Interview with John Marsh: Best Practices for Promotion
by Judith McKelvey
August 30, 2017
John has a reputation for being shy, but the first thing you will notice when meeting him is how present he is. Our new Associate Head who acts as liaison to lecturers is listening.
This, after getting through his first round of scheduling duties, which would make most anyone except Amy Barone stark raving mad.
So I’m here in John’s office to clarify best practices for promotion for the lecturer readers of the CPT. John’s tips seem practical and fair, taking into account reality. For example, when asked about the on-the-books peer review requirement for promotion, he says up front that there is nothing in place for that, and so no one has been penalized for not having peer reviews in their portfolios. Along the same lines, service is far down on the scale of important criteria: “Even for most tenure-line faculty, who are expected to serve on committees, service counts least next to research and teaching–so it makes sense that it can’t count against lecturers whose jobs do not include service.” That said, it can’t hurt.
What does count? Variety of courses taught, for one. This doesn’t mean literature courses, which lecturers pretty much no longer have access to; but a willingness to take 602s and diversify amongst the 202s or the English 15 innovation courses signals a willingness to learn, always prized in our profession.
Then there’s the dread SRTE thing. Again, John is practical and fair: “Everyone has a bad semester now and then; I just had the worst one ever. A few nasty outlier SRTE scores or comments each semester will not be considered important or telling. But a series of consistently negative reviews with specific complaints over time is a red flag.” As for the correlation between SRTE scores and grade distribution—a hot source of contention amongst lecturers—John repeats what we know, which is that this directive comes from the dean’s office. But he is surprisingly concrete about the litmus test: anyone with 50% or more “A” grades in a class will not be put forward to the Dean for promotion. That’s a high (or low?) bar, and much less harsh than the notes of warning that we have been receiving for the past five years or so would seem to indicate. So maybe the notes are just about keeping us trained for the 50% bar in case we hope to get promoted? (I didn’t ask that, so I don’t have the answer?).***
The last tip about advancement and opportunities is key: John says that all kinds of decisions get made with the information readily available. If he doesn’t know that you are interested in branching out in x direction, or that you have particular qualifications in the area of y and z, then you won’t be in the pool of candidates for any number of opportunities that might come up (and, he notes wryly, that might not).
“Come to my office and tell me about your interests and qualifications,” John says. “I hate email; tell me in person.”
I left 409 Burrowes thinking, “Dude, you are so going to have a line outside your door.”
***John notes that this 50% thing is just a ballpark figure and is always taken in context: for example, people teaching honors courses might have a higher percentage of A grades for reasons that have nothing to do with grade inflation.
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