FIRST YEAR WRITING, CONTINGENT FACULTY, AND THE PROBLEM OF STUDENT RETENTION

John Casey, PhD

Lecturer

Department of English

University of Illinois at Chicago

AN AXIOM OF THE FACULTY LABOR MOVEMENT

Faculty Working Conditions Are Student Learning Conditions.

TESTING THE AXIOM

Easy to assert but not necessarily to prove.

This presentation is as an attempt to isolate elements of higher education that highlight the connection between faculty working conditions and student learning.

Focuses on three areas of inquiry: 1. Student Retention, 2. Labor Contingency in Higher Education, and 3. First Year Writing Curricula.

STUDENT RETENTION

Natural starting point for investigation.

For better or worse student retention shapes the experience of faculty, students, and staff on most college and university campuses.

Diverse approaches to retention but the dominant model currently the sociological approach of Vincent Tinto, author of the book Leaving College (1993).

STUDENT MINDSET

Tinto asserted that the main challenge for student retention was creating a mindset in new students.

Belief that they can achieve the academic tasks required of them and that they belong in the new environment they have entered.

Tinto’s research reminds us that First Year students are high school Seniors severed from their “tribe.” They are starting over.

STUDENT MINDSET (CONT.)

Tinto argued that in the first year “the incidence of withdrawal is highest” and “the individual is least integrated into and therefore least committed to the institution and thus most susceptible to the pains and doubts which separation and transition evoke” (Tinto, Leaving College, 163).

Many First Year Experience programs use this insight as their starting point.

FACULTY ROLE IN STUDENT RETENTION

What is conspicuously absent from much of the research and even from the more general campus discussions on the issue of student retention is the role played by faculty in the socialization of students to campus life.

Especially odd given Tinto’s belief that faculty are the main socializing force in initiating students into the academic tribe.

FACULTY ROLE IN STUDENT RETENTION (CONT.) “Of the variety of forms of contact which occur on

campus, frequent contact with the faculty appears to be a particularly important element in student persistence. This is especially true when that contact extends beyond the formal boundaries of the classroom to the various informal settings which characterize college life. Those encounters which go beyond the mere formalities of academic work to broader intellectual and social issues and which are seen by students as warm and rewarding appear to be strongly associated with continued persistence. By contrast, the absence of faculty contacts and/or the perception that they are largely formalistic exchanges limited to the narrow confines of academic work prove to be tied to the occurrence of voluntary withdrawal” (Tinto, Leaving College, 57).

CONTINGENCY AND RETENTION

Lack of discussion of the faculty role in student retention has a number of explanations.

Most relevant for this presentation is the reality of who is teaching most First Year Students: Non-Tenure Track (NTT) Faculty.

Addressing the relationship of faculty to student retention would thus involve discussing the sore point of the changing nature of the faculty in higher education.

CONTINGENCY AND RETENTION (CONT.)

Audrey J. Jaeger and M. Kevin Eagan found that “students at the doctoral-extensive institution had the highest average exposure to contingent faculty instruction in their first year, as the average student at this institutional type had approximately 68% of all credits with contingent faculty” (Jaeger and Eagan, 521).

Not surprisingly, those at baccalaureate institutions, focused on undergraduate teaching more than graduate education and research, had the lowest percentage (49%).

CONTINGENCY AND RETENTION (CONT.)

Jaeger and Eagan’s data suggested a negative relationship between student retention and exposure to contingent faculty in their first year of instruction (a 2-4% decline per 10% increase in NTT faculty instruction), but left the reasons for this trend largely unanswered. (See “Examining Retention and Contingent Faculty Use.”)

Paul D. Umbach provided an explanation for this trend that focused on the challenges of NTT working conditions. Particularly access issues. (See “How Effective Are they?”)

STUDENT ACCESS TO FACULTY

Student access to faculty involves more than contact in the classroom.

Also includes office hours, scheduled face to face appointments, and virtual interaction via email and other technological means.

Much has been written on time demands for NTT faculty (especially part-time) but there is less of a focus on the physical environment in which students and faculty meet.

STUDENT ACCESS TO FACULTY (CONT.)

The physical environment in which a faculty member meets with a student suggests the relative value of their professor and the course they are taking to the institution.

UIC’s First Year Writing Program provides a telling example.

OUT OF CLASS CONTACT AND FIRST YEAR WRITING PEDAGOGY

Unlike many of the courses students will attend in their first year at UIC, our writing classes are small and collaborative, meeting two of the requirements noted by Tinto for successful student socialization into the campus environment.

This has made our classes a fertile testing ground for administrators interested in measuring the institution’s success in retaining students during the first year. It has also made them the natural starting point for new campus efforts to create our own version of the First Year Experience.

OUT OF CLASS CONTACT AND FIRST YEAR WRITING PEDAGOGY (CONT.)

Faculty have been asked on numerous occasions to help in the distribution and collection of surveys (most of which have nothing to do with the curriculum).

We have also been asked to serve as liaisons between the university and the students, providing them information on academic and social services available to them.

What we have not been provided, however, is adequate office space.

OUT OF CLASS CONTACT AND FIRST YEAR WRITING PEDAGOGY (CONT.)

First Year Writing faculty at UIC share offices originally designed for one person with as many as two other instructors. In my case, since I’m in a corner office, I share the space with four.

This presents a serious challenge for any potential out of class contact between students and faculty.

No privacy possible and it is often hard to hear each other with multiple conversations taking place at the same time.

OFFICE SPACE

Faculty office space allocation (what UIC’s administration refers to as “Institutional Commitments”) provides a link between issues of Student Retention, Labor Contingency in Higher Education, and First Year Writing Curricula.

Tangibly demonstrates how faculty working conditions impact student learning conditions both in terms of pedagogy and student persistence to complete their degree.

New avenue for advocacy on behalf of NTT faculty.

OFFICE SPACE (CONT.) Something similar to the Adjunct Project is needed to

address office space allocation. This study would expose the wide variety in what passes for “office space” among faculty and vividly illustrate to the public the limitations placed on our ability to work as NTT faculty.

Data from such a study would also serve as a useful bargaining tool regardless of whether NTT faculty have a union or not

As a member of our Faculty Union’s bargaining team, I argued that the current office situation for most NTT faculty was in clear violation of FERPA requirements for our students. This led to a contractual requirement to create a private meeting space available on request to NTT faculty in all UIC departments.

FURTHER READING Bippus, Amy M.; Catherine F. Brooks; Timothy G. Plax; and Patricia

Kearney. “Student’s Perceptions of Part-Time and Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty: Accessibility, Mentoring, and Extra-Class Communication.” Journal of the Association for Communication Administration. 30 (2001): 13-23.

Jaeger, Audrey J. and M. Kevin Eagan. “Examining Retention and Contingent Faculty Use in a State System of Public Higher Education.” Educational Policy. 25.3 (2011): 507-537.

Lerner, Neal. “The Teacher-Student Writing Conference and the Desire for Intimacy.” College English. 68.2 (2005): 186-208.

Nadler, Marjorie Keeshan and Lawrence B. Nadler. “Out of Class Communication Between Faculty and Students: a Faculty Perspective.” Communication Studies. 51.2 (2000): 176-188.

Tinto, Vincent. Completing College: Rethinking Institutional Action. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993.

Umbach, Paul D. “How Effective Are They? Exploring the Impact of Contingent Faculty on Undergraduate Education.” The Review of Higher Education. 30.2 (2007): 91-123.