Can we get a little help here? Few newly minted Ph.D. faculty are prepared for the community college culture; here's a way to prepare them well, and get them into the system - Controversy

TALK TO ANY CHIEF INSTRUCTIONAL OFFICER IN A COMMUNITY college in any part of the country and he or she will tell you that the number of qualified applicants for full-time, tenure-track jobs feels like it's at an all-time low. Most current adjuncts either don't have an appropriate doctorate (increasingly seen as a minimal qualification for arts and sciences positions), or aren't really pre pared for or satisfied with the notion of a career as a community college instructor. Graduate schools--with a few rare exceptions such as Arizona State and the University of Washington--have demonstrated a remarkable Lack of interest in preparing students to teach in community colleges.

Even though the economy has taken a dip, the number of new and replacement faculty openings in community colleges around the country is increasing rapidly. In fact, all of us are caught in the double bind of a wave of retirements (an estimated 30,000 over the next three years) and booming enrollments (an estimated increase of about a million students by 2010). There's a huge job market out here, one that has been all but ignored (Through inattention? Lack of knowledge? Prejudice? A long-outmoded academic caste system?) by graduate programs and the Jeremiahs of the professional associations Like AHA and MLA, who have been wringing their hands in public for years I about the wretched job prospects for new Ph.D.s. But the quarter of a million tenured and tenure-track faculty members currently teaching in community colleges all went to graduate school somewhere, Wouldn't it be nice if someone at a university that has turned out large numbers of community college faculty recognized that phenomenon, valorized it (as we say in lit crit), and decided to concentrate consciously on doing it well rather than doing it as a byproduct of some other activity?

A WORKABLE PROGRAM

Teaching Intro to Chemistry or Composition or Social Deviance at a community college isn't a whole lot different from teaching these courses at a university--lower-division classes are lower-division classes. What is different is the context: the community college culture. Few newly minted Ph.D. faculty are prepared for the community college culture, and no wonder--their role models throughout graduate school have been the graduate faculty whose primary mission has been to do research, and to prepare their students to do the same. But the community cortege culture is all about teaching and student outcomes and mission and collaboration. Relationships with faculty colleagues, staff, administrators, and students are not the same as in graduate schools. A program to prepare community college faculty must focus on readying students to thrive in this environment. The program I propose can do so simply, inexpensively, and effectively.

First, to create an economy of scale, the program should be located in the graduate school or a similar unit that can draw students from a variety of disciplines. The individual in charge of the program should identify students early in their graduate program whose goal might be to teach in a community college; he or she might even do some career advising, letting students know (among other things) about those thousands of jobs opening up in community colleges. Then, some time after prelims, the program head can invite students to participate in a community college seminar that includes some teaching strategies and a bunch of practical discussions with local community college faculty and administrators about students, toads, nonteaching responsibilities, unions, jargon, faculty support, and so on.

The program might include a formal on-campus observation arranged through a local community college's instruction office. It should be topped off with a paid internship at a cooperating community college.

MARKET THAT PROGRAM

Some years back, the Council of Graduate Schools (www.cosnet.orq) initiated a Preparing Future Faculty program among several of its member institutions, but the program isn't widely known among the chief instructional officers at community colleges. In fact, I took an informal poll of my chief instructional officer colleagues in the Northwest, and found only one other instructional vice president who'd heard of it. Conclusion? The graduate schools that develop a variation on this proposed program absolutely, positively must regularly let the community colleges know what they're doing; otherwise, what we have is a variation of the old "tree falling in the forest" proposition. The truth is that if a critical mass of such programs were developed around the country, community college deans would quickly start adding "experience in a community college graduate teaching program" as a desired qualification for new faculty, and recruit those universities like crazy. And all of us--universities, grad students, and community colleges--would come up aces as a result.

Richard Fulton is a former graduate school administrator and dean in residence at the Council of Graduate Schools.

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