THE PREPARING FUTURE FACULTY PROGRAM: WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?
by A. Leigh DeNeef

C. Differences PFF Made in the Initial Years in the Academy
If PFF made recent graduates more professionally sophisticated and gave them experience during the job search to relate to interviewing faculty as peers, it also prepared them for their first years on the job. Once again, however, this question did not register particularly high scores on the quantitative portion of the survey (3.4). One dimension of this preparation is simply the knowledge base that PFF alumni feel they have acquired in contrast to their non-PFF junior faculty peers. Angela Bryan remembers how many of the faces at her new faculty orientation at the University of Colorado were “painfully blank” as they were being told of the need to carefully balance teaching, service, and research. In several cases, alumni reported that just walking into a classroom for the first time was less stressful for them than for their colleagues because through PFF they had already “been there, done that.” “Many of my colleagues,” says Wendy Crone, “have had no teaching experience and spend a lot of time struggling with their teaching.” “In talking with them about various academic and teaching issues,” she adds,” I feel I have a massive advantage because of PFF.” Jason Cody put it this way: “PFF eliminates first-time mistakes.” Furthermore, because his PFF program “took care of the basic [pedagogical] matters,” he has been able to “take his teaching to the next level” by applying ideas from various Northwestern PFF graduate student peers to his classrooms at Lake Forest.

PFF alumni were also much more likely to be familiar with a range of particular classroom issues. Carlota Ocampo notes that her PFF program at Howard provided her with a good sense of different student bodies, especially older, continuing education students. This knowledge, she says, “was great preparation for my current job, where I am teaching a wide variety of students.” David Karp's PFF experience was not quite as useful, but looking back from his current position at Skidmore, he would now encourage PFF programs to focus more attention on “the ways in which the nature of undergraduate student backgrounds affects the nature of both your teaching and your advising.” Wendy Crone reports that, thanks to PFF, “I am more familiar with literature on teaching, with case study approaches, with cooperative learning techniques, and so forth. Peers are continually asking me now if I can recommend specific teaching resources.”

For some PFF alumni, the linkages between their PFF experiences and their initial years on the job are very direct. At the University of Denver, Scott Howard is now teaching a course in Milton that he had earlier team-taught with his PFF mentor at Seattle Pacific University. Without PFF, Scott reports, he would never have had this kind of preparatory experience.

A different kind of linkage between PFF experience and subsequent academic work can be seen in the way PFF alumni feel they have achieved a better balance, even a synergy, between their teaching and their research than that witnessed in many of their own graduate faculty advisors. Several alumni joined Kathee Godfrey in reporting that they are less likely than their former or present colleagues to see teaching and research as either distinct or in competition. Phil Camill (biology, Duke) speaks for many in affirming “life at a liberal arts college is great. I really enjoy the students and the balance of teaching and research.” Others, like Carlota Ocampo, feel fortunate to be working in an institution where “pedagogical work counts as research.” Even those now working in other academic settings have been able to bring their teaching and research into close alignment, including Charles Carter (religion, Duke), who, like several PFF alumni, has published papers specifically on his PFF experiences.

In various ways, most PFF alumni share Wendy Crone's sense that “PFF provided me with a basket of tools I'm still trying out, tools that I can pick and choose from as the need arises.” One need that several alumni did not anticipate was serving as faculty mentors for their own junior faculty colleagues. Because Wendy has this “basket of tools,” her own peers are continually asking her advice on various professional matters. “I've become,” she says, “a de facto mentor to my colleagues.” Kim Zeuli is having a similar experience: “I'm now mentoring eight junior colleagues, because PFF has given me a faster, quicker start,” particularly in various teaching methods. Wendy and Kim are representative, not only of the willingness of PFF alumni to take on mentoring responsibilities, but also of peer acknowledgment that PFF has made them more seasoned and savvy professionals. Although Jason Cody has been more reluctant to step fully into the role of de facto mentor, he too feels more experienced than many of his peers and is frequently approached by them for advice. His seasoning, in fact, did not escape the notice of his chair as well, who took the time to mention it in his annual faculty report to the dean.

Of the effects of PFF training on alumni, peer mentoring is only the most exceptional, and perhaps most surprising. Virtually all report that through PFF they have a far better understanding of the importance of faculty mentoring, and many have eagerly sought out ways in their new positions to become supportive mentors of their own students. Scott Howard, for example, uses his experience of teaching Milton at Seattle Pacific University, an institution affiliated with the Free Methodist Church, not only to make theoretical disciplinary points for his University of Denver graduate students about distinct reading communities and reader expectations, but also to instruct them in the diversity of student populations they will inevitably encounter nationally at different academic sites. In this, of course, he is effectively repeating for his own students lessons he learned earlier in his Washington PFF program. Scott also started a graduate placement service at Denver, again modeled on successful ones from his own graduate experience. Zoe Warwick (psychology, Duke) now offers her graduate students at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County a PFF-type teaching seminar based upon “best practices” garnered from her program at Duke.

Most PFF alumni agree that their programs taught them not only the overall importance of service as the “third leg” of faculty responsibility, but also how varied service requirements or expectations are at different institutions. Rick Fehrenbacher (English, Duke) speaks for many alumni when he says discussions with his PFF cluster-campus mentor first opened his eyes to the tremendous and ongoing challenge of managing time so as to meet all three obligations of teaching, research, and service. Angela Bryan says that “had I not had some PFF experience with how to balance service and research, I wouldn't have known to say ‘no'” to requests to serve on time-consuming and relatively unimportant committees.

PFF alumni feel they are on a faster track to tenure than their non-PFF colleagues. Although most would be hard pressed to offer any specific evidence for this, several agree with Joel Foisy that the experience of developing a PFF teaching portfolio was crucial preparation for putting together—without the “stress” that seemed common in their peers—an organized and comprehensive package of reappointment materials. Kathee Godfrey reports that at Fresno State she was required to submit formal “probationary plans” that articulate what she hopes to accomplish in her initial years there in terms of teaching, research and service. These plans were relatively easy to write, Kathee says, because PFF had already conditioned her to set very specific goals for herself and to conceive of her faculty life as a “triumvirate” of responsibilities. Paul Yoder (English, Duke) did not claim his PFF experience helped him achieve early tenure at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, but he is sure it helped him over initial faculty jitters. One alumnus put it this way: “I'm solidly on track for tenure, and my annual reviews indicate as much. I detail this not to brag . . . but to make the point that without my understanding of what was coming, of what would be expected of me as a faculty member . . . an understanding derived almost wholly from PFF, I would be buried.”

A somewhat different way of assessing the success of PFF is to listen to what some PFF alumni feel the program could have done better. An alumna from Arizona State said she wished she had “known more,” when she graduated, “about how to negotiate the tricky world of departmental politics.” Carlos Morrison would agree with another Howard alumnus's remark that “institutional governance and department politics were not really covered when I went through the PFF program, but these are critical to one's success in the academy.” A graduate school classmate offered a more rhetorical (mixed metaphors and all) critique: “I wish PFF had done more with ‘the art of politiking,' negotiating departmental mountains and abysses. (It can be a jungle out there!)” Paul Yoder says he would have benefited more from PFF if he had known which questions to ask of his faculty mentors: “I would have asked about factionalism within the department, about how well the faculty members got along, and what kinds of problems those relationships create in the implementation of programs and in the running of the department.” “Department politics,” Paul goes on to say, were “the single most troubling aspect of my first year or so on the job.” Fortunately, not all alumni missed this kind of preparation, and many, like Rick Fehrenbacher, feel that their PFF experiences served as a critical introduction to the whole range of “department stuff”: how committees get formed, how faculty negotiate differences, how petty squabbles can affect morale, what a chair can and cannot do. It prepared them, in short, to be a member of a departmental community as well as institutional, local, and professional ones.

One of the more surprising findings of the alumni survey and interviews is how many former PFFers have moved into administrative positions. Although it is certainly not a goal of PFF to prepare people for academic administration, it has clearly opened that option to several alumni and created a career path that they feel comfortable in following, if the personal and professional “fit” is right. Ray Person became chair of his department immediately (and unexpectedly) upon receiving tenure. He says that he is grateful for his PFF experience with cluster-campus mentors as he now assumes this responsibility in a more formal capacity. Carlota Ocampo was also appointed, in only her second year of full-time employment, as chair of the psychology program at Trinity College. Not only is she thus serving as mentor to other faculty subsequently hired in this program (many of whom, she notes, also have significant PFF experience), but she continues to serve as a prospective PFF mentor to graduate students at Howard. Says Carlota, “Graduate schools don't prepare you for the business/administrative side of academic life.” PFF, however, clearly does. Rick Fehrenbacher (English, Duke) is thinking seriously about moving into “an administrative position because of the early interest PFF fostered in how departments work.” Kathee Godfrey also says PFF helped her think more positively than many of her colleagues about the possibility of eventually moving into administration. Even now, she adds, it is the variety of roles she can assume as a faculty member that makes her job interesting and challenging.

Stuart Noble-Goodman represents an even more dramatic illustration of a PFFer whose career has taken him in administrative directions. Stuart's first job after graduate school was as director of graduate-student teaching programs at a large state university; his second was directing an undergraduate honors program at a small midwestern religious school. Currently, he is associate dean of arts and sciences at the University of Redlands—all within a space of five short years. Clearly, this is an exceptional academic trajectory, but the credit Stuart gives PFF is more the norm than the anomaly: “I'm achieving most of the professional and personal goals I set for myself, and what success I've had would not have been possible without PFF; at every juncture of my academic and professional development, my participation in Preparing Future Faculty has made a crucial difference.”