Contingent Faculty Face Exhaustion
===

[00:00:00] Andrew Hibel: I'm Andy Hibel, I'm one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs

[00:00:04] Kelly Cherwin: and I'm Kelly Cherwin the director of editorial strategy.

[00:00:07] Andrew Hibel: We're delighted to welcome you to conversations in HigherEdJobs...

[00:00:10] Kelly Cherwin: ...that we can agree that there's this energy

[00:00:13] Andrew Hibel: ...discussing honest and truthful conversations.

[00:00:15] Kelly Cherwin: I love sharing my passion for education,

Andrew Hibel: ...staying positive and focused on a job search.

[00:00:22] Kelly Cherwin: I think you and I could probably sit here and talk for another hour...

Andrew Hibel: ...Focused on your professional group,

Kelly Cherwin: ...sharing job search strategies and tips with our readers and our listeners.

Andrew Hibel: Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast.

[00:00:34] Kelly Cherwin: So we're going to move into an article that we found on Diverse Issues in Higher Education. It's called "Student Facing College Workers, Contingent Faculty Face Exhaustion."

And I think we all can agree that exhaustion is a good word that can describe how we've been feeling over the past couple of years. And one quote that kind of stuck out to me was by Jenny Connolly, the associate director at the University of Northern Iowa. She said, once again, people are just exhausted with the [00:01:00] unknown. The unknown I feel like is as a common theme of we, we get on a roll and we think something's going to happen. And then it changes. And then we think there's a new norm and then it changes. So it's this constant back and forth that is stressing people out. So how do college campuses face that? And especially as this article says, people that are on kind of the front lines, dealing with the students,

Andrew Hibel: People are exhausted and uncertainty is huge.

I think there's a teachable moment here for us in higher education to really recognize, certainty is somewhat illusory. I think what's so exceptional right now is the amount of uncertainty because things are uncertain. It's almost like they're perpetually uncertain. Many things are day-to-day, normally pretty uncertain.

But there's a certain regularity to our lives that we get used to, whether it's a variant that happens or a change in the regulations, we're constantly having to readjust as to what the current circumstances have is really taking its toll on many folks. And particularly in higher [00:02:00] education, a lot of folks who have a heck of a lot of responsibility in interacting with others.

[00:02:05] Kelly Cherwin: I don't know how you feel, Andy, but I think as this article says, a lot of people are tired of hearing, "Let's get back to normal." I don't know if there is ever a time that we will get back to normal. Having leadership on campus, say, just be patient, we'll get back to normal. I think a lot of employees are like, "What does that even mean?"

They're looking for support from their leadership team on how they can successfully do their job in these trying times.

Andrew Hibel: I think they'd even happy with just an acknowledgement of the vast amount of uncertainty, the idea that, well, you know, "we're all in this together" or "we're going to get back to normal."

Yes. I hope that our lives are more resembling what they were in 2019 at some point, but we can't look at the pandemic like we did in March, 2020, where we just go back to our offices in six to eight weeks and everything would be like, it was in January of 2020. And some acknowledgement [00:03:00] of the uncertain world run amok both on college campuses

and, also personally, I think people are looking for leadership to acknowledge the uncertainty first and foremost.

[00:03:11] Kelly Cherwin: I think we all can acknowledge that the past couple of years have been extremely difficult, but on the flip side, I think we can all realize that there have been some positive side effects.

Institutions have been forced to, to pivot and be more creative in how they are looking at how people can do their jobs. There's more flexibility in the workplace now.

Andrew Hibel: We heard that from Jeff about the college in his town that is having food service workers have more flexible schedules, the acknowledgement that those positive side-effects, they're actually part and parcel of the whole great resignation.

Yes, you're having these side effects and the employers do acknowledge this, that employees are going to look at the world a little bit different than they did before are going to have more success than employers who still see the world as they did three years ago. At its core, to me, that's [00:04:00] what the great resignation is all about.

You really can't separate those two with those positive side effects, the way people work and how they want to work and how they need to work. I think one of the interesting parts over the past couple of years, that's run parallel to the pandemic is a lot of the frustration with our country and particularly income inequality.

A lot of employment issues related to the pandemic have seen workers who are not as compensated as much as other workers being forced to put their own health at risk in order to do their jobs and being forced to do so under circumstances that sometimes really, even more so putting their health at risk.

There's a quote in this article from Kevin Kruger, who's the president of NASPA, the leading student affairs association in higher ed, where he says "...the circumstances of working on campus during COVID has been extremely challenging. A lot of higher ed professionals didn't come into this work thinking they'd be on the front lines of global pandemic and [00:05:00] putting their own health at risk."

I think that's so true. Folks who are out there working on those front lines are there because they love working with students. And they're there because they love working with people. And now they're having to look at that a little bit differently. And in many instances, other administrators and faculty who are not necessarily forced to interact with the outside world as much, and in many instances, aren't having to do that.

I think that dichotomy and that part of the conversation to what else is going on in the world has been a bit of a reckoning for a number of different higher ed institutions. The idea about pay, to be doing this work for the same pay for a lot of folks may not be worth it. The risk is not worth the reward.

And particularly in instances, like we mentioned before, where there's short staffing to do it for the same amount of pay and having to work harder and putting yourself at risk, really kind of changes that and I think goes to your point of going from the [00:06:00] burnout and frustration to desperation, not feeling like there's a solvable solution to the situation they're in which to me is at the core of all of this.

[00:06:10] Kelly Cherwin: Well, that's why I think this is a huge wake-up call for employers. They have to look at the morale of their workforce and understand that things can't just keep going on. You can't expect people to make up for someone who is no longer working there for the same pay. People just are not going to do that.

I hope leadership can acknowledge that things have to change moving forward.

Andrew Hibel: I think it's also as the article mentions, it's overlaid with the mental health challenges of so many students, faculty and staff that are going through both professionally and personally in this time. And that just, that just adds to the burden of those folks who are out there working with people.

[00:06:48] Kelly Cherwin: Oftentimes there's been situations where someone might not have that title of working in mental health, but they might be working with a student who has mental health issues. So they're being overloaded with not only [00:07:00] doing, like say they're working in the registrar's office to do that, but then they have someone come in that might need some assistance. So they're being torn to do many different skills that they originally weren't hired for.

Andrew Hibel: You're exactly right. They're being asked to do things that they're not necessarily trained on, but are very important. And while it's not a burden to them personally, it's adding to a workload that's already growing and in a situation where they're not necessarily comfortable, there was a quote here from Dr. Christina Maslach, who's the professor emeritus of psychology at UC Berkeley. And she said, "...job burnout is a response to chronic job stressors than have not been successfully managed. There are huge a number of self care options for people to cope with their job stressors today, yet that doesn't prevent burnout because it doesn't change the source of the stress.

So we can give them as many coping mechanisms and different ways to handle burnout, but burnout, without going to the cause of the burnout is going to lead to those more desperate [00:08:00] situations. And I think that that's a major concern for folks.

[00:08:04] Kelly Cherwin: I agree if we can't address the issue, how are we supposed to solve the problem if we don't know what the problem is?

Andrew Hibel: I thought another part that was interesting about the article, it also differentiated adjunct faculty from tenure track in that they're generally having larger classes and having to have just more volume compared to their tenure track peers. Kelly, I feel like we've come to a point in our conversation where right now there's just a lot of doom and gloom that we're offering.

I don't want to combat the positivity that's out there and over abundance at times with just a harsh, harsh dose of reality without really saying, where are some of the solutions. Where do you think professionals in higher education leaders, but also colleagues can be doing to make sure that some of these issues are being better addressed?

[00:08:52] Kelly Cherwin: I think a big thing to do is to speak up, address your concerns, complaining to yourself or to a coworker when nothing is going to get [00:09:00] resolved, doesn't help the situation. Reach out to others that might be feeling the same thing, have a support group. The article actually referenced that for adjunct faculty members, they might want to connect with others that might be in their same situation.

Address those issues with leadership, they might not even know what you're feeling or what's going on because they're not in the classroom. They're not online. They might not know that you had 25 students last semester, and this semester you have 50, don't assume that people know what you're going through.

So speak up. I think that's the biggest thing I could advise is communicate with your leadership team.

Andrew Hibel: And I would say to the leadership team, listen to those folks, respond to them, but also understand that, hey, there needs to be commensurate pay if there's additional duties and short staffing, but also try to deal with the staffing issue.

Try to deal with the pay issues, treat people well, treat them with respect. To me, that's a mission issue. That is part of your mission, which is to serve [00:10:00] your community, your students and education well, and I think that that goes to its core. If the mission issue isn't enough, let's look at the business part of this. Replacing a good employee is extremely difficult. It's very expensive and it's time consuming. You're better off trying to retain your good employees and keep them happy than going out there and saying, let's see what's in the pool. There are a lot of people searching for jobs. There's also a lot of jobs open, but either way, even if you end up with a better candidate, you're going to lose a lot of time and also further affect that morale because you're not retaining the people you need to be retaining

As a leader, if you can't see the mission, purpose, and wanting to serve staff and faculty that way, look at the business case.

[00:10:46] Kelly Cherwin: I completely agree. The final comment I have here is stated by Jenny Connolly, from the University of Iowa, she said, "I'm also really done with hearing. 'We're so resilient.' And I think students are done with hearing that as well. I think resilience has the idea that we've [00:11:00] overcome and moved on, but we haven't overcome this. I want everyone to remember that we're people too." I think this summarizes that, yes, this is trying, but we need to keep moving forward. And instead of the word resilient, maybe we turn to words of adaptable, flexible, and hopeful.

We'd really like to hear from our listeners about where are you right now? We want to hear what the challenges are that you're seeing. And we also want to hear the successes of schools out there that are up to meeting these challenges, tweet us at @HigherEdJobs or drop us an email at podcast@higheredjobs.com.

Thank you for joining us today and we'll look forward to talking next time.