Junior Faculty Group: COVID-19 Pandemic Impact Statement
March 31st, 2021 Version
Structure
Background (p. 1)
Summary of Impacts (p. 2)
Statement of Impact
On Research (pp. 3-4)
On Teaching (p. 5)
On Service, Mentorship and Faculty Status (p. 6)
Background: Description of its content and goals
This statement offers an enumeration of the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on junior faculty. It describes a range of concrete, material and financial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Junior Faculty. Insofar as the pandemic is still ongoing, this enumeration is preliminary and partial.
Our immediate, concrete objectives in writing the Impact Statement document are:
a. That the University approve it as Collective Pandemic Impact Statement by the Junior Faculty; or, if modifications and updates are required as the pandemic evolves, that these are completed in consultation and with the agreement of Junior Faculty.b. That the University require that it be included in all re-appointment/review/promotion dossiers, and that it be carefully and conscientiously considered by all reappointment and tenure committees for junior faculty from the academic year 2020-2021 onwards, for all junior faculty whose careers have been disrupted by the pandemic and its wide-ranging effects.
c. That as the ongoing pandemic unfolds, the documentation of Pandemic Impacts informs development and revision of University policy and structure. Particularly, but not exclusively, of policy regarding the hiring, retention and promotion of junior faculty, and the structural transformation of the University’s workplace culture and operations affecting faculty at large.
COVID-19 Pandemic Summary of Impacts: Research, Teaching, Service
Deepening of pre-existing widespread social inequalities, that differentially, unjustly and inequitably impact faculty of color (Black, but also Latinx and Indigenous peoples), parents and caregivers
Increased demand on Black faculty for participation in anti-Black racism activities such as public lectures and racialized faculty groups
University-wide restructuring that has adversely altered the financial and labor conditions of all faculty, with special impact on junior faculty
Loss of income, salary, retirement, research funds and resources
Increased workload for teaching, service and curriculum planning
Loss of professional opportunities to conduct research
Loss of professional opportunities to present and complete work, and build professional networks
Loss of guaranteed timelines for research within the academic year
Exacerbation of pressure on tenure/promotional/re-appointment clocks
Challenges of course evaluation and performance review
Increased digital and internet surveillance
Conflicts between expectations of research vs. teaching/service
Disrupted introduction to University and campus culture for junior faculty
Loss of opportunities for feedback, mentoring and collaboration
Increase in service-related activity
Potentially devastating impacts to non-citizen junior faculty, including family separation, greater administrative and professional challenges to remaining in-status.
Statement of Impact of the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Junior Faculty
I. Effects on Research and Scholarship/Creative Practice
Unequal distribution of pandemic-induced burdens, based on pre-existing anti-Black racial inequalities. All following burdens and deteriorated working conditions enumerated in this document are understood to exacerbate prevailing workplace inequalities, with particular and heightened effects for Black faculty. It is well-documented in numerous books and studies that Black faculty in higher-education typically undertake higher levels of service and mentoring, receive less research, financial, social and mentoring support and resources, are held to higher and discriminatory standards of evaluation that undervalue their contributions and discount invisible forms of compulsory and unrewarded labor, experience higher levels of workplace isolation and aggression.
Increased demand on Black faculty for participation in anti-Black racism activities such as public lectures and racialized faculty groups. We note that the pandemic has increased the volume and urgency of mentoring, advising and support by Black faculty for students of color, and placed additional and asymmetrical burdens on Black faculty to address longstanding racial inequalities in the University that target them at the highest levels. Black faculty are disproportionately required to lead and participate in both internal and public-facing responses to anti-Black racism, including events, faculty and student of color initiatives, trainings, studies, committees, groups and meetings. This disproportionately heightens Black faculty workloads, when they already carry a disproportionate institutional burden as members of communities most devastated by the pandemic.
The pandemic has brought about a University-wide restructuring that has caused University-wide cuts to faculty, staff, and institutional resources, all of which have created adverse labor conditions for junior faculty scholarship, teaching and service. These conditions include loss of access to library facilities, having to take over administrative work, the work of teaching, mentoring and advising for laid off staff and faculty, as well as the burden of making proposals for a restructured University, soliciting information, participating in department, college, and cross-divisional governance around the restructuring. Junior faculty are not typically included in senior leadership decisions, while unduly impacted by them, and are confronted with the time-consuming necessities of seeking out the information and grappling with the wide-ranging impact and character of restructuring decisions that are ongoing, with major shifts and changes occurring regularly since Spring 2020.
Loss of income, salary, retirement, research funds: The budget shortfalls related to COVID-19 have cut salary, retirement, research funds and research support for junior faculty at this precarious early stage of our careers and reduced available resources for research and professional practice. This affects junior faculty not only as TNS scholars but as early-career scholars/practitioners in our respective fields, who are expected to make bold contributions in the coming years. The simultaneous cuts to compensation and freeze on research funds make the process of planning and executing workarounds for the profound disruptions to existing research practices all the more challenging.
Increased workload for teaching and curriculum planning: As a result of the migration online in Spring, Summer and Fall 2020, and Spring 2021 (and potentially beyond) junior faculty have been asked to tackle new and unfamiliar teaching formats, quickly pivot to new technologies and new class designs as departments change offerings and class sizes and revise curriculum and models. Junior faculty have needed simultaneously to keep up with offering innovative pedagogies and exciting new classes to attract students, especially at a time of falling enrollments. While we welcome these challenges—which all faculty face—we hope that our University will take into consideration the particular pedagogical needs of junior faculty doing this work, while at the same time under immense pressure to produce research, scholarship and creative practice.
Loss of professional opportunities to conduct research. As scholars and practitioners, we have already lost professional research opportunities due to COVID-19-related closures of archives, libraries, museums, exhibiting and performing arts venues, research collections and repositories, along with postponements and cancellations of conferences, events, travel, residencies, fellowships and sabbaticals, and prohibitions of access to fieldwork sites, collaborators, communities, research and production locations and opportunities. Much of this research activity is difficult or impossible to reschedule, as it depends on other institutions, local public health policies, pre-planned events, specific sources of contingent funding, the scheduling of university research leave, family planning, caregiving for family/kin/dependents/community members, permits and regulations in other countries, or a combination of these factors. For faculty receiving sabbaticals and fellowships during the pandemic, expectations that they will have more to show for research leave or clock relief are compounded by disruptions of access to resources, sites and people during the pandemic as well as changing expectations for continued engagement with service obligations and course development in response to crisis conditions.
Loss of professional opportunities to present and complete work, and build professional networks: Junior faculty have lost opportunities to present work at exhibitions, programs, and conferences, with events cancelled and postponed, and they face delays in publishing, editorial and peer-review schedules (across academic and commercial presses and periodicals), all while working without the protections of tenure or seniority. The loss of further opportunities in the years ahead is anticipated, as subsequent waves of disease, global recessions and international funding cuts shutter organizations and institutions while increasing travel costs to some places and rendering travel to others altogether impossible. These conditions reduce available pools of opportunity and access, and curtail opportunities for in-person mentoring, collegial and collaborative relations. As junior faculty are early-career researchers building their professional profiles, relationships and networks—both internally at their home institutions and within their disciplines and fields—reductions and disruptions of access to colleagues in the field will affect their external evaluation during review.
Loss of guaranteed timelines for research within the academic year: Since junior faculty teach heavy loads during the academic year, we have always reserved the summer months for high scholarly production. Given the steady and dramatic increase in teaching/service work in Summer 2020 and Summer 2021, and the unpredictability of COVID-19’s aftereffects, this has adversely affected (and will continue to alter) our ability to plan ahead or execute our research trajectory for many years to come.
Exacerbation of pressure on tenure/promotional/re-appointment clocks: While junior faculty appreciate the University’s extension of tenure/reappointment/promotion clock relief, we are further impacted by the abstract language surrounding tenure requirements and how an “opt-in” (as opposed to opt-out) policy for the extension may be stigmatized or punished by tenure reviewers, including those from outside TNS, in the future. A clock extension that carries with it implicit expectations of “normal” levels of research productivity or expectations that simply go undefined would likely carry adverse consequences for faculty under review.
II. Effects on Teaching and Pedagogy
In addition to the significant increase in workload for teaching and curriculum planning described above insofar as it has a direct impact on research and creative practice (see I, 3), the pandemic, in its early stages, has affected teaching and pedagogy in the following ways:
Course evaluations and performance review: As COVID-19 continues to change the way we think about teaching and pedagogy, junior faculty contend with a system of review and reappointment that takes into great consideration student evaluations that will also reflect student attitudes to University policies regarding teaching online, campus closures and re-openings. Coupled with the well-documented fact that these crucial evaluations already reflect racial and gender biases in “normal” semesters, this aspect of performance review presents a double-bind for junior faculty. While the suspension of evaluations and their replacement by a questionnaire regarding online instruction might have been a reasonable short-term measure for a single semester, we also depend on evaluations to convey our pedagogical creativity and careful course design to the administration.
Increased digital and internet surveillance: Of concern to junior faculty, in particular, are the risks of workplace surveillance, as classes are increasingly moved online and materials more easily recorded and disseminated. This exposes classrooms and professors to wider internal and external surveillance, along with intrusion and harassment from parties outside the department and University, with ramifications for faculty reputations and performance reviews. These growing hazards are especially acute for all categories of faculty who do not enjoy the protections of tenure.
Conflicts between expectations of research vs. teaching/service. Junior faculty receive competing requests: to prioritize high levels and quality of research, scholarship and creative practice, but also to volunteer additional time for teaching and service. Junior faculty typically allocate summer months for research, but with the extension of the academic calendars of 2020 and 2021 into the summer, have allocated additional hours towards maintaining contact with students, teaching additional courses, training, revising curriculum and courses, modeling different scenarios for teaching online and hybrid course delivery. Junior faculty risk being doubly faulted for not remaining productive, and for not volunteering to perform additional service and teaching to attract or retain students.
III. Effects on Service, Mentorship and Faculty Status
Disrupted introduction to University and campus culture for junior faculty: In times of increased secrecy or anxiety in the higher education workplace, junior faculty (who are new to the culture and norms of an institution) are most at risk for misunderstanding, “mis-stepping,” or otherwise misinterpreting any University directives requiring interpretation. This causes understandable ongoing anxiety about status, perception, and punishment, for being “out of step” in some way with senior colleagues and administration. In normal times, junior faculty are enmeshed into University culture through casual and collegial contact on campus, through in-person and reliable mentorship, through campus events, and the general repetition of norms in the workplace. The loss of this kind of junior faculty education is in fact one of the great invisible detriments to our current cohort.
Loss of opportunities for feedback, mentoring and collaboration: In addition to doing the extra work of organizing and advocating for ourselves, including resource gathering for one another and cross-referencing information in order to protect ourselves, junior faculty are isolated from potential collaborators we might have otherwise connected with, or senior faculty with whom we might have formed an organic mentor-mentee relationship. To seek out this kind of mentorship might be stigmatized as burdensome, though understandably, in a time of COVID-19. Junior faculty also rely on consistent though informal (or non-evaluative) feedback from Chairs, Directors and senior faculty to assess their own academic performance ahead of reappointment or tenure reviews.
Increase in service-related activity: Without tenure protections and in the absence of this kind of feedback, junior faculty have experienced and will likely continue to experience pressure in the coming years of COVID-19-recovery to “volunteer” for various forms of uncompensated and unrecognized work for their respective departments and colleges. Junior faculty at TNS frequently perform high-intensity service in leadership roles, as Program Directors, Chairs, Councilmembers and Senators in faculty governance, while participating in new committees and task forces emerging in response to COVID-19. These include informal and formal curricular, divisional, cross-divisional committees, meetings and groups responding to the University’s restructuring, which has been accelerated by COVID-19. The high increase in service-related work—which is not as heavily weighted for promotion and reappointment and which often occurs on an ad hoc basis more difficult to document and explain in a review file—compromises junior faculty’s ability to meet those standards required of them. Even if not designed to harm junior faculty, unclear or contradictory standards for how work is distributed to and requested from junior faculty in the coming semesters will capitalize unfairly on this phenomenon, especially as very real fears about job security make it ever more difficult to decline requests to perform additional labor.
Potential devastating impacts for non-citizen faculty, who are almost all employed under an immigrant work visa (H1B) in contrast to senior faculty who have either permanent residency (Green Card) or citizenship. During 2020, due to both COVID restrictions and the new restrictive policies of the Federal Government this particular immigration status caused significant and credible anxieties regarding their ability to continue to live and work in the United States, which have been widely reported in outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post. The pandemic has separated these junior faculty members from their partners and family members and has foreclosed their ability to travel outside the country for work—exacting considerable personal and professional costs. Non-citizen junior faculty comprise part of the University’s body of international faculty, for whom there are also potentially extreme impacts resulting from any sudden loss of scholarly productivity: loss of employment and health insurance, along with immigration visa and/or green card status that affect the ability to remain in the country. Unstable timelines for the completion of scholarly work produce added burdens of arranging paperwork, filing for visas and extensions, proving resident status, or even fighting deportation, at a time when staying healthy and safe already takes up significant amounts of energy.