Topic introduction:

Amy comes as a humanist Political Scientist.  How can we talk with rank and tenure committees?  Also, having picked things up on her own, how does one build those skills?

Dick: My progress through tenure and promotion (while switching fields from math to CS years ago) was hampered by the time I invested in coming up to speed with technology, and helping others with those technologies.  None of that counted towards tenure.  Also, values in my field of CS were not well understood by my tenure and promotion committee.  How can we avoid this in the case of DH?

Discussion

Jackie: We all bear the burden of educating our colleagues.  This places burden on individuals to make the work of DH legible.

___: As a new faculty member, what is our advice?  How can we explain, make relevant, especially when there’s almost a service element?

Erin:  Must be able to explain whatever one’s field is.  Being at a liberal arts college, there’s more freedom to explore.

Jackie:  Are there places where we can send deans and provosts to?

Sara:  Looking at Twitter as a form of citation.

Rebecca:  At AACU:  Those administrators need examples and models of tenure cases.  MLA has something, but not enough;  Nines working on it.

Dick:  A white paper from one or more professional societies would help.

John:  Has been on a tenure and promotion committee.  It is just accepted.  Ryan:  as an interviewee, was asked “where do you see your scholarship going in next five years?”  Scientist asked for “traditional forms of scholarship….”

Erin:  We need to be aware of it.

John:  Departmental statement was rewritten.

Amy:  Will have to work hard to make the case for her tenure and promotion, make the case clearly to a heterogeneous group.

Dick:  Explicit wording of a departmental statement of values for tenure and promotion that recognizes DH would be enough.

Rebecca:  Katherine Harris sent a tweet about expertise.

___:  Were there relevant comments in the “communicating with colleagues” section?

Mark:  No.

Jackie:  What about interdisciplinary collaborations?

Ryan:  Seeking collaboration with computer scientists;  Dick is seeking collaborators in Humanities.

Mark:  Needs to be incentives on both sides.  Same with mentoring (as came up in “communicating with colleagues” session).

Rebecca:  What about role of undergraduate research as an incentive?

Jackie:  Collaborations such as LAC-R1 or anything newsworthy, and can help to make a tenure/promotion case.

Ryan:  There are NYT articles about DH this year.  Sometimes easier to make the case for outsiders!

Rebecca:  Role of grant agencies.  Can you get credit from peer-reviewed grant.

John:  Peer review an issue. DH that is “just doing it” won’t count.

___: At a small college, what do resources look like, how do they get shared, and how does that go?

Erin:  Laptop… That’s it.  She is her own tech support, and her IT department doesn’t support her Mac.  Particularly interested in partnerships with research-intensive schools.

Jackie:  Are there opportunities for multiple LACs to collaborate on grants?  Can we band together?

Dick:  I’m looking for that.  Is there funding for LAC-LAC collaboration?

Rebecca:  Talking to people about this.  One model is trading expertise for expertise.  NITLE is interested, Mellon is interested.  Will have to collaborate in order to .

Dick:  Start-up grants need initiation by a humanist, and I’m a CS collaborator.

Jackie:  Need an innovation statement.

Rebecca:  Brett Bobley is interested in new models of pedagogy, as well as innovation in humanities and innovation in technology.  Talk to Jen or Brett.

Ryan:  Need to connect.  Join DHAnswers, which supports technical questions, with vetting.  On a similar model, DHCommons is for collaborating on projects. Some big projects might use that site to collaborate or disseminate.  Quinn put the site together, several others here are involved.

Dick:  This kind of collaboration needs some face-to-face time to get started.

Rebecca:  Needs the face-to-face, which will happen at MLA session.

Mark:  If have gifted undergraduates doing innovative work, where should they go for graduate school, where they can grow their enthusiasm?

Sara:  Can be a divide at an institution between old guard and newer faculty;  at her institution, younger faculty are gathering to band together over lunch.  Helps them to bring informed internal ideas to the table.

Dan:  Had a discussion among faculty including both older and younger faculty, and some of the older faculty asked how they could help.

Ryan:  This is how DH gained a foothold.  Some with traditional scholarship are endorsing.

Ryan:  At MLA, it was said doing DH requires twice as much work, since must do the traditional scholarship, too.

Erin:  Fortunately, at LAC, don’t need the book for tenure.

Dick: Get it in writing.

Ryan:  There are these advantages of being at a small college.

Erin:  Have more latitude to create new courses.

Dick: Quinn said the same.

Jackie:  How many people are on job market.

Dick:  I meant getting the tenure values in writing for the committee.

Ryan:  Getting tenure and promotion letters.

Dick:  A possible model:  Computer scientist and student collaborates with digital humanist and student

Rebecca:  Wheaton College Old English/CS/Stat project to find about authorship is an example.  Their college requires a collaborative linked courses project.

Jackie:  At MLA DH track, do you need to build things in order o be a DHer?  Other questions:  What is feasible? What is feasible at undergraduate level? What computational competencies do DHers need in order to collaborate?

Dan: At Occidental, a staff group consults with faculty on these technologies.

Dick:  This is related to the technology center idea that arose in the student panel.

Dan: Doing that at Occidental, with students who help support.

I’ve just finished rereading the postings and comments through yesterday morning, and I have four session topics to propose after seeing our group-generated body of work so far. I’ll make separate postings for them, since the group will probably want to consider them individually. Here’s the first one:

How will the academic rewards system treat work in the Digital Humanities, for purposes of tenure and promotion?

The question of academic recognition of computationally-assisted scholarly work arose indirectly in Molly’s post on librarian-faculty collaboration: how do think about each other’s work? I think of it when I see Ryan and Megan’s comments about developing evaluation practices for multimedia assignments. Will the value of that time investment be recognized by our peers? New DH faculty and their colleagues who must evaluate their work have the most to benefit from a consideration of this topic. Marlowjm’s questions in that post about recognition by administration and faculty and support by an IT department indicate the importance of knowing how DH efforts will be considered in faculty evaluation, and several comments on that post seem relevant to me. In Amy’s Finding one’s way, Michelle’s comment about “teaching the technology at the expense of teaching our subject area” has relevance to how our work might be evaluated by our peers, and Amy’s thought about taking an introductory computer science course herself raises the important issue of whether we can afford such time investments for training and education (particularly if a tenure clock is involved). Blake’s excellent example of assessing computer-assisted music composition indicates a substantial issue in all of our fields. If evaluating digital work challenges specialists in our disciplines, how can a small-college tenure-and-promotion committee know how to judge it’s value?

I am particularly aware of this issue, having been part of the expansion of a technologically intensive field (computer science) housed within related departments (of mathematics) at two SLACs. The more I read in these postings and comments about colleagues pouring time into learning new technologies, the more I want those pioneers to understand how that investment will be recognized and valued, so they can make wise choices. With some proactive steps, I’m hoping tenure and promotion guidelines can adjust for DH in a more timely manner than it did during the CS transition.