Valpo Strategic Plan

[ValpoDiaspora]

Wh, thanks for sharing this data. Really interesting to see. Yes, the differentials still vary a lot between disciplines so for instance, to get an average of $59K for Assistant Profs across the institution, you're going to have most the liberal arts and sciences profs below that and lots of Business/Engineering School faculty above that. Anyways, what's most interesting (maybe hopeful?) about the data here is you can see how it looks like the ERIP did achieve getting some high-rollers off the books, as evidenced in that -9% change in the average salaries for the Full Professors.

Anyways, the uni struggles to keep up with the reality that people at all levels are facing the heightened living and housing costs. For instance, I was paying $26K per year for daycare for two toddlers at a preschool near the old law school campus in Valpo, which was a real strain on the $50 and then $48K tenure-track salary. Or to rent now in Valpo is easily $2K+/month for a two-bedroom apartment or even a small 2 bed/2bath house that's not a foreclosure will easily run $250K if you can save enough to try to buy. Other universities are facing this housing problem in much more extreme ways, like Santa Clara U, LMU and others in HCOL areas that now offer rental assistance or forgivable loan downpayment assistance programs, or sometimes childcare DCA contributions, as part of the benefits package so faculty and staff can get a foothold and stay, and be able to afford food and clothes after the housing and daycare is paid for. It is not that bad yet in Valpo, but housing did get pretty expensive these last couple years. Not VU's fault, but part of the reality why the stagnated salaries have become such a turnover problem.

[vu72]

And yet, if you look at the faculty for Engineering, you don't see a bunch of Geezers, but rather a bunch of good looking folks with highly regarded PhD's.

I founds 10 from Big Ten schools, 2 from Georgia Tech, 2 from Notre Dame, 1 from McGill and others from places like Iowa State, Florida, NC State, Marquette and Virginia Polytech.

[crusader05]

I do wonder how much the boom in Valpo has also had an effect. Costs have skyrocketed there and I don't believe they're slowing down. I know young professionals who chose to live in Lake County and commute to Valpo due to the cost issue. I wonder if looking into faculty housing might be another way to move forward, Mabye using some of the land on McIntyre street to build some low cost town homes that can rented out to faculty below market rate.

[David81]

I support what Diaspora is saying: Do we really want a university to be such an unpleasant, stressed out place to work that people are miserable, whereby those with options may well take them and depart, and those who remain are profoundly unhappy? That seems to be the implicit logic behind the take-it-or-leave sentiment -- or, as one posted meme quips, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

It also makes for an odd juxtaposition of attitudes and values expressed on this board: Many are calling for VU to buy out its current men's basketball coach, at a price tag of up to $700k or more, so it can engage in the dice roll of hiring someone new -- at a similar or higher salary -- in hopes that the change will allow them to root for alma mater in more winning ways. Meanwhile, there's a puzzling indifference toward those who are at the heart of the school's mission -- providing a high quality education to its students -- upon learning that so many faculty are barely making ends meet, while being loaded up with brutal teaching schedules that often turn their jobs into a 7-days-a-week endeavor.

Furthermore, if you care about the reputation of the University beyond its more tightly drawn circle, then understand that those brutal teaching loads and low salaries make engaging in scholarship and related activities (such as presenting papers at national conferences) very difficult. Yet, that engagement with the scholarly enterprise is also at the core of building institutional reputation. It can also be a source of positive media exposure when said scholarship is newsworthy or carries public significance. And being seen as a player in that larger realm -- perhaps with media coverage of faculty achievements to back it up -- can take the sting out of news coverage about a controversy over a proposed art sale.

[usc4valpo]

ValpoDiaspora - sorry dude, but we are all dealing with expenses. Blame the government, blame someone, but don't blame Valpo for rent and daycare woes.  I don't think Padilla can fix the rising cost of Cheerios and Crown Royal. We are going through tough times.

Also, the 30% less salary for Valpo staffing seems to be exaggerated. Overall, is Valpo 30% below average or are we competitive?

Also, with its success, could the college of engineering share any practices or pearls of wisdom with the rest of the university which may help them get up to speed? Maybe the creative writing major degrading us a tech school can understand the other point of view.

[ValpoDiaspora]

Hello dude to you too! 

Read the last line...

Not VU's fault, but part of the reality why the stagnated salaries have become such a turnover problem.

Not blaming Padilla.... just trying to note that the affordability problem exists and Valpo isn't immune to it. More creative & successful universities than Valpo have found ways to make it work for their employees, and not just in W-2 cost-of-living adjustments but in all kinds of housing assistance and HSA and DCA benefits where it was necessary to maintain the workforce. It's just not good for any institution, whether school or business, to have a constantly revolving door.

[usc4valpo]

I get it my dude friend, but we are seeing the revolving door in industry also.

[wh]

As to the assertion that faculty members are overworked to the point of discouragement and possible burn out:

Faculty members signed to 9-month contracts have 22 weeks off every calendar year, not including sick and personal days. Add in weekends, and they are on the job approximately 150 days per calendar year, give or take. That equates to 215 days off. Thus, what is inarguably a demanding, high stress role in higher education with pressures above and below is hopefully offset by time to rejuvenate. It seems like an equitable tradeoff IMO.

By frame of reference, I just congratulated one of our IT service engineers on his 5th anniversary and reminded him that he is eligible for an additional week of vacation, which gives him 3. On his 10th anniversary, he'll earn a fourth. In addition, we all get 10 paid holidays; thus, that's 47 of 52 weeks that he walks through that front door, positive attitude in tow, ready to conquer the world. Do we pay him well? Absolutely. In return, he has limited time away from the job. This also seems like an equitable tradeoff., IMO.

Lastly, let me say that I hold educators at every level in high esteem. I have an extended family of teachers and administrators. I am proud of each and every one.

[usc4valpo]

remember, it's a job, and there will be something that will piss you off.

[DejaVU]

Also, the 30% less salary for Valpo staffing seems to be exaggerated. Overall, is Valpo 30% below average or are we competitive?

It is real but, as I said, in comparison with the mean salaries of our peer institutions. And it is pretty accurate (distilled to the level of college, rank etc...) It is as close to apple vs. apples. Now, of course, if we change the peer list this difference may change up or down (who knows). Let's have a list made of bottom of the pit schools for purposes of salary comparison and another peer list with the most prestigious ones for purposes of demands on the faculty.


Also, about having 200 days off a year. That's not how this works. But I don't blame people thinking this way it is a common perception. It's just that it will take too much time to explain and I did it too many times on other occasions. Let's just say I should be so lucky. Hey, I might get a second degree and a second job in a more lucrative field.  Pretty much everything needed to actually promote from assistant to full professor will fill in those days no worries.


Put it differently: people would kill to earn 60K for working less than half year no?


But this does raise a valid point: what is the fair salary compared to how much is demanded from faculty? I am going to speak for my field only (which I won't disclose for now). LOng time ago I knew an insider at Colby College. I learned about their tenure process and also about a tenure denial. Altogether, I came to the conclusion that more is expected from a typical Colby faculty than VU faculty at least in my field. Especially if you want to earn tenure (which you have to in order to stay on the job). I think I could have earned tenure at Colby but only because I did far more than I needed to here at VU (and feel stupid for it now).


However, Assistant Professors  at Colby earn on average 90K or so (at least according to Glassdoor). I don't know about full profs but for sure is 6 figures. I can assure you they don't have 200 day off. But it does raise a question about whether VU faculty is paid enough for what they do. Of course it varies (some did far more others the bare minimum) but maybe the solution is to find a different peer list not just for salaries but also for other expectations. For example many teaching colleges have a 4-4 teaching load but next to no research expectation. Here at VU you need research to promote and get tenure on top of excellent teaching. What for? So that you advance to high ranked and be told you are a burden?


You might be surprised but 5-6 years ago, a certain Provost said we need to increase the pay bump for promotion because we have too few full professors and that does not look good. This now sounds like a joke. So, maybe if we drop the research expectation (too late for me  but maybe for the newcomers) and just ask for efficient teaching then maybe the current salaries will be justified. As I said before, you just can't make high cuisine with MacDonalds ingredients

[vu84v2]

From the various posts, let me clarify a few things. My basis is the university that I work for, but its practices are pretty common to most universities.

-Tenure-track faculty have an annual 12 month contract that is connected to tenure status. Clinical (non-PhD) full time faculty typically also have an annual contract that both parties can choose whether to renew each year (sometimes these are two or three year contracts). For these people, they have a choice of whether they are paid on a nine month basis or a 12 month basis (with a year starting on July 1st). If you choose being paid on a nine months basis, you are still employed by the university for the entire 12 months...it is not reasonable to assume that tenure-track faculty have 2 1/2 months off in the summer (see points below on research and service).
-Any other faculty (i.e. part-time adjuncts) are usually paid per class that they teach.
-For all faculty other than adjuncts, the contract states how many classes a faculty member teaches in a given year. For Valpo, I think it is six 3-credit classes in an academic year for tenure-track faculty. It is probably 8 to 10 for non-tenure track faculty.
-I am not aware of any university, including Valpo, demanding that faculty teach additional classes for free. Any additional teaching load is compensated (I will speculate that Valpo pays a tenure-track faculty member ~$7K to teach an additional 3-credit class.
-There is no such thing as tracked vacation time for tenure-track faculty. You are required to teach your classes at the times assigned, and you probably are required to have regular office hours and need to attend some meetings. After that, you manage your schedule completely on your own.
-What fills the time after time required for teaching (not only classes, but grading, preparation, etc.)? Research and service. Service is anything to support the operation of the university and anything to support your academic field (serving as an editor or reviewer, involvement in national/international academic organizations, etc.). The research side is the one that is most 'distant' to people not in academia. A complete research study - planning, data gathering, analysis, writing, editing - takes hundreds of hours for each person involved. Faculty at Valpo do less research than those at an R1 or R2, but they still need to do research. Tenure-track faculty at Valpo need published research to get tenure (else they lose their job). If you have tenure, you may want to get promoted to full professor, keep yourself marketable to other universities, engage in research with students, or just like doing research for any number of reasons. Some liberal arts disciplines have different research-oriented endeavors (writing a book, for instance), but they are no less time-consuming. The point is that being a professor is a full-time job.

Lastly, as mentioned by others, pay is dramatically different across disciplines. The primary reason for this is basic economics - there is a huge supply of liberal arts faculty versus the number of jobs and there is a much lower supply of faculty for engineering, nursing, many business disciplines, and others versus the number of jobs. This has been the case for many years, but external factors (high inflation, parents and prospective students placing greater value in professional studies than liberal arts studies) have made this situation untenable for liberal arts faculty.

[valpo95]

There are many good points here about tenure and expectations. If the salaries are indeed as low as has been indicated, that is a huge structural problem. Someone with a PhD from a good school and who is an effective teacher at Valpo could get hired at a school like Notre Dame and become a teaching faculty / clinical professor, at least in fields where there is demand. That person might get paid 50% more, and have a 3 + 3 teaching load, and no research expectations. (This does not count fields like English where there might be 100+applicants for a teaching position, so the salary differential might be less.)  Almost certainly, the college deans at Valpo make less than a tenured Associate professor in their comparable field at Notre Dame, IU, or Purdue.     

[usc4valpo]

so vu84v2 - are Valpo faculty well underpaid compared to other schools?

[DejaVU]

For Valpo, I think it is six 3-credit classes in an academic year for tenure-track faculty.

Good point summary. I would only add a small correction: the standard teaching load that I am aware of  is 21 teaching credits a year so more like 3-4. There may be variations across departments or colleges (I am a little vague because I want to remain anonymous).  There are individual exceptions (some service positions come with reduced teaching load). So during those good old times when higher ups wanted to increase the research output and the number of full professors, wanted to move gradually to a 3-3 load (i.e. 18 credit hours).



To those outside academia, there are, generally speaking, three types of universities/colleges when it comes to teaching and research expectation


1. Research intensive universities: teaching is usually 2-1 or 2-2 (i.e. 9 or 12 credit hours a year) with very high research expectation, grant writing, etc...People fail tenure primarily due to lack of research/grants, teaching matters much less


2. Middle of the ground: teaching is 3-3 (i.e. 18 credit hours a year) with serious research expectations but at a lower level than R1 universities and without pressure to get grants, etc... People still fail tenure and promotion for lack of research though teaching is the primary consideration


3. Teaching schools: teaching is 4-4 (24 credits) research expectation is minimal and often in a more holistic form (i.e. not necessarily in the form of peer review papers)


AS you can expect the salaries are typically in the decreasing order of this list.

[David81]

As to the assertion that faculty members are overworked to the point of discouragement and possible burn out:

Faculty members signed to 9-month contracts have 22 weeks off every calendar year, not including sick and personal days. Add in weekends, and they are on the job approximately 150 days per calendar year, give or take. That equates to 215 days off. Thus, what is inarguably a demanding, high stress role in higher education with pressures above and below is hopefully offset by time to rejuvenate. It seems like an equitable tradeoff IMO.

By frame of reference, I just congratulated one of our IT service engineers on his 5th anniversary and reminded him that he is eligible for an additional week of vacation, which gives him 3. On his 10th anniversary, he'll earn a fourth. In addition, we all get 10 paid holidays; thus, that's 47 of 52 weeks that he walks through that front door, positive attitude in tow, ready to conquer the world. Do we pay him well? Absolutely. In return, he has limited time away from the job. This also seems like an equitable tradeoff., IMO.

Lastly, let me say that I hold educators at every level in high esteem. I have an extended family of teachers and administrators. I am proud of each and every one.

Oh WH, if only the presumptions about the workload you describe were true in reality! But I must jump in here, too, with a necessary corrective to those who believe that most college and university teaching gigs, especially at a place like VU, are about long periods of thinking big thoughts or spending summers languishing around or taking the family on long trips. What's not seen or commonly understood is all the work that occurs beyond the classroom.

First, I don't know if you read Diaspora's very detailed explanation of her experiences as a VU professor, but all that supposed "time off" quickly dissolves into duties that spread throughout the week and not infrequently into the weekend. The "breaks" that you suppose are Miller Time are often used to finish grading, read for and update courses, squeeze in some time for scholarly work, catch up on committee tasks, and attend and present at conferences (which are often scheduled to coincide with weeks between terms and during summers).

Second, the 9-month vs. 12-month contract is oftentimes a matter of administrative classification, not an actual reflection when work is being done. (Believe me, I'm on a joint faculty-administration committee that looked at this from a legal and practical standpoint. It's not about that.) I don't know many fully engaged academics, regardless of whether on a 9-month or 12-month contract, who truly have summers off. Oftentimes that is the best time for doing scholarly work and/or doing course revisions. And by the way, if someone has a completely new course prep, it's not a matter of picking a book or two and then going along for a ride with the students. That prep work can eat up many weeks over the summer and/or a semester break, and during the semester be a source of late nights (or early mornings) and weekends spent trying to master the content in order to best facilitate student learning.

Third, once a new faculty member gets their sea legs (and sometimes before), other tasks get added to the plate. Time-intensive faculty roles in advising/mentoring/supervising student groups, uncompensated work for scholarly and learned organizations (thereby also enhancing institutional reputation), significant committee responsibilities that go well beyond occasional meetings, serving on non-profit boards related to one's expertise, and a lot more.

I will say this: What you may have mistaken for "free time" is actually the significant, comparative flexibility that many professors enjoy in scheduling their time and arranging the order in which tasks are performed. Believe me, I spent six years in legal practice before I started teaching, and I know the difference. Beyond classes and certain meetings, the flexibility is considerable. Very unlike navigating litigation and filing due dates, court appearances, and what not.

Anyhoo, if you want to believe your math about the time demands on professors who take their responsibilities seriously, then it's your right to have that opinion. But I can attest that the actual facts are different for the strong majority of professors that I know. Speaking personally, the opportunity to be a professor is a great privilege, and I am exceedingly grateful for it. I don't take that opportunity and the range of choices it offers for granted. But a life of leisure has not been part of that equation.

[David81]

By the way, one of the latest commentaries about the art sale question, written from the perspective of Christian higher education and the interdisciplinary importance of art, as well as the possible impacts of the sale on VU as an institution.

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/03/88166/

[VULB#62]

To me what's been missing in these discussions is class load.

Teaching four 200-400 level classes and seminars with a max of ~20 students per semester vs. four 100 level survey classes with a ~100+ each is a major factor. The former validates the instructor and supplies the juices an educator loves. The latter produces burn-out on an afterburner. And for a couple of reasons:  grading time is increased by a factor of five and personal contact, which most good educators thrive on, is diminished by the same factor but in reverse.

Any of you who are/were in academia care to comment?

[vu84v2]

usc4valpo asked if faculty at Valpo are underpaid. I don't have specific data, but my opinion is "yes, with a clarification". My view is that faculty who go to a school like Valpo choose to because they value spending their time doing teaching (and associated things like building student relationships) more and research less. This choice means accepting that you make less pay than faculty at other universities who are expected to do a lot more research (or, in some fields, engage in equally challenging scholarly work). They are not underpaid because of this. Faculty also choose what field they want to work in. A new PhD in psychology or theology might make $50K to $60K at Valpo, while an new PhD in accounting might make $110K to $125K (note, these are just educated guesses). Again, on this factor alone, faculty at Valpo are not underpaid. Where I think they are underpaid is from Valpo not being able to adjust salaries based on overall increases to market salaries (over the last five + years) in most disciplines and recent high inflation.

To vulb#62's points - I would say the cutoff for having closer relationships with students and providing extensive feedback is about 30 to 35 students in a class within a semester. I agree with your points about "survey" classes, but these are the exception at a school like Valpo (to my knowledge).

[David81]

To me what's been missing in these discussions is class load.

Teaching four 200-400 level classes and seminars with a max of ~20 students per semester vs. four 100 level survey classes with a ~100+ each is a major factor. The former validates the instructor and supplies the juices an educator loves. The latter produces burn-out on an afterburner. And for a couple of reasons:  grading time is increased by a factor of five and personal contact, which most good educators thrive on, is diminished by the same factor but in reverse.

Any of you who are/were in academia care to comment?

Course enrollments alone don't fully equate to workload.

Large classes evaluated by multiple-choice, true-false, and similar "objective" tests & quizzes require little grading time. The number of students can be irrelevant.

If the 20-30 student courses include a lot of writing assignments, especially 1st year composition courses, 4x that won't leave you with much gas in the tank by the end of the term. It also likely includes a lot more individual meetings with students. Overall, the inherently subjective nature of evaluating and grading writing is also much more, frankly, emotionally taxing than seeing how the MC tests turned out, and superimposing a grade distribution. The latter is a comparatively bloodless task.

I'm speaking of liberal arts-type courses, which seem to be an implicit focus in this thread. Though I'll also note that the hardest I've worked as a teacher in a law school setting was as an entry-level legal skills instructor for first-year students. Two groups of 20 students doesn't sound like much until you add in the frequent grading of analytically complex writing assignments, multiple planned individual conferences, and -- in that especially sophisticated program -- reviewing videotaped simulation exercises involving lawyering skills. Boy did I envy the tenure-track classroom professors in terms of flexibility of time, while we were on the clock until the term was over!

[I should add that on pedagogical principle, I've never used MC, T-F, yes-no tests, even when I had one of the very heaviest teaching & student loads at my school. But unlike others who did so with their larger classes, I paid a heavy price when it came to grading time, one that the institution never distinguished compared to those who took the easier way on evaluating students.]

[vu84v2]

My department officially 4-4 so eight courses per year... but in good times with allow people to teach a 3-4 in order to give them three units of research time, since it is an expectation for tenure - a book or a handful of articles.... Those good times are mostly gone though, so you just need to pull the research how to sweat and air if you want to keep your job.. "if" being the key question these days

Valpo22 raises an important point. 4-4 yikes! Teaching four courses in a semester properly, and we'll assume it is two sections each of two different classes, probably takes about 40-50 hours per week (prep, teaching, grading, etc.). More if either class is new for you. If you don't like your salary (justified or not), the most realistic way to move to another school is to develop your reputation from research (it is much easier to distinguish someone who excels in research than it is to distinguish someone who excels in teaching). But with a 4-4, you can't devote enough time to publish higher tier work. Thus, you get really frustrated in this situation.

[vu84v2]

David81 - What you are saying is not unique to liberal arts. For the subject I teach, I can test concepts using objective questions - but I expect students to learn to use concepts to develop compelling analyses and arguments, which can only be assessed via essays. Further, good faculty in areas like statistics and engineering assess not just the answer, but the process to get to that answer...and that type of grading takes a lot of time.

[VULB#62]

Where my comment came from: 

Out of Valpo and a year of grad study I joined the faculty at Concordia College, NY, as a history instructor. I had a 4x4 load.  Most classes were 25ish with one survey at about 50. The survey requied two papers. Was there for four years.  Loved it, every day was a trip, but........ I was basically living off my wife's salary who was a public health nurse and doubled what I was pulling in. After 4 years, I jumped to a public HS in Massachusetts and immediately doubled my salary.  But that educational jump also had a down side — more students now, and  5x a week instead of 3 (and one period a day of bathroom patrol).  It was the first time in my life I experienced the Sunday Night Dreads.

I lasted 9 years then bailed. Moved to corporate training at a major nuclear engineering firm in Boston. Doubled my salary again.  Piece of cake in comparison and never suffered Sunday Night Dreads again. I remained in the business world for 34 more years eventually retiring as an Senior IT project manager (similar to HS and potty patrol 😉), but I have always looked back with fondness on those four years at Concordia — if they could only have paid me enough to raise a family...............

I believe many of the lower level Valpo faculty can identify with my early experience. I wish them well whether they stay or move on. Teaching at places like Valpo or a Concordia is special.

[wh]

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to educate us outsiders about roles, responsibilities, and time commitments. Clearly, the workload is greater than I had ever considered. If I may, let me respectfully ask I final question to help me fully appreciate what you are saying. Anytime I drive through campus in the summer, it looks like a ghost town. What are faculty members doing behind the scenes over that "silent" period, when I don't see any students?

[ValpoDiaspora]

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to educate us outsiders about roles, responsibilities, and time commitments. Clearly, the workload is greater than I had ever considered. If I may, let me respectfully ask I final question to help me fully appreciate what you are saying. Anytime I drive through campus in the summer, it looks like a ghost town. What are faculty members doing behind the scenes over that "silent" period, when I don't see any students?

For me, Summers at Valpo were indeed lighter in work. The 3-4 or 4-4 loads we had in my (humanities) discipline were always during the year and I only once taught Summer I and II sessions since kind of desperate for extra $3k or whatever it was.

On non-teaching Summers, I would usually end up working about 30 hours a week...

-- preparing for the next semester, since you have to have everything ready to go on the first day of classes and so you spend Summer or Winter break doing that (selecting readings, scanning things in, drafting assignments and rubrics, arranging any guest speakers or field trips, etc.)  In some fields like 'intro to bio' or 'statistics' there may be pretty set content and a textbook you can just use, so it's not like you have to recreate the wheel; but in a lot of the disciplines like political science or theology you really do have to sort of create a lot from scratch in terms of pulling together thinkers around the course theme or central question with case studies, etc. The Summer course prep does take significant time, since you can't just say to students, 'write an essay' but you need to plan ahead a good connection between course content and assessments, build them around good questions, and then provide clear directions for the students so the expectations are clear.

- writing letters of recommendation for students applying to internships or grad school -- or I know at Valpo I know senior colleagues actually spent a lot of their summer time writing letters of rec for junior colleagues who were trying to find positions at more stable institutions  :/

- some minimal ongoing support to students (say, if they were carrying a capstone project from junior to senior year with some work over the Summer on it)

- preparing presentations and going to conferences (for instance, two of main conferences in my field are in late May and then in June, so that's easily a month of work if I'm preparing new research to present at those)

- trying to write/publish articles, reviewing other articles, etc.

- once everything got so unstable, applying for jobs (putting together cover letter, teaching statement, research statement, and sometimes mission statement or DEI statement, teaching evals, asking for letters of rec, etc)

I think a lot of people do so much teaching at Valpo on the 3-4 or 4-4 loads with 2 or often 3 different preps a semester, that they are tempted to basically give up on the research side of it... but that is dangerous for them in a couple ways. It's important to keep up the research even at a teaching-focused institution like Valpo, since the tenure requirements for plenty of departments still expect multiple publications in peer-reviewed journals even if they're on 3-4 or 4-4 loads on the 'teacher-scholar' model that the university expects from them.  And as somebody earlier mentioned, it is actually the research profile that is usually the ticket to a better job, weirdly, even in trying to transfer to another teaching-centered institution. If you haven't published a lot when your program or position is cut, it's very, very hard to get another job elsewhere.

So faculty were generally using the Summers for course prep and to make up for the scholarship and conference or service-to-the-academy duties they weren't able to get to during the year.

[David81]

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to educate us outsiders about roles, responsibilities, and time commitments. Clearly, the workload is greater than I had ever considered. If I may, let me respectfully ask I final question to help me fully appreciate what you are saying. Anytime I drive through campus in the summer, it looks like a ghost town. What are faculty members doing behind the scenes over that "silent" period, when I don't see any students?

For better or worse, for me that "behind the scenes" work is usually in front of a laptop screen -- even more so these days because of meetings increasingly held by Zoom. You won't see me on campus every day because I may be squirreled away at home, at the local public library, or at a coffee shop. And with laptop in tow, I can be productive even while traveling. One Friday earlier this year, I participated in a 90 minute committee meeting from a hotel lobby. So it's not only the business jet setters who can do a lot of their work from anywhere! (Hence, the another example of the flexibility that I'm grateful for.)

My summer work hours may vary widely, at least in terms of reasonably productive investments of time, because the work typically involves reading, research, and writing towards publication. Call me lacking in self-discipline, but that can mean a week where I'm feeling guilty for having little to show for it, and others where I'm cranking out the prose and working into the wee hours of the morning.

Folks who are used to inputs = consistent outputs understandably may find investments of time not leading to useful "product" hard to grasp, even a "waste" of time. But scholarship, especially, is a process of stops and starts and some failed efforts. And while some scholarly writing is fairly predictable in process and product, more cutting-edge, creative, or ambitious scholarly work is sometimes hard to fit into a timetable.