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From: cynthiah@UTDALLAS.EDU
Subject: Re: New leaders and established leaders
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 1995 08:04:58 -0500
Cynthia Selfe makes some extremely valuable points about balancing bothelectronic and print production towards tenure and promotion. And in heracknowledgements of leaders and mentors who are not building empires somuch as fostering collective efforts that slowly, but surely, move thefield ahead....Cindy's words are encouraging. As a new assistantprofessor who goes on the tenure clock in September, I have been givenextremely mixed signals at my institution. On the one hand, I was hiredto direct a rhetoric program, and it was a bonus that I could superviseand maintain a computer classroom since that's were the courses aretaught. It was also a bonus (or so they indicated) that I couldincorporate Internet into the pedagogy of this program. On the otherhand, as I have plunged deep into the abyss of the Internet (spending onewhole semester designing and creating a MOO for our program), I find lotsof support and lots of nay-saying. One assistant professor who goes upfor tenure in the fall even told me "I don't want to be crass, but allthat technology stuff you're doing won't count for anything." Now, that could discourage me or put a fire under my *-- to worktoward my tenure with what I consider a dogged determination to constructa set of criteria unique to me and my contributions to the university.In other words, it didn't scare me a bit. What I can do here, if notvalued, will be appreciated somewhere else, and I aim to let them knowthis. The market for using technology in teaching is exploding, thoughnot necessarily in the MLA joblist. We must begin to see ourselves ashybrids, and to look through post-disciplinary lenses, in order toconstruct our own job descriptions and positions. Heck, I've seen jobslisted in WIRED magazine that rival the vision of most of theadministrators out there putting together ads at this very minute for theOctober joblist. Don't get me wrong...I am happy where I am...but I amnot discouraged by the mixed signals, it only makes me more determined topursue my work in the most diverse ways possible...and joining up withvarious collectives to support each other in our individual andcollective efforts to become hybrids in a post-disciplinary multi-versity. One anecdote...a friend who will be on the market this year, andwho represents this kind of hybridization (his areas are digital art,video production, rhetoric, critical theory, photography, among otherthings) is putting his CV on cd-rom and plans to send the CD out with aletter that in effect says, "if you can't read this CV, then I don't wantto work for you." Of course, it won't be that literal :)...and ifsomeone says, WOW, we want someone like you who can help us set upsystems that WOULD allow us to do that, then he will send them all theprint CVs they want. (He's not stupid :)) All this to say thatcreativity, determination, and savvy are necessary to survive the marketin the future...and most importantly, so keep up with our students forwhom all of this is by now, very close to second nature.Cynthia Haynes-BurtonUniversity of Texas at Dallas
_____cynthiah@utdallas.edu___________http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~cynthiah/__________Lingua MOO_____http://mohawk.utdallas.edu:7000______University of Texas at Dallas, School of Arts & HumanitiesPO Box 830688-Mail Station JO 31, Richardson, Tx 75083Tel: 214-883-6340 - Fax: 214-883-2989