MS. MENTOR

He's Hogging the Course I Want

Should you wail to your colleagues, wait your turn, or find your own little piece of turf?

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Question: I'm a recently tenured professor at Emerging Public University. I do research, get grants, publish, and deliver conference papers. But the other professors in my subfield are research-inactive. They teach their pet courses, which rarely change in content or approach, over and over again.

Professor Swine, in particular, has been teaching the same required course (the only one in our subfield) for 20-plus semesters in a row, and I believe he turns off students whom we might otherwise recruit for our research and graduate programs.

Every year during the "democratic" course-scheduling process, I ask to teach the required class, and every year Professor Swine, who's well liked, has a hissy fit until he gets his way. He also accuses me of being like a child who wants what he cannot have. I am instructed to "go and create your own course and teach the same topics." I am at my wit's end over this issue and am thinking of leaving the university, or leaving academe altogether.

Answer: Ms. Mentor sighs, for it is the fate of impatient youth everywhere to be put through hoops and wringers. Your plight is not unique. Nor is Professor Swine the only one who seems to be having hissy fits and coming unglued.

You have wisely figured out the story. Professor Swine hogs the required class, which Ms. Mentor will call "Intro to Felicity Studies," because he's been around a long time, and he wants it. You, the young hotshot, think you would do a better job.

But academic bureaucracies do not always run on a single, narrow definition of what is "meritorious." Sometimes they opt for longevity or compassion — qualities that are hard to appreciate in your first few years on the job.

The merit dream is strong in academe. "Good" (smart, hard-working) students do get the best grades and test scores, followed by awards and prizes. Many have no serious competition until graduate school, where everyone else is also smart and persevering. Even then, intelligence and diligence seem to be rewarded — until the job market frosts everything. Ms. Mentor's newly tenured correspondent is extremely lucky and talented — but fretting over the one bauble beyond his reach.

As good students do, he has followed his department's rules ("'democratic' process") for being scheduled to teach "Intro to Felicity." Around academe, some departments consult no one, plugging professors into classes and time slots by some mysterious and invisible process. Others are very solicitous, with memos and meetings to make sure that everyone is "comfortable" with course assignments and teaching schedules. Some run on rules handed down by universities or accrediting associations: Only research faculty members may teach graduate seminars; only Ph.D.'s may teach above the sophomore level.

Usually the power struggles are over graduate courses, considered the plums, but "Intro to Felicity" doesn't fit that model. Most faculty members at research universities sneer at, or flee from, teaching introductory courses — and so Ms. Mentor's correspondent would seem to be a rather public-spirited departmental citizen who somehow can't make it into the arena.

Ms. Mentor thinks she knows why.Professor Swine, not an active scholar, seems to be disqualified from teaching cutting-edge research courses. "Intro to Felicity" may be a course he teaches well and rigorously. He may know where the weakest students will falter, and how to challenge the strongest.

He may also have health worries or private sorrows. Many "senior juniors" — those who publish little after tenure — are caregivers for elderly relatives or special-needs children. In business, employees who frequently miss work because of home responsibilities are fired. In academe, tenured colleagues often quietly but generously make accommodations. Young hotshots sometimes call their nonpublishing elders "unproductive," but more mature souls recognize the varying rhythms of lives and careers. Sometimes guiding the young or sheltering the weak is more valuable than submitting another grant proposal or creating another international symposium.

"But it's not fair!" you roar. "I do all the work, and he ... he always, I never ... I am so put upon ...," at which point Ms. Mentor tunes out. Life seems unfair, but many sacrifices balance out over a lifetime. And if they don't — if, indeed, you do all the research, get tiny raises, aren't sufficiently lauded, and your sufferings seem to have been in vain — well, you still know in your heart of hearts that you're a saint. Feeling superior and morally right always feels meritorious.

Ms. Mentor wonders if fighting to teach "Intro to Felicity Studies" is even good for your psyche, unless you get a particular joy from haranguing and confronting your elders. Professor Swine has offered you the graceful compromise: Teach what you want, call it what you want. You'll need that kind of collegiality to get through the next decades without waiting vulturishly for Professor Swine to retire or die.

Since you have your research, conferences, grants, and publications, Ms. Mentor wonders why you're obsessed with teaching "Intro to Felicity" anyway. She thinks you need a hobby, or an all-consuming love affair, or something to take your mind off Professor Swine's protecting his little piece of turf and gladness. You'll be much happier cultivating your own garden, facilitating your own felicity.

Ms. Mentor, who never leaves her ivory tower, channels her mail via Emily Toth in the English department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. She is the author of Ms. Mentor's New and Ever More Impeccable Advice for Women and Men in Academia, just published, as well as Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia (both University of Pennsylvania Press). (c) Emily Toth. Send questions and comments to her at ms.mentor@chronicle.com.