A Year in the Life of a Visiting Faculty Member
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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