For the March 2nd Reaction Paper, please discuss the following two topics:

1. Based on Dr. Bokemeier’s presentation, elaborate on the advantages of being involved in administration for an academic career. What areas of administration do you, personally, feel that you would be good at?

In order to see the advantages, a good critique also encompasses the disadvantages.  First, I will list both the explicit and implied disadvantages of being involved in administration for an academic career.  The majority of disadvantages seemed to be psychological and social in nature.  For example, the chair of a department at Michigan State is the intermediary between faculty (blue collar) and administration (white collar).  I think unique to MSU is that the chair appears to be neither of these roles exclusively and therefore the chair has a bit of internal struggling on a daily basis when dealing with both sides, as she is on neither.

This is similar to my current post as Manager of Volunteer Services at a Michigan hospice.  At hospice, or any medical care institution, the majority of workers are licensed professionals.  These includes nurses, doctors, home health aides, chaplains, and social workers.  These licensed professionals deal with patients on a regular basis with face to face interaction.  The parallel here would be that professors deal with students “on the ground level” daily.  On the other hand, the medical care entity also has administration which includes management, directors, and a variety of secretarial staff members.  As Manager of Volunteer Services, I am neither “on the ground” nor am I a full fledged administrator.  I manage a set of volunteers (like the faculty chair manages a corps of faculty) and I appear to have some sense of administrative privilege since I am hanging around the office administrators by default (I’m rarely in the field) and I report directly to management.  Yet, there I am stuck in the middle.  I can see the frustration that the chair must endure when she has little power to make the grand sweeping changes that the dean can make and also cannot directly relate to those “on the ground level.”

Yet, that is an opportunity and can be also viewed as an advantage.  For some people, like Dr. Bokemeier explained, satisfaction comes from within and one’s own ability to see the benefits of action.  If the academician is a person who requires tangible rewards, like publishing dozens of articles, then the department chair position is not appropriate for that person.  If the administrator is a person who requires complete power and is better and reviewing numbers than relating to people, than the department chair is not appropriate for that person either.  The department chair must relish in creating her own successes.  That’s a cerebral reward and somewhat difficult to explain in an essay.

The explicit rewards, or advantages, to being a department chair are that you get to steer the ship.  By setting the atmosphere and environment of the department, you can determine how the entire department operates.  As Dr. Bokemeier explained, the chair has the opportunity to make changes as small as the paint and furniture in department offices that can influence the attitudes that staff members carry with them to the classroom.  This is a very appealing situation.  The chair can also determine, to some extent, the appropriation of department funds.  Although Dr. Bokemeier did not go into detail on this area, I’m assuming that the department chair has the ability to allot certain funds to office technology (flat screen TV’s and Skype style conferencing) versus old dusty endeavors like metal filing cabinets and white noise machines.  To possess an ability to influence a vibrant workspace is intriguing.  It can also be scary.  If your decision to buy new purple wall paint offends an old professor who would rather see tangible purchases like book shelving, this is where you need to be very personable and convincing.  Recall, the chair must persuade both the faculty who sees the results of fund appropriations and the administrators who care predominantly about the bottom line numerically.

The preceding paragraphs are what resonated with me the most.  In all honesty, I am more concerned about the cerebral nature of the position.  In other words, I am interested in how the chair deals with the interpersonal relationships she has with both staff and administration.  Those parts of Dr. Bokemeier’s presentation were favorites of mine.  She also did discuss more basic advantages and disadvantages explicitly.  Advantages might include: greater salary, more prestige (for those who view performing administratively as prestigious), and more power to enforce decisions (as was discussed previously in this article).  Disadvantages might include: working 12 months per year (if you consider that a disadvantage), having to guard your words and speak diplomatically (again, if you find that a disadvantage), and losing some of the relationships you may have previously had with faculty members because you have to separate yourself from the “soap opera” (my words) that is the extracurricular.

As you might guess from the preceding paragraph, the position of department chair is in those ways much different than the position of Manager of Volunteer Services for a medical facility.  But, in general the two exist as intermediaries between two distinct realms, those on “the ground” and those “at the desks.”  To be a successful administrator, you have to define your goals.  Do you want summers off?  Do you want to teach a lot?  Do you want to focus on research and writing?  If so, then administration is not for you.  However, if you are interested in shaping a department and offering your strengths at financial management, appropriation, and leadership, then being chair of a department might be right for you.  That is the feeling I got from Dr. Bokemeier’s presentation.

Dr. Bokemeier laid out the areas of administration very basically during her presentation.  She explained the functional side, meaning the president and the board or what you might really think of as the bureaucratic and legal administrators, and she also described the dean/chair/faculty side of the dichotomy within higher ed administrative routes.  At this extremely early point in my career, it is hard type the following sentence with a lot of confidence.  I feel I am best suited to perform the role of dean.  Of course, by no means am I ready now.  But, I might be ready in a dozen years or so.  I will explain why.

During Dr. Bokemeier’s presentation, I asked about the educational and professional backgrounds of certain administrators.  I asked if any administrators possessed an MBA or a JD and if those degrees aided them in making various administrative decisions.  Dr. Bokemeier replied that the Dean of the College of Social Science, Marietta L. Baba, had her MBA.  The truth is, I was quite sure that I already knew that.  Dr. Bokemeier had confirmed what I already thought was true.  I was very happy to hear that Dr. Bokemeier believed that Dr. Baba’s MBA helped her perform her job as dean.  That is why I chose to get a master’s of public administration myself.  At the time, one of my good friends who now teaches college in Milwaukee chided me that I was “outside of academia” in pursuing my master’s.  However, I seriously put much thought into what I was doing.  I had a BA.  I would eventually receive a PhD.  Both undergraduate and doctoral work for me were intended to be in some type of liberal arts, with a propensity toward civil or social service.  I chose to focus that “middle” education on preparatory tools that would advance me into an administrative role.  I was surprised to hear Dr. Bokemeier to refer to the “choice” of faculty to “have the summer off.”  I think, and I am sure she understands, faculty do work during the summers on research and writing.  However, I do want to make sure that I work during the summers.  I want to ensure a thriving and sustainable department.  My enthusiasm for educating young minds rapidly creeps into my own belief that a vibrant learning environment starts at the top.  When asked what areas of administration I, personally, feel I would be good at I honestly and confidently state that I have the background and drive to be successful at any role from research project leader to department chair to dean to university president.  I just need more experience and knowledge.  I am at a point in my life where I have the tools to begin considering a trip down the administrative tract.  Now, I need to absorb the experiences, develop relationships, and ensure that I will be ready when I get there.

2. Drawing from the Lieberg book, describe active learning and discuss how you would incorporate this philosophy into a class that you would teach.

Active learning is quite simply “engaging” students.  Because of the wide diversity of students, both demographically and their motivations, it is important to discover ways to engage each individual.  “Participation” is often referred to as the pinnacle goal for engaging students.  However, participation is often misidentified.  We have been discussing our own awareness to prepare us for our first teaching experience.  The topic of participation is very appropriate for me to discuss personally when describing its often improper description.

When I am in class I tend to sit back and take it all in.  I actually have apologized in the past for selfishly learning as a spectator.  Yet, it was very effective for me.  Just last semester I was in a class that had 6 students and 1 professor and lasted for 3 hours straight with minimal breaks.  It held a constant din of discourse for the entire time, 99% of the entire semester!  It was amazing.  And, I learned a ton!  However, I did not speak much.  In fact, my professor told me after the semester was over that I should speak more.  But, did I really need to?  I think that I did not need to force myself to butt in.  In some situations, I chose to let the discussion continue its course and it always seemed to flow to where I was also heading.  What was more exciting, I would have a point to make on the tip of my tongue and then a classmate would spit out another very legitimate point of view.  In sum, I then possessed additional information, even potentially more than the rest of the class!  That is why I labeled it “selfish” at times.  I hoped that it was very clear that I was fully engaged in this class to all who participated in it.

However, I realize that not all of the silent onlookers in a class are going to be as excited as me to be there.  This is where the scenario gets tricky.  First, I am going to assume that there are some silent learners in the class.  I will let them partake and thrive via their chosen method.  Second, I am going to assume that there are some silent students who would rather not be in the class.  Here is where it gets tricky.  Do teachers need to provoke these students into engagement?  If so, how does the teacher do that?  Lieberg says that some students also rebel against a nontraditional class, in other words: here lies a catch 22.

On one hand, students want a traditional lecture.  Some might get disruptive if the teacher strays from tradition.  Lieberg optimistically envisions “an opportunity to talk about it… once students experience the engagement and rewards of involved learning.”  That sounds a little hokey.  But, what I gain from it is that it is my job as a teacher to provide a chance for these opportunities to happen.

The class is diverse.  There are many different types of individuals.  There is no single magic bean that will grown the garden.  To engage as many students as possible, I must utilize as many tools, approaches, tactics, and methods as is possible.  As I have been describing so far in this essay, there are vocal and silent learners.  A discourse should engage both of those.  For the students who lie somewhere in the middle or cannot be interested in a discourse, I must provide another opportunity or perhaps another venue for them to engage in learning.  We have talked previously in class about such methods: group work, breaking up the class into segments, how to use powerpoint effectively, and then there are other ways that we have not gone into detail with like multimedia, uses of technology (we talked a little about that), required speaking in class, etc.  We have described even functional ways to “mix-up” the class structure such as putting the desks in a circle or walking around the class if it is a big lecture hall, up and down the aisles.

Other points that have been brought up or that can be drawn out of the Lieberg book:

• Public speaking – This is an obvious way to engage an individual.  It is almost impossible to be mentally absent when speaking in front of the class.  This includes both literally in the front or from the student’s seat.  Lieberg reminds us that “if they have to speak, they want to appear smart and articulate.” (pg. 36)  We can accomplish this goal in two ways.
  • Make the student feel smart and articulate no matter what they say (affirmation).
  • Explain to the students that it is okay to present any answer, no matter how smart/ignorant or articulate/inarticulate it is (leeway).
• Required vocal participation – Lieberg presents the “go-round, four-corners, and debate” styles of engaging students (pgs. 109-112).  I must inject that these methods are only effective if the students are interested in the material.  Again, there is no “magic bean” to get the students active.  I envision these methods as introductions to topics.  For example, when I was taking masters level classes I had a professor who would divide us up on two sides.  More often than not, these sides were conservative and liberal.  We would discuss our approach to an issue such as hiring practices in human resources.  The subject matter would be amusing because it was so basic.  The challenge to participation was that students would often be on the side they did not want to really be on.  This allowed the students to see multiple perspectives on an issue.  And, perhaps most importantly, it gave a “reward” to students in that they could feel as though they had won the argument if they “won the vote” at the end (we treated it sort of like a legislative voting session).  We must not forget that rewarding students is a very effective and important way to engage them.
• The “Thinking Paper” – This suggestion (pgs. 135-136) possesses a subtle reward: validation.  As was previously mentioned, students are less likely to begin to speak or write when they do not feel smart or articulate.  One way to get the ball rolling is to begin with a paper, perhaps ungraded, that asks the student what they are “thinking of doing.”  It is a spark that may initiate a subsequent course of learning for the individual student.  It may give the teacher an “in” to discussing different opportunities for development.

In conclusion, it is most important to remember that active learning is a philosophy.  This is to say that it is not a set list of activities that will guarantee results.  The tactics listed above and throughout the book do not assure success.  However, they will help instigate a thriving and vibrant classroom.  The key to active learning is student engagement, no matter what the road that leads there.  Lieberg helps steer us in the right direction.