For this post, I wanted to share a contradiction in my work that I’ve really struggled with. I got into the work that I do – managing education-related programs with a focus on US college/university physics departments – because I wanted future physics/STEM students to have better experiences in physics and related fields. As I briefly mentioned in my last post, I was lucky to have a fairly privileged upbringing which enabled me to pursue a career in physics and astronomy. One consequence (in my opinion) is that I have a responsibility to use my position to contribute to and to empower efforts that transform and redefine STEM so that STEM can be co-created by and for more diverse communities.
However, I’ve found that in my pursuit of a career to improve student experiences in physics/STEM, I now no longer directly interact with students. I had a few conversations about this contradiction with colleagues at the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network Conference in November 2022, and those conversations have continued to rattle around in my head. For those not familiar with POD, the organization’s primary audience are staff who work in centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) or similar structures in higher education. These centers often provide faculty development, e.g., workshops to encourage instructors to use evidence-based pedagogical practices in their classrooms.
In these conversations, many of us talked about wanting a career where we could have a larger impact on STEM education than what we could do as an individual instructor. Speaking for myself, I was always troubled by the thought that if I became a professor, I could do my best to make sure the students who were in my class had a good experience, but (1) that effort didn’t ensure my students wouldn’t receive messages of exclusion from other classes or settings and (2) it meant that the students I could impact would only be those who were “lucky” enough to be in my class. I wanted to do more.
Working at a CTL often means that staff do not have direct interactions with the students in their university. Instead, CTL staff often work with the faculty and instructors in workshops, books clubs, and other activities (sidebar: some of my colleagues are involved in “students as partners” projects, but that still seems to be fairly unique). By working with faculty and instructors, CTL staff have the potential to influence entire departments. Of course, individual professors can have a department-wide impact too. As a postdoc, I had the opportunity to co-chair a Committee on Inclusive Community in my school (large interdisciplinary department, in the context of the university I was at), and we were charged with finalizing and implementing a strategic plan for the whole school. I really enjoyed this work, but was frustrated by the fact that if I did become a professor, that kind of service work often isn’t “valued” in the same way as publications for tenure and promotion.
In my current position, I do get to focus on that kind of service work on a national scale. My job involves submitting proposals and managing programs that empower people at colleges and universities across the country to do things that improve their (physics) programs. Working at this “meta” level allows me to multiply the impact I can have, but it does mean I rarely interact with the students who are the heart of our motivation. I’ve found other outlets for that motivation by volunteering with education activities and events, but it still strikes me as incongruent that those interactions aren’t a more regular part of my work.
I will also add that in a couple of my projects, we have talked about how to solicit and incorporate the students’ perspective more directly. For example, when we do site visits to departments that we fund, we often schedule a meeting with only students to hear their input. So, the students aren’t completely missing, but in the conversations I had at that POD conference, we were all intrigued by how you “lose” some of those connections in order to increase your impact.
I don’t have a specific “call to action” in mind with this post, but I’d like to invite readers to engage in these conversations. How do we weigh increasing impact versus wanting specific activities (like working directly with students) to be a part of our work? How can we design projects to try to address and/or minimize the disconnect – but perhaps more fundamentally, should we? Do you find this trend in your own careers, and did it influence your choices in which career opportunities to pursue?
This post really resonates with me. As a physics faculty member, who rotated into the role of director of my institution’s CTL, I thoroughly enjoyed the big picture thinking and broader impact that I was able to have. While in that position, I was still expected to teach a few courses so I was able to maintain the connection to students. Now that I am back to being faculty, I enjoy working more closely with more students once again, but I miss having big-picture thinking being a regular part of my role. I found it’s impossible for me to stop thinking on the larger scale, but now I don’t have a clear pathway to act on that big-picture thinking. To scratch that itch, I can and do get involved with service work at my institution and for professional organizations (including APS and POD), but that’s all “extra” workload.
Maybe this is somewhat orthogonal to your post, but this is what it made me think of: When I’m fully in “teaching” mode, I work with lots of students, but nearly zero colleagues. College teaching tends to be pretty solitary. On the other hand, when I do anything bigger-picture or about teaching (such as this blog), I feel I have colleagues.
What’s extra surprising to me is that I’ve come to really feel this trade-off despite my introverted, misanthropic nature.
Your post strongly resonated with me too! Two years ago I switched from an adjunct instructor role to an assessment/CTL role at a different university, and in making that choice I wrestled with many of the things you describe. And I’m still wrestling at times, with an extra dose of FOMO as my current institution really likes to proclaim how student-centered we are. (Tangent: in many ways we live up to that value, but sometimes we emphasize it so much I feel like we’re fetishizing students a little).
This spring my team piloted a small “students as partners” initiative, that I’m cautiously optimistic we can sustain. You mentioned these seem few and far between, but at least in our geographic region there are ~10 institutions who are doing something like this or planning to start it soon (and that’s just student partnerships with an assessment focus). And we’re starting to talk to each other!
Does a team of student partners meet my craving for the kinds of interactions I had in a physics classroom? (which of course is the main reason we’re doing it; only half joking**). The jury is still out – our students are approaching the partner role with different goals, incentives, and beliefs from most students in a physics class. It would be too much to expect this to be the solution to all my questions about my role and motivation, but I’m excited to see where it goes.
** To your question, should we be designing experiences that fulfill particular ways we want to engage? I think, mostly yes. It’s important to engage in work that will sustain us, and to recognize and occasionally revisit what we need to stay in the work. And to have collaborators so one person’s individual motivation isn’t the only factor driving decisions.