It was staggeringly cold.
It didn’t make it over 20F on that Friday. At times, there was serious blowing snow on top of the freeze. My car slid on the ice while driving to campus. But I made it there in time for two internal meetings.
One of the initiatives that was started over a year ago is reviewing the HCII design curriculum to make it more cohesive and reactive to current student and industry needs. I volunteered to be on the committee to help revamp the existing curriculum, figuring that I had a pretty good idea of what people graduating our programs were in for once they leave here. As part of this effort, we also debated what the Mission Statement was for the design area of the HCII. Lots more on this later.
Then was my first faculty meeting, which was unintentionally enlightening.
Here’s some inside baseball: Before coming to teach here and even while in grad school, I didn’t give much thought to the hierarchy of faculty. A professor was a professor was a professor. But once you actually become faculty, turns out that matters a great deal.
There are roughly three tiers of faculty. There’s research faculty, which is probably what you think of when you think “professor.” They usually teach one class in fall and spring semesters in their subject area and spend the rest of their time (and all of summer) doing research and guiding the Ph.D. students. They can be tenured, meaning they can only be terminated for a justifiable cause or under extreme circumstances. (All other faculty have contracts, usually for three years at a time. My contract is for a single year.)
Next down is teaching faculty, of which I’m one of five in the HCII. Teaching faculty spend their time, well, teaching instead of researching. At CMU HCII, teaching faculty teach three classes a semester, and two during the summer (a heavy load, considering each class is 8 hours in the classroom, plus ~10 hours outside of class doing grading and prep = 54 hours a week). Teaching faculty also have no voting rights, meaning for significant department issues (e.g. things like hiring), teaching faculty have no say. An assistant research professor with little experience can vote, but a full teaching professor could not. Teaching faculty aren’t typically tenured, although it can happen. (My role as Professor of Practice also falls into the teaching faculty bucket.)
Both research and teaching faculty have three levels: assistant, associate, and full professor. Full = tenured (at least for research faculty). There are three assistant teaching faculty (including me) and two associates. The research faculty seems fairly evenly divided between assistant, associate, and full.
Finally, at the bottom are adjunct faculty, who have no voting rights, no tenure, and no benefits. The plight of adjuncts is pretty well known. Adjunct faculty are basically contractors, although many of them teach at the university for many years and are extremely knowledgeable. Adjuncts can occasionally become teaching faculty. Teaching faculty seldom become research faculty.
Again, all of this was completely opaque to me as a student. But when you’re in a room of 40 faculty and five of you can’t vote, it’s noticeable. Which is what happened at my first faculty meeting.
Just discovered your sub stack! A belated welcome to Pittsburgh! I worked at CMU back in 84/85. Good times! I also just discovered they are running a podcast! It's a 2FER of discovery! Enjoy! https://www.library.cmu.edu/cut-pathways-podcast