HOW FORMS OF CAPITAL SHAPE THE TEACHING PRACTICES OF WOMEN IN FIXED-TERM FACULTY POSITIONS Alisha Emiko Blalock By 2019 A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education—Doctor of Philosophy HOW FORMS OF CAPITAL SHAPE THE TEACHING PRACTICES OF WOMEN IN FIXED-TERM FACULTY POSITIONS ABSTRACT By Alisha Emiko Blalock This critical narrative study illuminates the teaching practices of women in fixed-term faculty positions. While a groundswell of research has been presented on fixed-term or non- tenure track faculty, very few provide in-depth descriptions of their teaching as it is shaped by their experiences in graduate school. I drew from the theoretical work of Bourdieu to highlight how access to and accrual of social, economic, and cultural capital informed future careers and workplace performance for women in fixed-term position. From the narratives of 16 women at a comprehensive university in the Midwest, I described 1) two pathways into and through graduate school and 2) three archetypes to describe their teaching practices. Findings from this study suggested having a spouse and/or communities ties created a sense of stability for the women in my study, thereby giving them greater agency in the classroom. These findings draw attention to the important ways personal lives, or lives lived outside academia, shape the teaching work of faculty in fixed-term positions. Furthermore, my findings draw attention to how the fixed-term or non-tenure track faculty is stratified within itself, and this stratification is ordered through the institution of marriage or ties to local community. Copyright by ALISHA EMIKO BLALOCK 2019 For my grandmothers, Annabelle and Kikue, and my daughter, Miriam iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Five years ago I never imagined I would move us here, to Michigan, so that I could pursue my PhD. Kevin, I am so thankful for your loving support, for your deep encouragement, for reminding me why we came here. You have always been with me on this journey and I am so deeply grateful for you. Mom and Dad, you have always been my biggest fans, and always pushed me to listen to my heart, to remain connected to my own spirit, and to stay open to possibilities. Thank you for always sharing how exciting this is; you’ve come on this journey with me. To my community back “home.” I longed to be home so much while I was here, and you all loved and supported me, cheering me on from afar and keeping me close with our phone calls and texts and emails and annual visits. I love you all, Brenda Hodges-Howell and Simone Frazier, my beautiful dear friends; Meaghan Robbins and Liz Byrne my beautiful dear sister- friends. How could I have imagined the good people I would meet while here to dive into school, and yet also to have a life, a support system? Dr. Heather Shea, Tom Fritz, and Kari Lopez, you are Team Read, the folks I first met to form our reading group and eventually our constant encouragement and friendship group. We’ve shared much together and I’m so thankful for you all. To Dr. Renata Opoczynski, who embraced me when I first arrived, showed me the ropes, and became a fast friend. Dr. Rob Hill, your laughter and vulnerability have inspired and encouraged me. You’ll always be my favorite editor and who’s feedback I most look forward to. Thank you for being on this journey with me from day one. To Dr. Dave Nguyen, for your dry humor and honest skepticism, and for letting me be a recipient of your immense generosity. In the early days v of proposal writing, Aliya Beavers and Dr. Qiana Green you provided so much support. Your feedback, idea sharing, office or Starbucks writing helped me keep going from the very beginning. The long slog of sorting, writing, erasing, thinking, Kayon Hall you helped keep my summer writing going; Dr. Sam Larson, you always gave me the space to write. In the final stretch, to Dr. Brett Say, your feedback, your time, your enthusiasm to sort through ideas with me, and Dr. Jay Larson your willingness to read this thing and help me tidy it up, thank you. To the women in this study, your time and transparency, your ability to show vulnerability, to share your stories and also laugh with me are what made this dissertation possible. To Karla Bellingar, for the hours and hours of transcription and encouraging emails as I went through data collection. To Mary Tate and Courtney Kosloski for helping to keep me on track and always being willing to answer my random questions when I come up to the fourth floor. Finally, to the faculty at Michigan State in the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education program. In particular, to Dr. Brendan Cantwell, for guiding me through this process. I have truly enjoyed laughing with you, learning from you, and coming to call you colleague. Thank you for the intellectual challenges and pushing me academically. To Dr. Leslie Gonzales, for being so enthusiastic to join my committee not long after you came to HALE. I am so thankful for your encouragement and mentorship. To Dr. Terah Chambers, for your warmth and inquiry, for always asking me questions and checking in. And to Dr. Dongbin Kim, for your openness to join my committee, and to spend time with me when I pop in to toss ideas around, and to talk through big concepts and see how they might work. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................... x LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................ xi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 Statement of the Problem and Purpose of Study ......................................................................... 2 Theoretical Framework ................................................................................................................ 4 Importance of Study .................................................................................................................... 5 Design of Study ........................................................................................................................... 6 Organization of Dissertation ........................................................................................................ 7 CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND ...................................................................................................... 9 Field: Social Traditions and Higher Education ......................................................................... 10 Marriage and academia. ......................................................................................................... 12 Field: Non-Tenure Track Faculty and Work ............................................................................. 16 The growth of non-tenure track positions. ............................................................................. 17 Conditions of work. ............................................................................................................... 19 Summary of field. .................................................................................................................. 22 Habitus: Women in the Academy .............................................................................................. 22 Socialization and women in graduate school. ....................................................................... 25 Experiences of women non-tenure track faculty. .................................................................. 27 Women of color faculty. ........................................................................................................ 30 Summary of habitus. .............................................................................................................. 34 Practice: Women Teachers in the Academy .............................................................................. 35 Faculty agency. ...................................................................................................................... 37 Teaching practices and student learning. ............................................................................... 41 Summary of practice. ............................................................................................................. 43 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGICAL CHOICES ........................................................................ 45 My Role as the Researcher ........................................................................................................ 45 Critical Qualitative Inquiry and Narrative Inquiry .................................................................... 48 Research Design ........................................................................................................................ 52 Field: site selection. ............................................................................................................... 53 Habitus: participants. ............................................................................................................. 53 Practice: data collection ......................................................................................................... 54 Process for Analysis .................................................................................................................. 57 Personal reflections and partner debriefing. .......................................................................... 58 Narrative arc. ......................................................................................................................... 59 Summary of Methodological Choices ....................................................................................... 65 CHAPTER 4: PATHWAYS .......................................................................................................... 66 Pathways to Graduate School and Move to Lakeside University ............................................. 67 vii The Traditional Pathway ........................................................................................................... 73 Magdeline and Janie. ............................................................................................................. 74 Elaine. .................................................................................................................................... 81 Patricia and Adrianne. ........................................................................................................... 83 Dee and Eleanor. .................................................................................................................... 91 Joy. ......................................................................................................................................... 95 Summary of traditional pathway. .......................................................................................... 97 The Local Pathway .................................................................................................................. 100 Jill and Nan. ......................................................................................................................... 101 Dorothy, Liz, and Nadean. ................................................................................................... 106 Kiki. ..................................................................................................................................... 111 Anna. .................................................................................................................................... 114 Janet. .................................................................................................................................... 116 Summary of local pathway. ................................................................................................. 118 Pathways, capital, and the field ............................................................................................... 120 CHAPTER 5: PRACTICE AND STRATEGIC ACTIONS ........................................................ 122 The Importance of Field in Strategic Action: Practice at Lakeside University ....................... 124 The Planners ............................................................................................................................ 126 Developing long-term strategies. ......................................................................................... 126 Creating personal fulfillment. .............................................................................................. 132 Summary of Planners: Having a sense of choice. ............................................................... 136 The Laborers ............................................................................................................................ 137 Recognizing students. .......................................................................................................... 137 Preserving a sense of self. .................................................................................................... 141 Summary of Laborers: Doing the work without long-term strategies. ................................ 146 The Wanderers ......................................................................................................................... 146 Longing for research. ........................................................................................................... 147 Confronting the future. ........................................................................................................ 150 Summary of Wanderers: Being displaced from/in the field. ............................................... 154 The Planners, the Laborers, and the Wanderers ...................................................................... 156 CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS ............................................................... 157 Relationships as social capital ................................................................................................. 161 Marriage as social capital in academia. ............................................................................... 162 Community ties as social capital in academia. .................................................................... 165 Contributions to Related Literature: Marriage in Academia ................................................... 170 Complicating Related Literature: Community Ties in Academia ........................................... 171 Implications ............................................................................................................................. 173 Understanding graduate school pathways. .......................................................................... 174 Faculty employment. ........................................................................................................... 176 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 178 CHAPTER 7: EPILOGUE .......................................................................................................... 180 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................. 183 viii APPENDIX A: Paintings ............................................................................................................. 184 APPENDIX B: Research participation consent form .................................................................. 189 APPENDIX C: Interview protocol .............................................................................................. 190 APPENDIX D: Recruitment email .............................................................................................. 195 APPENDIX E: Resources/forms of capital ................................................................................. 197 APPENDIX F: Coding bundles for practice ................................................................................ 198 APPENDIX G: Individual categories and characteristics ........................................................... 199 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................ 200 ix LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1: Traditional Pathway Attributes and Capital ................................................................. 70 Table 4.2: Local Pathway Attributes and Capital .......................................................................... 71 Table 6.1: Pathways and Archetypes ........................................................................................... 160 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Narrative Arc .................................................................................................................. 61 Figure 2. Pathways ........................................................................................................................ 66 Figure 3. Strategic Actions .......................................................................................................... 122 Figure 4. Discussion and Implications ........................................................................................ 157 Figure 5. Epilogue ....................................................................................................................... 180 xi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Women have made significant gains in their representation as faculty in colleges and universities over the last thirty years (Hart, 2016; Smith, 2017; West & Curtis, 2006). Over the course of the same thirty years, the academic profession has also shifted, from a majority tenure- track to what many now call the “new faculty majority” of those off the tenure-track (Kezar, 2012). A recent report from Finkelstein, Conley, and Schuster (2016) indicated that although women are increasingly represented in the academic profession, “most of the infusion of women into academic roles has been in part-time and nontenure-track appointments” (p. 4). In short, women now represent the majority of the new majority. Coupled with the shift from tenure-track to non-tenure track is the division of labor in the academic profession; it is not simply that more faculty are women and are considered non-tenure, it is also that the tri-part functions of teaching, research, and service of the professoriate that have separated, moving teaching further and further into the realm of contingent work. Thus, at institutions across the United States, more and more women faculty are teaching and interacting with students in what is regarded as fixed-term faculty positions. Given that the majority of fixed-term faculty are hired to perform teaching duties, how they are performing and what they select to use as teaching methods has become a topic of interest among scholars in higher education. The term “fixed-term” or non-tenure track refers to faculty members who are working part-time or full-time in positions that are primarily devoted to teaching, and are not eligible for tenure. Fixed-term faculty positions are also defined by a semester-by-semester contract, or an annual or multi-year contract. Other terms to refer to faculty off the tenure track include contingent and adjunct faculty. When referring to the women 1 in my study, I use the term fixed-term, as that is the term they use and also how their institution describes their positions. A great deal of scholarship on teaching and fixed-term faculty focuses primarily on the relationship between these faculties teaching practices and student learning (Baldwin & Wawrzynski, 2011; Bettinger & Long, 2010; Ehrenberg & Zhang, 2005; Kiser, 2017; Lynch- Biniek, 2017; Umbach, 2007). While this is an extremely important area of research, in this study I propose a perspective that is more inclusive of aspects outside the academy to understand the teaching practices of women in fixed-term faculty positions. I argue research on fixed-term faculty teaching practices is not simply about their effects on student learning. Nor should more general research on fixed-term faculty be limited to the interaction of departmental or institutional culture to these faculties’ satisfaction, productivity, or sense of belonging. Rather it is important to ask how the work of fixed-term faculty, particularly women in these positions, is a reflection of a much larger narrative about women in academia and faculty stratification in the field of higher education. To this end, my study envisions the work and teaching of women in fixed-term faculty positions that considers their career trajectories, their histories in academia, and perhaps most importantly, their relationships outside academia, and how those relationships inform their workplace performance. Statement of the Problem and Purpose of Study My study addresses the problem of how institutions of higher education reproduce social inequality by examining how access to social, cultural, and economic resources shape graduate experiences and subsequent careers in academia for women. In particular my study is focused on how graduate school experiences shape future career trajectories, and how relationships formed before and during graduate school aid in workplace performance. These relationships represent 2 forms of capital, or the social, cultural, and economic resources in the lives of women in fixed- term faculty. As employment of fixed-term faculty continues to grow, it is imperative to understand how economic, social, and cultural resources shape their workplace performance. Women now make up the majority of those off the tenure track, and their teaching experiences in the classroom are a reflection of their social origins, past family experiences in higher education, and financial resources. Without considering these kinds of factors that are largely situated outside institutions of higher education, those aiming to provide more support for fixed-term faculty fail to understand the personal lives and histories outside academia contributing to faculty stratification in an already precarious workforce. For women in particular, a complex web of gender and economic stability is at play in how lives outside the academy and early graduate experiences shape their work inside the academy. Moreover, without acknowledging these aspects, scholars seeking to understand the division of labor in the academic profession remain focused on the non-tenure to tenure track divide, aiming their research at improving institutional and departmental cultures, instead of seeking to challenge the larger social structures maintaining faculty inequality. The purpose of my study is to examine how access to such resources and capital before and during graduate school experiences shape teaching for women in fixed-term positions at a comprehensive university. I explore how lives outside academia contribute to a sense of agency inside academia for women in fixed-term faculty positions. I focus specifically on cisgender women1 in fixed-term faculty positions for this study because their experiences emphasize how 1 My study is primarily focused on ciswomen in higher education. The theoretical framework and literature I use is also reflective of the experiences of ciswomen. Although all participants for this study identified as ciswomen, I did not exclude trans, gender non-conforming, or nonbinary faculty if they identified as women. Work related to and focused exclusively on trans, gender non-conforming, or nonbinary faculty should be the focus of future scholarship. 3 gender and relationships status contribute to the traditional expectations of, or ideal worker norms (Williams, 2000a) of the academic profession. These norms are tantamount to understanding how certain forms of capital provide advantages for women in the field of higher education. Thus, I consider the role gendering plays in the realm of higher education and ideal worker norms, and how the interaction of gender, social origins, and individual agency shape the ways women in fixed-term faculty positions teach. Moreover, I include the narrative of women’s work, and the pervasive narrative about marital status and economic security as related to working women (Damaske, 2009). Including only those who identify as women specifically from comprehensive universities: 1) illuminates the role gender, relationships, and feelings of stability and agency play in faculty roles that are often the most precarious, and 2) highlights the stratification of “second tier” universities within the larger field of higher education and the hierarchy present in fixed-term faculty at such institutions. Two research questions guide this study: 1. How do forms of capital inform graduate school socialization experiences for women and their subsequent careers in fixed-term faculty positions? 2. How do forms of capital and such graduate school socialization experiences shape the work and teaching practices of these women? Theoretical Framework I drew heavily from the theoretical work of Bourdieu (2016) to anchor my study about women’s teaching practices. Bourdieu’s theory of practice at once allowed me to examine the tension between agency and structure, while also providing an in-depth look at the individuals in my study. Three major concepts guide both the theoretical orientation and practical organization of this study: Field, habitus, and practice. Field are the arenas of struggle characterized and 4 defined by the actions of individuals; habitus is the disposition of actors, informed by their histories, experiences, and access to economic, social, and cultural resources; and practice is the agency of individuals, the evidence of how well they know the rules of the game, and their actions for how they gain position in their field (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). In addition to Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice, I used literature throughout my study to help describe how larger Western social spaces and traditions influence the field of academia. In particular, I drew from scholarship on gendered work and the institution of marriage to help explain how social capital is operationalized in the workplace performance of women in fixed-term positions. Importance of Study An oft-quoted statement from Maisto (2012), that “faculty working conditions are student learning conditions” (p. 201) is part of what motivates this study. I am interested in the interactions between women in fixed-term faculty positions and students, as it pertains to how these women faculty go about doing their work. To this point, plenty of literature has addressed the link between fixed-term faculty teaching and student learning, and the majority of these studies find sub-optimal working conditions for faculty and negative learning experiences for students. Clearly, there are inequities between fixed-term faculty working conditions and tenure- track working conditions. However, rather than drawing comparisons between tenure-track and fixed-term faculty, my study illuminates that faculty inequities and stratification occurs within the ranks of fixed- term faculties, and this stratification is partly a consequence of factors external to the field of academia. Addressing how faculty are stratified along social and class lines, and how gender norms contribute to such stratification is important to understanding how inequalities are 5 reproduced in academia; this is the second part of what motivates my study on women in fixed- term faculty positions. Presently, researchers writing about fixed-term faculty primarily focus on conditions of the institution or department and its influence on faculty teaching strategies. However, there are limitations to thinking this way. I investigate how extra-institutional factors such as social origins, marriage, community, and educational knowledge shaped the undergraduate and graduate student experiences and their subsequent teaching practices for the women in my study. My findings highlight how historical and cultural ideas about gender and marriage can further stratify an already precarious workforce, giving those with a spouse or other community and social ties a greater sense of security in their teaching roles, thus contributing to more creativity in the classroom. These extra-institutional factors must be considered when seeking to understand the teaching work of contingent faculty and the casualization of the non-tenure track faculty workforce. Design of Study My study was designed using critical qualitative inquiry and critical narrative research, drawn primarily from Pasque, Carducci, Kuntz, and Gildersleeve (2012) and Clandinin and Connelly (2000) respectively. As qualitative researchers, Pasque et al. argued that research should include context and culture embedded in the research. Combined with narrative research, stories from participants largely form the basis of such research. To create critical narrative research and attend to the context and culture of my research site, I situated my study research design in my own critical worldview, and use critical qualitative inquiry to help describe how qualitative research should be primarily interested in addressing powerful systems of gendering, race, economic position, and politics to develop context. Researchers Dyson and Genishi (2005) 6 described narrative and observation methods as tools to answer questions about how individuals do what they do and as such, my research questions ask: 1. How do forms of capital inform graduate school socialization experiences for women and their subsequent careers in fixed-term faculty positions? 2. How do forms of capital and such graduate school socialization experiences shape the work and teaching practices of these women? Three points of data were collected, all from one comprehensive university located in the Midwest: interviews, observations, and documents. These data sources were indicative of my theoretical framework of Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice. Critical to my research design is also the role of creativity during the analysis process. My analysis included both inductive and deductive coding, and during my own personal reflections and my incorporation of a creative element to my study, I developed a narrative arc to trace the personal histories of the women in my study and how these histories and access to resources (or capital) shaped their teaching practices. Organization of Dissertation My study on the teaching practices of women fixed-term faculty is deeply informed by the theoretical thinking of Bourdieu. For this reason, my study is organized by many of Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts. Chapter 2, my background chapter, is divided into three main sections, each corresponding to concepts of Bourdieu’s theory of practice. Thus, Chapter 2 contains the bulk of Bourdieu’s theory or practice, and describes how it grounds my study. The first section is field, and describes the field of academia, gendering, and marital norms that underpin institutions of higher education. The second section is habitus, and includes scholarship on graduate school socialization and the individual experiences of women non-tenure track 7 faculty to describe their dispositions. The third and final section of my background chapter is practice. This final section includes literature on faculty agency and scholarship specific to non- tenure track faculty teaching and student learning. Chapter 3 is my methodology. In this chapter I provide greater explanation of critical narrative research, methods I used to gather data, and my data analysis. My research design, like my literature review, also outlined Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts. The concept of field aided me in drawing boundaries around my study, and habitus in determining criteria for my participants. Chapter 4 is the first segment of my findings, and presents the narratives of the women in my study and their pathways into and through graduate school and their move to their current institution. Chapter 5 is the second segment of my findings, and employs Bourdieu’s concept of practice. In Chapter 5 I describe the specific teaching practices of the women in my study, and provide three archetypes to portray their teaching. Chapter 6 is my discussion chapter. In Chapter 6 I return to Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice as well as my literature review to describe how relationships shape teaching. Finally, Chapter 7 is my epilogue. In keeping with a narrative tradition, I provide a composite narrative of the women in my study, an epilogue, to describe potential futures and to close the stories the women shared with me. 8 CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND Bourdieu’s (2016) main theoretical concepts of field, habitus, and practice ground my study in theory and organize my literature review. In this chapter I provide a description of Bourdieu’s theory of practice and include literature to illuminate the theory as well as situate my study within existing scholarship. My reason for drawing from Bourdieu is two-fold: 1) Bourdieu allowed me to investigate the intertwining elements of an individual’s personal disposition to her environment while emphasizing the friction between social position and environment; and 2) Bourdieu’s work on systems of education allowed me to delve deeper into how such systems reproduce inequality (Bourdieu, 2016, 1988; Naiboo, 2004). I begin my background chapter by describing the field as one component of my theoretical orientation. Once this description is complete I move to the corresponding literature. The field segment has two parts. The first describes the presence of larger societal structures on the field of academia, and how gendering is present in defining the academic profession. The second segment more narrowly describes the field of non-tenure track faculty, and includes literature on the growth of non-tenure track faculty and their working conditions. Next, I describe habitus, or aspects of the fixed-term faculty profession that may inform dispositions. Foremost to habitus is capital. Capital represents the material and non-material resources that individuals accrue or have access to. Resources include economic, social, and cultural capital, and each form enables how individuals position themselves in a field and make sense of their surroundings. This segment of my background chapter includes scholarship on graduate school socialization, and literature about the specific experiences of women of color and women faculty. I describe how forms of capital are available during graduate school socialization, and how these shape women in the academy. 9 Finally, I conclude with practice, or the ways that individuals take action related to their position in the field and their disposition. The third and final segment of my background chapter is based on Bourdieu’s (2010) concept of practice. Swartz (1997) indicated practice is the intersection of habitus and field, and “practice conceptualizes action as the outcome of the relationship between habitus, capital, and field” (p. 141). For this reason, I dedicate this segment to literature on non-tenure track faculty teaching practices and faculty agency. My aim for this background chapter is to demonstrate how larger social structures and norms are present in defining the academic profession. Moreover, these norms shape how fixed-term faculty work is performed, and also represents important forms of social, economic, and cultural capital in academia. Field: Social Traditions and Higher Education Bourdieu (2016) described fields as arenas of struggle, structured by the actions of individuals. In my study, I focused specifically on the field of academia, while acknowledging that academia is also shaped by larger Western societal norms, customs, and traditions. Like Gonzales (2014), I propose the field of academia includes all aspects of higher education: the academic profession, disciplines, administration, scholarship and teaching, various institution types, and students and learning. The field of academia is also deeply interested in legitimacy, status, and prestige. Many studies report that institutional rankings, institutional pedigree, family legacy in higher education, faculty rank, and scholarship to name just a few, can dictate organizational behavior (Bourdieu, 1988/1984; Burris, 2004; Cantwell, 2016; Gardner, 2010; Gonzales, 2016; Morrison, Rudd, & Picciano, 2011; O’Meara & Bloomgarden, 2011). As a sub- space of greater society, the field of academia is also influenced by systems of racism, and 10 economic and social disparity, and is deeply entrenched in its formative history of white patriarchy and colonialism (Gonzales, 2018; Wilder, 2013). Additionally, ideals of marriage and community remain present in academia and are significant aspects of the academic profession (Lester & Sallee, 2017; Perna, 2001; Wolfinger, Mason, & Goulden, 2008). Drawing from ideal worker norms, Lester and Sallee (2017) commented, “…the ideal worker is often referred to as a white male in a heterosexual relationship, perpetuating heteronormativity and suggesting that white men are qualified and successful workers” (p. 124). Thus, the ideal worker, or rather the professor, is characterized by gender, sexual orientation, race, and even relationship status. Marriage is a social tradition that shapes the academic profession. Bourdieu (2016) indicated marriage and partnerships are sought to ensure “the integration of the minimal unit and its security, [and] alliance and prestige” (p. 57). This view of marriage reflects current scholarship on ideal worker norms in academia, and how these norms emphasize the need for partnership to be successful in academia (Hochschild, 1975; Lester & Sallee, 2017). Thus, those in partnership, or who subscribe to the traditional institution of marriage, may have certain conditions (e.g., increased economic support, romantic partnership and satisfaction) that enable them to be successful. The organization of the academic profession has long conformed to that of an ideal worker norm (Lester & Sallee, 2017). The ideal worker is an individual who can work during any hour in any location, often untethered from domestic tasks (Acker, 1990; Lester & Sallee, 2017; Sallee, 2012; Williams, 2001a). Williams (2001b) argues the ideal worker norm is born from and reproduced by the gendering system of domesticity. Thus, the construct of the ideal worker genders working roles and primarily subscribes breadwinner status to men (Sallee, 2012). Despite its dependence on binary interpretations of gender in contrast with today’s more nuanced 11 understandings about gender, the ideal worker norm continues to pervade the academy (Lester & Sallee, 2017; Sallee, 2012). Hochschild (1975) stated clearly, “…the classic profile of the academic career is cut to the image of the traditional man with his traditional wife” (p. 18). Studies that examine the heteronormative role of marriage and family in the academic profession often recognize ideal worker norms, and the larger social structure of marriage and the narrative of romantic partnership as a factor in work. Atkinson (2014) distills this sentiment clearly: In the case of ‘family’, ‘household’, etc. the current orthodoxy in the Western world, shaped by literally centuries of struggle and strategies among dominant agents has undoubtedly been a consanguineous, heterosexual, patriarchal, monogamous, private, nuclear, male breadwinner/female homemaker model (p. 225). The practices and norms of marriage, family, and household are deeply imbedded in the structures of higher education institutions, and in the academic profession. On this note, I focus specifically on literature that deals with heterosexual marriages and cisgender women in such marriages. Marriage and academia. Several studies found that marriage or partnership hurts careers for women in tenure-rack faculty positions. This harm is primarily attributed to the structure of the academic profession, as one that “forces women to choose between work and family” (Wolfinger, Mason, & Goulden, 2008, p. 390). The authors commented that marriage leading to the possibility of children negatively impact early career women faculty, and in some cases impede women from entering tenure-track faculty positions altogether. Similar arguments have been made by other scholars: in dual-career couples, the research careers for married women often come secondary to their husbands (Vohlídalová, 2017); marriage can create ongoing stress for family and household responsibilities, or caregiving roles that compete for 12 faculty research time (Goulden, Mason, & Frasch, 2011; Howe-Walsh & Turnbull, 2016); and dual-career marriages often force couples to sequence their lives, and choose family over career (Winslow, 2010). While these studies illuminate the challenges for women in academia, they are primarily interested in tenure-track positions and thereby neglect examining the large swath of faculty women in academia who are working in positions that are not tenure-eligible. Those studies that do consider women in non-tenure track positions and relationship status simply point to the family or partnership as a reason for why they are currently in such positions. Perna (2001) found married women are more likely than never married women to be in non-tenure track positions. Yet this study also found that women prefer to hold these positions as a result of wanting family or being in relationships or partnerships where they feel more obligated than their partners to keep house. Perna commented on the subject of career choice, Whereas some research suggests that women with academic spouses may be benefitting in terms of their productivity, rank, and salaries possibly because of greater access to collegial networks, this study suggests that married women—a substantial proportion of whom are likely to have academic spouses—may be disadvantaged with regard to their employment status because of a lack of mobility (p. 605). Thus, women academic spouses are bound by geographic location when their husbands lead the career trajectory. This may eventually lead these women to take non-tenure track positions. Baldwin and Chronister (2001) in their early study of non-tenure track faculty found a majority of women chose non-tenure track positions. Likewise, a similar study conducted by Harper, Baldwin, Gansneder, and Chronister (2001) reported several women moved into non- tenure track positions because of marriage and family obligations. Furthermore, many in the 13 Harper et al. study considered themselves “trailing spouses” and were content with this status, as “they appreciate what they see as increased flexibility to deal with family responsibilities” (Harper et al., 2001, p. 252). Indeed, there may be advantages for some women who have the opportunity to choose an academic career that is not on the tenure-track ladder. Underlying many of these studies is the indication of how the powerful institution of marriage weighs on the careers of women. Many of these norms are also bound in the literature on gendered organizations and the roles of men and women in such organizations. Scholarship on gendered organizations posits organizations are non-neutral entities. Acker (1990) has argued for increased scrutiny for understanding organizations, and asserted a theory of organizations and gender would more fully illuminate the sex-based segregation of work, income and status inequality, how cultural symbols and beliefs about gender originate and reproduce, and how organizational processes are products of masculinity. Organizational theories on the whole have largely neglected to include dynamics of power and privilege (Kanter, 1977). Consider the foundational theories of organizations: Taylor’s scientific rational manager, Weber’s “passionless” bureaucracy, and Simon’s “administrative man” (Kanter, 1977, p. 24; Scott & Davis, 2007; p. 53), and a characterization of organizations as neutral, rational, and objective monoliths emerges. Acker (1990) developed an explicit and cohesive theory for gendered organizations, and stated, To say that an organization, or any other analytic unit, is gendered means that advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and emotion, meaning and identity, are patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine. Gender is not an addition to ongoing processes, conceived as gender neutral. 14 Rather, it is an integral part of those processes, which cannot be properly understood without an analysis of gender (p 146). Acker insists here that the construction of gender cannot be simply added to existing theories of organizations as a variable in analysis. Instead, gender is integral to understanding power in an organization. In this way, Acker argues that neutrality cannot exist in organizations because gender hierarchies are evident at all levels of institutional processes. Many in the field of higher education have noted the influence of these social structures and stereotypes on the academic profession (Acker, 1994; Hart, 2006; Hart & Cress, 2008; Lester, 2008; Lester & Sallee, 2017; O’Meara, 2016; O’Meara, Kuvaeva, Nyunt, Waugaman, & Jackson, 2017; Smith, 2017). I further argue that to consider the field of academia it is essential to acknowledge the history and tradition of matrimony and romantic partnership in the academic profession. Bourdieu (1996), ruminating on the construction of marriage argued that these relationships, as well as family, are institutions that represent forms of economic, social, and cultural capital. Even as Bourdieu challenged the construction of marriage, he also acknowledged its power. “[The family] is a ‘well-founded illusion’, because, being produced and reproduced with the guarantee of the state, it receives from the state at every moment the means to exist and persist” (p. 25). Perhaps the tradition and in Bourdieu’s words, the guarantee of the state, also deeply influences how the field of academia considers the institution of marriage. While most scholars on women, gender, and work in academia frame their studies within patriarchal norms and structures, at the heart of the argument these scholars make is that in order to be successful in academia, one needs a partner. 15 Field: Non-Tenure Track Faculty and Work Although a groundswell of literature exists today on non-tenure track faculty, it was not until the 1990s that scholarship on the phenomenon of non-tenure track faculty began to take shape (Cross & Goldenberg, 2009). I focus on two main strands of research about non-tenure track faculty in this section of my literature review: the growth of non-tenure track faculty and the working conditions of non-tenure track faculty. Early scholarship on non-tenure track faculty mostly documented demographic information about who they were and where they worked (Baldwin & Chronister, 2001; Chronister, Gansneder, Harper, & Baldwin, 1997; Gappa & Leslie, 1993; Schell & Stock, 2001; Tuckman, Caldwell, & Vogler, 1978). Early scholarship also provided reasons for the burgeoning growth of these faculties. In this section I also include literature about secondary labor markets. This literature posits non-tenure track work is akin to secondary labor markets and provides a framework to better understand the division of work that has resulted from the increasing use of non-tenure track faculty (Maisto, 2012; Maisto & Street, 2011; Rhoades, 2014; Rhoades & Torres-Olave, 2015; Roemer & Schnitz, 1982; Schwartz, 2014; Torres-Olave, 2013). In the second segment, I review literature that examines the work conditions, institutional supports, satisfaction, and departmental cultures of non-tenure track faculty (Cross & Goldenberg, 2009; Hurlburt & McGarrah, 2016; Kezar, 2012; Kezar, 2013; Kezar & Gherke, 2014; Levin & Shaker, 2011; Ott & Cisneros, 2015). These studies provide a more intimate picture of the conditions of non-tenure track faculty work. Literature related to experiences at work, and student learning and non-tenure track faculty are included in other sections of my literature review. 16 The growth of non-tenure track positions. The growth of non-tenure track faculty positions is attributed to many internal and external factors including but not limited to declining federal and state support of higher education, a change in student demographics and enrollment patterns, and the aging faculty (Baldwin & Chronister, 2001). Shifting hiring practices, public and political attitudes about tenure, reduced funding from state legislatures, and the increasing acceptance of the marketization of higher education all contributed to the creation of the new faculty majority (Cross & Goldberg, 2009; Fairweather, 1996; Kezar, 2012; Kezar, Lester, Carducci, Gallant, & McGavin, 2007; Kezar & Gherke, 2014; Rhoades, 2014; Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006). Indirect higher-level decisions seemed to contribute to the growing use of faculty off the tenure track. For example, shrinking numbers of graduate students in professional education fields may motivate administrators to hire part-time faculty. In applied fields such as business, arts management, or public administration, practitioner faculty who teach part time may also be more desired because they provide professional experience for the academic field (Cross & Goldenberg, 2009). Kezar and Gehrke (2014) also indicated uninformed hiring practices by leadership at colleges and universities contribute to the increased use of contingent faculty. Surveying deans across a wide variety of institutions, Kezar and Gehrke found many hiring decisions are not thoroughly thought out, nor do they include those at department levels where the impact of non-tenure track faculty hires are felt the most. Budgetary constraints are perhaps the most familiar reason for the increase of non-tenure track faculty (Dedman & Pearch, 2004; Gappa & Leslie, 1993; Schell & Stock, 2001). Colleges and universities have needed to be more financially savvy due to rising undergraduate enrollment coupled with declining federal and state support. Yet the financial savings many seek in colleges 17 and universities by hiring non-tenure track faculty may not be as great as they anticipate. Findings from Hurlburt and McGarrah (2016) indicated that while cost-savings exist when more part-time faculty are employed, overall compensation for all employees such as administration, saw much more modest financial savings. In short, it is not so much a cost savings to hire more non-tenure track faculty, as it is a cost shift when all employees are considered. This cost shift might suggest that administrative staff is absorbing any savings from part-time faculty compensation. Rhoades (2014) indicated the increase of administrative positions in higher education impedes on the traditional functions of the professoriate. More administration has led to the decoupling of academic work, where the tri-part function of the professoriate is now unequally shared between tenure-track and non-tenure track faculty, and administrative staff. Rhoades (2014) argued, It is common to hear in the public discourse, and to read in the academic literature, that the transformation [of the academic profession to more contingent faculty] has been in some sense natural. At the same time, others have suggested intentionality on the part of the academic managers as well as the tenured professoriate (p. 120). In the above quote, Rhoades (2014) claims the increase of non-tenure track faculty is not simply a response to the marketization of higher education, but also a very purposeful decision by leaders in the academy. These decisions seem a calculated move to invest more in non-academic personnel and less in tenure-track faculty and instruction (Rhoades, 2014). Schwartz (2014) described two facets to the rise of the managerial staff and non-tenure track faculty. Schwartz claimed that the pressure colleges and universities face to become more market responsive 1) lures tenure-track and tenured faculty to more intensely participate in research and 2) increases the numbers of highly paid administrators to serve student-customers. Combined, these have 18 resulted in a casualization of faculty labor. Schwartz argued, without a concerted effort to include more “democratic equality” (p. 519) by all those in academe, the subfield of non-tenure track faculty and their lack of support will continue to persist as a normal and accepted consequence of decisions made in higher education. Myriad reasons account for the growth of contingent faculty, from more internal leadership decision-making, to the larger pressures of state politics and funding and all other explanations in between. What is clear, however, is that the continuing rise of non-tenure track faculty is a phenomenon that colleges and universities will need to recognize not simply as academic labor but as the new faculty majority (Kezar, 2012). Conditions of work. Perhaps the most prolific writer covering the subject of non-tenure track faculty is Adrianna Kezar. Several recent studies from Kezar explored how working conditions impact experiences of those off the tenure track, and her research primarily resides at the institutional level of non-tenure track faculty. Kezar (2012, 2013) frequently drew connections between individual performance and department or institutional culture by including the policies and procedures that hinder work of non-tenure track faculty. Making use of the institutional framework, Maxey and Kezar (2015) found many stakeholders were not aware of contradicting practices or misalignment of mission in how their institutions supported non-tenure track faculty. Thus, many stakeholders in the Maxey and Kezar study expressed concern that the practices of hiring contingent faculty (an institutional norm) did not align with their shared goal of student learning. These findings reiterate how removed leaders and stakeholders are from the work of non-tenure track faculty, and also emphasize the influence of non-tenure track faculty on student learning. 19 How supported non-tenure track faculties feel in doing their work impacts their productivity. Kezar (2013) investigated the differences departmental culture has on part-time and full-time non-tenure track faculty and their willingness to perform as teachers. Most significant to Kezar’s study is how participants talk about their work as teachers, and departmental cultures or norms that facilitate their teaching. For example, Kezar (2013) labeled supportive departments as “inclusive cultures” for non-tenure track faculty focused on teaching. Yet even as these inclusive departments may consider teaching a profession, “that does not mean there was significant support for them as teachers” (p. 173). Sometimes even a supportive department falls short in valuing the teaching aspect of non-tenure track work. Institutionalizing support systems for non-tenure track faculty, thus, can be a difficult process as found in a related study by Kezar and Sam (2013). Although there are possibilities for campuses to implement practices that support non-tenure track faculty, making these practices stick becomes the responsibility of non- tenure track faculty leaders (Kezar & Sam, 2013). Non-tenure track faculty in the Kezar and Sam study were expected to advocate for themselves and their working conditions despite being in inferior and vulnerable positions. A great deal of scholarship on non-tenure track faculty focused on productivity and satisfaction complements the research from Kezar and colleagues. Many non-tenure track faculty members indicate flexibility in the workplace and opportunities to teach as sources of satisfaction (Baldwin & Chronister, 2001; Hoyt, 2012; Waltman, Bergom, Hollenshead, Miller, & August, 2016). Yet, Ott and Cisneros (2015) found many non-tenure faculty “were significantly less satisfied with their personal and professional interactions with department colleagues” (p. 16). This finding indicates that despite relative satisfaction for the functions and compensation of the job, collegiality between faculty play a large role in the workplace 20 happiness of full-time non-tenure track faculty. Certainly, a positive perception of a department and having a sense of relationship among colleagues will influence a positive well-being (Seipel & Larson, 2016). Additionally, feeling connected to departments may also give non-tenure track faculty a sense they have a voice in decision-making (Ott & Dippold, 2017). Alleman and Haviland (2017) reported many non-tenure track faculty experienced exclusion in their departments. Some of these experiences of exclusion were not necessarily due to collegial or unwelcoming workspaces. Rather, Alleman and Haviland explained as non-tenure track faculty, some participants were excluded because the difference in faculty status limited opportunities for collegiality. “A surprising number of NTTF expressed that exclusion from tenure-track hiring, for example, was not a collegial slight but a difference in employment terms only” (Alleman & Haviland, 2017, p. 539). Alleman and Haviland implicated the working environment and departmental culture in addition to individual interactions to make their claims about non-tenure track feelings about collegiality. Departmental culture aside, it may also be the academic profession and system of the profession that influence feelings of job satisfaction and productivity among non-tenure track. Hudson (2013) found many non-tenure track faculties who expressed a sense of belonging were full-time or what Hudson referred to as aspiring academics. Bland, Center, Finstad, Risbey, and Staples (2006) hypothesized that tenure system faculty will be more productive and committed to their institutions due to the system of tenure rather than singular beneficial characteristics of the faculty position. Bland et al. signified the influence of the tenure system as a motivator, outside of institutional mission or departmental culture. This finding is important; beyond institution type, departmental culture, and university mission, it is the tenure system that has a notable level of power on the productivity and commitment of faculty. This system perspective may also 21 account for why the participants in Hudson’s study felt they belonged. For those who consider themselves part of the academic system, despite being non-tenure track, they may feel a sense of belonging because they share working space with others engaged in scholarly activity. Summary of field. Like many others (Acker, 1994, 1995; Eddy & Ward, 2017; Hart, 2016; O’Meara, 2016; O’Meara, et al., 2017; Park, 1996) my view of the field of academe is one where colleges and universities are not neutral organizations, but instead are deeply gendered institutions where power, authority, rule making, and norms have been established. Moreover, the field of academia is also tightly knitted to the ideals of matrimony. To be successful in the academic profession, one must be unwavering. For many women in academia, a tension exists between marriage, family, and career. This tension is due to the larger social norms present in academia (the social field influencing the field of academia) as well as the gendered arenas of higher education institutions. These norms are evident in the necessity for a partner to be or feel successful in the academic profession, as well as the unbundling of the academic profession into a teaching-only track for non-tenure track faculty. Acker (1995) stated, “applying gender analysis to teachers’ work would mean calling attention to the obvious and subtle ways in which cultural beliefs about women and men influence the nature of work…” (p. 114). The system and tradition of the ideal worker as well as the tradition of marriage and history of patriarchy in academia limit career opportunities for women. Habitus: Women in the Academy The positive influence on and unique place women fill in the academy is rarely highlighted in the literature. Rather, scholarship about women in the field of higher education primarily focuses on the discrimination, sexism, and stereotyping many women experience as faculty, administrators, and staff at colleges and universities (De Welde & Stepnick, 2015; 22 Marina & Ross, 2016; Thompson & Parry, 2017). These studies indicated that despite the contributions women make to their institutions, they have faced and will continue to face marginalization due to their gender. These experiences of marginalization, particularly due to patriarchal structures that dictate the rules and norms of academia, deeply inform the habitus of women faculty. Bourdieu (2016) described habitus as the disposition of individuals informed by history and culture. These dispositions derive from culture, history, skills, and relationships. Habitus is also a reflection of the capital an individual possesses. Appelrouth and Edles (2016) described habitus as a “mental filter that structures an individual’s perceptions, experiences, and practices” (p. 666). Through these filters, individuals make sense of and compete in the field, and their tools for competition are the arrays and volumes of capital they possess (Bourdieu, 2016). Swartz (1997) elaborated on the array and arrangement of capital, and stated, “Bourdieu reasons more in terms of ensembles of variables rather than separating out individual variables for precise measurement…[and] he affirms the relative importance of the different forms of capital” (p. 157). For fixed-term women working in the field of academia, it is not simply the forms of capital that are most respected in the field of higher education that provide advantages to these women. It is also forms of capital that are peripheral to the field of academia that provide leverage. The interlocking social schemas between the above larger social structures and the field of higher education are what Naidoo (2004) referred to as “each field mirror[ing] social space” (p. 459). Thus, faculty members who understand and comply with—or strive for—the prestigious attributes of the field of higher education garner forms of economic, social, and cultural capital both in the specific sub-space of academe, and in the social space of class 23 structure (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Within the academic field, there are many forms of economic, cultural, and social capital. Economic capital is simply material resources. Wealth, money, and properties are forms of economic capital. Cultural capital is the nonmaterial resources individuals possess such as education, personal tastes, aesthetics, and skills (Bourdieu, 1985). Social capital represents resources based on social connects, networks, or membership within particular groups. Being a part of a well-resourced network gives access to “collectively owned capital, a credential that entitles them to credit” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 21). The forms of capital most apparent in the field of academia are evidence of research and publications, institutional prestige and institutional ranking, access to elite social networks, and monetary awards. As a reflection of the ideals of the larger social sphere in academe, other forms of capital become apparent, such as individual appearance, researcher worldview and epistemology, researcher agenda, and other social traditions such as marriage and family, economic stability, and social origins. Hence, those operating in certain fields, like academia, encounter struggles when the unequal distribution of capital within a field becomes more apparent (Bourdieu, 1990). For women fixed-term faculty, habitus may include their academic experiences and disciplinary background, or graduate school socialization. It may also include more personal histories of where they are from, their family, and their racial background. Habitus is also deeply connected to capital. Possessing capital informs how women in fixed-term faculty positions can envision their work, and understand what is possible. Habitus embodies how a woman sees her place in the world. Habitus ensures “external social structures, once internalized, have the capacity to define an individual’s behavior and what is deemed acceptable and appropriate in accordance with social position, class, or social standing” (Griffin, Gibbs, Bennett, Staples, & 24 Robinson, 2015, p. 163). Habitus, then, is a representation of how capital operates and how capital has been offered, accessed, and accrued. As my study is focused on women non-tenure track faculty who hold PhDs or terminal degrees in their field, I include in this section socialization experiences to contrast how becoming prepared for a career in the professoriate is often quite different for women than it is for men. Doctoral education socialization represents the transition into academia; it links a woman’s personal history and culture with her aspirations. The second part of this section is focused on the experiences of women in the academy, with special attention paid to women of color. Socialization and women in graduate school. The preparation individuals go through for future careers during graduate school is referred to as socialization (Austin, 2002; Weidman, Twale, and Stein, 2001). Sallee (2011b) stated socialization is “the process through which individuals learn about the cultural norms and acquire the necessary skills to enter an organization and fulfill new roles” (p. 172). Weidman, Twale, and Stein (2001) describe socialization as the process students experience to learn the skills and knowledge to prepare them for the field in which they are studying. Weidman et al (2001) stated socialization is “a subconscious process whereby persons internalize behavioral norms and standards and form a sense of identity and commitment to [their] field” (p. 20). Graduate students are taught the norms of their profession or field, trained in a community of others in their field, and prepared by faculty through academic content and social and cultural influences. Graduate school socialization frameworks draw from larger psychological theories of socialization. These theories outline the steps individuals go through as they prepare for their profession. Graduate school socialization theories and practices often emphasize the preparation students experience to become researchers (Austin, 2002; Gardner, 2008). Graduate students 25 often learn there are different valuations for different types of faculty work, and begin to focus on activities of the professoriate that will provide them with the most rewards or the most social and cultural capital. For many graduate students, they are prepared mostly for a career as researchers and likely dedicate their time to publishing. Excelling at research activities specifically, and learning the culture of the academic profession generally often requires graduate students to take on new professional identities. By taking on these new identities, they may need to de-emphasize other aspects of their identities either because these identities do not conform to norms of their socialization environment or because these identities may actually be impeding on their success. Weidman, et al (2001) asserted that “students form a professional identity and reconcile the dysfunction and incongruity between their previous self-image and their new professional image” (p. 27) during the socialization process. Adopting new self-images, particularly a self-image as a researcher, can be particularly challenging for women in graduate school. This challenge comes not because of their merit but because of their gender and identity. Griffin et al (2015) noted that many women faced challenges in conforming to the “master culture” of graduate school, where “women encountere[d] unwritten rules of science and a lack of male faculty awareness that these rules existed” (p. 172). Conforming to this master culture could thus potentially provide capital to those in academia. Graduate school socialization should prepare students to take on a primary identity such as scientist or academic as they move through their respective programs. Yet many women still face barriers to taking this identity on entirely because they are either not given complete access to the benefits of graduate school socialization and networking, or because they are predetermined to underperform by mentors because they are women. 26 Clark and Corcoran (1986) found many women pursuing faculty careers were at a disadvantage during graduate school. Through their socialization experiences, many women reported their mentors doubted their ability to be productive researchers, a signal that they would not be able to excel in the most valued function of the professoriate. Moreover, many women in the Cole and Corcoran (1986) study expressed that they were channeled into “colleges emphasizing teaching rather then research...putting them at a disadvantage in beginning their research and scholarly work and building their reputations as scholars” (p. 34). Generalizing graduate school socialization without acknowledging that many women experience graduate school and preparation for the professoriate quite differently than their male peers also fails to acknowledge the deep seeded perspective in higher education institutions about what women are capable of or what kind of work they should be doing in academe. Gardner (2008) argues that individual characteristics, such as sex and gender, play a significant role in how one is prepared in graduate school. The reason for these differences is because socialization is based on a set of “normative assumptions” (Gardner, 2008, p. 128) for how an individual should be socialized, providing little leniency for accommodating those who do not fit the mold. Experiences of women non-tenure track faculty. Quantitative data on the distribution of faculty has more recently paid attention to the racial, ethnic, and gender differences among faculty type (Sam & Kezar, 2015; Finkelstein, et al., 2016). Considering the faculty workforce is much more diverse than it was even thirty years ago, it becomes more important to appreciate who make up the American faculty. With these new data points, it has also become increasingly obvious that women, despite making gains into the academy, represent the largest proportion of faculty off the tenure track (American Association of University Professors [AAUP], 2011). 27 Additionally, the differences in hiring for non-tenure track faculty positions for women of color was even more pronounced, as more and more women of color began filling non-tenure track faculty positions compared to men of color (Harper, et al., 2001; Finkelstein, et al., 2016). Several converging trends account for the increase of women off the tenure track, however no robust empirical study has examined this phenomenon. Finley (2009) provides a fairly comprehensive understanding about why women are more likely to enter the non-tenure track faculty workforce. First, institution types vary in how many non-tenure track faculty are hired. Finley notes two-year colleges typically employ the most non-tenure track faculty, of which the majority are women. Compare this to larger public and research-intensive universities where these positions are more prevalent, and where men remain the majority (Finkelstein, et al., 2016). Second, fields already popular among women faculty also employ the largest percentage of women non-tenure track faculty. These fields include social sciences, education, and in particular humanities (Massé, 2017). And third, choice accounts for the increase of women in non-tenure track faculty positions. Using choice to explain why more women are in non-tenure track faculty positions is a common narrative. Many women accept non-tenure track positions because these positions provide flexibility, or emphasize teaching (Harper, et al., 2001). Mothers with children are also more likely to be in non-tenure track faculty roles (Perna, 2001; Wolfinger, Mason, & Goulden, 2009). Yet as Finley (2009) indicates, if one uses choice to explain the presence and increase of women off the tenure track, one must also consider gendering roles, constrained choices, and familial situations. That women “choose” non-tenure track work must be understood that they are often facing constrained choices. Williams (2001a) stated pointedly, “choice rhetoric serves to veil the powerful mandates of domesticity in the language of self-fulfillment” (p. 39). Most 28 women would not choose their own occupational marginalization if they could be given the opportunity to have employment that provides for all of their needs. Not only does the growth of women in non-tenure track faculty positions coincide with deleterious effects on their career advancement and their individual experiences, but this growth also subordinates the fields in which they work (Webber, 2008). As Finley (2009) noted, fields where women have significant representation also tend to have high numbers of non-tenure track faculty. One such field, language and literature studies, also exhibits diminishing prestige and lower wages as non-tenure track faculty numbers rise (Massé, 2017). Such a trend may impact career mobility, as Witz (2013) implored, “how can women move from nowhere to somewhere else in a positional and class structure in which they have no position?” (p. 40). Working without position, as Witz (2013) described, may take its toll on the individual experiences of women off the tenure track. Sam and Kezar (2015) offered a narrative of silence for women non-tenure track faculty. In their contingent positions, women off the tenure track experience multiple avenues of silencing and oppression. They are rarely invited to be part of faculty governance, they lack the same academic freedom enjoyed by their tenure-track and tenured peers, they have limited interaction with their tenure-track and tenured peers, and quite often when they do interact with their tenure-eligible counterparts, they are treated with little respect and viewed as second-class faculty. Sam and Kezar posited the interrelated features of silencing, isolation, and deprofessionalization for these faculty all contribute and reproduce marginalizing experiences for women off the tenure track. Although data from the Sam and Kezar study was not originally intended to examine women off the tenure track, it does provide a window into the experiences of these women. 29 In a more intentionally designed study of women off the tenure track, Hart (2011) found many non-tenure track women faculty attributed their marginalized working experiences to departmental culture, rather than gender. However, Hart (2011) noted it is limiting to examine these experiences only through a structural and departmental framework. “The class and gendered perspectives, among others, are interlocking. Given the fact that women are clustered in non-tenure track positions, their concerns are gendered” (p. 119, italics in original). While the participants in Hart’s study may not have explicitly connected their inequitable treatment to their gender, it was impossible to untangle their status as women and non-tenure track faculty from their marginalized experiences. Women of color faculty. Little has been published specifically on women of color in non-tenure track roles. Thus I draw on literature about women of color in the professoriate generally. In doing so, my aim is to highlight the distinct differences women of color face in academe, not just between their male peers, but also between other women who are white. Since my study is intended to represent women off the tenure track, it is valuable to also distinguish the experiences of women of color to white women in higher education to be more inclusive and intersectional about their work and how colleges and universities marginalize women. I specifically include women of color because they also represent a growing segment of non-tenure track faculty work (Finkelstein et al., 2016). I review two areas of literature on women of color faculty in this section: student interaction, teaching, and service; and departmental culture. These two areas will provide explanations about the specific experiences women of color faculty face in the classroom and in their departments. These two areas will also give another perspective of teaching practices through not just a gendering lens, but also a racial lens. 30 Women of color often encounter a working environment that can put more expectations on their service role, provide less support for teaching, and marginalize their research agendas (Alexander, 2008; Harley, 2007; Pittman, 2012; Turner, 2002). Turner (2002) indicated many faculty women of color face multiple marginalities, and stated The lives of faculty women of color are often invisible, hidden within studies that look at the experiences of women faculty and within studies that examine the lives of faculty of color. Women of color fit both categories, experience multiple marginality and their stories are often masked within these contexts (p. 76). The multiple marginality Turner (2002) commented on is evident in literature on student interactions, teaching, and service. Ford (2011), grounding her study in faculty experiences, identity, and recognition, found race and gender directly impact student perceptions and interactions. What Ford (2011) described is the “bodily recognition work” (p. 448) faculty women of color engage in to make meaning of their racialized and gendered bodies within the more dominant, or recognizable, white academic space. Due to their physical appearance, false perceptions about women of color faculty skills, abilities, and knowledge manifest in student insubordination or disrespect, categorization, and even bewilderment, particularly from white students. Summarizing literature on student evaluations and women of color, Lazos (2012) explained many women of color faculty face particular challenges in the classroom because of their race and gender. Often, women of color faculty are presumed incompetent, must work harder to fit female stereotypes of caregiving and support in the classroom, and face increased challenges to their authority from students. These particular challenges are detrimental to women of color faculty since the combined marginalization of gendered racism manifests in higher 31 teaching loads than male or white female faculty (Pittman, 2010). Additionally, higher teaching loads, combined with the expectation that women of color faculty serve on more committees limits their ability to spend enough time on the areas of the professoriate that contribute to tenure and promotion (Griffin et al., 2013). Pittman (2010) described three major themes from her own research on the experiences of women of color faculty in the classroom at a predominantly white institution. First, women of color faculty faced challenges to their authority, second they faced questions about their teaching competency, and third they experienced disrespect in their expertise and knowledge (Pittman, 2010, p. 187). Pittman’s findings echo previous literature on women of color faculty in the classroom (Hamermesh & Parker, 2005; Harley, 2007) and support more current research (Ford, 2011; Lazos, 2012; Mitchell & Miller, 2011) in this area as reviewed above. In addition to the experiences in the classroom, women of color faculty also face unique challenges within academe and their departments. In studies on women of color faculty and institutional cultures, scholars report women of color faculty describing unfriendly environments as compared to White men and women, lack of respect among colleagues in the same department, and alienation and exclusion (Moffitt, Harris, & Berthoud, 2012; Thomas & Hollenshead, 2001). In interviews with several women of color faculty at different points in the tenure process, Kelly and McCann (2014) found many of their participants faced feelings of tokenism and outsider status, particularly during their first year as faculty. As their tenure career progressed, the participants in Kelly and McCann’s study voiced difficulty in finding role clarity and mentorship. One participant expressed doubts about continuing in the tenure track, saying It feels like a lot of the time I'm just spinning my wheels…and my department does feel a bit isolating. There’s another woman in the department who is never around… so it’s 32 very isolating. Being one, the youngest, and then two, you know, a woman…and then three, being Black (Kelly & McCann, 2014, p. 691). This comment reiterates other scholarship about women of color faculty expressing feelings of isolation in academe, especially at predominantly white institutions and in particular fields that have historically been dominated by white men (Thomas & Hollenshead, 2001; Turner, 2002). Other studies examining the stages of faculty careers report similar challenges for early and mid- career faculty as those of women of color faculty (Austin & Rice, 1998; Baldwin, DeZure, Shaw, & Moretto, 2008). However, studies aimed specifically at women of color and their faculty trajectories illuminate the distinct challenges these faculty face, not only as early career or mid career faculty, but also as women of color moving through the tenure system. Pittman (2010) may have best explained the specific stereotypes women of color face in academe; ones their white female colleagues do not: While all women faculty experience sexism, women of color report dealing with both gender and racial oppression in their peer interactions. Specifically, black women negotiate the mothering-yet-obedient “mammy” stereotype, Latinas deal with the presumption that they prefer to focus on home and family, and Asian and Asian American women grapple with the stereotype of being passive (p. 185). Women of color faculty in academe, in either non-tenure track or tenure-track positions face particular challenges in their roles because of the multiple marginalities they experience as women and people of color (Turner, 2002). Moreover, the gendering of women’s work also becomes racialized when women of color are considered, as stereotypes about women more specific to particular racial and ethnic identities is elevated (Pittman, 2010). 33 Summary of habitus. The growth in the number of women in non-tenure track faculty positions has yet to be completely explained. However, the collective accounts of women in these positions, along with literature aimed at understanding this phenomenon insist that a gendered point of view must be employed if we are to completely understand the growth in the number of women in this sector. Additionally, the experiences of women in academe in the above studies, from their introduction into the academic profession through graduate school socialization to faculty careers are one of constant marginalization. Their early experiences as academic professionals in graduate school introduce many women to a system that advantages men. Women have made significant strides in increasing their presence and status as accomplished teachers and scholars in all academic fields. This accomplishment is in part due to the generosity of certain advisors and being given access to helpful and support networks. Yet these positive socialization opportunities are not always common, and made more difficult for women of color. Taking on new identities to fit within the mold of academe may even be impossible for some women, as Bourdieu (2010) reminded, habitus filters the “social structure individuals carry with them…which are so many marks of social positions” (p. 82). Perhaps taking on a new identity is a foolish and outdated way to consider socialization; there are too many possibilities of what the professoriate can look like today. These socialization experiences do matter, and provide access to forms of capital, such as research activity, social and academic networks, and financial resources (Gopaul, 2011). Griffin, Gibbs, Bennett, Staples, and Robinson (2015) indicated The acquisition of social capital often occurs by way of faculty relationships, mentoring networks, and collaborative partnerships with peers. [Additionally,] those from more affluent class backgrounds, who have greater exposure to or are more familiar with 34 graduate education, may possess cultural capital that can facilitate access to key socializing experiences such as full-time student status, funding, and publication opportunities (p. 163). Acquiring cultural and social capital during graduate school is an important element to this study. Yet it is not simply access to significant forms of academic capital for the women in my study, it is also as Griffin et al. stated, class background and personal histories that women bring with them to graduate education that can dictate whether they take advantage of or understand certain scholarly or social opportunities. Graduate school socialization, expectations of the professoriate, degree attainment, in addition to race, ethnicity, and gender, all inform habitus and how teaching practices are shaped by women fixed-term faculty. Practice: Women Teachers in the Academy Connecting habitus and field are practices, or the calculated strategies of every day actions (Bourdieu, 2016; Swartz, 1997). Practices result from the interrelation between field and habitus. Hence, the teaching practices of women fixed-term faculty are deeply connected to where they are working, their capital, and their own dispositions. With the concept of practice, Bourdieu sought to “account for practice in its humblest form…practice as practice [where] objects of knowledge are constructed and not passively recorded…and found in the socially constituted system of structured and structuring dispositions” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 121). That practice is not passively recorded indicates that action is strategic and oriented within the field where the individual employs agency. Here the calculated chances and decisions of every day life, and shifting opportunities reflective of the field and sense-making of an individual combine to produce agency. These practices, or forms of agency, however persistent or resistant, are key to my study on women non-tenure track faculty. 35 Although Bourdieu’s concept of capital is not entirely meant to be deterministic, it does create very real constraints for an individual’s ability to act (Swartz, 1997). Gonzales (2012) emphasized this kind of constrained agency in a study on faculty members responding to a university’s shifting mission. Participants in Gonzales’s study expressed varying degrees of agency, yet all within the bounds of the university structure. Some participants internalized the mission shift of the university and altered their academic practice to reflect this shift. Other participants continued their work as if still working within the institution before the mission shift all the while seemingly agreeing to change their academic practice. The action these faculty members chose in response to the changing nature of their university, however, was still constrained by the structure of the university. Similarly, Collyer (2015) suggested individuals “act unconsciously according to our habitus and sometimes make choices and develop strategies as we engage with various social fields, gathering and deploying forms of capital” (p. 320). Yet, forms of capital may have different values even within the same field. “Everyone’s habitus provides capital, but Bourdieu pointed out that different stocks of capital are assigned different values by powerful institutions” (Gonzales, 2014, p. 200). Even when an individual gains entry into a certain field, she may not have the same authority as others in the same field. While all women fixed-term faculty may hold the same faculty rank at their institutions, varying degrees of capital shape their actions, and inform their decision-making. Having been socialized at a prestigious university or having a strong research record may provide confidence to some women in fixed-term faculty positions as they do their work; they know to some degree they have been successful in aspects that are valued in the field of higher education. Likewise, other forms of capital such as economic security or having a reliable community may provide a sense of stability for women, thereby 36 influencing their workplace performance or practices. Gonzales (2012) summarizes these scenarios, stating, “Seeing individuals as capable, practical, constrained agents, Bourdieu suggests that agency is about navigating in ways that seem possible and plausible” (p. 341). Hence, practices represent how reproduction occurs, how struggle for legitimacy perpetuates, and also how calculated actions reflect the agency of a woman fixed-term faculty member. Using Bourdieu’s approach to practice and agency allows me to emphasize the power of structures and cultures, while also including a deterministic element to human agency. Bourdieu asserted much of our actions are guided by “conditioning” and social constraints. While I also posit our agency is not completely deterministic, I use Bourdieu to highlight how heavily the institution or field weighs on influencing individual agency, embedded in the institution as well as in the construct of gendered organizations. In this way, the responsibility of change falls on those with power, rather than insisting non-tenure track faculty be agents of change within a system in which they are vulnerable and often powerless. Scholarship on faculty agency comprises the first segment of this section of my literature review. I include literature on faculty agency, with a primary focus on faculty agency and women in academia. In this section I pay special attention to how scholarship on this subject has framed agency. The second and final segment of this section on practices includes literature about non-tenure track faculty teaching, student learning, and instructional choices for the classroom. Faculty agency. An abundance of literature about faculty agency comes from KerryAnn O’Meara and colleagues. Many of these studies defined agency as “taking strategic and intentional actions or perspectives toward goals that matter to oneself” (Campbell & O’Meara, 2014, p. 50). Many of these studies also focused exclusively on women faculty, and the most 37 recent of these studies frame academe using a gendered organization lens. These studies are important in that they provide a baseline for how scholarship on faculty agency has been situated, reveal gaps in scholarship on faculty agency, and illuminate the propensity for agency among non-tenure track faculty. Two important topics are addressed in several studies from O’Meara and colleagues related to women faculty and sense of agency: career advancement and family. Both of these topics are particular to women faculty and their sense of agency in large part due to gender roles. O’Meara and Stromquist (2015) examined the role peer networks play in helping women perceive and act on advancing their careers. These peer networks play an important role in helping many women faculty be heard, having a separate space to air their concerns, and listen to their own perceptions about what they may believe or not believe they are capable of doing in their careers. For Niehaus and O’Meara (2015), agency had “two forms—perspective, or making meaning of situations and contexts in ways that advance personal goals, and the behaviors or actions taken to pursue goals in a given situation” (p. 4). Using professional networks as a subject to examine agency, Niehaus and O’Meara indicated what type of professional network combined with career stage greatly influences how much agency a women faculty member has or perceives to have. Often, faculty later in their career who have gained social capital and expanded their professional networks beyond their campuses have a stronger influence on their agency behavior as compared to those earlier in their career who may still depend on in-campus networks for support. O’Meara and Campbell (2011) provided insights into feelings of agency for women related to family leave policies at their university. Previous research in this area indicated women and some men rarely take work or family leave because of the prevailing belief that doing so will 38 impact their tenure prospects. O’Meara and Campbell stressed a sense of agency for women is closely tied to gender in regards to taking family leave. Other variables such as role models, department norms, standards at research universities, self-expectations, sense of capital, are important in either facilitating or hampering a woman faculty’s perception that she can take time off for her family. Similarly, Campbell and O’Meara (2014) explore the relationship between academic department contexts and faculty agency. This study provides four major contributions to faculty agency in the field of higher education. First, it provides evidence that departmental context matters in faculty careers. Second, the study provides examples of how agency manifests into action. Third, it provides broader contexts for agency and asserts department contexts such as collegiality, work-life family balance, and institutional fit often move beyond the institutional context. And finally it is the first quantitative study on faculty agency, bringing a new methodological approach to studying a concept often ill defined. Continued work on faculty agency points more intentionally to the institutional barriers that often impede agency, particularly for women faculty. Studies addressing the dialectic between individual agency and structural constraints have been framed using more traditional theories from sociology. Using career advancement again as a topic to explore faculty agency, Terosky, O’Meara, and Campbell (2014) acknowledged the disadvantages women experience while serving in the rank of associate professors. Combining their previous definitions for agency as the perceived and actual behaviors to achieve goals with Archer’s (2000) assertion that it is the interaction between individuals and their structures that shape the pursuit of these goals, Terosky, O’Meara, and Campbell were better able to tackle the gendered organization and gendered expectations women associate professors encounter. These expectations often include more service work and increased time spent on advising and mentoring students. Each of these expectations creates an imbalance between workload and promotion requirements. In my view, 39 Terosky, O’Meara, and Campbell provided a better handle on what agency is and is not capable of achieving by acknowledging “at times there may be barriers that no amount of agency can overcome, thereby reminding us of the power of certain kinds of constraints that limit opportunities to act with agency” (p. 62). Gonzales (2015) also made use of Archer to examine faculty behavior within a striving university. Gonzales emphasized both the very real presence of the rules and norms that govern colleges and universities and the ability of individuals to perhaps shape these structures. An important contribution here from Gonzales is her attention to the small acts of her participants, or the mundane (Clegg, 2005) behaviors that exhibit agency. These “micro-level” (Gonzales, 2015, p. 318) observations permitted Gonzales to have a very specific sense of the culture informing the institution where her study took place, and how the faculty resist or negotiate this culture. If, for example, a participant in Gonzales’ study indicated a shifting research agenda to conform to the cultural pressure from the institution, this could be categorized as agency, however subtle the shift might be. O’Meara (2015) also employed Archer’s theoretical thinking to examine agency in women faculty. While Gonzales emphasizes mundane actions, O’Meara insisted that agency is also the perception of possibilities that frame actions. These more discreet, or rather powerfully mundane, approaches to agency provide valuable alternatives to understanding agency. Agency exists in every day actions and may not always be a form of intentional resistance, but instead perceived chances for action. Certainly, even if not a formal act of resistance, an individual’s actions are responses to the structural constraints. Stromquist (2017) explored two interrelated issues facing faculty agency today: the rise of measuring productivity specifically through academic analytics and the increase of non-tenure track faculty. First, academic analytics, a tool to measure faculty 40 productivity is blamed for reducing faculties ability to set, review, and maintain research standards. Gildersleeve (2016) made a similar argument, exclaiming, “I am no longer my work. My work is no longer me. I am only my work; I am only human capital. My work consumes me” (p. 4). The dark picture Stromquist and Gildersleeve paint displays the strokes of Taylor’s scientific management theory: to “scientifically analyze tasks performed by individual workers in order to discover those procedures that would produce the maximum output with the minimum input of energies and resources” (Scott & Davis, 2007, p. 41). Second, the rise of non-tenure track faculty reveals the unwillingness by tenure track faculty to act on such obvious work equity issues. This case from Stromquist echoes the similar complaint from Schwartz (2014), who argued a reluctance to act from tenure track faculty to address the non-tenure track phenomenon only contributes to reproducing workplace inequalities between tenure and non-tenure track faculty. Teaching practices and student learning. Given that the majority of non-tenure faculty are hired to perform teaching duties, how they are performing and what teaching practices they employ has an impact on student learning. The impact on student learning has become an important area of investigation in recent years. Ehrenberg and Zhang (2005) produced one of the first studies to approach this subject by examining non-tenure track faculty and undergraduate student graduation rates. They found an increase of faculty off the tenure track correlates to a decrease in student graduation rates, holding other environmental variables constant over time. While they did not specifically examine teaching practices, their institutional level analysis provided one of the first indications about the effects of non-tenure track faculty on student learning. A study aimed at understanding teaching practices of non-tenure track faculty and student learning comes from Umbach (2007). Umbach included variables of teaching effectiveness such as active learning techniques, rigor of course content, and time spent 41 preparing for course. He found many part-time faculty use these high engagement practices significantly less often than their full-time non-tenure track and tenure track faculty peers. Following up on Umbach (2007), Baldwin and Wawrzynski (2011) also examined teaching practices of non-tenure track faculty to determine teaching effectiveness on student learning. Special attention to discipline and teaching strategies is paid in this study to account for appropriate levels of engagement for different academic fields. In short, their study examines teaching practices in disciplinary context. Across these disciplinary fields, their findings are quite similar to Umbach in that full-time non-tenure track faculty behave similarly if not even more positively on incorporating engaged student learning techniques in the classroom. Part-time non- tenure track faculty, on the other hand, make use of high engagement teaching practices much less often. Bettinger and Long (2010) also accounted for disciplinary and field differences, and included variables for the types of students more or less likely to be taught by contingent faculty. Bettinger and Long found part-time, non-tenure track faculty may have negative impacts on student persistence overall, yet also point out positive outcomes for students in professional fields. More importantly, Bettinger and Long emphasized the possibility that many contingent faculty are highly skilled instructors, focused solely on the function of teaching. This emphasis speaks to contingent faculties status as professionals in the field that teach on the side, an argument others have made as well (Baldwin & Chronister, 2001; Ott & Cisneros, 2015). A large longitudinal study from Kiser (2017) examined the teaching practices of part- time adjunct faculty at community colleges. Many participants expressed that their selection of teaching practices is reflective of their own experiences with learning. Additionally, many participants indicated the use of active learning techniques such as classroom discussion, 42 interactive lectures, group work, guest speakers and other kinds of reflexive practices. Perhaps most notable, Kiser found that despite poor working conditions, many part-time adjuncts in her study persisted in employing highly effective teaching practices with high levels of engagement. Lynch-Biniek (2017) provided a promising study on the teaching practices of non-tenure track faculty in writing composition courses. Participants in this study, both non-tenure and tenure track, indicated what type of texts and course assignments they use in their classrooms. Lynch- Biniek found that many non-tenure track faculty typically do not stray from traditional texts used in previous courses. Likewise, course assignments rarely step outside the norm from what is provided. Yet, Lynch-Biniak neglected to fully recognize the variable of time on course preparation, reward systems for tenure track and lack thereof for non-tenure track, and fails to connect institutional culture to faculty decisions and choices about curricular choices. Despite these limitations, Lynch-Biniek added to the conversation about how decisions made about teaching and instructional practices are influenced by working conditions, and what those decisions say about faculty agency in non-tenure track faculty. Summary of practice. Research on women faculty agency provides several perspectives on agency. A common denominator for these studies is an emphasis on the often-constrained choices these women are faced with due to departmental cultures and gender expectations. While there is a breadth of literature on faculty agency, a very modest amount focuses exclusively on non-tenure track faculty. For this reason, studies on teaching and student learning may provide insights about how non-tenure track faculty are making decisions, or expressing agency in their positions. Scholarship on teaching and non-tenure track faculty indicates many of these faculty do not incorporate high engagement practices in their teaching. As to why these practices are not 43 incorporated, reasons often stem from too little time to prepare for teaching assignments or non- tenure track faculty receiving little support from their departments for their high teaching loads. Women in non-tenure track positions, however, may be in a most precarious position. Considering women faculty on the tenure track often feel constrained, women non-tenure track faculty may be more limited in their abilities to express agency because they are often in vulnerable positions. Additionally, women faculty are more likely to receive negative student evaluations based on gender (Boring, Ottoboni, & Stark, 2016; MacNell, Driscoll, & Hunt, 2014). As non-tenure track faculty often teach the highest proportion of undergraduate courses, women in these faculty positions may experience both unsupportive departments and biased student evaluations. As my study focuses on the teaching practices of women non-tenure track faculty, I keep in mind how field and habitus, or the academy and women’s dispositions, influence or limit agency. 44 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGICAL CHOICES Thus far, I have introduced the field of higher education as one that places hierarchical value on certain forms of capital. Drawing from Bourdieu’s concept of field, academe is also influenced by the larger Western social ideals of marriage and family. These frames, and Bourdieu’s organization of field, habitus, and practice informed my methodological choices and my primary research question: 1. How do forms of capital inform graduate school socialization experiences for women and their subsequent careers in fixed-term faculty positions? 2. How do forms of capital and such graduate school socialization experiences shape the work and teaching practices of these women? To address these research questions, I drew from the central tenet of critical qualitative inquiry: a researcher’s position and the ways she represents participants and herself matter (Pasque, Carducci, Kuntz, & Gildersleeve, 2012). Thus, my worldview and the methodological choices I made during this study were deeply intertwined with the women in my study, how I analyzed my data, and how I presented their stories. Below I describe my role and worldview, then the influence of critical qualitative inquiry on my methodology of narrative research, and choice of methods. Next I describe my research design, providing details about how I selected sites, recruited participants, and collected data. Finally, I describe my analysis process. My Role as the Researcher I experience the world as one much like Bourdieu describes, where individuals in various arenas struggle for power, legitimacy, and stability. In my view, the economic, cultural, racial, and political systems that stratify individuals and groups in society also underpin educational experiences and educational spaces. This worldview deeply informed how I created my literature 45 review, as well as why I selected Bourdieu as my theoretical framework. Additionally, this worldview shaped my methodological choices and how I approached the field during data collection. Tieken (2013) shared how personal dispositions can shape research design and data collection. In an account of her time in the field, Tieken described her place in her research by running through a list of labels: I choose my labels carefully. When I first introduced myself to Lavin and Dorothy, I raced through “I’m a graduate student at Harvard” and lingered on “I taught third grade in the rural South” and “I grew up down here in Louisiana and Georgia, and my family still lives here”—figuring that, if I’m looking to do research in the South, the label of a recognized academic institution could lend credentials, but the labels identifying me as a Southerner and a teacher would provide credibility (p. 322-323). Like Tieken, I brought several identities, or labels, to this research project, some that offer credentials, some credibility. First, my status as a graduate student from a university in the same region where I collected data gave me some credentials. The women in my study were familiar with my institution, and many of them received their doctoral degrees there. Several women also recognized that the department I am in is well regarded, and projected credentials on me for my dissertation study. Second, I identify as a woman, as such I have something in common with those in my study and this commonality gave me credibility. The stories the women shared with me were familiar, and I found many of us laughed together and also shared frustrations having similar experiences of moving through the world as women. Although several participants and I had similar experiences, particularly between Dee and I as women of color, I was vigilant to 46 ensure that how we discussed our histories was clear and descriptive, rather than settling comfortably into speaking between the lines about our shared experiences. Yet I also struggled with the demographics of the women in my study, that 15 of the 16 included were white, heterosexual women, many from middle class backgrounds. I had envisioned focusing my research on women of color because of the sheer number of women of color in non-tenure track positions (Finkelstein et al., 2016) and also because of my personal connection to this population. However, the site of my research and my decision to collect data at a regional comprehensive in the Midwest limited my ability to invite a racially diverse group to be a part of my study. I continued on in my participant recruitment, keeping in mind that of the hundreds of email invitations I sent, only 20 or so were women of color. This lack of racial diversity created a larger narrative about the region my study took place, the social powers at play (white, hetero- mostly nuclear family units), and my ability to navigate these spaces as a middle class biracial woman, who is half Asian, and half white. In addition to my credentials and credibility, I also brought certain assumptions to this research. I strove to keep my assumptions about social class, and economic and cultural capital in check. As an individual who identifies as a woman and is white and Asian, and also a graduate student at a top graduate program at a large research university, I am surrounded by assumptions about merit, prestige, and “hard work.” Thus, at times it was difficult for me to not blurt out to some women that they needed to leave academia. Worse, I found myself wondering why they had tried to pursue a career in academia at all, when they did not come into the field of higher education with, or have access to, the kinds of capital that would have contributed to their success. I had to question how I myself conformed to the rules of “powerful institutions” as Gonzales (2014) described. I asked myself why some women insisted that in order to have a 47 family and be good mothers they could only do so as fixed-term faculty. I had to constantly check my assumptions about how the women in my study arrived at their fixed-term positions, their choices about family, their decisions about graduate school, and the meandering pathways of their academic trajectory. During my data collection, I had come to realize how pervasive the narrative of academic graduate socialization was, and how that narrative had so deeply influenced my perceptions of status and prestige. Once I accepted how my own socialization experience at my institution was shaping my approach to my data collection, I decided to draw from my own well of creativity, a part of my identity that I had set aside in order to pursue intellectualism in my dissertation. Creativity for my study meant I envisioned my research design and methodology as a painting, and drew on this metaphor until it became a literal representation of my process (Appendix A). Creativity also meant that I asked myself more personal questions about what I believed about academia, and how my actions and research in the field of higher education may or may not conform to the norm. Incorporating creativity challenged me to think differently about how my study would unfold, and work through my study the same way I would have worked through a painting in the past. I intentionally incorporated aspects of fine art and painting into my methodology, and these aspects are most evident in my analysis process and presentation of findings. Critical Qualitative Inquiry and Narrative Research Within the larger field of qualitative research, critical qualitative inquiry explicitly considers systems of power (i.e., racism, patriarchy, economics) in research questions (Pasque, et al., 2012). More importantly, as mentioned above, it is attentive to the role of the researcher, her position, and how she proceeds in the field to create congruence to center systems of power in her research. Cannella (2015) described critical qualitative inquiry as research that “crosses 48 disciplinary boundaries…and is always/already concerned with issues of fairness and equity, and the struggle toward more just and societal transformations” (p. 7-8). Similarly, Denzin and Giardina (2016) asserted that inquiry through a critical lens adheres to both the tradition of research in asking questions and providing evidence while at the same time addressing the changing face of higher education. These changes occur in “social, cultural, political, and economic forms” (Denzin & Giardina, 2016, p. 5). My focus on women in fixed-term faculty positions is an example of the changing face of the higher education field, and as demonstrated through my literature, a topic that can be assessed and examined within social, cultural, and economic norms. Likewise, Bourdieu’s theoretical approach is primarily concerned with asking questions about how dominant groups stay dominant through the reproduction of cultural beliefs and the legitimacy of those beliefs (Swartz, 1997). Writing about critical qualitative inquiry, Pasque et al (2012) argued that ontological, epistemological, and methodological considerations must be tied together; it is not simply about choosing a method à la carte, it is how a methodology and method are justified and congruent to the research problem and the researcher. My decision about methodology, then, was influenced by my own worldview and the tenet of critical qualitative inquiry that my role, position, and connection to those in my study matter. In this spirit, I relied heavily on the work of Clandinin and Connelly (2000), and Quigley (2013) to inform my narrative approach to research. Clandinin and Connelly and Quigley emphasize the role of the researcher, and how a researcher’s behavior, interactions with participants, her place in and approach to context shape research. Narrative inquiry centers stories from participants about a phenomenon in time (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). The phenomenon under examination in my study is teaching, or the culmination of field and habitus that Bourdieu (2016) refers to as practice. There are also 49 tensions in narrative inquiry, tensions tied specifically to the use of theory that Clandinin and Connelly refer to as the place of theory in research. Clandinin and Connelly argued tensions arise when narrative researchers adhere to a more formalistic approach to research design, data collection, and analysis. Thus, the deductive approach to constructing a research design from a theoretical framework (similar to what I had done) for a narrative researcher may prove difficult to balance; “the narrative inquirer does not prescribe general applications and uses but rather creates texts that, when well done, offer readers a place to imagine their own uses and applications” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 42). I addressed this tension by writing up individual historical portraits of each of my participants. I used these historical portraits as a point of data to read through inductively, to as Clandinin and Connelly suggest, “imagine uses and applications” for these stories. A second tension for narrative inquiry is the position of people included in research. In narrative inquiry, people are the embodiment of lived stories and shared experiences. Given that my theoretical framework heavily influenced my research study and that I personally hold a critical worldview, it was important for me to address these tensions in narrative inquiry. For example, during the process of designing my study, I kept a journal to record my reactions and responses to narrative research. In one entry, I discuss my positionality, how I approached narrative inquiry, and how I maintained a philosophical critical congruence to my research design. In addition to culture, other formalistic inquiry terms in common usage are race, class, gender, and power. Narrative inquirers, in developing or explaining their work with other researchers, find themselves almost inevitably at the formalistic boundary, as other researchers read through their work for the formalistic terms that apply: a person is a 50 member of a race, a class, a gender, and may be said to have varying degrees of power in any situation. Part of the tension for a narrative inquirer is to acknowledge these truths while holding to a different research agenda” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 45). This tension is not necessarily seen as a tension for me. My worldview and how I experience and understand the world means that I acknowledge these categories, and also claim that these categories or formalistic terms are constructed. I experience and see the world in terms of varying degrees of power, and how this power is manifest. It speaks to my constant questions about who is in control, who gets to be in control, and how are they wielding that control? I typically see the world through a constant negotiation within these terms (race, gender, class). Thus, the stories of my participants, while I read them as their own and within their own story, will eventually be looked at through my own worldview. [August 15, 2018] While Clandinin and Connelly may not consider their narrative methodologies “critical” in the larger paradigms of research, I align my worldview with that of Pasque et al as critical qualitative inquiry, and thus refer to my methodology as critical narrative inquiry. Critical qualitative inquiry represents the epistemological orientation of my research approach, one that recognizes powerful systems. Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) and Quigley’s (2013) work represents my methodology, one that tells both my participants story and through analysis, my own story. “It is not only the participants’ stories that are retold by a narrative inquirer. In our cases, it is also the inquirers’ stories that are open for inquiry and retelling” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 60). Thus, I emphasize the phenomenon of teaching within larger social systems of gender, academia, economy, and the institution of marriage while attending to the specific context. I envisioned these two research approaches (critical qualitative 51 and narrative inquiry) working together to create a foundation on which I could then begin to paint the rest of my methodology. My methodology is critical narrative; the canvas, the stretcher bars, and the primer of my qualitative paintings. My methods are narrative interviews drawn from Clandinin and Connelly, and observations and analysis guided by the work of Dyson and Genishi (2005); the layers of colors and paint strokes in building my research design. Research Design I used the framework of critical qualitative inquiry and Quigley’s (2013) urging to recognize culture and context, to symbolize the “field” of my study. My qualitative inquiry is purposeful in centering systems of power in research. For my study, the specific systems of power I highlight are gendering, academia, economy, and the institution of marriage. Then, I drew from different methods that were both aligned with critical narrative methodology, and with my theoretical framework. To understand habitus, I performed narrative-inspired interviews, to learn about the personal histories of the women in my study. I probed with specific questions throughout my interviews that dealt with capital without explicitly saying capital. For example, I asked about research activity, how women experienced graduate school, and how they arrived at their institution. These questions allowed me to better understand relationships, marriages, connections to community, and in turn, the economic, social, and cultural capital that women accrued prior to obtaining their fixed-term faculty positions. These interviews also had specific questions about teaching practices. To fully comprehend how the women in my study were teaching, I also performed observations. These observations, thus, represented Bourdieu’s concept of practice, and how the larger field and the capital/habitus of an actor shapes her strategic actions. My observations were informed by Dyson and Genishi’s (2005) recommendation that observations give insights into the routines or every day lives of 52 participants. Moreover, observations provided a space where activities took place, and a context for actions. Finally, I collected documents such as syllabus, promotion packets, and CVs that helped provide more information about the habitus of the women. Field: site selection. All the women in my study work at one comprehensive institution, Lakeside University (a pseudonym). Lakeside University is located in the Midwest, and is considered an institution with “higher research activity” per Carnegie Classification. Lakeside has approximately 26,000 undergraduate students, one of the largest comprehensive institutions in the region. Lakeside is also located in a rural area of the Midwest, and the closest urban center is approximately an hour and a half drive. I performed my research at Lakeside because as a comprehensive university it represents regional and national student enrollments, an array of faculty types, and a variety of degree offerings (Schneider & Deane, 2015). Comprehensive universities also employ large numbers of fixed-term faculty, both full-time and part-time, as well as tenure-eligible and tenured faculty, many of whom were trained to work as traditional faculty in large research intense universities (Eddy & Hart, 2011). Having both faculty types provided a mixture of faculty that may influence the character of a department or college. Finally, comprehensive universities are often characterized as having a teaching emphasis (Henderson, 2009). For this reason, selecting a comprehensive university may provide insight into what type of working conditions an institution that espouses the value of teaching provides to its faculty. Habitus: participants. Habitus for women fixed-term faculty may include their academic experiences, disciplinary background, areas of expertise, personal histories, and racial background. For these reasons, I selected participants based on three primary criteria. Each criterion and its justification is described below: 53 Criteria 1: Identify as women. I included in my study individuals who identified as women. I simply requested that individuals who identified as women consider participating in my study. Almost all of my respondents were white cisgender women (more on recruitment below). Criteria 2: Full-time fixed-term faculty status. It is essential that my participants were not on the tenure track in order to examine how women fixed-term faculty instructional practices are described. I sought only women who worked full-time at one institution because I did not want to draw differences based on employment status. Instead, I wanted all participants to be full-time fixed-term status in order for other qualities of work and teaching to be made evident without employment status complicating my findings. I did not discriminate on age or length of time in the position. Criteria 3: PhDs or terminal degrees. Graduate school socialization deeply influences how future faculty think about their work (Austin, 2002). For this reason, participants held a PhD or terminal degree in their field, or were ABD in their field. Women may experience graduate school differently, in that they may not receive the same opportunities, gain access to the same networks, or be regarded as future researchers and faculty members in the same way as their male peers (Griffin, et al., 2015). Thus, two tiers of academic professionals, those on the tenure track and those not, are present in the field of academia both of who receive the same training. These two tiers complicate the division of labor since both are equally qualified for the same position, and the socialization experience is one that was necessary for this study to understand how women with terminal degrees make decisions about the academic profession. Practice: data collection. I collected data using three primary methods: interviews, observations, and participant documents. Prior to data collection, I received approval from the 54 Michigan State University Institutional Review Board (IRB). IRB approval was completed for my consent form(s) (Appendix B), and interview and observation protocols (Appendix C). Recruiting women for my study. I began recruiting women for my study based first on institution type. There are several different comprehensive universities around the United States, and I chose the Midwest region for both ease of location and the variety of comprehensive universities. I first chose Lakeside University because of its rural location, and went through each department website faculty contact page to recruit participants. Lakeside indicates faculty type on most departmental webpages, and to ensure that I was contacting fixed-term faculty I referred to the faculty handbook and human resources page from Lakeside to understand how their faculty types and titles were defined. I also looked at the teaching faculty union to get a better sense of how faculty are organized at Lakeside. Then I emailed each potential candidates requesting they be involved in my study (Appendix D). Approximately 120 emails were sent to Lakeside University. I received 24 responses to my first email invitation for potential participants. After contacting the initial 24, 17 women agreed to be interviewed. I narrowed the 17 women down to 16, after excluding one woman who was not full-time at Lakeside or any other institution. As mentioned above, all women had to be full-time fixed-term at their institution, making them have the same faculty status of full-time fixed-term. Two women were full-time fixed-term at another institution but continued to teach part-time at Lakeside. Because of their full-time employment status, I included them in my study. Interviews. I performed narrative-inspired interviews with 16 women for my study. These narrative-inspired interviews followed Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) recommendation that interviews seek to understand the continuity and wholeness of an individual’s life experience. As I sought to understand the teaching practices of fixed-term women faculty, and 55 how forms of capital shaped these practices, I needed to learn about the academic trajectory of each woman. These interviews also included questions about the women’s lives before graduate school, such as where they grew up, whether they were first-gen, even their socio-economic status. Simply by prompting the women in my study with the question, “why did you decide to go on to get your PhD?” a personal history of each woman unfolded. In this way, I was able to have a clearer portrait of the habitus of each woman, and then how her capital (both capital that she was born into and that she accrued during her academic experiences) shaped her teaching practices. Each interview followed a similar pattern of beginning with high school or undergraduate education experiences and then leading into how each woman arrived at their current institution. Embedded in these interviews, particularly the undergraduate experiences, were other details of their lives including where they grew up, what kind of family they were born into, and as mentioned above, their socio-economic statuses. Additionally, many women mused about what their futures held for them, and if they did not offer these details I probed them, asking about what they think might be “next” for their careers. Thus, each interview followed the same narrative arc. On average, these interviews lasted 75 minutes, and were recorded using a small recorder. After each interview I downloaded the audio file and sent it to a transcriber who I hired to help me with transcribing this work. Observations. Mid-way through my interview process, I began to contact some women who I felt I connected more easily with, and asked them if they would be willing to have me observe them for the day. In total, five women agreed to this request. My observations lasted on average six hours per participant, with a total of 30 hours of observation data. During the observation periods, I took scratch-notes and head-notes to track activities and conversations 56 during the day. I did not use a recorder during any of my observations and relied on my scratch- notes. At the end of each day of observations, I recorded myself talking out loud, sharing thoughts and reflections on each day. Then, the following day I took my scratch-notes and recordings and created field notes. These field notes captured the details of each day. Dyson and Genishi (2005) stated “…notes are descriptive and begin to capture a few essentials of a study: time, space, participants, activity. Outside the classroom, these jottings could be combined with ‘headnotes’ or memories to construct a more detailed account of particular events” (p. 63). Per Dyson and Genishi’s suggestion, I combined my headnotes, scratch-notes, and recordings to create more robust descriptions and fine-grained details of my observations. These field notes helped construct the specific environment of Lakeside, and the individuals learning and working at the university. Participant documents. Almost all women in my study provided a copy of their CV or other material related to their work. For example, several women offered me their teaching survey scores, their promotion packets, and their course syllabi. One woman provided additional writing, and her teaching philosophy because our interview was interrupted. Process for Analysis I drew on my own experience as an artist to develop my process for analysis. The scenery surrounding Lakeside initially inspired this analysis process. I drove numerous times to Lakeside, and during these drives reflected on the landscape, the rolling hills of the Midwest, and how the season changed during the three months I collected data. I held the image of my methodological canvas in my mind, knowing that during my analysis phase I would be adding layers of paint, and each color would represent one part of my methodology (e.g. specific 57 method, Bourdieu’s theory of practice, or my personal worldview). Dyson and Genishi (2005) offer insights into the process of analysis, one that I also adhered to: Through analysis we are not on the trail of singular truths, nor of overly neat stories. We are on the trail of thematic threads, meaningful events, and powerful factors that allow us entry…into the everyday…It is, in fact, competing stories, put into dynamic relation with one another, that allow insight into participants’ resources and challenges, and moreover, into the transformative possibilities of social spaces for teaching and learning (p. 111). Below I describe my process of analysis, or how I included different aspects of my methodology like colors mixed together. These colors helped me begin painting my analysis. This process is one that attends to the resources and challenges of my participants to illuminate how their stories developed different ways to think about teaching and learning. Personal reflections and partner debriefing. During my drives to Lakeside, I recorded myself talking as I prepared for each day of data collection. These recordings include descriptions of the landscape, as well as my emotional and mental presence to prepare for interviews. At the end of each day I would record myself talking again, offering out loud how my data collection was proceeding, and how I might incorporate the visual element of my drives into my analysis. Also at the end of each day of data collection, I debriefed with my partner, and I recorded these conversations or took notes. By doing these reflections and debriefings, I was able to articulate the experience of data collection as it was happening, and also begin to notice similarities in my interviews, and how I was responding to these similarities. For example, there were certain things I was more attracted to or paid more attention to, such as the histories of the women in my study. My initial study was focused much more on teaching, yet I continued to circle back to the social origins of the women. I also developed an image that represented the 58 flow of my interviews, both on the individual and collective level of the interviewing process. This image is what I refer to as my narrative arc, and this arc is the foundation of my process for analysis. This arc developed throughout my interview process, and also had in a way, become a part of my subconscious as I incorporated traveling and time and seasons into my data collection experience. This arc represents the visual landscape, the flow of my interviews, a narrative analysis, and Bourdieu’s theory of practice. Narrative arc. I developed a narrative arc as a visual aid to represent my data analysis. The narrative arc represents four components to my study: 1) the physical landscape surrounding Lakeside, 2) Bourdieu’s theory of practice, 3) the process of data collection, and 4) the flow of each narrative-inspired interview as a tool for analysis. First, the landscape where I traveled back and forth collecting data was framed by low rolling hills. These hills are mirrored in my narrative arc. These hills also came to symbolize how my emotions would move up and down as I performed interviews and observations. Second, the arc also represents Bourdieu’s theory of practice. The image overall represents the field, and the arc as a hill where there may be moments of struggle to climb. The first two plot points signify social origins, and how the women in my study accrued capital. The third plot point is practice, and how individual disposition and the larger image of the arc combine to shape practice. Third, the arc represents entering the field, building relationships with the women in my study, and then leaving the field. Finally, the narrative arc represents the flow of my narrative-inspired interviews, and how my coding process would progress. As a representation of analysis, my narrative arc is primarily drawn from the narrative inquiry tradition (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Thus, I kept in mind that the phenomenon of teaching practice as described in my study was occurring in context (per Quigley, 2013) and in time (per Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) 59 Developing the narrative arc as an outline for coding. From hard copies of my transcripts, I performed two rounds of open coding. Dyson and Genishi (2005) suggest open coding is way to brainstorm and reintroduce oneself to the data. After these initial read-throughs and coding, I sat with these interviews for some time, unsure of how to process everything. My first two rounds of open coding did not feel appropriate for my study; I was missing a cohesiveness that other portions of my methodology possessed. The sense that my coding was untethered to the rest of my methodology was because I had put the image of my narrative arc and the stories of my participants aside when I began initial coding. Due to this, I went back to the narrative arc, and developed more concrete plot points that all interviews could follow. Thus, for each participant, I took them as one unique story, and focused only on that story as I read their interview, field notes (for those I observed) and any other documents associated with that person. As a representation of each interview, the narrative arc has four main components, or what I refer to as plot points: 1) entering graduate school 2) moving to Lakeside University 3) teaching practices and 4) what comes next. (Figure 1). Once I had decided to use my narrative arc, I began first by coding all of my participants into three of the four plot points: 1) entering graduate school, 2) moving to Lakeside University, and 4) what comes next. I printed out new copies of each transcript, and coded these portions by hand using colored pens. These plot points were the easiest to see clearly, as they were almost always located at the beginnings and endings of each interview. The third plot point, teaching practices, was less linear, so I decided to code this plot point last. By coding to my narrative arc, I was also outlining Bourdieu’s theoretical proposition that [(habitus)(capital)] + field = practice. Coding for capital. After I finished coding for plot points one, two, and four, I uploaded each transcript into NVIVO software, and used nodes to highlight the sections of the plot points. 60 I switched from hand-coding to using software knowing that I would be better able to see my narrative arc in a larger form through the queries I could run in NVIVO. As I moved my hand Figure 1. Narrative Arc written codes to NVIVO, I also took the opportunity to read the transcripts again, and add more details to the plot points, such as more specific codes in plot point one (entering graduate school), that described “early life” or “family.” Once all transcripts were uploaded and coding was complete for plot points one, two and four, I then went back through each of these large coded sections and coded to Bourdieu’s concept of capital. I loosely divided capital into the three components of economic, social, and cultural, as per Bourdieu’s (1986) writing on capital. For example I began first with plot point one, “entering graduate school” and if a woman in my study 61 indicated she was a first generation student, I assigned this a code of social capital and cultural capital to indicate whether she was familiar or not with entering the field of academia due to familial connections and history. Another example, if a woman indicated she went to a particular school either because it was a top university or program, or because it was local, I assigned this cultural capital, due to the value of prestige that the field of academia often places on institutional rank. In each of these instances, these amounts of capital place my participants in particular locations within a field (Bourdieu, 2016; Swartz, 1997). In order to assign forms of capital to the women in my study, I developed a list that drew from literature, and the ways scholars who study higher education as a system discuss what is valued in the field of academia (Appendix E). For example, Gopaul (2015) indicated high research productivity done during graduate school conforms to the rules of the game in academia. Conforming to these rules by publishing provides forms of capital for graduate students for their future careers. I also developed my own list of forms of capital for some of the women who had stories about entering graduate school and arriving at Lakeside that existed outside literature on the academic profession. For example, many women in my study grew up in the region around Lakeside, and this provided certain advantages for them. I coded these instances in their narratives as social or economic capital. Thus, in my study, capital also takes on different meaning depending on where my participant’s are situated in a field. Thus, the process of coding for capital was a fluid process. I was not prescriptive in how I coded for capital. I read each individual transcript and put the words of the women in context with their situation and in the context of the larger field of academia. Additionally, I kept in my mind other fields that overlap with academia (such as social status, patriarchy, and economic systems) and influence how individuals are able to move in academia. 62 Coding for habitus. Once I finished coding plot points one, two, and four of the arc, and also completed coding for capital for each of these plot points, I then went through and coded for habitus. This loosely follows, again, Bourdieu’s theoretical proposition that [(habitus)(capital)] + field = practice. Habitus, like capital, was coded without strict prescription. To code for habitus, I drew from my own personal sense of whom the women were, how they talked about themselves, and the jottings/car notes I had taken about each participant. I included field notes and interviews in this process. Coding for practice: The last stage of my coding process was to focus specifically on the teaching practices of the women in my study, or the third plot point. During this stage, I went back to Dyson and Genishi (2005), adhering more closely to their suggestions of open coding. Here, my coding was much more inductive, and I “marked significant passages…a word or phrase to describe bracketed information” (Dyson & Genishi, 2005, p. 85). After three rounds of open coding for interview transcripts, field notes, and documents, I began to bundle codes together and created larger themes from my groupings (Appendix F). Once I had these larger themes, I set them aside and moved back to incorporating a more deductive approach, folding in my theoretical framework and the previous coding processes of my narrative arc. Dyson and Genishi (2005) suggested that during the coding process, “researchers might ask of their data: What are people trying to do and through what means or strategies? How do people characterize others or their own situation? What sorts of assumptions…institutional expectations, normal childhoods, or good families undergird their actions?” (p. 85). To this end, I considered the habitus and capital of the women in my study, and created new groupings of the women based on certain categories. These categories were developed through my coding process from plot points one and two (Appendix G). Finally, I looked across my codes for how the women in my study 63 were characterized, combined these characterizations with their descriptions of teaching practices, and considered the context of Lakeside as it related to their forms of capital. I drew once again from Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice and his hypothesis: [(habitus)(capital)] + field = practice. Developing and writing the epilogue. I included an epilogue in this study for two reasons: 1) to complete the narrative arc I developed as a reflection of the interviews from the women, and 2) to ensure my own experience and emotions about my study were voiced along with the women. I drew again from the narrative tradition, and created a first-person composite narrative to describe the experience of “what comes next” or the fourth plot point in my narrative arc. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) indicated when moving from research data to writing research texts, “most of us [researchers] are astonishingly unclear about what our inquiry interests are and how to justify them in personal terms” (p. 122). For this reason, as I wrote the epilogue I remained focused on describing the essence of, or phenomenon of “what comes next.” Thus, this epilogue is less research writing and more prose. This last chapter is written in first- person, and is a story about what takes place on my last drive home as I reflect on the words of my participants. I include small portions of the conversations had with the other women and combine their words with mine to describe what the future might hold for all of us. Since I had coded for plot point four from my narrative arc, I looked over these sections and began to analyze them for the phenomenon of what comes next. I asked myself what this phenomenon felt like personally, and words such as ambiguous, unknown, future, and decisions came to mind. I coded for these words from the sections I had previously identified as plot point four. I also coded the transcripts from my own recorded conversations and debriefings that I created during my data collection process. 64 Summary of Methodological Choices My critical narrative methodology is a reflection of my own role as a researcher and my worldview that powerful systems of gendering, race, economic position, and politics stratify individuals and underpin the field of higher education. Narrative inquiry, from Clandinin and Connelly (2000) and in particular from Quigley (2013) is a methodology that retells stories using the voice of the researcher. Thus, what the women in my study shared with me is retold through my critical worldview, and in this retelling I maintain the honesty of their telling of experiences within the dynamic of powerful systems. I collected data using three primary sources, interviews, observations, and documents. All three data sources were focused on one comprehensive institution in the Midwest. These data sources were indicative of my theoretical framework of Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice. My analysis included both inductive and deductive coding, and during my own personal reflections and my incorporation of a creative element to my study, I developed a narrative arc to trace the personal histories of the women in my study and how these histories and access to resources (or capital) shaped their teaching practices. In the next chapter I describe two strands of findings that work in tandem: pathways, and teaching strategies. 65 CHAPTER 4: PATHWAYS Figure 2. Pathways Findings for this study are divided into two chapters, this Chapter 4 titled Pathways, the following Chapter 5 titled Practice and Strategic Actions. My first findings chapter describes two pathways: the traditional and the local pathway. Each of these two pathways represents the first and second plot point of my narrative arc: entering and progressing through graduate school and moving into a fixed-term faculty position. Each of these pathways has distinctive characteristics, however their boundaries are malleable. Thus, circumstances, dispositions, and access to resources shaped how the women in my study made decisions about which graduate program they attended, and how they arrived at their current institution. The traditional and the local pathways were largely developed based on the narratives of the women in my study. I approached these narratives drawing from a grounded theory perspective, however I do not consider my analytical method to be strictly grounded. It should be noted, however, that I read through all transcripts and field notes and developed each pathway according to how the women in my study discussed their experiences going into and through 66 graduate school. Two distinct experiences began to take shape through my coding process, and from the resulting codes I further developed characteristics for each pathway. After initially developing these pathways, I relied on literature about graduate school and hiring practices in academia, and the framework of Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice to further develop my two pathways. Influenced by the work of Armstrong and Hamilton (2013) and Rivera (2015), I further analyzed the narratives to reflect forms of capital. As Rivera indicated, “it became clear that culture and socioeconomic status were highly salient bases of evaluation and stratification [for the participants]…” This sentiment is also true for my study, and for this reason I include pointed notes about capital throughout my findings. Guiding the organization of these pathways was my narrative arc, a reflection of how each woman progressed through their academic trajectories and into their current faculty positions. This chapter on pathways provides background on the women, and introduces how forms of capital are offered, accrued, and provided as it relates to an individual’s geographic or social origins. As Bourdieu (2016) indicated, capital deeply informs an individual’s habitus, or how she filters and makes sense of the world around her. To best describe my participants’ teaching practices and truly understand their sense of stability in their teaching roles, it is essential to know and read the backgrounds of how capital has been acquired. Pathways to Graduate School and Move to Lakeside University Although much has been written about the training and preparation students experience in graduate school, very little research exists about how individuals enter their doctoral program (Cassuto, 2015; Nerad, 2011) and their subsequent academic careers. The pathways that lead undergraduate students into their graduate programs is little understood, yet extremely important to making sense of the link between undergraduate experiences and academic successes, and 67 how experience and success lead to opportunities in graduate school. I begin my findings section with these pathways, because they ground the larger story about how my participants deploy strategic actions in their teaching practices. The women in my study provided several reasons for having continued on to graduate school. Many explained they were “bookish” or “good at school” and wanted to stay in academia as long as possible. Others were primed during their undergraduate education with research opportunities and were simply expected to continue their education. For others, it was a poor economy or simply not knowing what else to do. The two pathways are based on these myriad reasons to pursue graduate school combined with the varied experiences during graduate school. The first pathway I discuss is the traditional pathway. The traditional pathway most resembles what research on the field of academia suggests is the “normative” trajectory into and through graduate school (Gopaul, 2015). Although increased student access and growth in professional graduate degrees has changed graduate education in the United States, an ideal pathway into graduate school exists (Cassuto, 2015; Posselt, Reyes, Slay, Kamimura, & Porter, 2017). This ideal is tightly connected to concepts of prestige and legitimacy in higher education, and those who travel a traditional pathway in the most idyllic way have potential access to social networks and institutional financial resources necessary for a successful professional future (Burris, 2004). Additionally, prospective graduate students with connections to powerful faculty mentors, and records of undergraduate research activity are more likely to be admitted to selective PhD programs (Posselt, 2016). Thus, women in my study on the traditional pathway, particularly for their graduate school experiences, were likely to attend highly ranked, large research universities. Additionally, many of these women went directly from their undergraduate degree into a 68 doctoral program; were preparing for a career in the academic profession; had the ability to relocate for graduate school; and had mentors and advisors who played important roles for their future preparation. The traditional pathway leading to the academic profession is also distinct. Most women on the traditional pathway experienced clear delineation between their graduate school experiences and their entries into the workforce. Rarely were women on the traditional pathway working simultaneously while earning their degrees. Other characteristics that make up their move into a fixed-term position are the hiring practices women on this pathway experienced. For example, women were hired through more conventional modes such as a national or regional search, or as spousal hires. I include spousal hires in the traditional pathway because it is a practice particular to academia, and even more so for dual-career academics (Sallee, in press). To summarize, the specific attributes that define the traditional pathway are: performing undergraduate research; continuing graduate education almost immediately after undergrad; having funding and access to financial resources from the department while in graduate school; attending graduate school as a full-time student; being able to relocate to attend graduate school; and being hired through a traditional search or as a spousal hire. The second pathway I discuss is the local pathway, which recognizes the different routes into graduate school. The local pathway provides and alternative to understanding graduate education outside of the large research-intensive universities where most scholarship on graduate education is performed. The local pathway is largely based on the narratives of the women, and less on literature when compared to the traditional pathway. Due to the dearth of scholarship discussing the more local-centric aspects of graduate school, it was imperative for me to highlight a local pathway that both deepens the body of literature on graduate school education 69 and provides a unique understanding of less recognized ways of how capital is accrued in the field of higher education. Most women taking the local pathway were raised in the same region where I performed my data collection. Thus, many either never left, or they returned to their homes for graduate school. Their pathways into graduate school were often a continuation of their undergraduate Table 4.1: Traditional Pathway Attributes and Capital Participant Name Magdeline Academic Field Biology Attributes / Capital Geographic mobility Performed undergraduate research Prestigious undergraduate Oriented to discipline Departmental pedigree Married (academic) Geographic mobility Performed undergraduate research Semi-prestigious undergraduate Oriented to discipline Married (academic) Geographic mobility Prestigious undergraduate Oriented to discipline Departmental pedigree First-gen student Single Geographic mobility Performed undergraduate research Oriented to discipline Married (non-academic) Geographic mobility Performed undergraduate research Semi-prestigious undergraduate Oriented to discipline Departmental pedigree Married (academic) Geographic mobility Semi-prestigious undergraduate Oriented to discipline Married (non-academic) Geographic mobility Oriented to discipline Geographic mobility Oriented to discipline First-gen student Janie Bio-Chemistry Elaine Performing Arts Patricia Applied Arts Adrianne English Eleanor Philosophy Philosophy Geographic science Dee Joy 70 Table 4.2: Local Pathway Attributes and Capital Participant Name Jill Academic Field Business Nan Physical Education Dorothy Nadean Kiki Liz Janet Anna English English Education English Sociology Communications Attributes / Capital Extended family nearby Worked professionally Academic insider Married (academic) Extended family nearby Attended Lakeside (undergraduate or master’s) Worked professionally Married (non-academic) Extended family nearby Attended Lakeside (undergraduate or master’s) Single and divorced (non-academic) Extended family nearby Attended Lakeside (undergraduate or master’s) Worked professionally Married (non-academic) Extended family nearby Attended Lakeside (undergraduate or master’s) Worked professionally Academic insider Married (non-academic) Extended family nearby Attended Lakeside (undergraduate or master’s) Academic insider First-gen student Married (non-academic) Limited geographic mobility Oriented to discipline Married (non-academic) Limited geographic mobility Oriented to discipline First-gen student Single degree at their comprehensive university, and many shared that they went back to graduate school because they thought it might give them social and economic mobility. Many, however, could not specifically explain why they returned. Like the traditional pathway, the local pathway into the academic profession is distinct. For most women on the local pathway, working and going to graduate school simultaneously was the norm. Several maintained their current positions (at the time of interview) as they pursued their graduate degree. Others moved into their fixed-term position while they were at the 71 “all but dissertation” or ABD stage. Another unique aspect of the local pathway is the regional and institutional network at play during their hiring experiences. Many women in my study developed positive reputations or maintained contact with faculty at Lakeside, and thus easily moved into their fixed-term faculty positions. Hiring graduates from the ranks of its own department and institution is what Altbach, Yudkevich, and Rumbley (2015) referred to as academic inbreeding. While Altbach et al. argued that this practice is deleterious to the respective field, for comprehensive universities and the women in my study it was a practice that conferred some advantages to both the new hire and the institution. For this reason, I refer to this practice as being an academic insider, rather than being academically inbred. To summarize, the specific attributes of the local pathway include: attending the institution where they were raised; attending the same institution as their undergraduate or master’s degree; having time as a professional between undergrad/master’s degree and doctoral education; not being entirely certain about why they continued their doctoral education; or being motivated to pursue doctoral education due to poor economic conditions. Both the traditional and local pathways provided important forms of capital. Within the various forms of capital, two attributes make each one particularly distinguishable from the other: 1) the mindset of those on each pathway about their futures; and 2) their geographic mobility. Those on the traditional pathway expected for themselves, and were expected by their departments, to pursue a tenure-track faculty position. For those on the local pathway, many shared they did not initially have the mindset or aspirations to have a career in academia s a faculty. Although some on the local pathway admitted feeling they were being prepared for a career in research, they remained more interested in their graduate education as a professional experience rather than a research experience. Many women on the local pathway were also 72 geographically bound and never left the region around Lakeside, nor considered leaving to pursue graduate education. Among the participants, eight women are in the traditional pathway, and eight are in the local. The tables above outline the attributes and capital for each of the women on each pathway. The Traditional Pathway I picked an advisor rather than a university, which is pretty common in my field. And she was at Midwest Flagship so Midwest Flagship it was… If it had been Texas, Texas? Sure. I don’t think I really cared where. – Magdeline The traditional pathway is composed of eight women: Magdeline, Elaine, Janie, Patricia, Adrianne, Eleanor, Dee, and Joy. Women on the traditional pathway are presented through their narratives, and the order in which I present them represents the degree to which each conforms to the traditional pathway I have described. At times, I provide two narratives simultaneously because of the similarities in the women’s stories. The narratives represent a continuum of what the traditional pathway looks like, and how the women in this pathway fit the definition of traditional to varying degrees. In order to group women into the traditional pathway, I identified those who had the attributes of “traditional” such as moving directly from undergrad to grad school, being able to relocate for graduate school, and obtaining funding for their graduate education. I also considered characteristics of the institutions that women on the traditional pathway attended. These institutions were often resource rich, and provided access to larger social and academic networks. The moving to Lakeside reflects the traditional character of the women’s pathway, in that many experienced a hiring process that was either from a national or open search, or spousal hire. For those that were not spousal hires, it was often a failed search for a tenure-track position 73 that led them to their current fixed-term position. Many on the traditional pathway were also being primed during graduate school to seek a tenure-track position, and many pursued, or are still pursuing tenure-track faculty positions. In essence, there are variants to the traditional pathway, as some women conform to a more idealized definition of the traditional graduate student (Gardner, 2008) than others. Thus, Magdeline and Janie represent a more idealized experience of the traditional pathway, whereas Dee’s and Joy’s paths may share some of Magdeline’s and Janie’s characteristics, their navigation along the traditional pathway had more interruptions and was less linear and streamlined. Despite these variations, one key characteristic links women on the traditional pathway together: their willingness to relocate for both graduate school and a faculty positions. Magdeline and Janie. Magdeline represents the most ideal traditional pathway into and through graduate school. She shared, I’m a French citizen. Now French American. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do, and I couldn’t do it in my own country. The only person really in the world to study with was at Midwest Flagship University, so I picked an advisor rather than a university. And Midwest Flagship University was the dream; it was everything I wanted. The advisor offered, what she offered was a silver lining. It was by far my top choice. I wanted a good match. And I liked it. It was what I had been waiting for, to finally get to kind of do what I’d been trained for. It was really my dream PhD. Her experience of leaving her home country to study abroad and then staying abroad for her PhD represents the kind of trajectory that is likely driven by her discipline, which is biology. Magdeline explained her reasons for attending Midwest Flagship University were to study with the best in her field. Her commitment to her discipline is what Gouldner (1957) described as the 74 cosmopolitan academic. Cosmopolitans are more likely to orient themselves to their disciplinary field, and build their network from within this academic field. Cosmopolitans are also more likely to be geographically mobile, a characteristic Magdeline truly embodied. After moving away, she went to a university in Canada, one of two universities that is currently a member of the Association of American Universities, and is well regarded internationally. As an undergraduate student, she was trained to perform research and become equipped for an academic career. She learned early on what was important for her academic trajectory, stating, “Really, it’s publications [that is] all they care about so I published and I was fine.” These early publications and research training, combined with the prestige of her undergraduate university gave Magdeline the freedom to select her graduate program. She stated, “I went to Midwest because I picked an advisor, rather than a university which is pretty common in my field…and also did a postdoc which is what biology typically does.” Magdeline was adhering to the norms of her field, being socialized in graduate school to follow a traditional pathway through academia. This kind of traditional pathway has few interruptions and assumes graduate doctoral education is a full-time endeavor. Thus, the traditional pathway is largely maintained to prime future faculty members by learning the discipline and institution’s cultural processes (Austin, 2002; Tierney & Rhoads, 1993). The socialization that Magdeline experienced is also key to reproducing norms in the field of academia. These norms of elevating research and publications, as well as studying with the best in the field are desirable, and provide social and cultural capital to those who receive the kind of specific socialization as Magdeline. As Tierney and Rhoads (1993) described, individuals are taught how to conform to their specific cultural processes, a practice that Bourdieu referred to as learning the rules of the game, or getting a “feel for the game” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). 75 Thus, Magdeline knew what was valued, and with this knowledge and training, combined with access to social networks and cultural learning about her field, she gathered the necessary capital to help her be more successful at the “game” of academia. In a similar fashion, Janie in biochemistry represents a traditional pathway. From an early age, Janie knew she would be attending college. Janie shared she grew up always being told she was smart, being instilled to value intelligence and brains. She explained she went to a small liberal arts school in the Mid-Atlantic to get a well-rounded education, and be near her family and the place she grew up. During her undergraduate education, Janie found her passion for her academic discipline. She gravitated towards the sciences and decided on a specific major where she could perform research. Despite being exposed to research and lab work as an undergraduate, Janie knew she did not want a career as a lab technician, and described the only other option as graduate school. “So I applied, got in, and I zoomed through my PhD, didn’t get a master’s, it was fantastic” she shared. Janie attended a well-regarded, large research university also in the Mid-Atlantic and like Magdeline, described her graduate school experience as one preparing her for the professoriate. Her relationship with her advisor was positive, and Janie shared that it was her advisor who funded her graduate education. She also followed up on her PhD with a postdoctoral position, another practice common in her field. Although much has been written about how graduate programs need to change the way they prepare students for careers after the PhD, many fields continue to train graduate students for a future in academia (Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2009). Both Magdeline and Janie are from the sciences, and their experience in graduate school reflects a traditional pathway for their field. The traditional pathway often includes being fully funded as a full-time student, being willing to 76 relocate for graduate education, and attending well-resourced or highly ranked programs. In particular, their graduate school training, or socialization, followed certain patterns: they published or had undergraduate research experiences in their respective fields, they worked closely with their advisors and extended their advisors’ research agenda, and they began to develop a research identity that was congruent with their discipline (Griffin, Gibbs, Bennett, Staples, & Robinson, 2015). Yet during our conversations, Magdeline and Janie also shared that having a career as a tenure-track faculty member became increasingly unappealing as they progressed through graduate school. Magdeline’s and Janie’s advisors modeled a research-intense and traditional life of a tenure-track faculty member at a large research university, and both women talked about what that life looked like to them. The portrait they saw impacted their decision-making about their future. Magdeline explained, “There was definitely a double-edged sword there with my advisor. She was a really good role model but…also really pretty tough and she mentored that way as well.” If not for the “tough” mentoring and advising Magdeline received, she may not have been fully exposed to the demands a woman faculty member in her field faces. She added, “I think the models we had in graduate school, advisors were overworked, no family life. Your typical classical academics and I didn’t want that for myself.” That Magdeline did not want that for herself was a reflection of her desire for a family. This decision was also because Magdeline believed she had a choice in how she wanted her future to look. Having built her research agenda, and having been socialized and prepared for a tenure-track position, Magdeline shared she was confident she would be offered a tenure-track position. Additionally, Magdeline met her current husband in graduate school, and they both knew that they would like to eventually have children. 77 I wanted to be a mom. I wanted kids so much and I knew, even before my husband and I had some, I was not going to be willing to drop a three-month old baby at daycare to be faculty. And I had the luxury where I could say I don’t want to, and a lot of people don’t have that luxury but I wanted to enjoy it. Of course, everybody’s different but I know some friends of mine have really struggled in that role, of being tenure and a parent, and I didn’t want to do everything badly. In Magdeline’s mind, she believed that she would not be able to be a successful parent and be a tenure-track faculty member simultaneously. Thus, she felt she had to choose one or the other, and her desire for a family was far stronger than having a tenure-track faculty position. Magdeline also acknowledges that she had the luxury of making a choice about having a family. Because Magdeline met her partner in graduate school, she foresaw that she could make choices about family and work, knowing she would have the economic stability to enable these decisions. Her husband gave her both economic security and social capital: Magdeline could literally afford to take a fixed-term faculty position and raise their family, and also have the camaraderie of a spouse to support her in doing so. For personal reasons and perhaps due to the kind of mentors she had in graduate school, she chose to put her energies into raising a family so as not to do “everything badly.” These decision points also allude to Magdeline’s sense of security about her economic position. Now with a partner who would be pursuing a tenure-track position (and eventually being hired into such a position) Magdeline was less concerned with financial matters as they pertained to her own career. While not everyone meets their future partners in graduate school, Magdeline acknowledges that this relationship was instrumental in allowing her to choose a family and make decisions about her academic career. Having a husband gave her more social capital, and 78 perhaps more importantly, the economic capital to make familial and financial decisions early on about her career. She confided that her career was never about making a lot of money, and her expression of this sentiment was more palpable since she had a romantic and financial partner. The ability to choose tenure-track or fixed-term was clear for Magdeline, and how strategic she was about completing her PhD: I had picked the non-tenure track a while back [while in graduate school]. I knew. I didn’t really need to feel like I had to prove anything. Then my husband found this position, a really good match for him. We were a package deal. You want him? You get both. But I had built my CV enough so that I was competitive. It definitely worked here [at Lakeside]. People were excited to have me join rather than, oh, we get a spouse to accommodate. Magdeline admitted that she played the game, and after her PhD published her dissertation and built her CV in order to be a positive hire to a department. She relied on her academic training to be desirable, and knew it was more of a bonus for the department rather than “a spouse to accommodate.” Like Magdeline, Janie shared a similar experience as she discussed her relationship with her advisor. “I saw my PhD advisor writing grants and teaching and he did administrative stuff. Just watching him juggle the teaching, research. And I like to give 100% to one thing versus doing just okay at two things.” The two things Janie balanced were teaching and research, and she felt the tension of balancing these throughout graduate school. Yet, an important teaching experience solidified for Janie that teaching was her true passion. She described her first teaching experience as a graduate assistant, Like, I got up in front of the class and I just went nuts up there. I was talking about electrons buzzing around the nucleus like bees and I was like, whoa, what just happened? 79 I was like, this is it. This is what I’m supposed to do. It just clicked. Things just fell right into place. And so I knew I wanted to end up teaching, period. Even as Janie met her husband in graduate school and they eventually started a family, for Janie, it came down to wanting to excel at one thing, and that one thing was teaching. Although Magdeline and Janie both followed a traditional pathway into and through graduate school, they both decided against pursuing tenure-track faculty positions. Harper, Baldwin, Gansneder, and Chronister (2001) noted in their study about women in fixed-term positions, “while some cited family considerations, many others talked about the tight academic job market or a desire to concentrate on teaching rather than research…” (p. 243). Magdeline’s and Janie’s reasons for pursuing fixed-term positions echo this literature, and their graduate school experiences provide a window into exactly what motivated their decisions. Janie also came to Lakeside as a spousal hire, and having learned that she loved teaching, knew she wanted to continue in that vein. Janie was fortunate to have learned about her passion for teaching, and this led her to look for adjunct positions. Janie and her husband found the opportunity at Lakeside, where her husband had earned his undergraduate degree. Her husband’s connection to the department helped get him in the door at Lakeside, and also helped Janie be hired as a full-time fixed-term faculty member focused on teaching. Both Magdeline and Janie travelled the traditional pathway virtually uninterrupted. They were afforded various forms of capital during their graduate education, and both were clear that they chose to be fixed-term either because of their interest in teaching, or raising a family or a combination of the two. Each of these two women had the cultural capital of their academic pedigree, as well as the social capital granted through an academic network and then by meeting their future spouses in graduate school. This offered them economic capital and the financial and 80 relational stability to complete their PhDs with a partner and move into a career in academia with a confidant and comrade. Elaine. As a first-generation student, Elaine, in performing arts, displayed a great deal of savvy and practicality as she travelled the traditional pathway. She described herself as being “nerdy” and “just reading everything” and she used those skills to help her navigate her academic career since she could not depend on familial experience to help inform her about college. She described her pathway into and through graduate school, saying, I’m from the Northeast, and I went to a really good high school. And I graduated from high school with a bunch of AP credits and went promptly off to an Ivy League school. I’m first generation. My mother was beside herself. Then after my first year at Ivy, I thought, “this is ridiculous.” I was miserable, just feeling far away from home, so I transferred to my state school. I didn’t go back for my doctorate until much later. So I went back to get my doctorate at Midwest Conservatory. I went there because it’s a top school. It’s well known and has a high ranking and good reputation. Most might consider Elaine’s decision to leave an Ivy institution as an undergrad to attend her state school a mistake; an Ivy League education would have given her prestigious credentials and perhaps increased her odds for social mobility and entrance into another Ivy in graduate school (Mullen, 2010). Yet for Elaine it was a reasonable choice to move back home. She was a first generation student, and knew she needed to be near her family and her community. She also hinted at the absurdity of being at her Ivy institution, sharing, “I was paying a fortune to be a history major.” Being closer to family and saving money were more important for her at that time. 81 Despite leaving an Ivy as an undergraduate student, Elaine chose her graduate school strategically based on what she needed for her current practice, and what she wanted in her future. Midwest Conservatory gave her the flexibility to keep performing and gave her the institutional prestige in her field. This is a similar story to Magdeline’s, who knew she wanted to attend a graduate program that would be her dream, and provide her with rigorous training from the best in her field. For her doctorate, Elaine was willing to relocate and by this time, had the financial means to move where the graduate program was located. These credentials, she shared, would be necessary for a future in the academic profession. She stated, “I know there are people here who are fixed-term who have been here forever. I am not planning on being one of those people.” This comment from Elaine about eventually pursuing a tenure line reflects a desire of many faculty members off the tenure track. A 2012 report from the Coalition on the Academic Workforce indicated that nearly 30% of survey respondents were seeking a full-time tenure-track position, another 20% were intending to seek a full-time tenure-track position, and 26% responded they had sought such a position at any time during their non-tenure track positions. Elaine’s desire to eventually pursue tenure-track is also where her traditional pathway diverges from Magdeline and Janie. Elaine views her fixed-term position as a stepping-stone to tenure- track and needs a fixed-term position so she can continue to perform and build her practice. Her performance credentials combined with experience in academia are what Elaine will need to eventually secure a tenure-track faculty position. In contrast, Magdeline and Janie both chose a non-tenure track career and never intended to pursue a tenure-track position. Elaine’s entry into Lakeside was through a more traditional national search for a full-time fixed term position. She shared that she decided to enter academia as a fixed-term faculty as a means to continue her practice, “I still have really good gigs, and so I didn’t want to give it up 82 completely because that’s a lot of money, honestly.” Elaine was also highly strategic in what kind of fixed-term position to accept, and which ones to apply for. She explained she wanted to be sure about positions, and did not want to be teaching courses she either was not interested in or was not capable of teaching. “I wanted to be sure of the positions, like I don’t want to be teaching a bunch of theory classes,” she said. “I got job offers like that but turned them down.” After applying to several fixed-term positions and not hearing anything, Elaine moved to New York to continue on in her professional career. As she was beginning to settle, she received a call from Lakeside, asking her if she was still interested in a position. Elaine was invited for a video interview, then brought to campus. With only a few weeks before the beginning of the semester, Elaine quickly relocated to Lakeside and began her position in fall 2017. Patricia and Adrianne. Both Patricia and Adrianne followed a traditional pathway, yet the traditional aspects of their pathways occurred somewhat unintentionally. They pursued graduate school less deliberately than their peers on the traditional pathway. They expressed the need to “land” or “get back to that world [of academia]” upon feeling lost after their undergraduate experience. Yet despite their unintentional approach to graduate school, they were fortunate to be admitted to institutions that provided financial resources to them, as well as some departmental and faculty prestige. Patricia, in historical arts, shared her feeling of un-intentionality was tied to losing her mother. She described that after her mother passed away soon after she finished her bachelor’s degree, she was not sure what to do. Adrianne in English, too, explained how, after her undergraduate degree, she was “treading water,” uncertain of what to do next. Adrianne also shared she felt she needed to justify to her family why she earned a degree, and prove her degree would lead to a successful career. Both Patricia’s and Adrianne’s pathways into graduate school 83 were thus less calculated, and somewhat unintentional. Patricia earned her undergraduate degree from a comprehensive state college in Oregon, and explained that after her mother passed, she moved to another college town in the Northwest to be near her partner. Anyway, so I was ‘okay, I’m here’ I’ll just start taking classes until I can figure out what is going on. Then I really enjoyed the courses, and I thought, you know, I like school, and I’ll keep going with it… So I continued after my masters, still at Northwest Land-Grant University, and I went into the PhD program, always doing assistantships, getting my education paid for and getting a small stipend. Growing up on the West coast, Patricia described her interest in her field as a young person and how she pored over books in the historical arts. She went out-of-state to attend college and majored in history, a discipline that complemented her interest in research from a young age. Because Patricia “landed” at Northwest Land-Grant University for graduate school due to circumstances, she limited herself to the department that was available to her, rather than selecting a department that could provide important connections based on rank, resources, or faculty. In short, her traditional pathway was less intentional. Despite this circumstance, her graduate education solidified her passion for research. Additionally, Northwest Land-Grant during the time of Patricia’s attendance was highly regarded in her field. As she and I discussed this love of research, she shared that it had been something she had always loved, and being in graduate school helped put a form around the curiosity and interests she always had as a younger person. Adrianne also shared that she continued with her graduate education because she found the environment of academia comfortable. “I love the life of mind, I love intellectualism, I love hard problems, I love big picture, I love the history of everything, that’s just how my mind 84 works” she shared. After completing her undergraduate degree from a highly ranked public institution, Adrianne then went to a public university in the Midwest to get a teaching credential. However, after moving to the West coast and pursuing teaching, she began to feel adrift. She explained, I graduated and I didn’t know what to do, and at that time when you major in English like I did, you were expected to just go teach. But I got my bachelors degree in English not because I wanted to work with kids, but because I loved the field…I just wanted to get back into the world of academia. So I applied to graduate school without knowing what I was doing. I didn’t know why stuff was important or I didn’t know it was important at the time. It was what I had been craving but I was pretty naïve about every aspect of it. Although Adrianne was motivated to return to the world of academia, she shared she was not certain about the best strategies to do so. She based her graduate school applications on location, one in the Bay Area where she was currently residing, and the other back in the Midwest near where she grew up. Adrianne chuckled, “Surprise surprise, I didn’t get in to Berkeley.” So Adrianne went to Midwest Flagship University. Despite Adrianne’s naiveté about graduate school and the application process, she was admitted into a department at Midwest Flagship with, what she described as very powerful people: “They had amazing people on faculty. Those people were just powerhouses in the field.” Adrianne spoke highly about her graduate school experience, about being trained by individuals in the field who had reputations, who were powerful, and who provoked her intellectually. A noteworthy study from Burris (2004) reported that social capital obtained through departmental status is an important factor in training and hiring newly minted PhDs. Adrianne’s graduate school socialization is indicative of departmental status, and the “powerhouses in the 85 field” she learned from. Even as most studies previous to Burris indicated the value of having a high publication record to PhD placement, Burris complicated these assumptions by accounting for social networks and the social closure that prestigious departments enjoy. Any change to ranking and status had by departments “must be the result of the forfeiture or acquisition of a substantial volume of social capital” (Burris, 2004, p. 261). Thus, a well-regarded and powerful faculty member (or group of these faculty members) brings prestige to a department. Adrianne also shared some of the challenges she encountered in graduate school. Many of these challenges stemmed from her lack of knowledge about academia, something she alluded to earlier by stating she did not “understand that what you do if you go to graduate school in English is become a professor.” Adrianne described her lack of knowledge about graduate school by contrasting her experience with her husband’s, who she met while at Midwest Flagship. Adrianne’s husband was the third generation in his family to pursue a PhD, and the third to pursue the professoriate. She explained, “Getting a PhD was, and being a professor was completely standard operating procedure in his family.” Having the partnership of her husband during her graduate program helped Adrianne understand how to navigate through graduate school and academia broadly. He knew how to approach graduate level studies, knew how to make connections with faculty, knew how to prioritize competing interests, and knew what would be expected of him as a future faculty member. In short, Adrianne’s husband had a distinct feel for the game of academia (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Patricia and Adrianne continued to graduate school because they both loved being in academia, and they needed to “land.” However, these circumstances made their decision-making process about attending graduate school less flexible. For Patricia, attending Northwest Land- Grant University was convenient and helped ground her. Additionally, Patricia could be near 86 someone who could support her, and whom she would eventually marry. She was also fortunate that Northwest Land-Grant had a well-regarded reputation in her field. Adrianne attended Midwest University because it was familiar and near where she grew up. Although their entrances into graduate school were less calculated, both Patricia and Adrianne were able to receive a traditional kind of socialization experience. Thus, even as some circumstances may dictate pathways, even those less strategic choices supported the desires of being back in academia that Patricia and Adrianne had. Although Patricia and Adrianne both attended graduate school with a similar unintentional theme, their arrival at a comprehensive university was quite different. Patricia shared that as she completed her PhD, she was encouraged to begin looking for tenure-track positions. This encouragement was mostly due to her strong research skills and the prodding of her faculty. Yet she shared that there were many struggles in the process of applying for different positions. She applied to several tenure-track positions and also had a handful of on-campus interviews. However, she was never given an offer. She then explained “I widened my breadth” to include lecturer and non-tenure track positions, all the while wondering why she pursued her PhD. Patricia shared, “Yes, I enjoyed the process [of graduate school], I didn’t have any debt at the end of it, but I never had that feeling like, that aha moment, like I’m making the right decision.” Patricia’s experience is similar to many newly minted PhDs who go on the job market for a tenure-track position. For so many, the hope of landing a tenure-track position in their field is perhaps only a dream. For those in the arts and humanities, Patricia’s field, positions are harder and harder to secure as the field itself shrinks and the PhD pipeline and graduation rates maintain or increase (Massé, 2017). 87 Eventually, Patricia did find a fixed-term position at Lakeside, learning about the position and gaining an interview through another individual in her field. She shared that she did not have a formal process where the university brought her to the campus. Rather, they had a video interview, and, Patricia explained, “clearly they needed someone to fill the position. And that was me. I have a good reputation in terms of my research, and they just naturally assumed that I could teach just as well.” In the middle of the winter, Patricia moved her family hurriedly from the Northwest to the Midwest for the position. She shared that the swiftness of the move, and the need for immediate teaching, combined with the culture shock of relocating was difficult. Unlike Patricia, Adrianne did not move far for her position. Near the completion of their PhDs, Adrianne described the job market for English faculty as the “absolute bottom.” Despite the terrible job market climate, Adrianne’s husband was hired as a tenure-track faculty member after spending a year as an adjunct at Lakeside. While her husband was working at Lakeside, Adrianne began to adjunct at a community college nearby while finishing up her degree. Then after a year, she explained “the pay was just horrendous. And I was like, I don’t care if my husband and I are in the same department.” So Adrianne discussed with her husband about negotiating for a spousal hire. She elaborated, So I moved over here to Lakeside. And it was the simplest thing ever because as a spouse, I hardly had to even put it in writing. So you got to remember, this was 20 years ago, you just picked up the phone, ‘Hey, John,’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ And because I was ABD, getting my PhD, I didn’t necessarily feel like anybody was doing me any favors. Even though they would’ve perceived they were doing me favors but, because I was a PhD, and of the 20 or so adjuncts, only three of us had terminal degrees. 88 Adrianne emphasized that during the time she was hired at Lakeside in the late 1990s, she was in a unique position as a PhD candidate. At that time, few non-tenure track faculty in English had their PhDs, and thus Adrianne indicated that because of her terminal degree she was in a more desirable position, one where the department did not feel like they were doing her any favors. I grouped Patricia and Adrianne together in the traditional pathway because their move into graduate school was from a culmination of circumstances, rather than a deliberate decision to earn their PhDs. However, their experiences in graduate school and their arrival at Lakeside diverge upon deeper examination of their capital, or the resources they had access to or possessed. Although they were both married and had emotional and economic support, Adrianne’s marriage to another academic gave her entry into Lakeside. Additionally, Adrianne knew she did not want to pursue a tenure track faculty position, and by making this decision she removed possible future feelings of failure in academia. Despite wanting to be back in academia and indulging in the life of the mind, Adrianne shared that once she was in her graduate program the intensity, the competition, the need for prestige, and most of all, that her family never grasped why she would want to earn a PhD, weighed on her. She shared she never fully believed she could succeed in academia and “my self confidence wasn’t there. You know, like I can do this, I belong in this.” Adrianne continued I’m not technically a first-generation student, but I sound like one. My family couldn’t make sense of why I would get my PhD, like it wasn’t what women do. So there was always a conflict there, because it was just always, you should be doing something else, you should be teaching, teaching is valuable. And you know, it takes a long time to get a master’s and a PhD. I was doing it for years and I could never like get over that hump or get them to understand. And finally, I think I just gave up trying to get my family, my 89 parents to understand it. And I think that’s what contributed to me being a lecturer and not a professor. Adrianne battled with traditional graduate school socialization, and with the messages from her family about what is valuable. These conflicting messages she characterized as the “life of the mind” and scholarly research as compared to teaching. Although Adrianne had what she called “a refuge” in her husband, she felt she was negotiating her desire to be firmly in academia as a professor, with having to justify to her family why she was in graduate school. Her disposition during graduate school was deeply informed by her family background, and it shaped why she decided not to pursue a tenure-track position early on. Adrianne’s access to a powerful faculty at Midwest Flagship University, and having refuge in her husband who was also an academic lifted her ability to succeed in graduate school despite the deeply personal internal conflicts she had about academia. Relationships and future decisions about career trajectories highlight different volumes of capital between Adrianne and Patricia. Like Adrianne, Patricia had a strong traditional doctoral socialization experience, one that primed her for a future as a faculty member. Also like Adrianne, Patricia had a significant romantic partner during her graduate studies, someone she eventually married. However, her move to Lakeside resulted from the institution’s search for a fixed-term faculty member. Patricia accepted the post after she was unable to be hired into a tenure-track position when she was initially on the market. As she explained above, she experienced “struggles.” These differences in how Patricia and Adrianne moved to Lakeside highlight how a partner in academia can provide forms of capital. While Patricia had built a social network in academia during her time as a graduate student, she struggled to find a tenure- 90 track position. Alternately, although Adrianne did not seek a tenure-track position, she was able to easily move into academia because of the connection to her husband. Dee and Eleanor. Dee and Eleanor both in philosophy, shared they did not initially get into their top school choices. Some of the factors involved in getting into a top graduate program, particularly for the arts and humanities, are largely related to undergraduate institution, faculty advisors, grade point average, and undergraduate research (Mullen, 2011; Posselt, 2016). Dee and Eleanor attended graduate school after they had been turned down for programs to which they had initially applied. Each of these women pursued their terminal degrees, however their paths into their eventual graduate institutions were a result of not being admitted their first time out. As a teenager, Dee knew that she enjoyed philosophy and became president of her high school philosophy club. Yet, when she entered college as an undergraduate, she did not commit herself to philosophy, instead she let her interest in certain courses guide her towards her major. It is possible her late decision about declaring her major may have inhibited her ability to perform any research as an undergraduate. Dee may have limited her potential to grow a social network in her discipline early during her academic experiences. After settling on philosophy, Dee explained, I knew that I was going to have to apply to graduate school because I knew I wanted to be a philosopher. I had to continue. But at the time, I didn’t realize how important one’s GPA was, how important test scores were, and how important the name of the school that you went to for an undergrad was. I just thought well, I’m brilliant so it doesn’t matter. Then I didn’t get in to any of the schools that I applied to. And I thought why wouldn’t 91 schools take me? But I had no clue as to the competition, what kind of competition there was. Dee eventually returned to her undergraduate institution to earn a master’s degree. She used that time to improve her skills and then apply again for a PhD. As the first in her family to continue to the doctoral level, Dee explained she did not have anyone who knew how to help her, or share the kind of “disciplinary knowledge about what I needed to know.” Dee’s experience highlights the importance of capital needed at the doctoral level. She was unaware that her doctoral opportunities were reliant on her undergraduate level education. Dee did not have the social connections or familial history or mentoring to understand the tight link between early academic success and graduate school. Fortunately, during her master’s degree her advisor became a source of knowledge about moving on to a PhD. The extent to which Dee did not have the “disciplinary knowledge” to get into graduate school became painfully clear when she initially applied. She admitted that her lack of this knowledge, her poor grades, and her undergraduate institution worked against her compared to “the competition.” For women in particular, having mentoring relationships, and being encouraged to do well as an undergraduate student and achieve high grades are key in influencing them to pursue—and be successful in—graduate school (Davis, Amelink, Hirt, & Miyazaki, 2012). Although Dee did not show particular talent during her undergraduate studies, with mentoring and guidance she was admitted to a graduate program that she believed would be a good fit. Challenges to getting into graduate school, however, did not end once Dee was admitted. As a woman of color in a discipline dominated by white men, Dee shared her own experiences in academia this way, 92 I try to take the charitable interpretation, but when I was told by the program coordinator even before I started my PhD that ‘maybe I wasn’t cut out for this,’ I thought, ‘he’s just reinforcing the problems that people like us don’t want to pursue this kind of degree.’ Maybe he was trying to help, like, ‘I’m going to warn you, it’s gonna be hard,’ but then I thought, he’s not helping. He’s actually making it worse. Being a woman and a racial minority is already extremely difficult. This isn’t helping. Dee demonstrated a considerable amount of resiliency upon receiving these discouraging words from the program coordinator. She added, “Thankfully, I was kind of naïve, like, luckily naïve. I just knew I wasn’t going to be happy unless I did this PhD. And I ended up being a fairly outstanding student.” In this instance, Dee’s naiveté may have worked in her favor. Looking back, Dee admitted that the program coordinator of her PhD program may have been attempting to discourage her from beginning the program, yet her willingness to take the “charitable interpretation” may have bolstered her own stubbornness to do well and complete her doctorate. Dee also shared that her graduate school advisor fully funded her education, and she did not became aware of her department’s commitment to ensuring she succeeded until she was almost finished with her degree. She confided that during her graduate school experience, she was only funded year-to-year and her faculty often cobbled together extra funds to ensure she received funding and completed her degree. Like Dee, Eleanor was unable to get into the graduate programs she initially applied to. Eleanor went into a terminal master’s program instead of going directly to a PhD, an unusual practice for her discipline of philosophy. Upon completing her master’s degree, Eleanor applied several times to multiple PhD programs, explaining 93 Again, didn’t get into the one I really wanted to get into and the ones I did, they couldn’t guarantee me funding. I ended up taking a year off because I didn’t get in somewhere with full funding. By the end of that year, I realized, okay, you know what? I’m really ready to go back to the academic world because the world of this office work is not for me. So I applied again. This time got an offer with guaranteed four years of funding from Midwest Flagship University. I went to Flagship, not because they had a particular strength in my program but because it was near where I was already, and it would be a familiar place, and they offered me four years of funding. Eleanor ended up at Midwest Flagship University for two reasons, funding and location. However these factors became important after not being admitted to her top choices the previous two times. The reason Eleanor pursued graduate school was primarily because she enjoyed school. She admitted, “the thing I liked best in the world was college so I figured the ideal thing is not to leave college so I figured, to be frank, well, I like being a student so much I’ll like being a professor. I better do what I can so I don’t have to leave the institution.” Simply having an interest in academia, however, did not necessarily ensure Eleanor obtained the kinds of skills and preparation necessary to continue to the doctoral level. Her persistence did eventually pay off, and she was accepted into a program that fully funded her studies. She admits, however, that she went to Midwest Flagship University because of the funding and location, not because the department had particular strengths. Dee and Eleanor also shared similar experiences on the job market. After graduating with her PhD in 2014, Dee became a visiting assistant professor at a liberal arts college in the Mid- Atlantic. After spending a year in that position, she went back to her undergraduate alma mater to adjunct part-time. All during this time, Dee continued to look for a tenure-track faculty 94 position. She eventually found a single-semester position at Lakeside, working as a full-time fixed-term faculty. Eleanor also spent time on the job market after completing her PhD in 2004. She was successful in getting interviews, but was never offered a position. After two years on the market, Eleanor taught part-time at different institutions and community colleges around the Midwest region. She went back on the market for tenure-track and for fixed-term positions. “Basically, when I was just about to give up hope, I had a phone interview with Lakeside,” she said, “and they hired me and told me there’s a possibility of renewal and I thought, well, that’s good. Then I won’t have to panic right away. I have more time to, you know, put something together and make myself more market worthy, to get back on the market.” Lakeside was close to where Eleanor was currently living, and so she did not have to leave her home. Additionally, having found a full-time fixed-term position gave Eleanor a feeling of stability so she could try again for a tenure-track position. Dee and Eleanor both shared a deep love for philosophy. Their orientation towards their disciplines motivated them to continue their postsecondary educations, but both women confronted a poor undergraduate record and limited academic preparation impeded their ability to attend their top choices for graduate school. It was persistence and patience, and continued cycles on the job market that eventually moved them to Lakeside. Dee continues to pursue a tenure-track position, where as Eleanor eventually ended her tenure-track faculty aspirations and settled to stay on at Lakeside. Joy. The traditional pathway is not always direct as it was for Magdeline and Janie. For some, like Patricia and Adrianne, it is unintentional. For others, like Dee and Eleanor, it is travelled with persistence. Joy’s traditional pathway highlights how one continues to hope and 95 strive for a favorable academic position amidst a changing academic field coupled and departmental conflict. Joy’s initial academic trajectory led her through highly ranked programs for her master’s degrees. She earned two master’s degrees, both in related fields of urban planning and environmental sciences from a well-respected Midwest public university. At the time she finished her degrees, they were considered terminal for her applied field. Upon completing her master’s education, Joy moved to the Northwest and took a tenure-track position in a doctoral level university, where she spent several years as an assistant professor. However, her situation became increasingly hostile, and in addition to the tense situation in her department, her field was also shifting, now requiring a PhD as its terminal degree. Thus, Joy decided to go back and earn her PhD while continuing to work. Yet, she explained, it was too difficult to continue her PhD while carrying a teaching load, so she left her position to complete her doctorate. After being in an assistant professor position for four years, Joy shared that “it was plain I wasn’t going to get tenure.” This was in part due to the fact that she still only had a master’s degree, and also because of some internal politics with the chair. She explained there were some “really nasty” things occurring in her department, and although she had a verbal agreement to continue in her position and earn a PhD, she shared, “this turned out not to be true at all.” Joy’s experience in balancing her current role as an assistant professor and graduate student, with the negative and unsupportive environment of her department, led her to leave her post as a tenure-track faculty member. She spent the next two years as a full-time student, earning her PhD from the same institution she worked at. After she completed her PhD, she then went back on the market, looking for another tenure-track position. Yet, Joy said 96 I haven’t gotten another tenure-track position. Maybe I was, you know, I’m a first generation college student, I didn’t know that leaving a position would cast such a negative tint to my career, I just figured well, I’ll get another one when I’m done with my PhD. I had no idea that you don’t quit a tenure-track position. Joy’s experience reveals that, although she was being prepared for a career in academia, there were some things of which she was not aware. Her changing field and the requirement for her to have a PhD were something she could not have foreseen, however, she admitted that she did not know what she was giving up when she left her position as an assistant professor. As a first generation college student, she may not have started out with the necessary understandings about academia that provides insight into how to work in higher education, and the hierarchies present in the faculty system. These are the kinds of implicit knowledge that many people may know who had family or ties with academia. Since Joy left her position and completed her PhD, she has been working primarily on one-year contracts as a fixed-term faculty. She was hired at Lakeside to fill in for a faculty member who was on sabbatical, and spent most of her time teaching at the undergraduate level. Summary of traditional pathway. An important characteristic for the traditional pathway is the willingness of the women on it to relocate for both graduate school and a job. Additionally, while several women are married, those married to other academics in particular made it clear that they felt they had the option to pursue a fixed-term or non-tenure track faculty position. For the women who were willing and able to relocate, this opened them to important forms of social and cultural capital, as they were able to move to attend institutions that may be highly ranked for be resource rich. The ability to relocate is a primary feature among the women grouped on the traditional pathway. Moreover, what gave them the willingness to pursue a fixed- 97 term position was a combination of their graduate school socialization experiences, their familial support in the form of their spouses, and in the case of Magdeline, a desire to have a family. Other women on the traditional pathway had sought or continue to seek a tenure-track faculty position and are willing to relocate for such a position. Mullen (2010) indicated that prestigious high schools, strong academic counseling, parental influence, and even a sense of entitlement, all inform where young people apply to college and whether they are admitted or not. Although these forms of capital are specific to undergraduate students, they can also be applied to graduate school admissions (Eide, et al., 1998; Posselt, 2016). Dee and Eleanor shared how their experiences during undergraduate study left them without fully knowing what to expect for graduate school admissions. Thus, the forms of capital that they came into their undergraduate school with or could have accumulated during that time were not enough to get them admitted into their top choices for graduate school. Dee and Eleanor strived for a traditional, and perhaps more prestigious pathway into and through graduate school, yet that pathway was initially blocked. Even so, Dee and Eleanor persisted and eventually earned PhDs, both from institutions that offered some form of funding and/or comfortable location. There is enormous value in understanding how to apply to graduate school and what to expect upon arrival. This understanding is a form of capital that many aspiring graduate students need to be successful. Gardner and Holley (2011) reported that students with a large social network versed in the importance of institutional prestige are likely to know what kinds of capital to accumulate once in graduate school. For example, Magdeline knew early that “all they care about is publications” and positioned herself to build this form of cache. However, accumulating these forms of capital can also add stress to students. In order to amass social and 98 cultural capital in prestigious departments, students are often required to be geographically mobile. Relocating is particularly difficult for many first-generation students, or those who do not have undergraduate academic pedigree or financial security. Making these moves distances graduate students from the family and friends they might need most to successfully progress in their graduate education. There is a tension, thus, in the traditional pathway for those who are not already primed for this pathway through their undergraduate experience, familial background, and even social and economic origins. Entering and maintaining the most idealized traditional pathway requires few interruptions from those traveling its route. For the majority of those on the traditional pathway, even minor disruptions could interrupt their trajectory. While these off-ramps were sometimes due to limited or lacking capital (e.g., low undergraduate GPA, no social network or mentoring), they could also be personal (e.g., inability to relocate, death in the family). The experiences of my participants highlight that there were more “correct” ways to navigate academia, and even knowing how to apply to graduate school can make a difference in where they were admitted. Moreover, not having complete agency in deciding where to go and which institution to attend, and going through the arduous experience alone and/or single were hurdles that made their pathways challenging. The various forms of the traditional pathway and the experiences of my participants reveal how forms of capital can set an individual onto a certain path, and how life circumstances, even that life continues to be lived, can create disturbances in one’s academic trajectory. 99 The Local Pathway “Sure, Flagship was a stellar school. It is a stellar school but that wasn’t my criteria. It was basically location, I had to stick around.” – Dorothy Like the traditional pathway, women on the local pathway fit the pathway to varying degrees. In order to group women into the local pathway, I identified those who had attributes that were centered on remaining in the region where they grew up or had strong local or community connection to the region where Lakeside is located. Apart from one woman, Janet, most of the women in the local pathway were raised near where they currently work, or had extended family in the area. Eight women comprise the local pathway: Jill, Dorothy, Nan, Liz, Kiki, Nadean, Anna, and Janet. Women on the local pathway explained that their decision to pursue a doctoral degree was motivated by one of two reasons: 1) for professional and career advancement and career legitimacy, or 2) for the fulfillment of simply knowing they always wanted to earn a PhD, though without a clear justification as to why. Many women on the local pathway, thus, did not indicate that their ultimate goal was to be a tenure-track faculty member. Almost all of the locals continued working full-time while they earned their doctoral degrees. Additionally, many of the women on the local pathway were hired into their positions through someone they knew at the institution. My motivation for describing a local pathway is not necessarily to compare it to the traditional pathway. It was rather to illuminate another way, or as Henderson (2009) suggested, a redefinition of academic life, one that emphasizes the importance of place. Below are the narratives of the women on the local pathway. Like the traditional pathway presentation, the order I present the women here is important, and indicates how closely their experiences reflect the character of the local pathway. Additionally, I ordered the narratives in an intentional way to provide a continuum of the local pathway, and display its variation. One key 100 characteristic links the women on the local pathway together: their unwillingness to leave the area for graduate school and for a future position. Jill and Nan. Both Jill and Nan grew up in the region around Lakeside University. They each have degrees from Lakeside, and both shared they wanted to pursue their doctorates in order to grow themselves personally and advance their careers. Additionally, Jill in business, and Nan in physical education, each had over ten years between their master’s and doctorate degrees. This time between was spent working as administrators or faculty in higher education. A striking similarity between Jill and Nan are the risks they took in their careers. Jill left her administrative position at Lakeside to take a fixed-term faculty role there, and Nan left a tenure-track faculty position at a community college to take a fixed-term position at Lakeside. After earning her BA in English and Political Science from the liberal arts college near her hometown, Jill continued her education at Midwest Flagship University. Upon earning her master’s degree in English and Communications, Jill began working as an administrator at Lakeside. Jill spent ten years working as an administrator, earning promotions into a senior leadership position. During this time she also married and eventually she and her husband decided to pursue their doctorate degrees. Likewise, Nan was working full-time as a tenure-track faculty member and decided to pursue her doctorate in order to move into an administrative and leadership position in academia. Before beginning her doctoral degree, Nan was working in the sciences as a faculty member at a community college. She had her master’s degree in a related health sciences field, and spent over 10 years as a community college faculty member teaching anatomy and physiology. Her experiences there, and her desire to learn more about the field of higher education motivated her to apply for a doctorate in education program focused on leadership in community colleges. Nan 101 stated that she wanted to grow herself personally and professionally, and hoped to use some of the skills she learned in her doctoral program to be a leader in a community college or other type of regionally focused institution. Nan also shared that one reason she chose the program she did was because it was close to where she was already living, making pursuing the degree much more convenient for her as a full-time faculty member. When she entered her doctoral program, she had two young children, and she shared it would not be possible to attend an institution that required her to travel or leave her family. Nan explained, I was working on growing myself personally and professionally and I’ve always been kind of a student of leadership or like how do you better yourself and better others and so I decided that I would look for any programs, I really wanted to learn more. It had been so many years since I’d finished my master’s, it had been 13 years and I really felt like I wanted to keep learning and growing. As Jill and Nan progressed through their doctoral degrees, they both felt supported by their husbands. Jill shared that since she and her husband had both agreed to pursue their doctoral degrees, she had the support of a partner who personally understood her experience once it was “her turn.” “He knew exactly what it took to finish, and would help me along the way.” This was a significant source of support for Jill. Additionally, Jill had financial stability during her program. Her husband was no longer a student and had recently been hired as a tenure-track faculty member at Lakeside. Nan also shared that her husband provided significant support for her as she progressed through her doctoral program and experimented with her teaching. “My husband has an education background. I did not have an education background at all, but I would just kinda come home and tell him things and he’d say ‘Oh, read this book or read this article’. So that kinda opened my eyes.” 102 As Jill and Nan neared completion of their doctoral degrees, they both were faced with a decision that would change the trajectory of their careers in academia. When Jill was ABD, she was invited to come to the business department at Lakeside as a fixed-term faculty member. Due to her time as an administrator at Lakeside, Jill had developed a relationship with the chair of the department. She explained, The chair called me, knowing my track record as a professional, and said, ‘I know you’re ABD, I know you’re just finishing up. I have this opportunity.’ So it was a risk, it was a gamble for me, because I was an administrator and I had been at Lakeside for 12 years, so such a long time. And I loved my job. I had a lot of exposure to a lot of high-level leaders, and I don’t necessarily have that in this [fixed-term faculty] job. So it was really a gamble, a risk I guess. But I knew I always wanted to be on the faculty side. And I had two little kids at the time, and I thought I can’t give up that time with them. You know, they’ve lost enough time with us, in all the years and years and years of our doctoral programs. Jill explained that the chair seemed to be in somewhat of a bind and needed to fill a fixed-term faculty position. “There were a lot less rules about fixed-term faculty hiring when I came on in 2010. Ultimately he had the authority to do whatever he wanted as a chairperson. And he knew me, and knew my quality of work.” Jill took the fixed-term faculty position without even interviewing. However, she continued to elaborate on the risks she felt she took in taking the position. Jill stated while she found she had much more flexibility to be with her family, she also knew that her degree, a doctor of education in leadership, might be frowned upon in her new fixed-term faculty position. “There are some folks that believe that that’s not really, um, that doesn't qualify as, a) it’s not a PhD, it’s an EdD, and we know that’s like the silver star, not the 103 gold star, and b) because it’s in higher ed leadership, higher ed doesn’t translate to business leadership.” Jill continued that she knew her role would be seen as subordinate, whereas her previous role as an administrator was as a leader, manager, and coordinator for programs across the university. How Jill believed her experience in moving into a faculty position after having worked as an administrator for several years reflects the transition of her professional identity to an academic identity. Reybold (2008) indicated individuals moving from a practitioner role into a faculty role might redefine their professional identity, one that requires a balancing act for those moving from a sector outside academe into academe. Certainly, Jill’s description of having a “silver star” is indicative of her doctoral degree, yet it also considers her previous role as an administrator where she was not required or encouraged to perform scholarship or be involved in scholarly endeavors. Still, Jill knew that she “always wanted to be on the faculty side” and was willing to take the risk of leaving her other position to fill this new role. Thus, the risks for Jill were mostly in her positioning in the institution. As she moved into this position, Jill was fortunate to have a family and partner who supported her decision, and also were able to give her the justification (to be with her family), the motivation (to be on the faculty side) and the security (to have a husband who had recently taken a tenure-track faculty position at Lakeside) to take the risk. Like Jill, Nan was faced with a decision in the middle of her doctoral studies. During this time, the culture at her community college began to shift. Over several years while at the community college, Nan had developed her teaching method to incorporate different teaching styles such as flipped classrooms, more interactive lessons, and increased use of technology. Part of the impetus for pursuing her doctoral degree was to be able to move into a position where she 104 could support more current teaching methods. However, her role at the community college became divisive, and Nan shared that her department became increasingly hostile towards her teaching methods. She explained that her own convictions about leadership and teaching, combined with what she was learning in her doctoral program motivated her to leave her faculty position. Nan resigned from her faculty role, believing that she would move into an administrative position at some point. I’m one of those people that holds true to your convictions and I’m not gonna go along with things. So I left a tenured position at the community college and took probably a $25,000 pay cut to come to Lakeside. We moved the whole family down. My husband was still driving an hour and a half, commuting. But it just felt like the right thing to do. So I was right in the middle of my doctorate at that time. Nan had a social and academic network through her doctoral cohort and her alma mater at Lakeside. Nan’s conviction’s about her work, and her faculty role at her community college led her to reach out to a former colleague at Lakeside, where she began working as a fixed-term faculty member. “I jumped job to job and basically finished teaching summer classes for the community college and didn’t receive my class schedule for Lakeside until five days before the semester started.” Like Jill, Nan also had the support of her husband to leave her faculty role at the community college. This support made jumping from one job to the next, taking a substantial pay-cut with it, easier. Both Jill and Nan experienced career surprises during their graduate school programs. Seibert, Kraimer, Holtom, and Pierotti (2013) indicated, “career shocks may precipitate career decisions because they cause individuals to reassess the current trajectory of their careers” (p. 176). These career shocks, or events that lead to a reappraisal of current career and employment, 105 coupled with an intrinsic desire to continue their education provided more motivation for Jill and Nan to shift their career trajectory into fixed-term faculty roles. In addition to these incidents, Jill and Nan also possessed external support in their marriages and regional community connections that enabled them to navigate the risks they foresaw in changing careers while still in graduate school. Dorothy, Liz, and Nadean. As with almost all women on the local pathway, Dorothy, Liz, and Nadean grew up in the same region as Lakeside. Dorothy, Liz, and Nadean are also all in English, and writing and rhetoric. Dorothy entered an undergraduate program later in life, after she had raised a family. She was 36 when she began her undergraduate degree at the nearby liberal arts college. After completing her undergraduate degree and earning a teaching certificate with the intention to teach, she could not find a job. “So I decided to go to grad school. That’s what everybody does, right?” Dorothy also shared the same sentiment about continuing her education at the doctoral level, saying, “So, got my master’s, then still didn’t have a job, so I’m like, guess I’ll get my PhD.” Dorothy stayed in the area because of her family, earning her master’s from Lakeside and her PhD from Midwest Flagship University. Dorothy’s decision- making process about her doctoral studies were largely based on 1) believing that continuing an education may provide employment and it is “what everybody does,” and 2) an interest in pursuing education and teaching as a field of study and practice. Dorothy described herself thus I think I’ve always sorta been teacher-y cuz like when I was a stay-at-home mom, I like taught bible school. I taught everything I could teach. So I think I’ve always sort of had that in me, you know, and when I took that first class as an undergrad, it was like, that’s what I really wanta do. But then I didn’t, I didn’t think I could be a professor. I’m like I’ll 106 have to teach high school, because I started late and I knew it took a lot of school and all that so I’m like, I’ll just teach high school. Dorothy’s disbelief that she could eventually become a faculty member teaching at the collegiate level was obviously disproved. Her interest in teaching and her self-proclamation of herself as “teacher-y” motivated her to continue her education, all the while seeking opportunities to learn and teach and stay in the classroom. Similarly, Liz shared that it was an ongoing connection to the academic field of education as well as her socio-economic circumstance that motivated her to pursue postsecondary education. Liz shared that her love of learning and writing led her to teach, and ultimately led her to pursue graduate school since, like Dorothy, the kind of teaching she wanted was at the postsecondary level. Liz earned all of her degrees from Lakeside. Likewise, Nadean also shared that she sought a PhD in order to learn to teach. I was a librarian and I would always like adjunct teach a class or two at various places, community colleges. And kind of smaller, regional universities. And there was an opportunity at the tribal college, full-time teaching and I thought, I would like that [to teach]. Like I think I wanta do this. And so I applied, received the job and then realized, hm, I could be better at teaching. So I applied to Midwest Flagship and I ended up in the writing and rhetoric program. Nadean earned her undergraduate degree from Lakeside, then earned her master’s degree in library science from another public regional university in a neighboring state. Her interest in teaching piqued when she finally had the opportunity to teach full-time. The desire to pursue a doctoral degree in order to enhance teaching skills is somewhat antithetical to what a doctoral degree is perceived to be, particularly as PhDs are traditionally 107 viewed as research degrees (Nerad, 2004). Dorothy, Liz, and Nadean all shared that they continued their educations in part because they wanted to teach at the postsecondary level, and Nadean specifically expressed that she hoped a PhD would provide her the necessary skills to teach well. As graduate socialization has been more closely examined, the shift in where individuals with PhDs work is more largely recognized. Additionally, the increase in non-tenure track faculty positions indicates that teaching at the postsecondary level can be a specific occupation. In addition to wanting to teach, Dorothy and Liz also shared that their reasoning for pursuing higher education was also due to economic security. Dorothy stated she was unable to find the kind of work she wanted, and decided that teaching at the postsecondary level was much more akin to her interests. Liz’s motivation was also coupled with her family circumstance. I was a first generation college student so my family wasn’t familiar with the process, my dad had done some community college, so they thought that would be a better path. And as a high schooler, I was from a small town, my dad’s a farmer, my mom’s a secretary, that is just not even on your radar, right? So, the community college in our area, I knew people who went and didn’t finish, and I had a pretty strong drive to finish. I was driven because I was working with middle-aged adults who were struggling to make ends meet, and who didn’t have health care, and who really had a difficult time of things. Doing the same thing without a whole lot. I just didn’t feel like it had a lot of purpose, and I didn’t want to find myself in a position like that. Liz was determined to economically succeed the community where she was from, and earning a college degree was the means to do so. Torche (2011) indicated that for many individuals from low socio-economic status, earning an undergraduate degree might improve chances to be 108 economically better off than previous generations. However, Torche also noted that a graduate degree may not necessarily provide the same upward economic mobility for the same individual. Improving socio-economic status motivated Liz’s pursuit of undergraduate education, yet her continuation into graduate school was fueled by a love of learning. “It was an act of discovery, right? College wasn’t an option and then it was, and I love learning and I love writing, I don’t love K-12 teaching, so, higher ed teaching made sense.” Liz continued, “After I finished my undergrad at Lakeside, I decided to go back and get my master’s and came here again. Got my master's in English. And then when I graduated with that I just stayed here.” Having an assistantship at Lakeside while earning her master’s degree gave Liz an easy segue into continuing to teach in the writing program as an adjunct. Eventually, Liz was hired as a full-time fixed-term faculty member in the department of English. After several years of teaching introductory courses with her master’s, Liz realized she would need to earn a terminal degree if she wanted to expand her career options. As Liz and I talked, she shared that it was a combination of her personal desire to further educate herself, and the external pressure to feel that she needed PhD. Underpinning both of these desires is the possibility of career advancement and greater career opportunities. “I can teach 101 and 102, and that’s really all. So as far as growth and variety, unless I branch out…there isn’t really anywhere else for me to go within the university without a doctorate. And if you’re working in higher education without a doctorate it’s sort of like you quit too soon.” In addition to sharing similar reasons for pursuing graduate school, Dorothy, Liz, and Nadean also entered their doctoral programs as adults with children. Balancing their lives outside of academia while continuing to make progress on their doctoral degrees was sometimes a challenge. Nadean commuted an hour to Midwest Flagship from the town where Lakeside is 109 located, and lamented “it’s rough in some ways because you don’t, I did not bond with the students in my cohort the same way. We had a cohort of seven and I always kinda felt like I didn’t really fit in.” For Dorothy in particular, graduate school was sometimes a tumultuous experience. She was working full time at her undergraduate alma mater while she worked towards her PhD. She also shared that she had a difficult relationship with her advisor, and did not always feel supported or have the kind of direction she needed to be a successful doctoral student. Dorothy explained that as an undergraduate student at the small liberal arts college she attended, she had never done large research projects or proposal writing like was required of her as a PhD student. Field notes below describe Dorothy’s experience and challenge with research. Dorothy said that she had never done this kind of work when she was an undergrad, and did not know anything about the process of research until she was a doctoral student. At this point, Dorothy said, “I had to write my proposal nine times before it got approved! I kept going to my chair and giving her my proposal, and all she would say is that it was wrong and I had to do it again.” Dorothy then described how it was difficult to change chairs, it caused a big rift. She said that her previous chair had essentially black-listed her and called her a very difficult student to other faculty. Dorothy also said that her previous chair had shut down her IRB, without Dorothy knowing. Dorothy continued to do her dissertation work, collecting data, and as she was writing up her findings, she had learned that her IRB had been closed. This essentially meant that all of her data was collected without the protection of IRB. She looked at me and said, “it cost me my job.” [Field notes, March 29, 2018] Since Dorothy was no longer ABD and close to completing her PhD, she was unable to continue in her director position at her undergraduate alma mater. Suddenly in a financial bind while 110 facing doing data collection a second time, Dorothy reached out to a colleague at Lakeside hoping to find work. Her contact at Lakeside was someone she knew when she was a master’s student, and felt comfortable reaching out to inquire about a position. Dorothy was informed that there would be an opening, and was simply told to “fill out the paperwork, I think you’re a shoe- in.” Dorothy acknowledged, “It just was very fortuitous and just kind of happened so I don’t think that it was normal at all. I think it was, I just got lucky.” The timing for Dorothy was indeed fortuitous, and her relationship with a colleague at Lakeside helped her move quickly from one form of employment to another. Had it not been for Dorothy’s maintained connection to Lakeside, initiated during her master’s degree work there, she may not have completed her PhD at Midwest Flagship. Dorothy, Liz, and Nadean all shared they were drawn to continue their postsecondary educations because of a desire to teach. Additionally, as women on the local pathway, they were also from the region near Lakeside and had ties to the community. These community ties provided stability for them as they pursued their graduate education and moved into their fixed- term positions. Their forms of capital were social, and Dorothy, Liz, and Nadean were clear that they needed to and wanted to stay close to home. For this reason, they each explained that they pursued their doctoral degrees locally. Kiki. Kiki’s local pathway is best described as a boomerang; she started her academic trajectory near home, then left to pursue a career, and eventually returned home. She earned her undergraduate degree in English and then obtained her secondary teaching certification from a well-regarded public university in the Midwest. After she received her degree, she spent several years in Mexico teaching English. She shared that after that experience, she knew that she wanted to earn a master’s degree to teach English to speakers of other languages “because I 111 realized it was my passion, I loved it, but I didn’t have the skills to teach English as a second language.” Kiki decided to move back to her home state in the Midwest, and applied to the Master of Arts in teaching English at Lakeside, near where she grew up. She applied to the program with only a couple of months until the start of the semester. Also on a whim, Kiki applied for a graduate assistantship. She ended up being accepted and was admitted with funding through a graduate assistantship. During her time as a master’s student, she began working part time at the Language Center, and upon completing her master’s degree, began working full-time at the Language Center as a fixed-term faculty member. Since 2011, Kiki has been working in the center full-time as a fixed-term faculty member and an administrator, and is now in ABD status. Kiki was motivated by external and internal forces to pursue her PhD. She mentioned that her mom and her closest aunt have PhDs, and she was inspired by their example. Kiki also shared that her daughter was part of the motivation, to “be that for her.” Additionally, other teachers in her department had decided to pursue the PhD at Lakeside. Kiki finally explained, “You know, being a woman, being in higher education, it’s really hard. And not having a PhD in higher education is really hard.” As a fixed-term faculty member, Kiki is aware that being in higher education is difficult without a PhD. This difficulty is due both to her position as a fixed-term faculty member, and as someone who worked in her fixed-term faculty role for several years without a terminal degree. However, Kiki does not aspire to continue in a faculty position, and stated clearly I don’t necessarily wanta be faculty. I wanta make more money. I wanta have more of an impact on students’ lives and make it big picture. I think that’s something that is really important, so I’d like to do that. I’d like to move higher up in an organization. 112 Kiki sees her doctoral degree as a way to advance her career inside academia, and not necessarily as a means to enter the academic profession. As a current full-time fixed-term faculty member who also balances duties in administration in the Language Center, Kiki has decided that her place in academia is in a position where she feels she can make an impact on a broader organizational level. In her view, earning a PhD will give her the means to do so. Kiki’s desire to pursue a more administrative path, however, may also be due to her experience in graduate school. Kiki shared that her dissertation chair encouraged her to move into an administrative position. “She was like, ‘I think you should be a director of something.’ I think she was feeling a little fed up with the publish-or-perish faculty role because it’s very political.” Kiki continued to describe the majority of students in her program as already working full-time as administrators on campus, or at other institutions nearby. Using a PhD to advance professionally outside of the professoriate, as is the case with Kiki, is not unusual. In Kiki’s field (she will soon earn her PhD in Higher Education Leadership) it is common for individuals with such degrees to advance into positions of administrative leadership or policy. As the field of graduate education has shifted to enroll more students and the placement of individuals into the academic profession tightens, those teaching and working in graduate education have been charged to rethink how they prepare graduate students for a career outside of academia (Austin, 2002; Nerad, 2004). Kiki, and in a similar fashion Jill and Nan, had the foresight to approach their doctoral degrees as an opportunity to work in administrative and leadership positions. Cassuto (2015) indicated that faculty, too, should advise graduate students to look beyond the academic profession when mentoring students for future careers. Furthermore, Cassuto suggested that the institution of higher education has a responsibility to the public to create both knowledge production and social service. 113 Kiki leveraged her local pathway, one paved with her family, generational PhDs, and institutional ties, to envision herself in a future role that combined her scholarly interests (leadership education) with her professional experience (international higher education, ESL). Despite admitting that it was difficult to be a woman in higher education, Kiki drew on the stability of her family and her knowledge as an insider to navigate academia. Her social capital in the form of her community ties, cultural capital in the form of the other women in her family who also earned PhDs, and her economic capital in the form of her husband supported her confidence to seek out a career in administration and envision a future where she would make more broad dramatic change in her field. Anna. Some on the local pathway experienced what I refer to as forced mobility. Anna, in the field of communication, exemplifies how individual experiences, and familial and social roots might clash with the prestigious and status-driven expectations of graduate school, and the desire to travel the traditional pathway. Anna’s pathway into and through graduate school began somewhat unintentionally. She pursued graduate school after explaining that she “didn’t have a thought about it at all as an undergrad.” She shared that she initially pursued graduate school because after completing her undergraduate degree she could not find employment. Furthermore, Anna described herself as a late bloomer, and it was not until after she finished her PhD that she was able to step back and understand how her social background and disposition shaped her present situation. A lot of my academic trajectory didn’t seem like there were like legitimate choices made for me on my own part up front. Going to graduate school, I feel like I didn’t really make this choice beforehand because the economy was so terrible at the time. And my family’s background is not academic. I’m first-gen. So I had all these fluffy ideas about what you 114 can do with your degree. My GPA was really not very good but they admitted me in the graduate program at Lakeside on a conditional basis, and then I actually ended doing a fantastic job. I poured myself into it. So my advisors encouraged me to continue to the PhD. But my family has always lived here, and I needed to have a certain proximity. That was part of the reason I stayed in the area. So I went to Mountview State University on full funding. I actually finished in three years, which is insane. But I didn’t do anything else. I finished first in my cohort. But I was more keyed in on the work aspect of graduate school because I have a blue collar, like really blue collar background. So I came at graduate school with a very pragmatic approach, like I just didn’t have the time or the money to waste working on publications, or being a rock star. I couldn’t see myself taking another year, another two years, spending money on rent, doing all those things you’re supposed to do in grad school to build your CV. You know, just so I could have the luxury of preparing for the market, or focusing on the market only. I couldn’t see myself either taking like a year or even six months of not working. For Anna, three instances during our conversation make clear her connection between her upbringing and how she worked her way through academia. First, she described herself as a “late bloomer” and did not do well as an undergraduate student. Anna did not understand that one’s academic trajectory and the relative success of that trajectory should begin as an undergraduate. Fortunately, Anna was admitted to graduate school even though it was on a conditional basis. To her benefit, she received encouragement from advisors in her master’s program and was recognized for her resilience and her intelligence. Second, Anna was bound geographically. She limited herself to programs that were near her current location so as to be near her family. Because she was unable to attend institutions that 115 were a considerable distance from her hometown, she excluded some programs that might have afforded her greater funding, and a stronger emphasis on socialization into the academic profession. She shared that she had been accepted to other programs, some with more prestige, but chose Mountview because of its close proximity to her family. Mountview was approximately a three-hour drive to her family’s town. Finally, Anna’s blue collar background and approach to work shaped her decisions about how many years she spent in graduate school. Anna did not invest in her research agenda during her PhD program, even though that was the primary reason she continued her education. For many, financial considerations play an enormous role in not only attending certain schools, but also how individuals progress through graduate school (Nguyen, 2016). Even upon learning that most institutions of higher education value research over teaching, she did not necessarily build her research agenda. During our conversation, she lamented that if she had taken more time, or given herself the “luxury of preparing for the market” perhaps she would be in a tenure-track faculty position today. After finishing her PhD, Anna went on the job market looking for a tenure-track position. She spent three years in different yearly fixed-term positions, and then was hired full-time at a regional doctoral granting institution about an hour from Lakeside. Anna works primarily at this institution in a full-time fixed-term faculty position, and also part-time at Lakeside. She also regularly picks up other classes as an adjunct at community colleges in the region. Janet. The local pathway represented some constraints in relocating for a faculty position, especially for those seeking a tenure-track position. Janet, who moved to the region because of her partner’s career, pursued her PhD later in life, after having a successful professional career. Janet earned her undergraduate degree in economics from a regional 116 university in the South, then went back to earn a Master’s in Business Administration from a highly ranked program in the Mid-Atlantic. Pursuing her PhD was something Janet had always wanted to do; yet she took many years between her master’s and doctoral degrees to help raise a family. Janet explained that it was her husband’s career that moved them to different cities along the eastern seaboard. Finally, after her husband’s job relocated them again to a smaller Midwest City, Janet shared that she knew she had to go back for her doctorate. She described that being near a large public research-intensive school and doctoral granting university was her opportunity to finally pursue her PhD. She enrolled in sociology, and also continued to raise her children. Although it took Janet eight years to complete her degree, she shared that many of her experiences in graduate school were research intensive. Before returning to graduate school, Janet worked professionally in market research, for public organizations, government, and private companies, and her skills as a researcher included both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. She decided on sociology as a PhD, because of her work in research, and her interests in economic systems. As Janet was nearing completion of her degree, her family was faced with possibly moving again. Janet decided to take a postdoctoral position at Lakeside for a year in the event they relocated. During the year of her postdoctoral position, her husband’s job inevitably did not relocate the family, and Janet was offered a full-time fixed-term position in the sociology department at Lakeside. It was during this time she also put herself on the market for a tenure- track position. Yet, due to her limited mobility since her family was staying in the region indefinitely, she was only able to apply for positions that were within commuting distance. Janet did well on the job market, and had two on-campus visits at institutions that were very nearby. However, as she explained 117 I had four interviews and I didn’t get any of them. The first one, the one that was truly viable, I did terribly. I was ill equipped and I fucked it up and didn’t get it. That was that. And that one, the first one, was like the job I could’ve actually taken. The other ones were just not right, and then finally the last one, it went really, really well. But after that, I stopped applying cuz it wasn’t, I just gave up. Once you’re like three years out from getting your degree then your shelf life is you know, past due and they figure there’s something wrong with you. Janet faced geographic limitations during her search for a tenure track faculty position. Janet’s experience on the faculty job market highlights what the market often demands of aspiring faculty members: that they be well-prepared and socialized to present research and discuss their research in a distinct way; that they be willing to relocate. Too long away from completing a PhD and too long on the market is unfavorable. Summary of local pathway. For several women on the local pathway, they described how regular life did not stop while they continued their graduate education. Six of the eight women on the local pathway continued working full-time as they earned their doctoral degrees, and all of them save for Janet grew up in the region near Lakeside University. The unifying feature of the local pathway is the limited geographic mobility of those on it. This geographic mobility is intentional, as is the case with Jill, Nan, Dorothy, Liz, Nadean, and Kiki. For Anna and Janet, it is somewhat prescribed as both women shared they felt unable to leave the area for school or work. A theme also present in many of the women’s stories on the local pathway is the tension they felt between the expectations of the academic profession (publishing, attending more prestigious institutions) and their own local position. Henderson (2007) noted, “Although 118 academics are often stereotyped as raving liberals, they often are fundamentally very conservative, relying on rigid hierarchies of status and prestige” (p. 35). What Henderson refers to is how the larger field of academe creates hierarchies among institutions and faculty types. This is done through Carnegie classification systems, research productivity, access to resources and the prestige that individual faculty carry. Thus, Jill, Liz, Kiki, and Anna, and to some extent Nan and Janet, expressed that they were very aware of their position as women in academia without a doctoral degree, and of their graduate institutional pedigree. In the face of these tensions, however, the women on the local pathway had tremendous support from families who were nearby, and were also able to use local connections to take career risks, continue their educations, and eventually move into fixed-term faculty positions at Lakeside. What makes the local pathway distinctive is its forms of capital within the field of comprehensive universities. The traditional pathway conformed to what the larger field of higher education values: publications, institutional prestige, faculty mentorship and financial resources. Each of these are forms of capital for the traditional pathway. Henderson (2009) indicated that many faculty at comprehensive universities feel the effects of status and self-esteem as compared to more prestigious institutions. Thus, types of capital like successful research publications and scholarship recognition may influence the dispositions of fixed-term faculty and how they perceive their work. Henderson offered that perhaps to discourage these feelings, these types of institutions might consider redefining pretensions about success. I described and further developed the local pathway for three reasons: 1) to show alternate routes into graduate school, 2) to elevate the distinction of comprehensive universities, and 3) to highlight that some forms of capital that the larger field of academe values may not afford the same cache in the sub-field of comprehensive universities. 119 Pathways, Capital, and the Field Through analysis of the narratives of the women in my study, literature, and my theoretical framework, I outlined distinct pathways to describe how the women in my study went through graduate school and how they moved to Lakeside University. These pathways are both present in the large field of academia, the greater arena where the sub-field of institution type and Lakeside University reside. Thus, there are forms of capital that each pathway offers, and these forms are neither better nor worse than one another, but rather different. The value of the capital for each woman on their respective pathways becomes apparent in the following Chapter 5, where I describe the teaching practices of the women. Before turning to the teaching practices, it is necessary to note the forms of capital that were provided on each pathway. The primary difference between the traditional and local pathway as mentioned earlier is the geographic boundaries of the women. For those on the traditional pathway, there were few if any geographic boundaries for both their selection of graduate education and on their move to Lakeside. The opposite is true for locals. Almost all women on the local pathway were tied to the region, and made decisions about graduate school and moving to Lakeside based on location. Gopaul’s (2011, 2016) research on capital and graduate level education also reflected specific forms of capital that some women in my study on the traditional pathway had access to and accrued. These include the ability to secure scholarships and external funding, publishing, attending academic conferences, and access to academic networks. These forms of capital are valuable to those on the traditional pathway, and as Gopaul (2016) suggested, the “acquisition of particular achievements (capital) and the desirability of such achievements” helped to secure success for graduate students in the traditional field of doctoral study (p. 53). Those on the 120 traditional pathway were mostly afforded opportunities to publish, engage in research activity, obtain funding, full-time student status, and have geographic mobility. In addition, many of the women on the traditional pathway met their spouses while in graduate school, and these spouses were also academics. This provided a great sense of economic, social, and cultural stability for women on the traditional pathway. The local pathway offers its own forms of capital. These forms of capital also complicate some of the traditional forms of capital often prized in academia. For the local pathway, women had access to: benefiting from being academic insiders; family and community ties as many were from the same local region where they were currently employed; professional experience; and knowledge about the community. Those on the local pathway were mostly afforded opportunities to continue working full-time as they went to school, and maintain a connection to their local community. Like the women on the traditional pathway, many women on the local pathway also had spouses, and additionally had deep ties to their communities and the institutions. The capital that the women had access to and accrued on their respective pathways becomes operationalized in Chapter 5, where I next describe their teaching practices and their actions in the classroom. 121 CHAPTER 5: PRACTICE AND STRATEGIC ACTIONS Figure 3. Strategic Actions Bourdieu’s (2016) theoretical concept of practice is best described as a sum of the actions that are taken by individuals due to their volumes of capital and their placement in the field. In Chapter 4, I described the volumes of capital the women in my study possessed, setting the stage to better understand practice. Swartz (1997) elaborated on practice and indicated “Bourdieu adopts the language of ‘strategy’… stressing the importance of agency within a structuralist framework” (p. 98). Essentially, action, or practice, is “strategic rather than rule or norm conforming…actors in their everyday practices attempt to move through a maze of constraints and opportunities that they grasp imperfectly through past experience and over time” (Swartz, 1997, p. 99). Strategy is an essential component to Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice, described as “having a ‘feel for the game’ aim, on the mode of ‘protension’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 128). Strategy, thus, may also be characterized by acting and thinking towards the future. Practice is also nuanced, and Bourdieu (2016) further indicated that action is “sensible and reasonable” as an individual considers the structure or field in which they take action. To 122 reiterate from Chapter 1, practice is the result of “so many marks of social position” (Bourdieu, 2016, p. 82) and rooted in historical and field context. I take up this characterization of practice as strategic actions to describe the teaching practices of the women in my study. Their strategic actions are a result of who they are, what they have experienced, and how much capital they have appropriate for their field. The means and ends of strategic action for the women also resemble the subtle differences in definitions of practice as well as reflect the volumes of capital each woman possesses. Their stories and their pathways into and through graduate school presented these elements, and in this chapter I describe Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice by emphasizing strategic action. In this chapter I also describe more in-depth the individual dispositions (or habitus) of the women. From the stories of my participants, I created three archetypes to describe how the women in my study talked about their teaching, and thus strategic action. These archetypes of teaching practices are not examples of specific methods, but rather a broader description of their teaching style, and a further reflection of their disposition or habitus. The archetypes were developed based on what I consider “high” or “low” strategy. Deciding what is considered “high” strategy or “low” strategy was based on Bourdieu’s (2016) description above of having a feel for the game (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Swartz, 1997), and the descriptions provided by the women about their teaching. However, it is important to keep in mind that these levels of strategy are flexible, and their dispositions also inform their levels of strategy in the classroom. Thus, it is not simply about how much capital an individual has, but how capital as a part of habitus shapes practice. I begin first by describing the Planners, and their teaching practices. The Planners are considered those with “highest” strategy. Next I describe the Laborers, and last I 123 describe the Wanderers, or those with the “lowest” strategy. Before presenting the teaching archetypes, I reiterate the importance of the specific field of my study. The Importance of Field in Strategic Action: Practice at Lakeside University Marginson (2008) drew from Bourdieu’s (2016) concept of field to help define the field of higher education. For Marginson, institutions across the field of higher education work on a continuum, with elite institutions on one end, and less- or non-elite on the other. Marginson delineates elite from less- or non-elite based on characteristics such as fields or disciplines of study, enrollment practices, revenue, and institutional ranking. Elite institutions are those that are focused on liberal arts educations, are typically not-for-profit, and have high research productivity. Less- or non-elite institutions are thus for-profit driven, vocational, and have larger open enrollments. I refer to this example from Marginson (2008) to better explain how the practices of the women in my study are taking place at Lakeside, and also in the larger field of higher education. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Bourdieu’s concept of field is dynamic and also dimensional. I have defined the field in my study as academia, and included all of its aspects such as the academic profession, disciplines, administration, and students and learning. This field is also both a sub- space of larger society and possesses sub-fields of its own. As also mentioned in Chapter 1, the field of academia is deeply influenced by systems of racism, and economic and social disparity, as well as traditional ideals about worker norms and relationships. Like Marginson, I too suggest the sub-fields of higher education are the array of institution types, each with its own rules and norms and localized behaviors. At my site, Lakeside University, the larger social field as well as the field of academia, and more specific localized norms are all at play. This specificity of norms and rules of the sub- 124 field and how strategic action takes place, as informed by habitus and capital, in the sub-field of Lakeside is most evident in the archetype of the Laborers. Lakeside University is a comprehensive university in the Midwest. It is located about 70 miles from the nearest urban or city center, and sits along the rural lowlands of the Great Lakes. The term comprehensive university is somewhat disputed, and can encompass a variety of different kinds of universities that are defined as “regional” or “directional” or “teaching oriented” (Schneider & Dean, 2015). Henderson (2007) described comprehensive universities to be “The People’s University”, clarifying that its defining characteristics are state-publicly funded, multi-purposed in its mission of education (offering a diversity of undergraduate and graduate degrees) and its Carnegie class includes masters and doctoral level classifications. Continuing, Henderson noted comprehensives are mid-sized, ranging from 3,000 to 15,000 students. Lakeside University, during IPEDS data for 2016-2017, reported an undergraduate population of 17,103, slightly higher than Henderson’s description. Comprehensive universities are typically moderately selective for student admissions, and retention and graduate rates are often lower than at liberal arts or large public research institutions. If comprehensive universities were placed along Marginson’s (2008) continuum, they might be somewhere in the middle, between elite and less- or non-elite institutions. In addition to the more benign characteristics of comprehensives, there are also qualities that make these institutions unique and even controversial. Henderson (2007) noted comprehensives are regarded as regional “not only because they tend to serve students from a particular region, but because their students and staffs are engaged in a wide array of economic and cultural activities in their areas” (p. 8). This regional aspect gives Lakeside a homegrown quality, and many of the staff and administration, as well as the students were from the area. 125 Their more controversial qualities are their striving nature (O’Meara, 2005), their contribution to the rise of graduate education that some suggest is greedy or predatory, and their willingness to compete in a larger scale through athletics and research, a habit that could pull them further way from their regional- teaching-oriented origins of serving their immediate community (Schneider & Deane, 2015). The Planners Campbell and O’Meara (2014) defined agency as “taking strategic and intentional actions or perspectives toward goals that matter to oneself” (p. 50). More than just having a perspective about teaching, the Planners put their ideals into practice, “toward the goals that mattered” to them. This is also a reflection of Bourdieu’s (1992) description of strategy as sometimes being forward thinking, or having protension. Since practice is the result of the interrelation between field and habitus (Bourdieu, 2016; Swartz, 1997), when a Planner explores using certain methods in a classroom, it is the combination of her personal disposition and her position in the field that informs her actions. Six women from my study are considered Planners: Magdeline, Janie, Elaine, Adrianne, Jill, and Dorothy. Four of the six women are from the Traditional Pathway. Below I highlight two narratives in which the Planners described their teaching, and provided examples for why they are considered as having high strategy: developing long-term strategies, and creating personal fulfillment. Developing long-term strategies. Many Planners used the words strategy, agenda, or goal, to describe how they thought about teaching, and how they implemented certain practices. Moreover, many of these strategies were long-term and developed over several years. Dorothy in English shared that she remained active in her research as a means to inform her teaching. 126 Although it took many years to implement the things she learned from her research, she had set out to do this work from an early stage in her teaching career at Lakeside. I’ve been making this shift to writing about writing over the past three years, and writing about it as I go. In our field, we’re often accused of having no content because our students write about all kinds of stuff. But we do have content and part of my goal, my agenda, is to shift the way colleges think about composition as a course that just revolves around helping them learn to write for college and help them really learn how to write for life, how to use words in ways that will make an impact and make the world a better place. Real rhetoric. Dorothy continued to share she created informal surveys for her students over the years, asking them about writing, her writing classes specifically, and what they wanted to learn. These surveys were outside of the university-wide student assessments of her teaching, and she used these surveys to inform her own teaching practice. Although it is not uncommon for faculty to use their own forms to gather student feedback, Dorothy created her surveys to work towards her larger goal of changing the way the field thought about writing and rhetoric. She combined the responses from these surveys with her own research on writing and rhetoric to develop a research-driven course for her students. Dorothy emphasized that her involvement with her own research motivated her shift in the classroom. As a graduate student, Dorothy struggled with the intensity of the research in her program as stated in the Pathways section. Yet over the course of her teaching she came to rely on her interests and teach from a perspective that was informed by what research may be suggesting in her own discipline, and infusing that into her coursework. I recorded Dorothy’s perspective about teaching in the following field notes: 127 As Dorothy and I walked down the hall back to her office, I also asked her about her assignment, which was essentially a semester-long research project. She explained that she felt doing this type of work is “just so much more fun.” She added, “I think I’m the only one who does these kinds of assignments.” We got back to her office, and talked more about the students and their projects. When I asked why she coordinates her courses in this manner, she stated bluntly, “Because research is important.” She firmly believed this, and that doing assignments in this way was imperative for learning. [Field notes, March 29, 2018] Dorothy’s strategy of using research is a reflection both of her experience in graduate school on the local pathway, and an important way for her to organize a course while also maintaining rigor and learning. She explained she has been incorporating this for several years, and slowly building her teaching practice to reflect her own work and encourage student learning. Jill also had a long-term strategy for her teaching, one that would make a lasting and sustainable contribution to students inside and outside her field of business. Over several years, Jill developed a course that could meet the requirements for undergraduate general education electives, thereby being available to all undergraduate students to fulfill electives requirements. We all create our niches, and our own areas of expertise. And what better alignment with my background than to create a course to fulfill general education requirements within the gender and diversity realm? Something that will be sustainable by making it a requirement, right? And when it's offered online it can technically go out to anyone to teach, but because I've been here for so long I have like first choice or priority. So a little selfish. 128 Jill continued to explain that although she does not have to teach these classes, she usually takes them on because she wants her voice to be a part of the learning, particularly since she designed this course. She also emphasized the long-term strategy of developing a course such as this, one that meets university-wide standards for general education electives requirements. Her ability to move a course into the university elective system displays Jill’s savvy about the workings of the institution, her local pathway, and also her capital as an academic insider. This savvy is due to her longevity as an administrator before moving into her fixed-term position, and her comfort and familiarity with her department. Jill’s actions reveal how she sees her role in teaching (creating courses that connect business to gender and diversity), how she feels about owning certain courses (picking first the course she developed), and also where she senses she belongs (carving out her niche as an expert in gender and business due to her longevity in her role). Moreover, Jill still claims many of these courses as her own, and shared that she will sometimes take an over-load of courses in order to teach this elective when it is offered. As she stated, “a little selfish,” indeed, yet Jill is also asserting her presence and her important role in delivering the content of a course she herself developed. Magdeline in biology regularly brings musicians into her large lecture courses. She spent several years incorporating this teaching approach into her classrooms, where a cellist or dance performance accompanies lectures about evolution and the cycle of life. The justification for teaching this way was recorded below in my field notes: Magdeline described that the average drop-out, fail, and incomplete rate for these kinds of intro classes across the US at public universities is around 20 percent. She said that at Lakeside, she’s brought this down to 4 percent. Hence, more students are passing her 129 class, which may eventually translate into more students being interested in the sciences. She said, “obviously, this is good for the department.” [Field notes, April 4, 2018] Magdeline was intentionally strategic to use student achievement statistics to support the creativity in her classroom. As indicated in the Pathways, Magdeline from the traditional pathway spent time in a postdoctoral position at a prestigious university, and also graduated from a highly ranked institution. Magdeline had learned what a place like Lakeside would value based on her previous academic experiences, even at a comprehensive university that tends to place a high value on student learning in gateway courses like her introductory course in biology. Magdeline also took a long-view approach to her teaching when she arrived at Lakeside, knowing that it would take a little time for her to run her courses the way she wanted, given her fixed-term faculty status. After arriving at Lakeside, Magdeline immediately met with the chair of her department to build rapport. Based on her positive record of publishing, and her feelings of stability from her husband’s position as a newly hired tenure-track faculty member, she felt she would be able to confidently introduce herself and her teaching approach to the chair [Field notes, April 4, 2018]. In addition to being strategic about discussing her teaching with the chair early on in her teaching career, Magdeline and her husband were also extremely strategic about initially choosing Lakeside. During her job search with her husband, Magdeline said explicitly that they looked for an institution that would value teaching, and one where the research load was not unreasonable. “We picked somewhat strategically, we wanted a place where teaching was valued, where the load wasn’t crazy so that my husband could do what was meaningful to him. Everybody here had small kids, and it was refreshing to see a department like this.” The amount of planning and strategy Magdeline and her husband devoted to their job search benefited them 130 in their careers, particularly for Magdeline who has been able to incorporate her arts-based teaching practice into her classrooms. When Janie started her position as a fixed-term faculty at Lakeside, she was told that she may want to consider going above and beyond her duties in order to develop a positive reputation and eventually be able to teach courses she wanted, as well as to teach them in the way she wanted. She shared, There’s a little bit of strategy in taking on so much in that I’m making myself more useful and needed. More of, oh, Janie’s taught this. We can, she can do this again. So there’s a little strategy. And you hope things calm down. Then a couple of years ago I designed an online course and now I teach that one every semester. By making herself “useful and needed” Janie was able to position herself to create a course for herself that she now owns and teaches every semester. Janie also volunteers to be on curricular committees so that she has a say in how curriculum is designed. Like Magdeline, Janie is also married to a tenure-track faculty member in her department. This social connection provided her important information early on in her career at Lakeside, as she explained: So the associate dean, she was my husband’s undergrad advisor when he was here at Lakeside in school. Like we’ve had dinner at their house. And she and the dean were just like you need to make yourself invaluable, right? And just like, yeah, I know. I’m working on it. Thanks. Although Janie expressed some frustration over feeling that she needed to make herself “invaluable” she accepted the advice of the dean and volunteered for curriculum committees. By doing so, she built a positive reputation and positioned herself as an expert in certain areas of cell biology in her department. While this is not a sustainable approach for fixed-term faculty, she 131 indicated later, “you hope things calm down,” and eventually for Janie they did. She is better able to select and prioritize aspects of her student interactions, what committees she volunteers for, and whether to take an overload of courses or not. Creating personal fulfillment. In a study on women faculty and agentic behavior, O’Meara (2015) found that many women in faculty roles persevere in their positions (or express agency) by creating meaningful work for themselves, particularly when they are working within constrained environments. Planners in my study also discussed ways they found enjoyment in their teaching, or intentionally included practices that reflected their personal interests. While this enjoyment largely stemmed from the fact that many Planners saw themselves as teachers and felt confident in pursuing a teaching career, other Planners also weaved in their personal interests into the classroom, whether their love for the arts, their professional work experience, or their current research. As mentioned in the Pathways chapter, Janie was very clear that her passion was in teaching. She described that her decision to be a fixed-term faculty member was deeply connected to teaching, “It is the love of teaching. Sure, I could, I could run a research lab here and I could get tenure and I could get grants, but then my teaching wouldn’t be as good. And I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to do.” Janie placed her love and interest in teaching above other duties of faculty such as research. Janie continued, “Teaching just comes naturally and I enjoy developing course materials. One of my students asked me why I’m not a regular faculty member. I say I like talking about science more than actually doing it.” Janie continued to describe the hours she spends developing and tweaking lectures or in-class discussions. She admitted that she did this in part because she was a perfectionist, but also because she simply 132 found joy in making every aspect, small or large, of her teaching just right. Janie summarized her course planning thus: I could sink a whole day into one lecture. And I don’t know when I’m gonna get to teach this class again, so I might ask what’s the value in doing all this work? But if it matters to one student, that’s enough. So I’ve been trying to intentionally decide where to spend my time at work and doing things that I feel are fulfilling to make me enjoy the work. So I spend time doing things that are fulfilling, and I enjoy spending time working on lectures so I’m gonna do that. Janie’s approach is a balance between spending time on what she finds fulfilling while also not knowing when she may be assigned the same course again. Janie indulges in the practices she enjoys, and has had the time and experience in her department to be able to do so. Dorothy also expressed a deep passion for being a teacher. “More than anything, I like to teach. I am a teacher. That’s what I am. That’s what I like. All my research revolves around teaching.” Like Dorothy’s long-term strategy of leveraging her research agenda to improve her teaching and reach her larger goal of changing the narrative about the field she teaches in, Dorothy also used research to elevate her enjoyment of teaching. Magdeline shared the same sentiment, stating, “I always find I’m a much better researcher when I teach and vice versa. I think both ways. I teach much better if I do research well, and contact with students is key.” Dorothy and Magdeline were not the only Planners to maintain a research line, even as they may not be directly rewarded for it in their fixed-term positions. Elaine continued her artistic scholarship through her performance. Elaine stated, “At universities they want you to do academic or scholarly research as you’re doing it. In the music area it’s different because [scholarship] can be considered performance. So my scholarship is 133 creative and I don’t want to give that up completely.” Elaine draws from her continued involvement in her profession for her classes and student lessons. She described using her stage experience to add content to her courses, and introduce concepts her students may not be familiar with due to the small department and potential inexperience of her students in performing arts. I have to say, ‘I’m gonna strike that. I’m gonna take something off stage.’ We did mad libs and played trust games, just to get them doing things. Then I’d have them do a monologue and then someone would stage that monologue. And I made them write out the stage directions so they got practice writing out the directions. Elaine described her teaching practice as a reflection of her stage experience, and spoke of needing to bring this experience directly into her classroom. Elaine continued that her department has stated she need not continue her own performance practice, but she added “the dean’s office loves it cuz they love all this international credit stuff.” Thus, Elaine’s involvement in her scholarly performance serves to keep her abreast in her field to enhance her teaching, and adds a positive professional reputation to her department. Similarly, Jill brings her previous professional experience into the classroom, and described the excitement that often ensues when she draws on her own professional background. “I feel like I bring a sense of energy to the classroom. I think most often students will comment on my passion for the topic. So when I teach the Women and Management course, we look at the systems and structures in place to help women advance. It gets exciting.” Jill added that she gets to teach courses such as this that align with her background and expressed “that’s very much a positive…that is really part of my passion and gets me excited about teaching, and I want to teach those classes and keep that area of expertise, that niche.” Jill’s local pathway trajectory and her professional experience inspired her to incorporate her area of expertise into her teaching. 134 Adrianne shared that when she was initially hired, she regularly taught a survey course for British literature, a course she was extremely interested in. Over time she began to teach more composition classes, and then shared that she had also developed a deep passion for these. “I’ve become pretty passionate about teaching comp, about the value of it. I’m really committed to this, like one of the most valuable things that I do is teach composition. It’s like I may love teaching literature but I really see value in teaching comp.” Adrianne connected the importance of composition to her students’ learning with an increased passion for it in her own teaching practice. Although composition is not in her specific scholarly arena, she was intentional about sharing how her love for reading and writing has evolved into a passion for composition through teaching these courses. This evolving passion has helped Adrianne feel more fulfilled as a teacher. Rather than just seeing the value in a composition course, Adrianne also sees that she herself enjoys the topic. This interest led her to join a committee to redevelop introduction courses such as English composition, one where she was also able to integrate some of her literature background into course content to introduce composition concepts to students by using English literature classics. Magdeline perhaps best described creating personal fulfillment when she shared, I bring in dancers and musicians and we do all kinds of things and there’s always, you know, learning objective based. It’s not just for the fun, bringing crazy things, but the students resonate with that practice and it’s amazingly satisfying for me… with the performing arts so dear to my heart, it works well. It’s fun for me, it’s fun for [the students]. Magdeline has brought in performing arts so dear to her heart into her classroom where she can at once motivate student learning in creative ways and enjoy the performance herself. 135 Summary of Planners: Having a sense of choice. An underlying characteristic in the above narratives of the Planners is the sense of choice many of them felt. This sense of choice is evident in a number of ways, expressed differently by each Planner. Some of this sense of choice began early in their careers, as Magdeline and Janie both indicated that in graduate school they intentionally selected the fixed-term faculty track, admitting that the tenure-track appeared unsavory. This is true for Magdeline especially, as she had been offered a tenure-track position, but turned it down. As for Dorothy, she indicated that she was able to make ends meet as a fixed- term faculty member, that money and finances were not particularly stressful and as someone who went back to college as an adult after having raised a family, felt considerable freedom in deciding to be fixed-term. As expressed by the Planners that had a sense of choice in their activities and teaching approaches, their accumulation of capital became more evident in how it informed their practice. Jill, for example, indicated that her connection to the department and her good reputation gave her a sense of confidence when she arrived as a fixed-term faculty member in the College of Business. Although Jill was very cognizant of the stratified faculty in her department between tenure-track and non-tenure track, she was able to develop teaching strategies that gave her a better position in her department and made her invaluable. Her ability to “be selfish” about which courses she took, and her commitment to creating general education elective courses, were products of her capital and her habitus. Bourdieu (2016) wrote poetically, “in practice, it is the habitus, history turned into nature…” to describe how individuals filter and make sense of the field and their position. Habitus, thus as characterized by the dispositions of Planners and their experiences and histories as well as their capital, provided Planners with the forethought and the field position to have high strategy in their teaching practices. 136 The Laborers Six women are considered Laborers in my study: Nan, Nadean, Liz, Janet, Kiki, and Eleanor. Five of the six women are from the local pathway; Eleanor is the only individual who experienced graduate school and moved to Lakeside on the traditional pathway. Because the majority of the women are from the local pathway, the context of the field is particularly important for them. This context informs the two thematic descriptions for Laborers: Recognizing students, and preserving a sense of self. Recognizing students. Although being geographically mobile is valued in the larger field of academia, the Laborers represent how localism has benefited them in their teaching practice. Clegg (2011) argues different forms of social capital, as the case in my study of being a local, can be an advantage for some in a specific field. Thus, rather than considering their localism as a deficit in the field of academia, Clegg might suggest that there are certain strengths, even forms of social wealth, that individuals such as the Laborers possess (Yosso, 2005). One such strength is the Laborers’ ability to recognize and identify with many of the students at Lakeside. This was in part due to their local pathway status, and that the majority of Laborers were from the Lakeside region. Liz, a first-generation student in English described how she discusses teaching and student interactions as opportunities to show students, many who come from economically depressed areas, that college can be about more than getting a job. Liz tells her students, “You are more than a future accountant, more than a future advertising executive, more than a future engineer” [Participant personal communication, April 11, 2018]. Liz encourages her students to be “more than their majors” because she wants her students to have a fuller experience in college than simply graduating to get a job. The encouragement Liz provides is a reflection of her own 137 experience as an undergraduate and a first-generation student. Liz knows where her students are coming from locally and emotionally, and even perhaps their motivation for pursuing a college degree. She is able to remind students that they are whole individuals and that their aspirations for increased social mobility and their degrees are not the only things that define them as college students. Other Laborers described the same sense of recognizing students, and this recognition was evident in how they introduced potentially controversial topics in the class. Nan shared, I don’t lecture people because then they don’t listen or they become close minded because I’m not gonna listen to her because you can’t, you have to keep that comfortable environment for students and if they feel threatened, even if it’s because you’re trying to help them, if they feel threatened, they’ll just shut you out. Janet in sociology shared a similar approach. When discussing topics of gender or social inequity, Janet described “soft-peddling” some of the content. Compared to a number of the tenure-track professors, I soft pedal feminist and gender issues, even though I’m like, like gender’s one of my organizing principles in my work, but because I wanta be effective, I feel like if you just shove it in people’s faces…they’re like, ‘there’s no gender discrimination, yada yada’.” That Janet’s soft-peddling comment includes a comparison to her tenure-track peers may be a reflection of her fixed-term faculty status. Janet also shared that it was part of her overall approach in the classroom in order to show students how injustices impact all of society. Otherwise, Janet said, “I soft pedal it and still get, oh, she’s a feminist bitch, don’t take her class.” Also discussing the topic of women in the classroom, Kiki shared she takes an approach that will not alienate students or make them feel 138 pushed away. “I think you have to meet people where they are. So like, the engineer is a woman in a hijab, sometimes that’s all I can do. And using the pronoun she for boss or doctor, using she for professor. It’s the little steps, little steps.” The practice of soft peddling or taking little steps for the Laborers reflected their willingness to introduce new concepts or topics in the classroom, and do so with some recognition of whom their audiences were. Janet in particular compared her approach to other tenure-track faculty, and even while expressing that gender is one of her “organizing principles” she still was sure to use a light-hand when discussing gender equity in her classroom. Although many Laborers had the asset of being from the community, their recognition of their students did not always indicate that they had a clear long-term strategy behind their teaching practices. Despite being in their fixed-term faculty roles for several years, they did not discuss how their teaching practices could be related to a long-term strategy. As teaching was central to how they described their work, they did not have clear plans or expectations about how to continue in their teaching roles or how to ensure their job security. Nan, pondering all the extra activities she is involved in her department that are external to her fixed-term position requires, stated “I think I just do it because I enjoy it and I see people aren’t gonna step up and do it. I don’t know if that’s a good answer or not.” Nan continued to weigh the different tasks of her job, and explained, “I have learned here that some things just don’t count. Things that are important don’t count. Like all the extra time you spend with students, run by students, outside your normal duties, don’t necessarily count.” Nan further described activities that she was involved in, and lamented that the work she does mentoring students is often overlooked by her department. One particular interaction with students displayed this balance between acting as a mentor and advisor without the power of being on the 139 tenure-track in the department. I was struck by Nan’s thoughtful tone as I wrote up the following field notes: The two students went on to describe that they didn’t feel they had direction in a particular class, and also that the professor had not shown up for several classes where they had hoped to get instructions on writing for their assignment. Nan listened to them, nodding her head. The two students continued on, and then proceeded to ask her what they should do, and if there was any way they could improve their grades… She told the students she could try to have a conversation with some other faculty, but that they really needed to go to the chair. I noticed that Nan never explained her position as a fixed-term faculty member, and instead encouraged the two students to meet with the chair and describe their situation. She would act as a partner with them if needed. [Field Notes, April 17, 2018] Nan envisioned her role as a faculty member as one that also takes on mentoring and advising students. She did this on many occasions during our time together, and offered to help many students without overpromising what she could do. She concluded, “Maybe I should be a little more strategic. Some people might call it naïve but… I’m an idealist.” Nan’s idealism in helping her students and being there for them was also tempered by her position as a fixed-term faculty member. Summing up a sentiment many Laborers shared, Liz exclaimed, “I work for personal satisfaction not monetary compensation!” Liz proceeded to describe all of the extra activities she was involved in, the mentoring she does for students, and the committees she serves on outside the department. Liz casually mentioned that these activities might aid her in the future, but as of yet she was involved simply because these tasks were interesting to her. Liz’s commitment to 140 teaching and her interests rather than leveraging those commitments to a long-term strategy in her fixed-term career is a notable characterization of most Laborers. Preserving a sense of self. How Laborers are preserving a sense of self in their teaching practice models the dualism of the subjective and the objective for Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice. Swartz (1997) noted that how individuals construct social worlds is not at odds with the objective structures that surround and at times contain them. Likewise, Mackinnon and Bullen (2005) noted that action from habitus is “both constraint and freedom” (p. 35). Many Laborers reflected on their own sense of self, and how they were preserving this sense of self in their teaching practice. While some of these actions of self-preservation were positive reflections of their roles as teachers, for others they were also a reflection of how they struggled to maintain involvement in activities outside their teaching to preserve themselves. To indulge some wordplay, preservation for the women in my study could be sweet or be a safeguard. Nan, Nadean, Liz, and Kiki were particularly emphatic about their roles as teachers, and their sense of self in the classroom. For example, Nan, in health sciences shared in Chapter 4 that she left a faculty position in a community college because she could not teach using the methods she believed in. She shared that before she came to Lakeside, she contacted the department to ensure that implementing flipped classroom practices and including technology would be accepted there. Nan knew she would not be able to be true to herself, or as she mentioned from Chapter 4, “I’m one of those people that holds true to your convictions and I’m not gonna go along with things.” Nan was committed to preserving the way she taught, and left a tenure-track faculty position in order to do so. Kiki, describing herself and many others in her field as “teachers. We just want to teach. Leave me alone, let me teach.” This is a characterization of many Laborers, and how they ensured that a sense of themselves was part of their classrooms. 141 Liz described herself as a critical theorist, and for this reason often challenged her composition students to understand the role of higher education in society. She included this sense of herself in her classrooms and shared The university culture is a reflection of the culture of our country, and views that our society has given to education and how that has changed. And I think I probably try to counter that but not in the way by telling students what to think but to try to get them to question why they’re here. How do you use these opportunities, but within the context of the readings and the writings in class. Liz acknowledged the hierarchical system of education, and also that as a fixed-term faculty; she was part of a two-tiered system. She was acutely aware of her fixed-term position, and very much recognized her own localism. She used these aspects of herself to further motivate bringing in her own belief system and critical theoretical orientation into the classroom. Nadean described that she implemented “tweaks” in the classroom as a way to both resist what she felt were domineering practices in her department, and to ensure she was presenting her whole self in the classroom. Nadean mused about being constrained through a set syllabus, That set syllabus, I really like structure and rules, but I also don’t like to be told what to do apparently. I’m always like, oh, but if we did this just a little bit different, like this would be really cool to do this project in this way. And some of those little tweaks, you can kind of get away with but not fully. But I feel like I can be my best teacher self when I can make the program fit my teaching style and make the assignments what I need them to be. Nadean examined her own feelings about having the structure of a set syllabus, while also feeling that she was not able to fully be her “best teacher self” with the restrictions of a set 142 syllabus. As Nadean continued describing her teaching, she mentioned other tweaks she made, such as making group assignments into individual assignments, or redrafting assignments intended to be research or scholarly papers into annotated bibliographies. As Nadean shared these tweaks, however, she also explained these kinds of changes often flew under the radar, “No one said I couldn’t tweak it that way and no one ever said anything, if they even noticed that I did, because I mean, you do have to turn all of that material in. No one ever said, oh, you can’t do this.” Thus, Nadean changed portions of her class to suit her teaching style, but did it in such a way that perhaps no one “even noticed.” Through this example, Nadean was expressing a sense of agency in her teaching practice, but she was also feeling the constrains of her department and institution and her strategies are ones that suited her enough without drawing too much attention to herself. The actions that Nadean takes up perhaps best describe Bourdieu’s (1992) intent for practice as strategy. By strategy Bourdieu does not mean conscious choice or rational calculation…choices do not derive directly from the objective situations in which they occur or from transcending rules, norms, patterns, and constraints…they stem from practical dispositions that incorporate ambiguities and uncertainties that emerge from acting through space and time. (Swartz, 1997, p. 100). Nadean’s decisions about tweaking assignments, along with Nan’s descriptions of staying true to herself and her way of teaching, embody how habitus informs practice. Laborers are making decisions and performing daily actions, or enacting senses of practice, based on their histories and experiences. The actions described above also help define these women as Laborers; their 143 actions are largely reflective and practical, and strategic to the end that they act for self- preservation more so than for positional aspirations. Dimensions of habitus and its role in shaping strategic action are present in other Laborers who are less inclined to take on the role of teacher. Eleanor’s and Janet’s actions signify another form of self-preservation, one less sweet, and rather more as a practice of safeguarding a sense of self that they had previously hoped to embody as faculty members. Bourdieu (2016) indicated the intersection of habitus and strategic action brings awareness of what is possible and not possible. Both Eleanor and Janet engaged in actions that they understood may not be possible in the classroom, yet were essential to preserving their sense of self. Eleanor in philosophy shared that when she taught, she often created her courses to be more philosophically rigorous, even in general education courses. She fashioned class discussions to focus on more theoretical and critical approaches to philosophical debates, rather than a prescriptive approach. She elaborated, “here’s the common view on business ethics, this practice, price gouging, blah blah blah. I have them read monographs and journal articles.” Eleanor described that she often included more intellectually rigorous work in order to keep herself interested in the topic. So I make it into more of a philosophy class, more than other instructors, and I don’t mean to say I do it better, I’m just saying it’s different. Because if I felt like I’m not even really teaching philosophy that would be too demoralizing. Eleanor’s approach to teaching at a slightly higher level is a reflection of her own interest in her discipline of philosophy and wanting to feel that she is really teaching the discipline rather than 144 parroting best practices in ethically sticky in-class scenarios. Her approach is a reflection of what could be possible. In addition to creating more intellectually rigorous coursework, Eleanor also shared she tries to maintain activity in her research agenda. She chuckled, “so I feel like I’m talking to other scholars in my sub-discipline, and I start to remember that I know how to talk to, you know, grownups so to speak.” Like Eleanor, Janet also maintains some activity in her research. Janet suggested that part of the reason she continued her involvement in research is because it kept her current on the expertise in her field of sociology. However, it may also be in part because it allowed her to preserve this part of her self, since she often is overlooked to teach courses that are specifically in her wheelhouse. The chair assigns the classes, and she never bothered to, like, look at what the skillsets are, and I sent her an email that was like ‘I like teaching stats. I’d be willing to teach it, take an overload, you know because I enjoy teaching it.’ And she was like ‘oh I didn’t even know you knew how to teach stats. And I was like, that’s what I was hired, for methods, that’s the reason they even bothered hiring me and she just assigns me classes. I mean, I have as many publications as some of the people who are like associate professors. The approach that Eleanor and Janet took to preserving a sense of themselves in their teaching was to draw upon their strength in research. They both sought to maintain an active research agenda, and both shared it made them feel that they were still contributing to their respective fields and their teaching practice. 145 Summary of Laborers: Doing the work without long-term strategies. The ability to take strategic action is tightly connected to the field where the action is taking place. Laborers in particular exemplify the importance of the specific field and the placement of individuals with forms of capital and how that capital operates in this field. Laborers had certain levels of comfort and recognition with their students and their surroundings due in part to their experiences on the local pathway. However, what signifies them as Laborers is their inability to convert this form of capital into long-term strategic planning. As in the case of Nan and Liz, they both felt strongly about their roles as teachers, and expressed their deep investment into the lives of their students. This investment was manifest in how many extra activities they took on, including tasks of mentoring and committee work that fell outside of their formal job descriptions. Although some Planners, such as Jill, Janie, and Magdeline also took on extra work, the Planners’ justified their actions and correlated their actions to gaining stability and security in their positions. For Laborers, their extra work was not as strategic, nor did it necessarily have an end-game. Liz put it plainly, saying, “The extra things are sort of what feed my soul honestly. So, I don't know, I make room for them.” Hence, Liz indeed worked for the satisfaction, which may not ultimately lead to increased strategy or sense of stability in her role as a fixed-term faculty member. In short, Laborers’ willingness to be helpful was not necessarily strategic, nor directed toward improving their position. Rather, it was for self-preservation or again, as Liz described, “for my own personal satisfaction.” The Wanderers The strategic actions by Planners and Laborers are in direct relation to the more strict understanding of Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice, or habitus, capital and field: [(habitus) (capital)] + field = practice. As close readings of Bourdieu (1992, 1985, 2016) indicated, 146 however, subtle differences are present in how strategic action is understood, and to what ends these actions must or should be directed. The Wanderers represent both a lack of ends to their strategic actions as well as a dissonance to the field in which they take these actions. They are truly “wandering” as they decipher what their future holds, and seek the appropriate field to exert their agency. Often what is not said during conversation can speak volumes to a qualitative study (Saldaña, 2016). During my conversations with Wanderers, there was a noticeable absence in talk about teaching. While many of the Planners and Laborers discussed teaching, the Wanderers rarely talked about their teaching even when prodded. Instead, Wanderers discussed their research at length, or aspects of their teaching that were difficult. Although some Wanderers shared they enjoyed teaching, most of them admitted that they were not fulfilled by teaching, nor could ever be. Thus, they discussed their other projects, their research, or components of their work where they did find fulfillment. Four women make up the Wanderer archetype: Dee, Patricia, Joy, and Anna. Only Anna is from the local pathway. Below are two themes that define the Wanderers: Longing for research, and confronting the future. Longing for research. Almost all of the Wanderers shared that research was an important aspect of their work. Patricia acknowledged that research was vital in helping her sustain her role as a teacher. She shared that she tried to draw boundaries around her time in order to maintain a research agenda, yet in doing so also admitted there were potential consequences for drawing such boundaries. It’s important for me to keep working on my research. It’s not expected, but I have to keep doing it, I will keep doing it because I’m just not fulfilled by just teaching. And I think research is important. Because you want to bring in some of what you’re 147 researching into the classroom. And I think the students and department appreciate it. But because of this, I have to really structure how I do things, like when I am or am not in the office. Patricia continued to explain “I want my department to think positively because they decide whether I get reappointed. So I go to department events. But it’s also like, just another social engagement sometimes and I just don’t want to do this but I have to be around.” Patricia described the challenge of being present in departmental functions, while simultaneously teaching four courses a semester and researching. Like some of the Planners, she attempted to use her research to help elevate her reputation in the department. However, unlike the Planners, she struggled to devote as much time as she wished, and was less strategic about how to leverage her research and her expertise to help her establish a niche and a presence. Patricia’s description of herself as an introvert, and as someone who was less willing to cater to the requests of her department indicated these traits were sometimes a detriment to her, as she described feeling isolated from her peers in the department. Patricia also relocated from the Northwest, and this added to her feelings of isolation and unknowing about the culture of Lakeside and some of the social norms of her department. Anna also hoped to include more of her research directly into her classroom, yet had not had the opportunity to really emphasis some of her research in her courses. Anna explained, “They would say, oh, this is too close to, you know, this type of course that already exists. Or this is something they already address in this women’s studies course or something.” Despite Anna’s research agenda and its complementary characteristics to some of the courses she teaches, she has been unable to leverage her expertise in her teaching practice, or at least infuse her research into her course content. 148 Joy spoke plainly about her role as a researcher and her role as a teacher. “They don’t care about my research, they don’t care about my career or me as a person, you know, I’m just a body to teach the courses.” Joy shared she attempted to continue her line of research, but can rarely get traction on her projects because of the limited time she can devote to them. Joy had spent the past year trying to perform interviews for a qualitative study, but shared she had been unable to gather what she felt were enough interviews, and neither had the time to transcribe the interviews nor the money to hire help. Joy explained her research had stalled due to her high teaching load of four courses each semester. In addition to a stalled research agenda, Joy teaches in geography, but her research and field is in urban planning. Thus, like Anna, her area of expertise is outside of the content she teaches and she rarely has an opportunity to let these two, her research and teaching, connect on any meaningful level. In this way, her expertise is often on the sidelines. Negotiating time to perform research weighed on the Wanderers. Anna described how even seemingly small decisions about how many emails to answer in one day could inhibit her ability to research. These “smaller choices” as Anna described could take a toll on her ability to teach and research. Ultimately, the lack of time to devote to a research agenda was, as Anna put it, “disappointing.” It’s disappointing. I’m sure at some point I’m gonna be able to research more, but you know, your status in any program, if you don’t have your finances straight and you don’t have your housing straight and you don’t have even just like that support system at home. I’m not saying I can’t take care of all these things myself but that’s the kind of stuff that I’m mostly treading water with and then I’m caught in this kind of limbo where I’m at. 149 You know, so the research aspect of it, yeah, I’m always disappointed. Every single year, I’ll be like I’d love to do this and I don’t really ever. So it is a bummer. Patricia concluded, “And it gets really exhausting because I teach now four classes, and I still try to have a research agenda; I still try to do research because the goal I guess would be one day to get the tenure-track position. And I love it, that’s the one thing I can actually say that I do love, the research.” For Wanderers, it was the research that was ultimately fulfilling, yet also prompted a sense of sadness for them as they acknowledged their inability to take part in something they felt passionate about. This passion was often contrasted to their roles as teachers. Dee shared, Although I love teaching, I cannot survive on teaching alone. It doesn’t fulfill me, it’s not something that I can, that if I had to just do teaching alone I would leave because it doesn’t make me happy. It has to be teaching and research or just research because teaching alone, I know myself and I know that I would never be happy with just teaching. Dee explained for her, it must be both teaching and research, and she further described that her research is also what informs her teaching. Dee listed several projects that she was involved in, and highlighted her research throughout my discussion with her. Dee was clearly proud of the scholarship she had accomplished, but she also struggled to continue the pace of her research while teaching four courses each semester. Confronting the future. Practice, as a result of long-term strategic actions is least evident in the Wanderers. The long-term for Wanderers was less directly related to their teaching practices than it was to their feelings about their futures, and how they would confront these futures if they continued to remain in fixed-term positions. As mentioned above, Wanderers were still deciphering their futures. The commitment of the Wanderers remained to their research, as 150 well as to a future that they hoped would materialize if they continued to persist on the tenure- track market. However, Wanderers also confronted their future with some anxiety and uncertainty about what they should or would be doing in academia. For this reason, how they invested their time reflected where they wanted to be rather than where they currently were. Additionally, their uncertainty seeped into their approaches to teaching. Patricia confided, “I wish I could say I always wanted to be a teacher, but I sort of fell into it.” Patricia’s desire to be in academia was not connected to teaching, but rather to research. Patricia had hoped that earning her PhD would lead her to a tenure-track faculty position, one where she would be able to perform research in her field of applied and historical arts. Patricia’s traditional pathway was also somewhat unintentional, and the lack of a clear direction or purpose to pursue a PhD may have obscured some of her teaching practices. Patricia also shared that she struggled at times with students, and this increased her uncertainty about remaining in her fixed- term position. Some of the challenges Patricia faced were also a reflection of feeling disconnected from the local region, and she went on to explain that once she arrived at Lakeside, she was immediately given a 4/4 teaching course with little time for preparation or time to get settled and create a sense of place near Lakeside. Dee also shared some of the same challenges with students, and how it shaped her approach to teaching. I have gotten into a situation where, you know, I felt like, number one, the students were being overly demanding, unreasonably demanding and they, they complained about me cancelling an office hour but had really no idea what kind of professor I was. And that turned into basically the chair, before even speaking with me, making a judgment about my professionalism and then asking for a fuller review of my teaching. So instead of just 151 taking the student complaints, three student complaints, they’ve now done a mid- semester review where they’re interviewing all the students in my class in order to get an assessment of my teaching. Dee’s experiences, having an effect on her ability to teach, also reflect the larger narrative around women of color in faculty positions. As reported in Chapter 2, women of color faculty experience higher rates of student disruptiveness. Many women of color faculty feel also combat racial and gender stereotypes, and Dee as an Asian-American explained that she felt she was being punished for asserting herself. Dee concluded, “I think for, you know, minorities and underrepresented people, it’s more difficult. There’s lots of research about the difference in terms of the experience of teaching for underrepresented people versus those who are not. That it’s actually more stressful for us.” Dee’s situation at Lakeside, a primarily white institution that is also located in a rural, and mostly white region of the Midwest is an indication of her feeling marginalized and misunderstood by students. Anna described a specific interaction with a student as well, and how some of these more contentious conversations trickled down into her teaching. I had an issue with a student and it became really problematic. Like a conflict that unfolded in front of other students because I don’t have time, office hours, let’s meet right now. What do you need to talk to me about? And it escalated. But you know, they’re, the fact that you don’t have the time, you don’t have the resources takes a toll on your stamina physically, on yourself mentally and then, of course, that’s gonna trickle down to your students. And every relationship that you have. You know, at school and away from campus. But you know, I’m cognizant of it. I’m always trying to find the balance, but it definitely affects my classroom. 152 The unknowing that many of the Wanderers described was also present in their classrooms, and how they framed their teaching practice. In the same way that Patricia described how she needed to be present for her department, she also made the same suggestion to her students. “I tell students this sometimes. I grade your papers, so you want me to think positively of you.” Her advice to students was a direct reflection of how she felt in her own department. Patricia’s actions towards her students and her desire to maintain her research are a nod to what she hopes for in the future. She concluded, I still try to do research because the goal I guess would be one day to get the tenure track position…but, well I’m still here at Lakeside. It’s better than it was, like if you’re measuring better by your student evaluation scores. But, am I still mentally happy? No. But you think that you will be, you just have to get there and it will be okay. It’s like it still is a process, so I’m still in that like, wow, of realizing that, I’m going to work really, really hard, and still be at a lecturer position, unless I get hired away, and the likelihood of that might not be there, because the longer you’re in a fixed term position the likelihood you’ll stay in that position. Patricia’s statement about the difficulty in moving to a tenure-track position after being fixed- term is a fact. Finkelstein, Conley, and Schuster (2016) indicated that the tenure-track “tended to operate as something of a self-contained and only modestly permeable career path” (p. 160). Thus, those who start in non-tenure track positions are unlikely to move into tenure-track positions. Anna’s words follow Patricia’s sentiment, as she also spoke about having a positive reputation, but also being pegged as a fixed-term faculty. Her uncertainty about her future was evident in her words below, and also indicative of how relationships and interactions shaped how the Wanderers deployed teaching practices. 153 This is a dead end. You know, I mean I kind of keep turning around to multiple dead ends of just like you’re just staying here do to this until we open up another tenure-track line and you’re welcome to apply for that but you have the reputation that you’re not tenure- track. And do I have the reputation for not filling a tenure-track role? Is that gonna work against me? The unknown shaped how Wanderers moved through their classrooms, and informed how they thought about their futures. Almost all Wanderers were actively on the job-market for a tenure- track position, but all also expressed a great deal of uncertainty. Joy shared that it was often difficult for her to focus on classes because she was never sure if she would be leaving or staying. “It’s just really hard teaching this semester because of being so scared, not knowing what is going to happen, if I’m going to land a position or not.” Summary of Wanderers: Being displaced from/in the field. It cannot be stressed enough the important context of field and sub-field for my study. As practice is deeply connected to the field in which the action is taking place, it is also deeply informed by the “correct” forms of capital that are necessary for a specific field. Wanderers signify the distinction, or lack of distinction, when practice takes place in an (in)appropriate field; when the players of a game are playing the wrong game on the wrong pitch. All but one Wanderer was from the traditional pathway, and were thus socialized to approach the academic profession emphasizing their own research. Anna, on the local pathway also shared this characteristic, and the disposition of all Wanderers was a keen interest in research, as well as an idealized view of academia. Unfortunately, their idealization of academia was not realized, and their uncertainty about their futures as both fixed-term and possible tenure-track made them feel displaced. 154 Their displacement was embodied in the interactions with students and the challenges many of them discussed. Their displacement was also manifest in how they strived to be involved in research, and each expressed a love and passion for research above and beyond teaching. Drawing on Bourdieu (2016), their displacement is also apparent in how their actions align with the field. Gopaul (2011) indicated that a missing link in many studies on education is an attention between field and capital. Bourdieu (1992), further clarifying the connection between habitus, capital and field implored The relation between habitus and field operates in two ways. On one side, it is a relation of conditioning: the field structures the habitus…on the other side, it is a relation of knowledge or cognitive construction. Habitus contributes to constituting the field as a meaningful world, a world endowed with sense and value, in which it is worth investing one’s energy (p. 127). The Wanderers in my study represent how misalignment between field and capital may inhibit strategic actions from taking place, or as Bourdieu (1992) suggested, reflect whether “the field is a meaningful world…worth investing one’s energy in” (p. 127). How the Wanderers described their teaching practices reflected their pathways, access to capital, and socialization, and their understanding of the field and how they placed value or meaning in their position within the field. Likewise, Wanderers largely expressed an aversion to teaching, yet teaching was the largest single function of their fixed-term faculty role. Bourdieu continued by suggesting practice as a consequence of the intersection of habitus, capital, and field may result in action that is not only about resistance or conservation, but also apathy or departure (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). 155 As Wanderers may have come to Lakeside with certain forms of capital that were valuable to the larger field of higher education and academia, these did not necessarily provide advantages for them as they went about their teaching practices. Rather, in some instances, a strong desire or longing to perform research was a distraction for the Wanderers, and kept them in a space of carrying a high teaching load while longing for a position where the research grass could be greener. Anna indicated about herself, “I was at a liberal arts college before Lakeside, not my cuppa tea, I’m more R1.” Thus, she connected her work to her institution type, and while she shared that she enjoyed teaching, she felt drawn to being at a large university with the highest levels of research activities where she could also perform her research. These descriptions from Anna and other Wanderers were signifiers of where they longed to be, and how the capital they accrued (research socialization) was misaligned with their role as teaching intensive fixed-term faculty at a comprehensive university. The Planners, the Laborers, and the Wanderers Three archetypes represent the teaching strategies of the women in my study: the Planners, the Laborers, and the Wanderers. As indicated in this chapter, not all women from one pathway conformed to a specific archetype, and it was the accrual of specific capital and how that capital intersected with the rules of the specific field that gave each archetype a high or low strategy in their teaching practice. A close attention to forms of capital in the field is necessary to understand and describe how these forms of capital are shaping work. Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice and his concept of practice, thus, begin to illuminate how forms of capital stratified the women in my study based on their teaching and classroom experiences. In the following chapter, I deepen my analysis of how forms of capital shape teaching practices, and in particular expand on forms of social capital and the connection between pathways and strategic actions. 156 CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS Figure 4. Discussion and Implications Without understanding how individuals have access to and accrue capital, particularly as appropriate to a specific field, would limit understandings about how social reproduction occurs, how socialization inside and outside the academy is learned through familial ties, and how colleges and universities as powerful institutions stratify individuals based on forms of capital. This study investigated both the histories and experiences of women in fixed-term faculty positions, and how those histories and experiences shaped their every day actions, or what Bourdieu (2016) referred to as habitus and field and capital equals practice. In order to realize both the storied narratives of my participants and how those narratives shaped teaching, I drafted two research questions: 1. How do forms of capital inform graduate school socialization experiences for women and their subsequent careers in fixed-term faculty positions? 157 2. How do forms of capital and such graduate school socialization experiences shape the work and teaching practices of these women? More specifically, these two questions hinge on forms of capital, or the access and accrual of economic, social, and cultural resources that aid individuals in obtaining beneficial positions within a field. To paint the background to this study, I provided a review of literature organized by Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts of field, habitus, and capital. In these three concepts, capital and its ability to provide legitimacy to individuals was present. For example, by introducing the field of higher education as a subfield or reflection of greater society, I immediately pointed to the hierarchy present in society (ordered by race, gender, social class, etc.) and how that is mirrored in colleges and universities. Another example is in the section of habitus, as I discussed the socialization experiences women have in graduate school. Previous researchers (Cole & Corcoran, 1986; Gardner, 2008; Griffin et al, 2015) reported that women in particular are more scrutinized, less supported, and increasingly questioned about their intentions during their graduate school experiences. These examples indicated that without the appropriate appearance, experience, or social origins, individuals may lack access to important forms of capital (social, cultural, economic) necessary for future careers in academia. Continuing my analysis and building on the importance of capital and field, I wrote Chapter 4 in order to describe different pathways into and through graduate school, and present a nuanced understanding of how experiences shape and inform academic trajectories. Thus, Chapter 4 not only described how the women navigated their graduate school experiences, but provided important insights into how these experiences afforded them certain forms of capital. Likewise, it was not only important to develop a dimensional portrait of each woman, it was 158 necessary to show how early life and relationships provided forms of capital even before graduate school. Two pathways are presented in Chapter 4: The traditional pathway and the local pathway. For women on the traditional pathway, their forms of capital included early publications, attending academic conferences, developing a large academic social network, and sometimes personifying institutional prestige. However, these forms of capital varied, and not all women on the traditional pathway had all types of capital, or possessed them in the same volumes. For example, Janie traveled an idealized traditional pathway, one where she was able to relocate, had full funding in graduate school, had early access to research and publications, attended her top- choice institution for graduate school, and met her husband who eventually became a tenure- track professor at Lakeside. Dee, on the other end of the traditional pathway spectrum, was unable to attend her first, or even second choice for graduate school, had her graduate school funded through a piecemeal approach from her faculty, and was not encouraged to perform research until graduate school. However, Dee was able and willing to relocate for her graduate education. For women on the local pathway, forms of capital included remaining near their homes, having social stability in the communities where they lived, being professionally connected insiders at their institutions, and continuing to earn a paycheck while progressing through graduate school. Also like the traditional pathway, their capital varied, and not all women on the local pathway had all types or the same volumes. For example, Jill leveraged her years of professional experience, knowledge about the community, and relationship ties to Lakeside to provide a sense of agency in her classroom. Jill was also married to a tenured professor at Lakeside, giving her a greater sense of security, both economically and socially. However, Anna 159 felt limited by her geography, and although she was able to stay connected to her community, she continued to strive for a tenure-track position, never feeling stable in her current fixed-term position. Operationalizing forms of capital, then, is evident through teaching practices. These teaching practices offered a form of measure of capital by how the women described their strategic actions in the classroom. Chapter 5 presented the strategic actions shaped by the experiences of the women and the capital they accrued from Chapter 4. The three archetypes are the Planner, the Laborer, and the Wanderer. Not all women on the traditional pathway were considered Planners, and likewise not all women on the local pathway were considered Laborers or Wanderers. Table 6.1 represents both the pathways and the archetypes. A closer examination of the capital that each woman possessed illuminates a key aspect for all the women in my study: their relationships as a form of social capital. Table 6.1: Pathways and Archetypes S Y A W H T A P l a n o i t i d a r T l a c o L ARCHETYPES Planners Magdeline Janie Elaine Adrianne Jill Dorothy Laborers Eleanor Nadean Kiki Nan Liz Janet Wanderers Joy Patricia Dee Anna 160 The subject of relationships was embedded in all of the narratives and descriptions of pathways and teaching practices. During conversations about pathways, discussion of these relationships remained in the background. For example, husbands, professional colleagues and families, shaped graduate school experiences. Following the trajectory of my narrative arc, as my analysis and interview protocol drew closer to focusing on teaching practices, talk about relationships moved to the foreground. For example, being hired at Lakeside was a direct result of a husband’s job, or being hired was a direct result of a previous professional relationship. Likewise, student interactions and relationships were a direct reflection of feeling connected to the community around Lakeside. Relationships rest at the heart of each of the forms of capital the women in my study possessed, for both the traditional and local pathways. To understand teaching practice then, it is necessary to recognize the importance of relationships for the women in my study. Moreover, it is imperative to acknowledge that types of relationships in a specific field offer certain advantages. I focus on relationships as social capital to elevate the social ties my participants had with other people and how those relationships complicate what counts as social capital. Relationships as social capital A major theoretical contribution of Bourdieu’s is his emphasis on social capital. Like Marx, Bourdieu’s concept of capital originates with economic production and economic means. Properties, wealth, and money give individuals access to lifestyles and opportunities, and “the more wealth a person possesses, the more he is able to remove himself from the necessary daily concerns of physical survival” (Appelrouth & Edles, 2016, p. 670). Through these means, individuals are grouped together depending on the nature and volume of their capital. In the field 161 of greater society, these groupings form classes, and these classes are evident in the social origins of the women in my study. However, throughout Bourdieu’s writing, key differences from Marx emerge (Bourdieu, 1985). Bourdieu diverges from a strictly Marxist and economic interpretation of capital by also including the social aspects of relationships that contribute to class stratification (Bourdieu, 1985). For example, my archetypes created groups of the women in my study, and these groups were based on their forms of capital and their “high” or “low” strategy in the classroom. Within Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, these groupings might also be considered classes. Although I have not emphasized a class structure in my study, these groupings do provide an avenue to explore how women in fixed-term faculty are stratified based on their forms of capital, following Bourdieu’s thought on class stratification. Appelrouth and Edles (2016) indicated, “Bourdieu contends that economic resources alone do not form the social space of positions. Nor are money and property the only avenues for expressing and sustaining relations of domination” (p. 671). This hierarchical stratification is tantamount to using Bourdieu’s theory of practice. Although the women in my study are not in direct competition with one another, they are certainly stratified and their actions and their agency is an indicator of the nature of their stratification. Their stratification, as I describe below, hinges on the form of capital that Bourdieu emphasizes most: social capital. I leverage Bourdieu’s contribution to the concept of capital to highlight the social relationships and communities that both promote the normative understanding of social capital in academia, and also complicate it. Marriage as social capital in academia. As I have argued earlier, success in academia often necessitates a partner. Success in my study is represented by the high levels of strategy and feelings of stability on display in the teaching practices of women in fixed-term faculty roles. In 162 particular, Magdeline, Janie, and Adrianne arrived at Lakeside as spousal hires and worked in the same departments as their husbands. They each shared that when they joined Lakeside they had a connection to the department, either through their husband or because of previous academic ties (also through their husbands). These connections allowed them to immediately acknowledge and understand the cultures of the department, have familiarity with other faculty, and feel that they were making long-term decisions about their careers. Recalling Hochschild (1975), if the academic profession for the white, male, cisgender professor is the image of an ideal worker, a similar argument might be made for women in fixed- term faculty positions. In order to have agency in the classroom, these women need partners outside of academia (or inside as is the case for many Planners). All of the women in my study who were considered Laborers were married, and for several Laborers they discussed explicitly how their partnerships gave them security to take fixed-term positions that were a fit for them. Nan and Liz in particular shared that they loved teaching, and were able to earn a meager salary as fixed-term faculty because they had economic resources through their husbands. I argue additionally that this status also gave them a greater sense of agency in their teaching practice, and also a sense of stability so they might not be penalized for ignoring a long-term strategy or plan in their teaching and future academic career. Nan and Liz were freed from economic constraints to be more creative and take more risks in the classroom. They each also expressed a deep satisfaction with teaching and fulfillment by the work of teaching. The circumstances of Nan and Liz in fixed-term positions, their placement at a comprehensive university, and their marriages combined to aid them in their teaching practices. This is the specificity of the field and how forms of capital operate in a field. 163 Bourdieu (1992) suggested comparing the field to a game as an aid in understanding this theoretical concept. Doing so illuminates that fields have elements of rules, norms, and regularities. Furthermore, Bourdieu explained as actors, or players, we are invested in the game as well, and with capital we collude and position ourselves in the field. Bourdieu continued, We also have trump cards, that is, master cards whose force varies depending on the game: just as the relative value of cards changes with each game, the hierarchy of the different species of capital varies across the various fields. In other words, there are cards that are valid, efficacious in all fields—these are the fundamental species of capital—but their relative value as trump cards is determined by each field and even by the successive states of the same field (p. 98). The social, cultural, and economic capital that academic marriages provide to women in fixed-term positions is especially potent in a comprehensive university such as Lakeside. For these Planners, their master cards were their romantic partnerships. Planners married to other academics had social connections, financial support in their spouses, and the majority are from the traditional pathway where they also received the normative forms of socialization for the academic profession. They had social capital in their spouses, along with economic capital in those partnerships. Many Planners also graduated from reputable doctoral programs, where they had access to a large academic network. In essence, arrival at their institutions was almost pre- determined, and they began to immediately build their teaching practices knowing they were committed to the institution. In other words, they began to build their lives, and their teaching was a reflection of that building. Jill provides a unique example of as someone with an academic trajectory from the local pathway who also represents the Planner. Like Magdeline, Janie, and Adrianne, Jill is married to 164 another academic. However, she moved through graduate school on the local pathway, and her socialization experiences were different from the other three women. What made Jill’s circumstance unique were her volumes of social capital. Jill had the benefits of both a spouse, and of her local community. Her transition into her current fixed-term position was not the result of being a spousal hire, but rather due to her maintained connections to Lakeside and her own positive professional reputation. Furthermore, Jill described being a part of the community, raising her family, and making her home in the region near Lakeside. The combination of her social capital in her marriage and her community and local ties provided workplace stability; Jill never intends to seek a tenure-track position, and she is dedicated to carving out a niche for herself and her profession through long-term strategic actions. Community ties as social capital in academia. Community ties is another important factor in practice for women in fixed-term faculty positions. Bourdieu (1992) again: “Two individuals endowed with an equivalent overall capital can differ, in their position as well as in their stances, in that one holds a lot of economic capital and little cultural capital while the other has little economic capital and large cultural assets” (p. 99). This comment from Bourdieu is reflected in Dorothy. Dorothy entered and progressed through graduate school on the local pathway. Her academic trajectory began later in life, after she raised her children. Dorothy is no longer married, and is also responsible for taking care of her aging parents. Additionally, she shared that she grew up in the region around Lakeside and had a large community around her with her children, her parents, and other social ties. Although Dorothy does not have the economic security of a spouse, nor does she necessarily have the traditional forms of capital often valued in the field of academia, she does have the capital of social security in the 165 community around her. This form of capital matters in the field of academia, particularly at the institution type of Lakeside, a comprehensive university. Henderson (2007) noted that the character of comprehensive institutions is not necessarily formed by the same prestige driven aspirations of larger research intense universities. Henderson (2007) argued, “The core concept of the people’s university is the democratization of higher education,” thus, institutions like Lakeside have a multitude of missions and may weigh or evaluate faculty capital differently than their liberal arts or research intense peers. For some of the Wanderers, they could feel their lack of capital in areas that mattered to the specific site of Lakeside, even though they had been socialized and prepared for a career in the academic profession. Patricia, having a spouse and graduating from a reputable program, struggled to find stability in her position and her teaching. She provides a unique perspective on how social capital in the form of community ties operates to provide stability and high levels of teaching strategy in her fixed-term position. Patricia has the social capital of a spouse, and with that partnership also comes increased economic security and a family. Yet Patricia shared some regret in relocating so far from her graduate school community. She moved her husband and her son to an area of the U.S. that was unknown, lacking any form of community or social connections apart from any she might form at Lakeside. She continued to lament not receiving a tenure-track offer when she was on the job market and continued to look for a tenure-track position. Her skills as a researcher were clear, yet she was unable to convert these skills and cultural capital into value at Lakeside, where making and maintaining connections often provided leverage. Dee and Joy also shared that they felt isolated and misunderstood by their students and by the community around Lakeside. Both women had neither the connection of a romantic partner or a familiarity with the local community, making their community ties to the region extremely 166 weak. Thus, it was not only their work as fixed-term faculty that was precarious, it was also their social interactions and the potential for maintaining relationships. The potential for developing or maintaining relationships was exacerbated by their pursuit of tenure track positions, and so their desire to plant roots at Lakeside were often dug up by their hopes of relocating. Variations on forms of capital. Laborers are perhaps the most noteworthy example of how capital shapes agency, and how notions of capital can be defined differently because of field. In addition to my brief example of Dorothy above, many of the Laborers were deeply connected to their communities, and these connections gave them a sense of stability and ultimately agency in their work. To locate how Laborers were able to translate their community ties into capital, I first draw from the work of Marquez Kiyama and Rios-Aguilar (2018) who stated Bourdieu claims that educational institutions are relatively autonomous and influenced only indirectly by more powerful economic and political institutions. Rather than being linked directly to the power of an economic elite, educational institutions are conceived as part of a larger universe of institutions that do not overtly impose compliance and oppression, but reproduce existing power relations more subtly through the production and distribution of a dominant culture that quietly conforms what it means to be education (pp. 10-11) Marquez Kiyama and Rios Aguilar are describing how the field of higher education, and colleges and universities that in part make up this field, are mostly beholden to the more subtle forms of social reproduction. I posit that because of these less overt forms of compliance and oppression, there may be room to interpret capital differently depending on who is operationalizing that capital in what field. Certainly, the subtle examples of the dominant culture were present in my 167 participants, as they described the ranking of their graduate institutions, their ability to relocate, their marriages to other academics, and their publication records. Even as I discussed these topics with Laborers, they were aware of their own position within this hierarchy, as when Nan indicated she had thought to enroll in a graduate program on the West coast that may have had a better reputation, but was unable to because of her limited mobility. Thus, even as capital may have different valuations in different arenas, individuals in precarious positions leveraging these valuations are still working under oppressive environments. My study complicates some of these subtle forms of power by including social spaces outside the academy, social spaces most embodied by the Laborers. Laborers were intimately knowledgeable about their students’ experiences, and about the community members in and around Lakeside, or the “town gossip” so to speak. They were insiders in this regard, and they brought some of this insider attitude into their classrooms. Liz was adamant about ensuring her students knew they could move beyond their first-generation and low socio-economic status. Nan had a keen understanding of how to negotiate difficult topics in the classroom, and also how to take those small steps to challenge her students without turning them off to important learning content. Nadean remained connected to her family and community, and developed assignments for her students that were a reflection of their home-bases near Lakeside, and their potential aspirations beyond Lakeside. Each of these teaching practices did not make Liz, Nan, or Nadean Planners, but it did give them a little more stability and sense of agency in their classrooms. Here, my interpretation of Bourdieu as what I refer to as a “somewhat-optimistic constructivist structuralist” comes to light. In my view, Bourdieu’s attempts to grapple with the sociological dialectic of agency and structure through the concept of habitus, does not necessarily mean that action is always 168 deterministic. Rather, as I have described through my pathways and archetypes, actions can also provide opportunities. And yet, drawing from Kiyama and Aguilar (2018), these opportunities remain limited. My process for identifying certain forms of capital held by Laborers was due to this view. For example, as I analyzed transcripts and documents and field notes from my participants, in addition to coding for obvious forms of capital recognizable to academia, I also highlighted forms of capital that were important to the place of Lakeside. As Nan described to me how she was able to leave her position at her community college and slip into her position at Lakeside, it became obvious that she had a form of capital (community ties) that other participants such as Dee and Joy, and even Magdeline did not. This put Nan into a unique position in my study, and I continued to code and highlight similar instances in other participants’ stories. Even so, Nan’s ability to have stability and agency was, and will continue to be, limited to Lakeside. Whereas, for someone like Janie or Elaine, their forms of capital that adhere to more traditional forms of capital may be, in a sense, transferable to other arenas. Finally, there is no clear pathway through graduate school leading to an academic career that provides a sense of stability and agency. This is evident by the trajectories of a few women from the traditional pathway who are categorized as Wanderers in their teaching practice. The placement of Joy, Patricia, and Dee from the traditional pathway into the Wanderers archetype illuminates the important context of a specific field in this study a comprehensive university. Their placement into the Wanderer archetype also emphasizes how academics understand social capital and how that understanding is promoted and complicated through my study. Below I describe how my study contributes to current related literature on non-tenure track faculty through the lens of social capital. 169 Contributions to Related Literature: Marriage in Academia I do pretty good as much as I can with this. But it’s not a sustainable thing for one person, let alone if I were to ever want to, you know, procreate and all that. If I was with a partner or married or whatever, and there was that second income, and the house, I’m sure I could. But I don’t know how. And women that are adjunct, that are single, that have children, I find few and far between. They’re usually, if they’re in that status, they have a spouse. – Anna Several studies have highlighted how marriage, and insomuch children and families, can hurt women’s careers (Kulis & Sicotte, 2002; Perna, 2001; Wolfinger, Mason, & Goulden, 2008), but these studies are primarily focused on women in or seeking tenure-track positions. My study adds depth to these findings by suggesting that a heterosexual marriage, particularly to another academic, can provide stability and high levels of agency for women working in academia. The words of Anna at the beginning of this section illuminate the challenge she faces in maintaining her position as a fixed-term faculty member without having a partner to help provide financially, emotionally, and socially. These are forms of capital found in a partner that Anna admitted she lacked. In this section I provide a deeper discussion on how marriage adds stability to women in fixed-term faculty positions, and promotes current literature about ideal worker norms and the importance of a romantic partner to workplace performance. As Anna described, being in “that status” as a fixed-term faculty member and having a family, a house, and stability means having a spouse. Magdeline, Janie, Jill, and Adrianne were all married to other academics. Additionally, they are all considered Planners, or faculty with high teaching strategy. Scholarship abounds on the role family and children have on the lives of working women. Yet a less discussed topic in literature on the academic profession concerns the roles marriage or romantic partnerships play 170 in career trajectory and workplace performance for women in academia in fixed-term positions. Although literature on women in academia pertaining to family and relationship presents significant findings for women’s careers, many of these studies focus solely on tenure-track faculty positions. Those that do focus on women in non-tenure track faculty roles posit that women are choosing these positions in order to care for family or potentially form a family. Certainly many women choose a non-tenure track career in order to devote more time to household and children. While my study is not conceived to contribute to the conversation about choice and women’s domesticity or their work, I intend to provide insight into how marriage as an institution can provide levels of stability. Furthermore, I posit that marriage as an institution is recognized by the field of academia, and can thus provide certain forms of capital for women off the tenure track. My study is focused then on the specificities of how the non-tenure track workforce is not merely stratified from tenure-track, but stratified within itself, and on examining how gendering and relationship status plays an important role in this stratification. The absence of how relationship status on women in fixed-term faculty roles, and more importantly how these relationships shape workplace performance is where my study makes significant contributions to the literature on women, marriage, and academia. Complicating Related Literature: Community Ties in Academia Yep, our family is around here so, geographically, everyone lives near us, so all the family dinners, I don't really want to leave. – Liz I was freaking out. And not only that, but going from a liberal place, like the West Coast to here, it was like a culture shock. Totally. And people don’t quite get that because, it’s a big deal to move across the country. As you know. Um, so, anyways, that was a lot. – Patricia 171 The above words from Liz and Patricia reveal the differences in their communities at Lakeside. Liz, who grew up in the same region and has family nearby, shared that her large family regularly gets together, providing a source of community. Patricia moved to Lakeside from the West Coast, and as she and I discussed her time at Lakeside she shared she often felt alone. Her cross-country move still weighed on her three years after she began at Lakeside. Their words are a reflection of their sense of community outside their work at Lakeside. This sense of community and other social ties beyond the academy is often missing form literature on faculty and particularly research on fixed-term faculty. The majority of literature on non-tenure track faculty often fails to recognize other aspects of life outside academia that contributes to how these faculty go about their work, such as those highlighted by Liz and Patricia highlight. Kezar and colleagues (2012, 2013; Kezar & Sam, 2010; Gehrke & Kezar, 2014) have fervently argued for improved working conditions, more collegial atmospheres, and an increased recognition of the labor of non-tenure track faculty who contribute to the learning of students. However, Kezar and colleagues rarely leave the institution when making recommendations about non-tenure track faculty, or in understanding their lives and work. Additionally, an abundance of literature scrutinizes productivity and satisfaction among non-tenure track faculty work, and these studies also rarely consider the environment beyond the academy (Alleman & Haviland, 2017; Cross & Goldenberg, 2009; Levin & Shaker, 2011; Ott & Cisneros, 2015). My study reaches beyond this literature and argues that lives lived outside the institution should and must be considered when understanding the work of fixed-term faculty. Moreover, I seek to elevate how community ties plays an important role in workplace performance for non-tenure track faculty. 172 Kiki, for example, often employed the small-steps strategies in the classroom, and knew how to navigate potentially divisive topics in the classroom because of her familiarity with the region. Likewise, Nan and Janet also expressed the ways they introduced topics and pointed directly at their relationships with students that aided their teaching. Kiki, Nan, and Janet were all from the local pathway, yet their social capital as evidenced by their comfort with the local population is a topic rarely considered in literature on workplace performance. Additionally, Nadean’s immediate and extended family was in the region. And although Nadean expressed that her experiences in graduate school did not always provide the kinds of connections she desired, she also commented on the support of her family in her academic pursuits. Nadean often tweaked assignments, and did such tweaking with confidence. When scholarship about the field of academia and the academic profession examines the concept of social capital, it most recognizes prestigious relationships or valuable and reputable connections to powerful others. Women in my study possessed an important community tie that gave them interests and projects outside of academia. My study complicates how academia places value on specific types of social capital because many of the women pointed to their local communities as a source of stability. These communities and the local region around them provided security to experiment with teaching practices, as is the case with Nan and Dorothy. These more localized forms of community and social capital are the kinds of social capital that are not often recognized in academia, yet provide powerful sources of stability in the lives and workplace performance of women in fixed-term faculty positions. Implications The attention of field is particularly important to my study, and provides both specific discussions points and more general discussion points. Swartz (1997) indicated that action is 173 “generated not as a direct expression of prior class socialization and the accumulation of specific forms of capital it provides. Rather, action is the product of class dispositions intersecting with the dynamics and structures of particular fields” (p. 141). The particular field in my study and where class dispositions are intersecting is a comprehensive university. The specific site and institution type may have given women on the local pathway a greater sense of agency, while ties to the community imbue women with a greater sense of stability. For all the women in my study, having a connection and a social relationship seemed to add value or capital to their teaching. This was indicated explicitly by some of the women who were married to academics (Planners), and also explicitly by the women who did not talk about relationships (Wanderers). For the Laborers, it was less explicit, and their discussions about community and family and region were an undercurrent in our conversations; perhaps even how they talked about their sense of place is itself a finding – it need not be so obvious because that they are from the region is just a fact, not a form of capital. From this study, I provide two implications for the field of higher education. The first regards increasing understanding of graduate school pathways, and moreover, increasing our respect and attention to experiences in graduate school occurring at institutions other than top tier or research intense universities. The second implication is directed at faculty employment, and at recognizing that lives lived outside the academy shape and inform how faculty do their work. Understanding graduate school pathways. As Bourdieu (2016) indicated, an individual’s propensity for action is a culmination of her capital and how that capital interfaces with the field in which she is situated. Thus, the pathways from undergraduate to graduate education and how the women in my study arrived at their current institution are deeply important to understanding their sense of agency. These pathways reveal how expectations 174 about, and preparation for graduate school begin during undergraduate education. These pathways also show how community and family can shape where individuals land. Finally, these pathways highlight how expectations about and preparation for graduate education reflect the economic, social, and cultural capital of individuals pursuing a doctoral degree. I developed two pathways into and through graduate school to address the little understood experience of graduate school socialization and learning for students who are considered “locals.” While literature on graduate school socialization abounds (Austin, 2002; Clark & Corcoran, 1986; Gardner, 2008, Sallee, 2011b; Turner & Thompson, 1993), much of this literature is focused on larger research intense public universities, and thus may only address a particular kind of socialization, one preparing students for the professoriate. Posselt (2016) noted the rise of graduate school education for professionalization, and her study on graduate school admissions highlights how faculty act as gatekeepers. It is necessary to complement this growing body of literature by focusing on less-elite institutions, ones where graduate education provides broader access to students seeking a graduate degree for career advancement. By theoretically, leveraging Bourdieu’s (2016) theory of practice and emphasizing the relationship between field and capital, I have added to understandings in how pathways provide different forms of capital, and even eventually how these pathways may inform different career outcomes. I argue that a more explicit link between field and capital as Gopaul (2011, 2016) has suggested could provide insights into how unseemly or unrecognized forms of capital in a more local or regional setting, i.e., comprehensive universities, can be quite valuable. The field of higher education would benefit from redirecting its focus to broad-access institutions, those institutions where graduate school is expanding and professionalizing. 175 Many students attending comprehensive universities for their terminal degrees may or may not be seeking the professoriate. Kiki and Nan, for example, both intended to use their doctoral degrees for administration. The need to provide graduate students with other employment avenues is even more pressing for students in traditional disciplines such as philosophy and English literature. Adrianne mentioned that she was not aware that when you entered a PhD program in English, the goal was to be a professor. This goal may still be true, but the realities of achieving that goal are dim. My study highlights the difficulty in finding a tenure- track faculty position through the stories of some of my participants. Had they been mentored to strengthen skills that apply beyond academia, or been encouraged to see themselves outside academia, they may have found a more satisfying role for themselves. Faculty employment. A groundswell of research on the academic profession focuses on work productivity, satisfaction, and collegiality. Yet few of these studies account for factors outside the institution that shape workplace performance. My study provides insights into how marriage and community ties can also be a factor in workplace performance, a factor that is often outside the institution. Ludlow and Alvarez-Salvat (2001) reported that marriage (in)stability greatly impacts teaching, indicating “it is possible to study and interpret teaching evaluation ratings not only as a function of the specifics of the classroom environment but also as a longitudinal function of the personal situation of the instructor” (p. 118). Thus, personal lives and situations shape how faculty perform in the classroom. Gonzales (2018), attending to the historical experiences of women faculty, likewise noted that these experiences shape knowledge production and how women faculty take actions to produce such knowledge. In essence, it is impossible to untangle where we have learned and what we have learned from how we currently learn and teach. The women in my study also provided insights into how lives lived outside the 176 academy shape work, and in doing so implore institutions of higher education to reconsider how work, productivity, satisfaction, and collegiality is understood. Recognizing that relationships, communities, and social ties shape workspaces must be elevated in research on the professorate. What might a deeper understanding or acknowledgement about community ties and relationships suggest for institutions of higher education? First, the field of higher education must consider the community aspect of college campuses. Instead of putting policies that in effect are there for rewards and greater productivity, or trying to create collegial or supportive departments, institutions must themselves transform into spaces that are committed to the idea of community and working towards reframing and reinterpreting what community means. This transformation is somewhat antithetical to what the professoriate is; yet just as the face of the faculty body has changed so too should the nature and culture and environment of college campuses change for the individuals who live and work there. Second, these considerations must take the form of action. These actions could be through fostering a greater culture of care for fixed-term faculty, and recognizing or even rewarding some who are interested in research. For many women in my study, they strongly indicated that maintaining their research was important for improving their teaching practice. Other actions might also include intentional mentors for fixed-term faculty, ones who recognize social and intellectual spaces. Although not all intentional “buddy” systems work, knowing there is a larger supportive community for women in fixed-term faculty positions might be helpful. These support networks might be especially beneficial for women such as Patricia, Dee, and Joy. Intentional communities and social check-ins could be offered online, through social media, or through face-to-face meetings. I recognize in offering this suggestion that many of the women in my study described themselves as introverted, yet I also heard them express a sense of isolation. 177 Providing more social supports for faculty might help address these feelings of isolation and encourage a culture of care. Regarding use of theory, scholarship in higher education could benefit from approaching faculty research from frameworks that consider their whole person. This approach may resemble research done on students and student affairs, and the myriad factors and aspects that shape how individuals move through academic spaces. Bourdieu (2016) provides ample theoretical tools to help understand how connections, histories, and experiences, culminate in dispositions. While my study leverages Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, it does not simply constitute advocating increased scholarship from Bourdieu. Instead, I recommend that scholarship seeking to understand the work of faculty attend to the whole lives of these individuals, rather than correlating their performance to institutional policies and departmental collegiality. Conclusion I just think it’s very isolating and part of having a job at my age, you know, is like that’s your social outlet and there isn’t a lot of that, so all the more reason why when I teach the classes that I like which are also by definition smaller, they’re always capped at 30, you kinda get to know the students a little more so you have some like sense of knowing who people are and a little bit of relationships that you feel like are constructive and worthwhile. – Janet The words above from Janet embody parts of my study: that feelings of isolation may be due to a lack of social capital in the form of relationships and community ties. My study took up the subject of non-tenure track faculty; a subject that has grown in the field of higher education scholarship over the last 20 years. Rather than follow existing trajectories in this trend, I intended to challenge the current literature about these faculty, and also elevate the individuals who do 178 faculty work off the tenure-track. Drawing from the work of Bourdieu, I framed my study using the theoretical devices of field, habitus, and practice. Tantamount to my study was understanding how the academic trajectories informed how the women took agency in their teaching. By focusing on the narratives and stories of their social origins, their time in graduate school, and how they moved to Lakeside University, I could then better understand how these experiences informed their work. Bourdieu’s (2016) theory or practice guided my research design and analysis, and allowed me to include multiple aspects of the women’s lives and include them in their teaching practices. This kind of inclusion was important for this study, as it was necessary for me to display how the lives individuals live outside of the academy, or outside of work broadly, can deeply shape and influence how work is performed. This connection is obvious in research on workplace performance, family studies, and in the discipline of sociology, but rarely is it considered when higher education scholars seek to understand faculty work. Drawing again from the words of Janet, faculty need work to feel constructive and worthwhile, and often these feelings can arrive through relationships, spouses, friendship, and community inside and outside the academy. 179 CHAPTER 7: EPILOGUE Figure 5. Epilogue It was snowing on my last day at Lakeside, April 17, 2018. I hurriedly walked to my car to begin the drive home, after spending the day with Nan. It was cold, and her last words lingered, “I’m going to miss having you around.” I started the car engine and turned on the heater, warming my hands and seeing my breath. I pulled out of the parking lot at Lakeside and entered the highway. I had driven this highway so many times, and this would be my last. I thought back to the conversations I’d had, the long-days I spent at Lakeside and with the women in my study. I looked out over the landscape as I pressed the gas to speed up to 70mph, and reflected on the landscape. It seemed cruel that my last day at Lakeside in April would look much like my first day in late January; cold and snowy, as if nothing had changed. What had changed? What would change? I thought about my own future, feeling emotional as I wondered if my first year on the faculty job market would look like Patricia’s or Dee’s. Where would I end up? And could I have done more to better position myself for “that tenure-track job?” Would there be struggles? Did I have enough of the “right” kind of capital? I just wanted to be home. Home. 180 I put the car on cruise control. Why couldn’t I have the confidence of Elaine? Elaine seemed so certain, so sure. I recalled her stating bluntly that she wasn’t “planning on being one of those people.” One of those people who had been in a fixed-term position for years, forever. I thought of Magdeline, and how strategic she was, like Elaine. “Strategy, yes,” Magdeline said, “very strategic in moving to Lakeside.” Her future was secure, stable. Magdeline had no plans to leave, and would continue to carve out a niche for herself. Likewise Jill had recently been promoted, a promotion through the fixed-term ranks that gave her the highest level of stability as a fixed-term faculty member. “But they’re married. To academics” I couldn’t help but think. These were the Planners; their next phase was a reflection of their current stability or strategic actions. As Adrianne shared, “I’ve made lemonade, I like it here.” The car was warm now, and I turned the heat down. I rounded the bend that passes over the wetlands halfway between my house and Lakeside. This section of the drive is the long low stretch, where I would often let my mind wander and rely on my routine of driving, my instinct to take me home, and my daily action. I reflected on what Liz said, “I’m totally embracing the process.” Nan’s words came, “I’m really not that concerned about the future. I feel like I have a lot of faith. I feel like things will work out. And if I’m not supposed to be here, there’ll be something else.” These were the Laborers, the locals who knew the region and could be open to the process. Nan continued to describe her community, her cohort from her doctoral program, and shared she “had people around who are so supportive of me and people I consider mentors.” Nan had her “people.” She was able to be open to the process like Liz. The open landscape and countryside was fading away as I drew nearer to home. More cars were on the road, and other highways began to merge into the two-lanes that I had to myself for so many miles. As I gripped my steering wheel tighter, preparing for a bit more traffic, I 181 thought of Joy and her fears of the unknown. She confided, “what’s going to happen is very scary. I just don’t know. I don’t know.” I felt her exhaustion as I recalled all the drives I’d done to Lakeside. All the cold days, early mornings, late nights going there and back. Alone. I remembered Dee, who said with conviction, “I’m not one of those people who are willing to basically continue on in a permanent state of existence as a fixed-term faculty. Fuck you. No.” Dee was envisioning her future for herself, and remained connected to her identity as a philosopher, not as a faculty member. These were the Wanderers, uncertain and also trying to create a future for themselves. I exited the highway and turned into my neighborhood. The snow had stopped falling, and the evening was approaching, the sun was going down. Winding my way through my neighborhood, rolling slowly past the other houses I felt myself pulling away, leaving the women who had so candidly opened themselves up to me. I felt myself looking into an unknown landscape, my back to the stories and experiences I had just heard and my eyes scanning a horizon in a place I could not locate. I thought about community, about my own social ties. I thought about home. Liz’s words came, and I hoped the same for myself. “I don’t really know, but I hope I would find some little corner that needs me and I would wiggle into that role and create it, but I’m not sure what that looks like yet.” 182 APPENDICES 183 APPENDIX A: Paintings 184 185 186 187 188 APPENDIX B: Research participation consent form 1. EXPLANATION OF THE RESEARCH and WHAT YOU WILL DO: • You are being asked to participate in a qualitative research study intended to help me better understand how the work of women non-tenure track faculty is influenced by their university. • Your participation includes one primary interview that will last between 60-90 minutes. In the event that I need to clarify points of our initial interview or ask follow up question, I may reach out for a brief second interview lasting approximately 30 minutes. You will be assigned a pseudonym to protect your anonymity. 2. YOUR RIGHTS TO PARTICIPATE, SAY NO, OR WITHDRAW: • Participation in this research project is completely voluntary. You have the right to say no. You may change your mind at any time and withdraw. You may choose not to answer specific questions or to stop participating at any time. At any time of the interview or during observations, you may ask the interviewer to stop the recording or leave the room, in order to keep particular details off the record. 3. COSTS AND COMPENSATION FOR BEING IN THE STUDY: • Beyond your time and energy, there are no costs involved in participating in this study. • Participants will receive a $15 gift card for participating in this study. 4. CONTACT INFORMATION FOR QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS: • • If you have concerns or questions about this study, such as scientific issues, how to do any part of it, or to report an injury, please contact the researcher: Emiko Blalock (blalocka@msu.edu) If you have questions or concerns about your role and rights as a research participant, would like to obtain information or offer input, or would like to register a complaint about this study, you may contact, anonymously if you wish, the Michigan State University’s Human Research Protection Program at 517-355-2180, Fax 517-432-4503, or e-mail irb@msu.edu or regular mail at 4000 Collins Road, Ste. 136, Lansing, MI 48910. 5. DOCUMENTATION OF INFORMED CONSENT: • Through Qualtrics 189 APPENDIX C: Interview protocol Interview Participant:- _____________________________________________________________________________________ Location of Interivew:____________________________________________________________________________ Date:______________________________Time Start:_____________ Time Stop:__________________ Participant Discipline/Field________________________________________________________________________ (If applicable) You indicated you hold a position outside of your non-tenure track faculty position, is this position in academia? I want to thank you for taking time to meet with me. As I shared with you over email/phone, I am a PhD candidate collecting data for my dissertation. My dissertation is focused on investigating how women non-tenure track faculty encounter the rules and procedures, and norms and cultures of their institutions. I am particularly interested in examining these encounters through the work of women non-tenure track faculty and their teaching practices. Because I assume that our personal, professional, and academic backgrounds can shape our interests in our discipline or what we understand as our roles as teachers, the first part of the interview will be focused on “background questions.” Then, in the second section, I will ask you more specific questions about your teaching prep, the classroom, and teaching experiences. This section will also include questions about the culture of your department and institution. Finally, I will ask you questions about who you are, and how aspects of who you are influence your teaching, departmental interactions, and work generally. For instance, I had a professor who used a lot of embodied teaching methods, so we would come in to class with music playing, and would do different types of learning like taking off our coats and putting them back on. A few reminders before we get started: • I will be using a pseudonym for you, your department, and your institution to protect your identity, nor will I use any other identifying information in my study. • With your permission, I will be recording this interview and it will then be uploaded to my • computer for transcription. If you have concerns about certain parts of our interview being recorded, please let me know and I can turn off the recorder and make notes by hand. I will transcribe this interview. If you would like a copy of the interview I can provide one for you. • • • As I move to the analysis phase in my dissertation, I will contact you if I use parts of our interview. REVISED RQ: How do forms of capital shape the teaching practices of women in fixed-term faculty positions? 190 Theme/Reasons Warm-Up Field Practice Interview Protocol 1. Let’s start with a few big questions about your academic trajectory. Tell me a little about how and why you decided to attend graduate school. • Where did you go to school? Why did you select the institution you • What were your professional aspirations upon entering graduate did? school • What motivated these aspirations? In your view, what do you think you were preparing for? 2. I’d like to learn about your current teaching appointment and your department. Can you tell me how you came to this job? • What was the hiring process like? 3. Can you tell me about your current department? For example, do you work in a department with a large faculty? What is the culture like in your department? Do you feel like you know your colleagues? 4. Overall, do you feel supported by your department in your teaching role? • What does this support look like? In what form does this support take? Resources? If not, what would support you in your teaching role? (access to prof development?) • 5. In relation to the kinds of supports you have or perhaps do not have, I have a question that will take us into a conversation about teaching. • Again, thinking about the supports you may or may not have, and your department, what do you think students are able to gain in your classroom? What might they be missing? • For example, have you ever thought, “If I only had…or if only I could” or, “I’m so thankful I have…” 6. Okay, so let’s focus on teaching specifically. Can you tell me about your teaching? Like course load, course design. I’d like to get a landscape for your teaching load, the classroom, things like that. First, What is your course load? • How many students, on average, are in your classes? • Do you have a say in your course assignments? Or how does that • How do your courses get assigned to you? How much time do you happen? have to prep? 191 7. Can you tell me about getting a teaching course assignment? Do you get a syllabus? Can you change that syllabus? How much freedom do you have in designing a course? 8. What compels you to design a course in a specific way? For example, do you have a teaching philosophy you can share with me? • How did you develop this philosophy? 9. How are you evaluated on your teaching Now that we have talked a lot about your work contexts and teaching, I’d like to circle back to how your background might shape your teaching practices and experiences at your institution. For example, I look rather young, and I’m racially ambiguous. Because of this I tend to be a little more critical when I provide feedback on papers. I think I do this because, even though I may be friendly and casual in the classroom, I also feel like I need to maintain a level of respect, maybe intellectually. Relatedly, my teaching experience is mostly at a Jesuit institution, so I knew I could be fairly liberal when focusing on issues of social justice because of the mission of the institution. There is a lot of research that suggests that teaching is shaped by previous experiences -- academic, personal, professional and otherwise. Likewise, there is research about how context and organizations may influence teaching. So, in this last section, I am going to ask you to talk about how these background factors may shape your teaching. I’d like to know more about how who you are informs how you teach. Can you talk about that? 12. How about other aspects of who you are, like race, age, political leanings, even where you grew up, do you think these influence how you present material in the classroom or your teaching? 13. Do these aspects inform how you interact with students, or how students might interact with you? 14. How about in your departmental interactions? Like with other colleagues? • Do you find your gender or race shape your experiences in these Habitus Habitus settings? 192 I’ve been doing a lot of reading and writing for my study, and I remember reading about how women are often expected to do more, like in the way of teaching, or mentoring. 15. Do you think there are certain expectations placed upon you as a teacher? Are these expectations from students? From the department? 16. How do you respond to these expectations? 17. Are there responsibilities you have that are not clearly defined for you from your department? What are those responsibilities? 18. So what comes next for you? 193 Research Participant Information and Consent Form 1. EXPLANATION OF THE RESEARCH and WHAT YOU WILL DO: • You are being asked to be shadowed / observed for a day as you do your work. I will be present during the day, and be with you as you go to class, do work in your office, and potentially have discussions with students. All of my observations will be recorded using hand-written notes. During class time, I will use an informal protocol to make observations, as well as use our previous interview to focus my observations. • All individuals during these observations will be given pseudonyms. Any other identifiers, such as building name, course title, or office space will also be given a pseudonym. 2. YOUR RIGHTS TO PARTICIPATE, SAY NO, OR WITHDRAW: • Participation in this research project is completely voluntary. You have the right to say no. You may change your mind at any time and withdraw. At any time during observations, you may ask the interviewer to stop the recording or leave the room, in order to keep particular details off the record. 3. COSTS AND COMPENSATION FOR BEING IN THE STUDY: • Beyond your time and energy, there are no costs involved in participating in this study. • Participants will receive a $50 gift card for participating in the observation portion of this study. 4. CONTACT INFORMATION FOR QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS: • • If you have concerns or questions about this study, such as scientific issues, how to do any part of it, or to report an injury, please contact the researcher: Emiko Blalock (blalocka@msu.edu) If you have questions or concerns about your role and rights as a research participant, would like to obtain information or offer input, or would like to register a complaint about this study, you may contact, anonymously if you wish, the Michigan State University’s Human Research Protection Program at 517-355-2180, Fax 517-432-4503, or e-mail irb@msu.edu or regular mail at 4000 Collins Road, Ste. 136, Lansing, MI 48910. 5. DOCUMENTATION OF INFORMED CONSENT: • If you are willing to participate in this study, please indicate your consent by signing below: I agree to participate in the research study to understand the teaching practices of women non-tenure track faculty. Participant’s Signature Participant’s Name Date 194 APPENDIX D: Recruitment email Dear XX, My name is Emiko Blalock and I am currently a PhD candidate in the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education department at Michigan State University. I am writing to invite you to participate in an interview to understand how the teaching practices of women non-tenure track faculty are influenced by the culture of their university. Your participation is important to elevate the teaching work of women non-tenure track faculty, and recognize the contributions women faculty make to student learning. Participation will include one interview lasting approximately 60-90 minutes at a time and location of your choice. Any information you provide during the interview will be anonymous. For participating in this study, you will receive a $15 Amazon Giftcard. Study design: My study is a qualitative study, and one element of my data collection includes personal interviews from participants who meet the following criteria: 1) Identify as a woman, and 2) Has a PhD or other terminal degree in her field, or is ABD (EdD, MD, JD, MFA) 3) Is in a non-tenure track faculty position If you meet these criteria and are interested in participating in this study, please click here to complete a very short questionnaire and provide preferences about how to contact you. This questionnaire also includes a consent form for the interview. Please feel free forward this email to others you think might also be interested in participating in this study. I am happy to talk further about this project over the phone or via email if you have questions about the study or your participation. Thank you so much for considering participation in my study, and helping me gather data for my dissertation. https://msu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bmFP8GDiP8Z3YWN Best, Emiko 195 Follow Up Email: Dear XX, I am following up on a previous email inviting you to participate in my dissertation study. My name is Emiko Blalock and I am currently a PhD candidate in the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education department at Michigan State University. My dissertation is focused on understanding how women non-tenure track faculty encounter the cultures of their departments and institutions. I am primarily interested in understanding these encounters through the work of women non- tenure track faculty. Your participation is important to elevate the work of women non-tenure track faculty, and recognize the contributions of women faculty. Participation will include one interview lasting approximately 60-90 minutes at a time and location of your choice. Any information you provide during the interview will be anonymous. For participating in this study, you will receive a $15 Amazon Giftcard. Study design: My study is a qualitative study, and one element of my data collection includes personal interviews from participants who meet the following criteria: 1) Identify as a woman, 2) Has a PhD or other terminal degree in her field or is ABD (EdD, MD, JD, MFA), and 3) Is considered fixed-term or non-tenure track faculty If you meet these criteria and are interested in participating in this study, please click here to complete a very short questionnaire and provide preferences about how to contact you. This questionnaire also includes a consent form for the interview. Please feel free forward this email to others you think might also be interested in participating in this study. I am happy to talk further about this project over the phone or via email if you have questions about the study or your participation. Thank you so much for considering participation in my study, and helping me gather data for my dissertation. 196 APPENDIX E: Resources/forms of capital Traditional Mentors because they opened up a social network or because they were examples of what to do and what not to do. They modeled what an academic life would look like Were able to focus on school, had resources from university (something important for CV), very little debt Financial support through partner Local Hiring through social networks, knowing people at the institution. This works also in traditional, but can favor more academic inbreeding at comprehensives Some had funding; zero debt Financial support through partner Shifts in jobs was also happening during graduate school since many Undergraduate research available at certain institution types, publications This was apparent in some of the teaching examples (Jill, and Dorothy) “College knowledge” selecting institution types “College knowledge” selecting institution types Type/Source Social: Faculty Mentors Social: Families nearby, being graduates from where they work (academic inbreeding) Economic: Assistantships, partners (romantic or otherwise), family resources, locale (Gopaul, 2015/2016) Economic: Marriage/partnership Economic: Marriage/partnership; worked full time while a doc student, only applied to one institution (focus/driven) Cultural: Knowing what higher education values, research over teaching / also ties in to institution type Cultural: understanding student viewpoints, understanding the region Cultural: Generation College (Gardner & Holley, 2011; Mullen, 2010) 197 Agency and Autonomy Advocate Aspirations Autonomy Ambition Crossroads Agency Demoralizing Flexibility Negotiations Power Spinning Tenure track APPENDIX F: Coding bundles for practice Work load Boundaries Extra Naïve Negotiations Recognition Coming to terms Research Spinning Reward Service Students Stress Mentoring Staying on Teaching Being needed Discipline Expertise Demoralizing Emotions Confidence Interest Naïve Prestige Regret Nudge Justify Hiring Perception Spinning Reward Students Stress Unique Vocation Value 198 APPENDIX G: Individual categories and characteristics 1. Married to an academic 2. Married 3. Not married or single 4. Local (from the region around Lakeside 5. Not local 6. Lakeside graduate (any level) 7. Lakeside graduate (doctoral) 8. R1 doctoral graduate 9. Has family/kids 10. “Forced” to return to region around Lakeside 11. First gen student 12. Working class 13. Looking for tenure 14. Went back to graduate school because no job 15. Went back to graduate school for profession or career advancement 16. Not sure why went back to graduate school 17. Stayed in the area 18. Year to year appointment 19. Only ever academic 20. Has had another career 21. Went straight through to graduate school from undergrad 22. High research activity 23. Geographic mobility 24. Had a GA in grad school 25. Significant mentors 199 REFERENCES 200 REFERENCES Acker, J. (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender and Society, 4(2), 139–158. Acker, S. (1995). Chapter 3: Gender and Teachers’ Work. 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