue to enjoy your blog when I get a chance to read. A blog post on whether or not to use a professional editor for your book would be nice. Had dinner with a recently tenured prof at Harvard Business School and was shocked to learn he used a professional editor for his second book. Maybe it's more common than I thought. Also, I have a colleague who should probably seek out such a service, but doesn't know how to go about finding a good editor here in [Academic Town.]"

I sent back a hearty endorsement and some ideas for finding editors locally.  But I'm curious whether other academibloggers agree with me that editing help -- used appropriately -- is a great thing.

What about you?  Do you use an editor?  Do you think that it is an acceptable practice?  Does it feel like "cheating" somehow?  What are the boundaries for ethical help?

I got an email from the owner of an academic editing service who said that he wanted to set up some sort of affiliation or partnership with me.  I haven't gotten back to him, but thought that the service, AcademicWord, looked interesting.  What do you think?

Gah!

I'd just finished polishing a post with several links when, GAH!, I lost it.  When am I going to learn to save as I go?

Teaching Carnival V

Yipee!  Another wonderful teaching carnival compiled by Ancarett.

There goes my morning....

Too Long Meetings & Too Short Meetings

"I understand, judge, I am the only one standing between you and lunch, so I'll try to make this painless," quipped Senator Joseph Biden at Alito's confirmation hearings yesterday.

I've emailed this quote to my dear husband who wishes that his colleagues were willing to break for lunch rather than quibble endlessly about details.  He has served on his department's Institutional Review Board for years and for the past couple of years he has DREADED those meetings because of a faculty member who obsessively questions every point and enjoys playing devil's advocate for every proposal that crosses the committee's desk.

This week, dear husband came home early.

Imagine my surprise at seeing him come in the door at 4pm -- that morning he'd joked that he might not be home till midnight because the IRB meeting was starting at 3pm.

"Professor Hijacker wasn't there," he explained.

Don't you hate meetings with Pontificators, Showboaters, Obsessors or Hijackers?

(Actually, my dislike of meetings is one of the reasons I chose to pursue a private clinical practice and adjunct teaching vs. a t-t academic career.)

Well, last week I heard about the opposite problem -- a meeting that was too short rather than too long.  It was an outrageous tale of a committee so concerned with lunch that they punched one of my coaching clients in the professional solar plexus.

This Asst. Prof's tenure review committee was supposed to meet in November but for some reason the meeting was delayed until just before the December holidays.  There were a couple of other items on the agenda and they got to Asst Prof's tenure case about noon.  At that point, the hungry colleagues decided to break for lunch and meet about Asst Prof's case IN LATE JANUARY. 

Can you imagine?

Oh the stories I hear....   

And by the way, as I'm sure you've noticed....

Should books be required for tenure?

I was glad to see that New Kid has also reacted to the MLA committee's proposal for tenure changes.  Her thoughts are saavy and thought provoking, as usual.

And following up that post, she has given some great tips for understanding the differences between dissertations and books.  I agree with her that the two essential "how to" books for academic monograph publishing are William Germano's From Dissertation to Book, and Beth Luey's Revising Your Dissertation: Advice from Leading Editors. Why are these books helpful?  Because they are written by editors at academic presses rather than by academics.  This also means that they are readable and practical.

Gotta say, that if I were an ABD in a field related to New Kid's, I'd be begging her to be my mentor.  Her advice about teaching, politics, etc., is always so spot on.  I think the same thing of several other academoggers - but don't want to start a list because - like memes - someone might feel left out if not included. As jo(e) reminded us when she declined to tag someone to do a recent meme; it is never fun to be the kid who isn't chosen for the team until last.

No More Books to Get Tenure?

Attention Academics in the Humanities

Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed has written two articles about calls at the Mondern Language Association to change general requirements for tenure.

The first piece describes the proposed changes and the second elaborates on the proposed shifts and gives more details about people's reactions.

The most dramatic of the proposed changes would be allowing other venues of publication besides "the monograph" to count for tenure.  In layman's terms, you wouldn't have to turn your dissertation into the damned book to get tenure. This change might even include considering on-line, peer-reviewed publications to be legitimate. Gasp!

Other calls for change include:

• limiting the number of outside reviewers who write letters for the tenure seeker to six big whigs -- some universities require 12.
• requesting tenure letters from universities of comparable status (ie. Podunk U would stop asking for letters from big whigs at Ivies.)
• not asking letter writers questions that are unfair to candidates, such as "would you recommend this scholar for tenure at your university" (as though a Podunk U prof should be able to get tenure at HarvPrinceYale.)
• providing better systems of senior faculty mentoring for junior faculty.
• and creating "Memorandums of Understanding" with new faculty that will spell out what will be expected of them come tenure time.

I think that this last item is especially important.  Scott emailed me for a comment on the proposal and then quoted this portion of my response:

“Among the junior faculty I coach, the most upsetting problems arise when the criteria for tenure are unclear or raised capriciously,” said Mary McKinney, a psychologist and the founder of Successful Academic Coaching, who helps junior faculty members navigate the tenure process. “It’s tough to jump over a bar that you can’t see. And even harder to clear a bar that is being lifted as you leap.”

I had some other thoughts about the possible tenure overhaul that were not included in Scott's article. 

As for the idea of creating formal mentor systems within departments: It is unrealistic to expect that you can institutionalize true mentoring relationships - especially in the humanities where it is atypical for people to collaborate on papers.  In my experience, only a minority of junior faculty members find a senior colleague in their department who has the time, interest and generosity to provide consistent, honest guidance. You can't dictate mentorship.  Like it or not, I think that the onus is on junior faculty to ask many smart questions of a wide range of people, and to sniff out the political quagmires on their own.

As for the idea of getting rid of books as a necessity for tenure -- I think that it is likely to happen because financial pressures on academic publishing houses mean fewer books.

After Scott's first article, there was a great comment by Sandy Hatcher, the Director of the Penn State U. Press:

She (or he) wrote the following:

"From dissertation to book

"The MLA panel is to be applauded for making the kinds of recommendations it has. We in the scholarly publishing business agree that “it’s about time” that such changes were initiated; we have been calling for them for nearly two decades. Another reason for placing less emphasis on monograph publication as the “gold standard” for tenure is that, with academic libraries generally having access to dissertations in electronic form through ProQuest (which has just instituted an “open access” option as well), there is little motivation for libraries to order books based on dissertations unless very substantial revisions have been unertaken, and hence sales of books identifiable as having originiated in dissertations are even lower than the already low sales on monographs in literary criticism, which make them very difficult for university presses to publish. Yet tenure committees have continued to insist on junior faculty publishing monographs, which they can hardly verry easily do in the limited time they have unless they start with their revised dissertation as their first book. The conflict between library practices and tenure committee requirements is one more instance of the failure of universities to examine the logic of their institutional systems—puzzling in view of the university’s self-image as the bastion of rationality!

For now, however, if you are in English, or most fields in the humanities, and you're at a respectible university, you need to publish a book for tenure.  If this is the case, THINK ABOUT THE ECONOMICS OF YOUR BOOK.  FROM THE PUBLISHERS POINT OF VIEW.

Even at the time of their dissertation defense, no graduate student I've worked with has known the elements of a successful book proposal.  Many junior faculty preparing manuscripts are clueless about the financial pressures on academic presses, or how marketing prospects affect editorial decisions.  Ideally, all doctoral training would cover practical information about career planning and tenure requirements, including the basics of academic book publishing.  For example, it would be helpful if professors revealed the practical importance of choosing a marketable topic when their students are developing dissertation proposals.  While generating ideas for the dissertation, few students are asked "Who would want to read this, and why?"

How's this for an "earnest exhortation" as promised in my blog's byline?

Dooced!

Once again, Ivan Tribbles and their administration cohorts are chanting "Told you so."

In mid-December, DeVry University fired instructor Meg Spohn for what she calls "water-cooler kvetching" on her blog.

Although Meg is still A.B.D. at the University of Denver, she had a full-time job teaching and serving as department chair of communications and composition at the Westminster campus until mid-December.

Here is her description of Dooce-day:

"I got called into the Academic Dean’s office late Monday morning. The Human Resources person who hired me joined us. She said they had become aware of my blog, and that I had made disparaging comments about DeVry and about its students on the blog, and that because of that, I was being let go. I was then escorted to my office, where I packed up everything in there while the HR person watched (and to some extent, helped) and then to my car.

Here’s what didn’t happen:

- Any specific mention of a particular posting or even particular blog (as many of you know, I participate in or run about half a dozen blogs).

- Any warning, disciplinary procedure, discussion, or any other process by which I was notified of the “problem.” This was especially egregious, as previous instances of faculty having “objectionable” postings on their blogs have been treated by discussing it with the faculty member. I was fired outright without any opportunity for discussion at all.

- My being allowed to say goodbye to anybody or talk to anyone on the way out, ostensibly for the purpose of “confidentiality.” I was hustled out of there in a surprisingly furtive fashion. Nobody even knew I was gone.

- ANY disparaging comment about my students, on ANY blog, EVER! That is just not accurate at all. My students are my heart. But you knew that."

Wow.  From what I can tell so far (I've emailed her to gain access to her now-protected posts) Meg's blog is quite inoffensive. 

Still, I always warn untenured faculty and grad students that I believe they are better off with a pseudonymous blog until they are tenured.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get you.