Re: compensation

[Sara Kimball <skimball@uts.cc.utexas.edu>]

Jeanne, I couldn't agree more, though I'd point out that it's not just 
people working for tenure who face burnout and bitterness.  I suspect as 
a general rule writing center people (and maybe more broadly composition 
people) are willing to bring an extrordinary amount of passion and 
capacity for hard work to their jobs, but we have to be careful not to 
let our greatest virtues become our greatest weaknesses.  This is 
something I think we're facing in the Division of Rhetoric and 
Composition at UT.  Several of us were willing to work extremely hard to 
get things up and running during our first years, but now it's time to 
figure out how to assure permanance, while not rejecting innovation and 
rational expansion.  Good people have to be willing to put in extraordinary effort to meet a 
crisis or seize and opportunity (and crises have this interesting way of 
morphing into opportunities) but it's important to make it clear to the 
powers that be that an initial spurt can't be institutionalized as a 
permanent level of effort.  I think the argument that over-work (or more 
bluntly, exploitation) builds in mediocrity is the key.  I'm not sure I 
expect administrations to respond well to "You're treating us badly." but 
a responsible administration should respond to "If you want a first-rate 
whatever, this is what you have to do such-and-such to support it."  It's an 
argument I made myself several times during the process of getting our writing 
center up and running. I realize that different people have different 
levels of protection and support and hence, differing abilities to make 
arguments.  But it's more likely to work than you might think.  And if 
it's difficult for whatever reason to think of it as asking for support 
for oneself, then think of it as also asking for support for a successor 
and, therefore, for a program or institution.  
Sara Kimball
UT Austin



On Tue, 10 Sep 1996, Jeanne H. Simpson wrote:

> Having said that only half jokingly,  I believe that we must work hard to
> assist this person by pointing out that most of these elements get at
> least 1/4 to 1/3 released time *each*.  The responsible answer is that to
> hire one person to do all these things is to build in mediocrity, for no
> one could possibly do it all well.  We need to stop conveying the message
> that it is ok to demand this kind for work for low salaries, and that it
> is ok to hire people with the expectation that they will perform it and
> then to allow them to burn out and become bitter and difficult in the
> effort to do the impossible under the threat of non-tenure.  As a
> profession we simply have to start providing the honest answer. To me the
> honest answer, no joke: pay this person at the level of department chair
> at the very least.