How Many Award Posts Can One Write?

So here is my dilemma.  I have a really interesting job; I help faculty at Florida State University apply for or nominate colleagues for external awards.  I get to learn about all disciplines across the university.  I get to work with the highest achieving faculty.  I get to read proposals for and reflections on great teaching, impassioned research, and sacrificial service.  As interesting as all that is, awards are not a daily event for even the most accomplished.  So how many award blogs can a director write?

I will soon post stories of award winners here.  Stay tuned.  But today I have to say in public, again, what I believe about awards.  Awards for those working in higher education and research are special.  The best of us will get only a handful in a  very distinguished career.  I will not work with the same faculty every year (though I will definitely work with the same high-achieving faculty more than once).  My hope is to work with most faculty at least once in a career.  If one is employed at Florida State University as a professor – whatever rank – one is capable of and expected to produce award-winning research, teaching, and service.  Research I university faculty do that, regularly.  It is not arrogant or unseemly to let my office know you have a potentially award-worthy publication, or discovery, or pedagogy.  Doing so gets the word out and spreads that knowledge just created.  It attracts students and colleagues who want to be collaborators.  Sharing our knowledge, even that we discover or create, is what we do here at FSU.

Many – perhaps most – will not win an award on the first nomination.  Some may not win at all.  But every award nomination spreads the word about the good work begin done at Florida State University.  Even work not recognized is sometimes remembered as one remarkable achievement in an exceptionally remarkable year.

That said, we are extremely proud of our award winners at FSU.  We are ever so pleased when others acknowledge the quality work we know is here.  To that end, award announcements as well as nomination deadlines will be worked more frequently into these blogs.  For a director does, indeed, have a limited number of blogs about the awards process in her.  But the blogs about faculty success, they will always be readily available.

What Award Matters to You?

On our Provost’s website, FSU lists faculty who have won the Nobel Prize, a Pulitzer, a Guggenheim, or a Fulbright.  We also list members elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Even if you are not in academia, you probably recognize these as major awards for talented and accomplished people and most faculty agree they are so.  It is after this short list that the relevance of awards gets murky. 

I am a humanist by training – Ph.D. in American Literature.  The Pulitzer and the Guggenheim would make a career in the Humanities.  But so would a MacArthur, a National Book Award, an American Academy of Learned Societies Fellowship, or, possibly, a great review in the New York Times.  The joy of awards in-field is that one’s peers have agreed your work is valuable, noteworthy, meritorious.  And this acknowledgment translates.  I may not understand the subtle differences between the IEEE Richard M. Emberson Award and the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, but I do understand that both are highly competitive professional recognitions.  What is even better is that the members of IEEE do know the difference. 

It is our job (and our joy) at a Research I institution to educate each other on what we do specifically (How can there be any more to say on American modernism and race post WWI?  What are microelectronics? ) and how we know who is doing it well. 

So, what award matters most to you?  Which of your mentors will you nominate for it this year?

The Benefits of Higher Education

In its May 24, 2011 edition, Inside Higher Ed addresses the issues raised in Academically Adrift.  We are told:

• 45 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” during the first two years of college.
• 36 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” over four years of college. 

In an age tenacious about applying corporate measures to higher education, these statistics are a death-knell.  If students aren’t learning (improving their critical thinking and writing ability), then why are families going in to debt to get them a college degree?  Let me suggest that families are getting exactly what they pay for:  a degree.  

For years now, the public has has commonly held a statistically supported perception that those with college degrees get better jobs and earn more over their lifetimes.  If this is still true, does the knowledge matter?  I, of course, would argue it does, but then I didn’t earn three college degrees in order to earn more money (I knew work in the corporate sector would pay off much more if that was my goal).  I earned three college degrees to improve my quality of life and because I am a lifelong learner who can’t resist the next question, the next puzzle, the next controversial insight.  Ultimately, this is what I try to provide for my students:  a love of learning and a lifelong commitment to it.  Don’t get me wrong; I aim to have them increase their thinking skills and their ability to find an answer when needed and we should measure student achievement on such criteria.  But I have many bright, qualified, somewhat driven students who hold fast to their goal to simply get a degree and good job. Learning, application, and joy are not on their agenda. 

Now, if I am an exceptional teacher, my students will have that “ah-ha” moment in my classroom and get hooked on learning.  They will come to care less about the grade and the credit and more about the next question, the next problem, the next discovery.  When a student can say the C they earned in my class taught them more than the A they earned in another, I know I am on the right track. 

As the profession awards teachers, it affirms the value of learning, loving to learn, and embracing a life of the mind that engages with a life of the spirit and the body.  Teaching awards, then, are a means to announce when and how we get it right.  Every teaching award nomination I facilitate includes a requirement for letters from students.  Every time I have requested such a letter, I have recieved an enthusiastic “yes.”  Once exposed to exceptional teaching, students are changed forever and they know it.  They can list specific ways that a teacher made learning matter, often in a course that was required and that they expected to simply have to endure.  The profession may bicker about the measures we should use in the classroom to evaluate teachers, but successful students know what worked for them.  Perhaps we could begin to continue our own lifelong learning by listening to them.

To nominate the professor who changed your life for the better for a teaching award, consider the following: 

FSU Internal Awards

A Resurrected Blog…Because Faculty Awards Matter

Amidst my seemingly endless daily duties, I have let blogging go.  I keep promising myself that I will get to it tomorrow, but I don’t.  I read faculty proposals; grade student essays; draft my own chapters; submit book awards; lead workshops on Fulbright applications; petition Accounting  for an actual check…the list goes on.  Today, however, I have returned to the blogosphere.  It is my goal to stay, to continue to build a conversation on faculty development and recognition.  Keep your fingers crossed I will be back before July!

I often talk with faculty about why awards matter. I am frequently told by faculty members that they didn’t get in to this profession for the awards and I believe that is true.  Nonetheless, the National Research Council’s most recent report lists that faculty ranked the “reception by peers of a faculty member’s work, as measured by honors and awards” as the seventh most important characteristic in evaluating the quality of faculty in a program or university. Number of publications, citations, and grants were the top three criteria, but peer recognition through awards was included. 

 The FSU doctoral programs ranked by the National Research Council with these criteria showed that major gains can be made with few awards.  Let me use my area as an example. UNC and University of Iowa are state-funded Research I schools with top-ranked English departments.  UNC reports 1.61 awards-per-English faculty member; Iowa reports 1.38. FSU’s English faculty claim .96.  With numbers this close, every award makes an impact.  

Additionally, peer recognition begins during the awards process, and I remind faculty in our discussion on why awards matter that award competitions are another way to share your work both in-field and across fields.  It is not unusual for an award committee member to remember an outstanding nomination that did not win the award and to comment on that work to a colleague or the nominee herself. 

Awards matter because faculty created them to matter.  They honor the best teaching, research, and service and both the profession and the public understand this connection.  When you or your FSU colleague complete work that matters – and you will – contact my office to talk about an award nomination.

The Fury of Fall

Every business has its peak times and academia is no different.  The beginning of the fall semester is definitely a peak time at The Florida State University.  New schedules, new meetings, new students, new classes, and – yes – a new football season.  After surviving the first week, I checked my writing schedule only to be reminded that I have two award applications due in October.  Both require three letters of reference and detailed descriptions of my projects.  These applications have been thought about, but they have not been drafted.  I’ve lost at least three weeks finishing up vacations, prepping for class, and getting back in the swing of things.  When will I be able to catch my breath enough to finish a draft of something so important up to six respected colleagues will have to review it?

As with all academic work, there is only the time one makes.  If I really want these awards and the opportunities that come with them, I will make the time to write them.  This will be time carved out between meeting classes and preparing for  classes (I’ve not even arrived at the grading classwork part of the semester yet); revising a journal article; drafting a book proposal; and keeping up with the current criticism in my field.  There are also new committee meetings and new discussion groups I participate in both for my own edification and to mentor students.  Still, my life is the absolute norm in academia.  We balance many tasks, all of which take enormous mental energy.  But mental energy, intellectual stimulation, a great idea, and an impossible problem energize academics.  Awards put us in touch with other great thinkers and expand not only our sphere of influence but also the sphere that influences us.  So while you are carving up your calendar, block out some time to apply or nominate a colleague for one of the following awards.

Be a Woodrow Wilson Scholar: 

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=sf.welcome

Over 50 ACS Awards due 11/1:

https://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/memberapp?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_TRANSITIONMAIN&node_id=1313&use_sec=false&sec_url_var=region1

Multiple AERA Awards due 11/1:

http://www.aera.net/AboutAERA/Default.aspx?menu_id=20&id=240

Multiple Book Prizes available through OAH:

http://www.oah.org/activities/awards/

Being Open

Academics are right now transitioning from summer break work ( researching, course planning, writing, revising, brainstorming, traveling) to fall semester work (teaching, serving on committees, grading, researching, writing, revising, collaborating).  Some faculty completed a Fulbright or Guggenheim application during the summer as a piece of their planning, researching, and writing; others, like me, found through such research that this was not the year to apply.  What is most conducive in the academic life to award application is openness.

Academics, in general, are open to new ideas, experiences, and procedures.  Though many would have anecdotes to relate that refute this claim, the common complaint that directing faculty is like herding cats reminds us that left to their own devices, academics are curious and interested and open.  Of course, such openness does not exclude arguments against new ideas and resistance to unexamined change; instead it demands all be examined, evaluated, analyzed, and either discarded or applied.

It is my guess that part of academics’ reticence to apply energy to award application/nomination is that there are more interesting things for academics to do.  Awards that supply a new experience (Fulbright) or unlimited freedom (Guggenheim) or connections to other top level researchers (NSF and NEH) are the most interesting to professors.  Of course, these awards also come with money, but it is more than money that attracts.  Professors apply for grants to start new work or continue already valued work.  What do awards do but anoint work as finished and respected?

That most national level awards supply a new experience – with or without money – is often missed.  But appearances at awards ceremonies, award announcements, dispersal of public-friendly summaries of award-winning work, and the award committee’s direct experience of a professor’s work often lead to invitations for collaboration and leadership that would not have been possible without the award.  I know of artists whose Joan Mitchell Award led to exhibitions in superior galleries; writes whose Pulitzer led to new jobs, stints at Yaddo, and collaborations; scientist whose CAREER award expanded their grant success and connected them with senior scholars.

Many of the outcomes of winning an award are clear and expected – a plaque, an article, an honorarium, handshakes, and congratulations – but many more are open and unended.

So take the time to throw your hat in the ring for an award this year.  You never know what may come of it.

Post-Vacation Ruminations

I have just returned from two weeks in the North Carolina and North Georgia mountains to the gently rolling hills of North Florida and work, work, work.  My time away was spent with family and friends and was regenerative, but it was not contemplative.  I’m back in my office realizing I truly had put so much out of my mind that I am having trouble finding it again.  And the work that has resurfaced is not the thoughtful, academic musings of my profession.  It is committee meetings, software development, form submission, and proofreading.  What happened to my time to think and plan?  What happened to that article I was to finish and that new course I was going to begin developing?  How can I be better prepared to apply for a Fulbright next year if I am already behind?

I imagine my dilemma is familiar to all academics, even those who have not signed over to the dark side with its twelve-month contract and administrative responsibilities.  The American psyche simply does not nurture or reward time spent thinking, planning, musing, brainstorming, or reasoning.  Americans want production and if an award is not guaranteed, then the time spent preparing the proposal/nomination is considered wasted.  Since this is a national identity issue and not simply a professional identity issue (or, preferably, a campus identity issue), I have my work cut out for me.  How do I convince overworked and under-recognized faculty striving against all odds for tenure in a financially precarious profession that their time is well-spent applying for and nominating others for awards?

First, I have to get department chairs to agree that award nomination is important.  They are the first line in rewarding faculty for such efforts.  Imagine if a department, especially in these financially devastating times, would reduce a professor’s teaching load in return for supervising a specific number of award nominations per semester?  Colleagues would learn about each others’ work; senior faculty would mentor junior faculty; nomination support letters would become commonplace and discussed openly.  Heck, a faculty might even develop a team mindset.  Imagine!

Second, I have to get college deans to agree that award nomination is important and to fund-raise to that end.  Faculty members who do win awards should be recognized, feted by their peers.  There should be parties and funds to attend the meetings at which the awards are presented.  Imagine if donors were asked to support faculty development in such a specific way that the John Q. Smith Travel Award paid the expenses to attend the next Nobel Prize presentation.  Imagine if board members and congressmen and the presidents of national professional organizations were invited to attend local gala celebrations of awards won. Everything becomes more important when someone notices and perhaps the public would begin to understand a bit of what academics do.  Imagine!

Finally, I need to develop a way for awards to be only a benefit to promotion and tenure and not a detriment.  No one should be penalized for not winning an award, but everyone should be compensated for winning one.  Unions, faculty committees, and administrators would have to agree on a such a policy and begin to see more ways of being inclusive without lowering standards.  Imagine!

These are pie-in-the-sky goals, or are they?  Shouldn’t the most educated people in the world be able to amicably solve their own professional challenges?  Though academics aren’t trained in “academia,” and every discipline has its own needs and world view, all academics in every discipline have established and proven skills in higher thinking and reasoning.  These skills applied to administrative issues (such as the application and nomination for awards) would mean faculty and administrators encompass views different from their own and find a common ground.  Imagine!  What a world academia would be!

Award Regret

I am a bit sad to no longer be working on a Fulbright application to be submitted on August 2, 2010.  I wonder if I made the right decision; I wonder if I have the determination to truly work on this application and establish connections with Benin or Senegal or Kenya before August of 2011.  Like everything else in academics, you get what you work for.  If I want to publish or apply for a Fulbright, I simply must do it.  I am not in the sciences; I need no special equipment or location to do my research.  I must stay focused.

To do so, I am working on useful smaller goals.  I am developing a new course and soliciting some opportunities to teach it.  I am on schedule with publication submission.  I am searching for ways to connect with my host country and I am reading as much as I can about it.  But I am also looking at small awards that will let Fulbright know I am award worthy.  I am considering applying for a Research Grant to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at UT-Austin.  I am considering applying for a Research Grant to the Hemingway Archives.  I can do all these things even though I do not have a tenure-track faculty appointment.

If I was an early career faculty member, I would apply for the on-campus research awards offered by FSU and encourage my students to nominate someone they were studying with for the teaching award.  If I were nominated, I would pursue with great attention the FSU teaching award.  And, I would volunteer to serve on a committee for a regional professional organization.  All of these actions will help demonstrate my interest in and dedication to the profession and any awards won – no matter how small -  will let others know that I have been evaluated by a jury of my peers and found worthy.  Such is important as one competes for national and international awards.

So if this is not your year to apply for a Fulbright or a Guggenheim or an NSF CAREER award, apply for something smaller.  And nominate a colleague.

Why One Would Say “No,” or at least “Not This Year,” to the Fulbright

My blog has been silent which I know means  death for a blog site.  But I have been struggling with my Fulbright application and I am not yet conditioned to report the struggles while they are happening, only to work to decipher their meaning and to find a solution.  So in this process, I have discovered both that I am not ready to apply for a Fulbright and that my academic training is counter-productive to writing a blog.  Let me begin somewhat at the beginning.

I announced on this site that I would pursue a Fulbright this year not only because it is a life-long dream but because I wanted to know more intimately the struggles my faculty face in their own application preparations.  I must say I have been VERY successful in learning about the Fulbright process and what my faculty face, and part of that success comes through my decision that I cannot, in good faith, complete the process this year.  Here is what I learned.

First, though the CIES staff are enthusiastic and knowledgeable, they, like faculty, can be overworked.  The response time to my emailed queries was abysmal, an unexpected development.  Now, for the experienced faculty member who has established international relationships on his/her own, this is not a problem, but for the ingenue, it is.  Like MANY award applications I facilitate, starting EARLY is so important.  Because one is dealing with a federal agency and institutions abroad, MUCH time must be allowed to follow leads, make connections, and ask questions.  I waited too late – I began the first of June – so my CIES response time was longer and exchanges with international universities still incomplete.

Second, there are unexpected problems when dealing with technology in developing countries.  I want to go to Africa.  My research interests focus on the presentation of race in culture and literature, especially in the marketing and understanding of national identity.   I am pretty content going to any country in Africa, but I want to spend time in the newly developing and recently un-colonized African nations.  I selected Benin and was considering Burkina Faso based on a CIES recommendation.  However, the Burkina Faso contact information was wrong and I could get neither an email nor a fax to go through to the university in question.  Benin answered me within 24 hours.  In the process, I did more research and felt I was a better match for Senegal.  But now I have three weeks to make a university connection and request letters from my in-States colleagues.  There is no contact information listed on the Senegal award page which directs me to contact a CIES representative for that information.  I have not heard back from the CIES staffer since my emailed request for information on July 7.  Again, I should have started earlier to allow more time for replies.

Finally, I am not ready to apply for this award.  I was applying for a teaching award and I have courses ready that seem to fit the award descriptions.  But I am in the process of developing a new course that will fit better and it still needs to be tested on American students.  I do not have a significant publishing record yet, and even though I was applying for awards that specifically recruited junior faculty, I am unsure as what constitutes “junior.”  Can it really mean beginning?  More importantly, though, I decided I did not have enough confidence in my qualifications to ask my letter writers to pull together a letter in the next three weeks.   If I did not get awarded (which is what I expected), would I be willing to ask these letter writers to write again?  What is the line at which a colleague becomes a pest for letters?

I have heard faculty hint at all the above problems before and I had really dismissed them.  “Not enough time” – make time;  “no international connections” – that is what CIES is for;  “not ready yet” – of course you are; “can’t impose on letter writers” – it is a professional obligation.   But in a profession that relies in so many ways on collegial relationships, the professional obligation is reciprocal and faculty are careful to not overtax their colleagues, just as I was.  I don’t want to put people I respect in the position of having to write a letter of endorsement for a proposal they find inadequate.  Though in an ideal world my colleagues would simply tell me, “You are not ready yet.  Let’s work on this proposal another year before you send it,” few and far between are the peers who would say such.

I will now recommend to my faculty that they begin at least in February preparing their Fulbright proposal and to enable this we will hold our Fulbright Application Workshop earlier.  I will also encourage only those who have a particular and well-defined passion for a specific location or project to apply.  Just wanting to be a Fulbrighter – even one to the continent of Africa – is not enough.  One needs to want to go for a reason that is tied to the location.  And though many a CIES representative has said those exact words to FSU faculty, I am hearing them with new ears as a result of having attempted the process.

I am also now aware that I must fight the urge to present only a “finished” product in my blog site.  Maybe next year I should post my actual proposal draft for comment and revision.  I should certainly post my problems and successes as they occur.  And I will most definitely use this space to remind academics of the usefulness of failure.

So, as we should know and embrace in academe but don’t, I have learned a great deal through my failure to complete a Fulbright application for 2011-12.  Perhaps, if I start now, 2012-13 will be my year…

The Attraction of Summer Procrastination

At FSU, the first six-week session of summer school has ended and another has begun.  Summer camps have invaded.  Much is happening, even during the ninety-five degree heat and the summer thunder showers.  However, my Fulbright application draft has stalled; faculty are now asking to see other successful proposals (both a good strategy and a stalling mechanism); and no one – NO ONE –  is answering my emails about award due dates. 

In my own attempt to draft a Fulbright proposal, I did some research and then tossed the ball to the Fulbright representative, storied for always answering emails and phone calls.  It has been a week and I have not gotten an answer to my question or even an acknowledgement that I asked a question.  It is time for me to move my question to the other contact name listed for my countries, but I haven’t yet.  You see, my question was about which country I should apply to.  Now I have sat through many Fulbright workshops during which applicants have been told that CIES professionals can help with the decision of where to apply.   However, I think in my heart-of-hearts that I should know this answer; I should be driven to a particular place for a particular reason.  But,  I am simply drawn to Africa, a pretty big place with millions of particulars.  What insight can a stranger offer me about where to apply? 

The CIES professional will know the specific information about each award that is not published due to space restrictions.  This person will be able to read my CV and my course descriptions and get an idea of where my skills are desired.  Still, I am hesitant to admit that I want a Fulbright to Africa and I will go anywhere they send me. 

In many ways, my dilemma parallels what faculty must sometimes feel when they contact me.  “Hey, Peggy.  I think my newest book is really great and some have said it is award worthy.  What can you recommend?”  It is an odd way to run an awards office, isn’t it?  But such queries are what I solicit.  Even though I work out-of-field 99% of the time, I do know about awards (some at least) and I am willing to find out more.  I am in no way in competition with the faculty member for the award, as colleagues in her department might be.  I am not offended by the desire for awards because my job charges me to get more awards for FSU faculty; I will take every chance I get to do so.  Most importantly,  I can’t know what good work a faculty member does unless someone tells me. 

So, I may just send that email to Fulbright again.  They certainly won’t be seeking me out to ask if I am interested.  Being interested is a good thing; so is being ambitious.  It is just a matter of how you go about being both, and I plan to be polite and teachable.  If they don’t answer this time, I’ll start looking for my own model proposal to view!