Miami needs to recognize role of visiting professors
With the onset of spring break comes this sobering fact: my position here at Miami University will likely not be renewed next year. I am currently a visiting assistant professor in geography, but I am not alone: most of the visiting faculty here have read the writing on the wall and believe that due to the economic problems in this state we will not be rehired. While we understand that our positions are for one year only, I believe visiting faculty on this campus fill a vital role for the undergraduate students we serve. In the first place, most of us are good teachers, many of us are very good teachers and a few of us are excellent teachers. We are hired for our teaching and are new to academia, so we introduce new pedagogical techniques and are generally intent on receiving high course evaluation marks to prove ourselves in higher education. Secondly, we teach more courses than the average tenure-track or tenured faculty member does. For example, I have taught five unique classes here in two years (and fourteen overall) with a total of about seven hundred students enrolled (or approximately five percent of Miami's undergraduates).
As a result of my position being eliminated, the geography department will not be able to offer an honor's section of Geography 101 or Southeast Asian Development and will likely have to expand the enrollments of the fewer introductory courses that will be offered. Thirdly, many of the visiting faculty at Miami attend to matters that are not necessarily quantifiable in assessing the undergraduate experience. For example, I have advised four students on their senior capstone projects or independent studies, given talks in dorms on my research, taken students to Jungle Jim's, and written over 60 letters of recommendation for my students to support their job applications, to include in their study abroad application materials, for internships, to be a tour guide on campus, etc. Where will these students turn when my visiting colleagues and I are gone?
Lastly, because most of the visiting faculty have recently finished long dissertations, we often meet or exceed publishing expectations set by our respective departments. I am resigned to leaving Miami in May, when my term is up, but I feel that students will be unprepared for the changes they see come fall 2009. It is in this spirit that I respectfully urge the Miami administration to rethink its language regarding saving faculty jobs from the cuts at this university. Provost Jeffery Herbst, in an interview with The Miami Student published Feb. 27, said, "None of the positions to be cut involve faculty." If and when visiting positions are cut, this quote misleads our students and unfairly delegitimizes the hard work visitors have done as "faculty members."
Jamie Gillen, PhD gillenmj@muohio.edu
Policy debate team plays vital part in undergrad education
The past week highlighted life as a Miami University alumnus. Saturday evening I celebrated our school's 200th birthday with fellow Miamians here in Dallas. Wednesday evening I had the opportunity to judge a public debate between Southern Methodist University and Wiley College, the latter of The Great Debaters cinema fame. Thursday morning I learned that the policy debate program at Miami, the foundation of the university's forensics program and an organization with more than 100 years of history in Oxford, was a casualty of economic factors and internal politics. Friday afternoon, I received mail from the Miami Luxembourg program looking for an alumnus interested in the Student Activities Coordinator position at MUDEC.
The past week showcased three of the experiences that helped to get me to where I am today, and I fear one of those is going to be lost due to shortsighted decision making. Policy debate is the most intense and rewarding of the many forms of intercollegiate debate. No other activity combines the intensity of the research, rhetoric and competition that policy debate offers to undergraduate students. I understand that many of the graduate programs at the university have been cut due to the worldwide financial situation, in order to better focus on Miami's core mission of undergraduate education. To allow the Miami policy debate team to fall by the wayside would be to deny a fundamental pillar of the undergraduate experience.
This announcement comes on the heels of Miami's ninth consecutive qualification for the National Debate Tournament (NDT)-the NCAA tournament of policy debate. Few schools in the country of Miami's size and resources can claim consistent success on this level for nearly a decade. The coaches and debaters for this year are now facing the national championship final as their last tournament ever. Miami's debate team not only represented the university strongly in intercollegiate competition but also brought a needed source of intellect and balance to the on-campus experience. The Miami policy debate team holds two to three debates a semester for students in Communication 135, a class that is required not only for speech communication majors but for all students entering Miami's renowned Farmer School of Business. Policy debate is one of the top qualities sought after for law school and graduate school applicants. Debaters engage in advocacy of all sorts across the political spectrum and provide a needed base of students with strong critical thinking abilities and dedication to education beyond the classroom. My teammates from Miami are now working as lawyers, political advisers, government officials, professors and businessmen and women.
If Miami genuinely is seeking to refocus on undergraduate education in these difficult economic times, debate opportunities should be supported as vigorously as ever. The program's strong alumni base is seeking to engage the administration to find a solution to continue the tradition of policy debate at Miami.
Congratulations to Aaron Vinson and Drew Wallenstein on their achievement of qualifying for the NDT. Let's work to make sure the streak can go to ten next year.
Tim Glass '05 themapman@gmail.com
Local project offers chance to contribute to water week
In her amusing essay, "Charging for water reflects recession's pervasive effect," (March 3, 2009) Amy Biolchini questions why a fast-food establishment finds it necessary to charge a nickel for a cup of tap water. She writes, "Even in sit-down restaurants, water comes free of charge." She further wonders whether this "basic human necessity" shouldn't be "accessible to any person at any time." Unfortunately, there are over 900 million people in this world who do not have access to safe, clean drinking water, and some 4,200 of them die every day from water-related causes. UNICEF-USA addresses this problem through its TAP PROJECT (tapproject.org), where sit-down restaurants all over the country are inviting (not "charging") customers to contribute small amounts of money to UNICEF to bring about much-needed change to this situation ("make change for a dollar.") We Tap Project volunteers in the Oxford area invite everyone to patronize the participating restaurants (look for the above motto on window-clings) during World Water Week, March 22 to 28. In doing this, we may all feel good about "paying" for the normally free commodity we all take for granted.
Prof. Emeritus Peter Carels Unitarian Universalist community, Volunteer coordinator in the Oxford area for the Tap Project carelspe@muohio.edu
