This is a curious publication. A large, meaty tome (over 500 pages of two-columned, small-printed matter; over sixty contributors) with a title that promises much, it is curiously narrow and curiously disappointing. To begin with, the "academic life" and "academia" mentioned in the title turn out, on closer inspection, to be almost exclusively management, organizational behavior, and business administration. To be sure, there are some lessons from that world which are portable to others, or from which all of us can learn, but it is still an oddly parochial way to put together a book which pretends to be about academia and bears a blurb claiming that it is "written by a diverse group of scholars." Almost all of these contributors teach at large doctoral or research institutions which, even statistically speaking, are not the exemplars of academia.
There is an effort to get these scholars to write in a different way: in fact, most of these chapters are autobiographical. The rueful testimonies of discomfort of some of the authors show us how unusual this is for them, and it seems to be an entirely good idea. The normal essay here gives a few pages of reflections over a career up to this point followed by some words of advice or lessons learned.
I wish I could say that the format released in the contributors previously unsuspected reserves of narrative ability, vivid writing, metaphor and shock-of-recognition frankness. The majority of the contributions are relatively slack, with academese still the stylistic norm, despite the unwonted first-person pronouns.
Given these reservations, it is important to note that this is an extraordinarily full survey of the possibilities of the kind of career these people have had. There are sections on Becoming a Teacher, Doing Research and Getting Published, Working with Doctoral Students, Getting Tenure, Integration of Work and Nonwork Lives, Working Collaboratively, Becoming a Reviewer, Becoming a Journal Editor, Becoming a Department Chair and an Administrator, Becoming a Full Professor, The Overenriched Work Life, Working as a Consultant, Developing Innovative Teaching Materials, Working Inside the University, Working with Policy Makers, Taking a Sabbatical, and A Look at the Future. Many of these sections include several essays or chapters.
Given my interest in university teaching, I looked carefully for what these authors had to say about it and found the results fairly depressing. One woman reveals that the suggestions she received in graduate school for success in academia were: "Publish often and appropriately, teach acceptably, make some service contribution to your institution and discipline, and strive for professional recognition through scholarly contributions." Teaching, she discovered, was the easy part. With expectations this low, that is no surprise.
Another contributor says, "I think I had very realistic training in how to make it in academica--publish, plain and simple, and be competent at teaching so they don't have to get rid of you." She does raise the question of whether it is worthwhile to go beyond competence and become a good teacher, and answers it (roughly) "well . . . probably." Another chapter includes a solemn graph with teaching performance on one axis and preparation time on the other, showing that spending more time on teaching preparation will make someone's teaching performance better. The author says that a young faculty member may well wish to avoid being recognized as a good teacher, as this might reflect badly on his or her devotion to scholarship.
Sigh.
The best news about teaching comes from Stella M. Nkomo, who writes (has she no concern for her reputation in Management?) "I had decided to become a professor because I wanted to teach others. My own life had been profoundly changed by education." It was a delight to realize that this committed teacher is at UNC Charlotte.
The best chapter aside from hers is Cynthia V. Fukami's "Herding Cats Part Deux: The Hygiene Factor," which is about chairing a department. She explains that the department chair is a "hygiene factor"--just as cleanliness, for example, cannot produce health but its opposite can produce sickness, a department chair, when successful, cannot deliver happiness but can certainly produce misery when unsuccessful. This essay not only makes good sense but provides a welcome helping of humor, far too scarce in Rhythms of Academic Life, though surely one of the most satisfying things about academic life itself is its humor.
Humor is not a hygiene factor. Its presence helps to humanize a book.
This one is a massive work, full of earnest words by helpful professionals. Pity that its tendency is not broader, more concerned with students--especially undergraduates--and more idealistic.
Merritt Moseley
UNC Asheville