A Year in the Life of a Visiting Faculty Member
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by
Chris Cumo
Who’s Who
Tamar Diesendruck
Institution: New England Conservatory. Formal Title: Visiting
Faculty. Courses taught: Composition and graduate theory seminar.
Highest degree: Ph.D., Music Composition.
Tamara Fudge
Institution: Fort Hays State University. Formal Title: Visiting
Assistant Professor. Courses taught: Music. Highest degree:
Ph.D., Music.
Bob Jones
Institution: Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo (California Polytechnic
State University). Formal Title: Visiting Assistant Professor.
Course taught: Urban Planning. Highest degree: Ph.D., Urban
Studies.
Ning Shultz
Institution: Bemidji State University. Formal Title: Visiting
Assistant Professor. Course taught: ESL. Highest degree: MA
in English and American Language and Literature.
The job of visiting scholar is no sinecure. The year begins
in September at a frenetic clip. The week before classes was
a blur, admits Bob Jones, a visiting scholar in urban studies
and city planning at California Polytechnic State University.
He stayed in Washington D.C., where his wife worked, until
nearly the last minute before driving 3,000 miles from Washington
to the university, nestled among the picturesque farms between
San Francisco and Los Angeles. Once there he had to scurry
for an apartment, a scarce commodity in a city of 44,000 that
grows by more than a third every September with the arrival
of more than 16,000 students. Fortunately, his department
chair knew an architecture professor who had secured a last-minute
leave and had an apartment two miles from campus to sublet.
The close location allowed Jones to commute by bicycle, which
saved him the aggravation of hunting for a parking space,
another dear commodity at the university. Once he had somewhere
to live, Jones got keys to the building and his office and
began moving books and other reference materials there.
Syllabi preparation, a pre-term ritual for most faculty is not ubiquitous.
Tamar Diesendruck has only once prepared a syllabus, though
she has been a visiting instructor at the New England Conservatory
of Music, Bennington College, the University of Pittsburgh,
New York University, San Francisco State University, and the
University of Wisconsin. Likewise Ning Schultz, who has been
a visiting scholar at Bemidji State University in Minnesota,
Iowa State University, and Swarthmore College, prepares one
only when the department requires it. A native of China, she
never prepared a syllabus in more than a decade of teaching
there, a practice that has led her to view it as a formality.
But Jones and Tamara Fudge, a visiting instructor at Fort
Hays State University in Kansas and Augustana College in Illinois,
have both found themselves in early September preparing and
photocopying syllabi for multiple courses.
Once the term begins, Jones turns his attention to learning how
the little but important chores get done: how to get a custodian
to sweep his office and empty his trash. He also begins to
crystallize his commuting schedule, figuring out when and
how often he can afford to fly to Washington to visit his
wife. When she was at the New England Conservatory, Diesendruck
also taught at a college in Vermont. September was the month
she succeeded in grouping her Vermont classes on one day,
making only one six-hour round tip to Vermont necessary per
week. Fudge had to interweave five schedules in September:
her own, two for her husband, and one each for her two children.
October
is scarcely less demanding. When Schultz first came from China,
she was still scrambling to acculturate herself to the U.S.
Her transition from teaching English in China to teaching
Chinese in the U.S. was not as smooth as she had hoped. She
had taught English so long that she found herself thinking
through Chinese grammatical problems in English, and so she
didn’t always have quick answers to students’ questions. She
didn’t know how hard to work American students. In China she
had simply told students their assignments and they complied.
In the U.S. the process was a negotiation, with students complaining
when they deemed the workload excessive, behavior she had
never experienced in China.
In
October Bob Jones gave his midterms; California Polytechnic
is on the quarter system. Fudge spent as much as fifteen hours
per week grading the work of only six students in one class.
Schultz devoted two hours a day to grading at Swarthmore,
which students and professors have dubbed Sweatmore, thanks
to the heavy load of assignments and grading. To be sure,
October had its less draconian moments, as Jones spent evenings
at dinner parties sponsored by faculty and student groups,
musing at how seldom he ate at home.
By
November, Tamara Fudge began rehearsing the ensemble of students
she had recruited for the Christmas musical. Tamar Diesendruck
began to apply for academic jobs, tenure-track and visiting
alike. The need to craft each cover letter to the position,
photocopy CVs, and secure letters of reference consumed time
she would have otherwise devoted to teaching had she had a
permanent position. November was the month of finals for Jones
and midterms for Schultz, Fudge, and Diesendruck.
During
Thanksgiving break Bob Jones finally threw himself into his
own research. As a visiting scholar he knew that California
Polytechnic didn’t have an interest in what he published.
Indeed, at an interview for a visiting instructor position
at the University of Cincinnati, the search committee told
Jones that his publications meant little to the university
since he would be only a temporary hire. But he also knew
that he needed to keep cranking out articles to remain competitive
in job searches.
In
December, Christmas break brought little respite for these
visiting scholars, as Schultz, Fudge, and Diesendruck began
preparing for the next semester’s courses.
“I
took home half the library so I could get my courses together,”
said Fudge.
Ning
Schultz sent off articles to journals, and learned that Swarthmore
would not renew her appointment that spring. She would have
to scramble for work. Meanwhile, Bob Jones flew to Washington
to spend Christmas with his wife.
January
and good fortune found Schultz as visiting instructor and
Coordinator of the Sino Studies Program at Bemidji, in Minnesota.
Jones gave midterms in his second quarter while Diesendruck,
Schultz, and Fudge distributed syllabi and began anew the
ritual of teaching. Fudge began applying for academic posts,
a task complicated by her husband’s need, as a visiting scholar
himself, to find another academic appointment to avoid the
commuter marriage Jones had resigned himself to. Meanwhile,
Tamar Diesendruck was in limbo. She had applied for several
posts, but had not yet received any calls for interviews.
This was a difficult month for her; life as a visiting instructor
is tenuous at best.
In
February, Jones immersed himself in California Polytechnic’s
accreditation review, a process in which he was a liaison
between the university and the accreditation board, because
he knew several of the faculty doing the accreditation. He
took solace in phoning his wife in the evenings, and Schultz
stayed in close touch with friends in China while making new
ones in America. Jones gave finals and began his third quarter
at month’s end, while Fudge recruited and began rehearsing
students for the Easter musical.
In
March, Tamar Diesendruck scheduled her first interviews of
the year and began researching the host universities, rehearsing
her answers to potential questions and assembling her interview
attire. With the first interviews came the first stream of
rejection letters. Spring break gave Jones a concentrated
block of time to revise articles for publication, as well
as another opportunity to visit his wife.
Early
April brought midterms for Jones and interviews for Diesendruck
and Fudge. May brought finals for all and an end to the year.
Tamara Fudge, Bob Jones, Tamar Diesendruck, and Ning Schultz
cleared out offices and turned in keys. Jones left California
for Washington D.C., and Diesendruck, who still had not found
an academic job, began searching for a corporate job.
Anyone
who enters academe knows its precarious nature, a truth no
one understands better, perhaps, than the visiting scholars
who agreed to be interviewed for this feature. These women
and men manage to put aside the contingencies of their lives
to teach and publish with the verve of their tenured colleagues.
It is too easy to say that they yearn for the intangible reward
of sparking a passion for ideas in students. But it is also
true. Why else would they move from university to university
year after year, living frenetic lives and enduring commuter
marriages? Diesendruck, Fudge, Jones, and Schultz do so because
no matter how universities classify them they are bona
fide teacher-scholars.
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