What I wish I’d known when I started at Grinnell (#1296)

Topics/tags: Grinnell

A few years ago, someone told me that they had begun work on a document that they called What I wish I’d known when I started at Grinnell. Such a document seems useful. If I recall correctly—and I rarely do—they had a very different idea about what one might wish to know: Their document discussed places to shop and such. That’s not what I was expecting.

Rather, I would have hoped to have something that explained how the College works (or fails to work). As a friend has noted, This place is bananas [1]. That is, Grinnell does not necessarily behave like other institutions of higher education. Explaining the unexpected parts of Grinnell seemed best.

I’ve been at Grinnell too long [2] to recall everything that surprised me about the institution. Grinnell has also changed a lot since then. Nonetheless, it may be useful to reflect on some things that newcomers (mostly new faculty but also some new staff) would benefit from hearing.

Some newcomers have also told me that my musings serve as to introduce some aspects of the institution. Isn’t that terrifying?

In any case, the following represents my attempt to cover some things I would have liked to know were I just starting at Grinnell. Feel free to suggest others [3], and I’ll either add them to this document or put together a sequel. They appear in no particular order. They may present a somewhat negative outlook on the College, but that’s because you need to be warned about the problematic things rather than the great things.

Grinnell is not like other institutions. Every institution is different. But people who’ve been at many institutions say that Grinnell seems even more different. I don’t know everything that’s at play, but unclear paths of communication, duplication of work, undocumented procedures and more are likely some of them.

Our insanely large endowment does not give us as much freedom as you’d expect. We have an endowment of over two billion dollars [4] and about 1700 students. That might make you think that we can easily do new creative and innovative things with our money. You’d be wrong. Most of our income from the endowment is promised somewhere, whether to supporting students who could not otherwise afford a top-quality small-college liberal-arts education, to interest on building projects, or to salaries [5].

If you compare Grinnell to other institutions with need-blind admissions that also meet full demonstrated need of admitted students, you’ll discover that we have many fewer students able to pay full tuition. We are clear outliers. The next closest is the University of Chicago. If I recall correctly, we have something like half as many students able to pay as these kinds of peers. Some of us (particularly faculty) are proud of that; as I just noted, we support students who could not otherwise afford a top-quality small-college liberal-arts education. Others (particularly some administrators and trustees) want to see us bring in more full-pay students.

Grinnell has almost no general education requirements. Perhaps you knew this already. Not everyone seems to. In any case, Grinnell does not require that students take, say, mathematics or a foreign language. Students must take 124 credits. Students must complete a major (traditionally 32 credits). Students cannot count more than 48 credits from one discipline to the 124 credits [6] nor more than 96 credits in one division. This policy makes it nicer to teach introductory classes: People are generally in the class because they’ve decided they should take it or someone has convinced them it would be useful for their growth, so you don’t get the resentful Why do I have to be here? students. Of course, we still have some courses that seem like GenEd requirements: Calculus is required for many majors; Statistics, for others.

Grinnell is small enough that you can easily reach out to other people to get answers and help. Not sure about a requirement? Call the Registrar’s office. Want to know more about a course or a major? Call a faculty member in the department? And when I say call, I mean call, send email, or send a Teams message.

Grinnell has excellent resources to support students. We have a Writing Lab (well, a Writing, Reading, and Speaking Center), a Math Lab, and a Science Learning Center. We have a Data Analysis and Statistical Inquiry Lab (DASIL) that can support students (and faculty!). We have a department of Student Success and Academic Advising. The folks in Academic Advising are great at helping students develop study skills. We have an active Office of Careers, Life, and Service. Most of these areas will also send folks to your class if it’s appropriate and you ask nicely [7].

You are expected to know way too many Grinnell-specific terms. You’ve probably already seen that we have a bunch of acronyms [8,9]. CTLA is the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment. ISC is the Instructional Support Committee. CSFS is the Committee for Support of Faculty Scholarship. In contrast, SFS is Senior Faculty Status. ILL is inter-library loan. SHAW is Student Health And Wellness (at least I think it is). SEPC is Student Educational Policy Committee, the group of students charged with running the department’s social life and providing a student voice in department activities. If someone uses a TLA that you don’t know, ask them. In addition, we tend to refer to courses by number (at least in many of the science departments). For example, 115 is introductory statistics. And then there are terms like Tutorial (required seminar-style class for incoming students), Convocation (a weekly all-campus lecture series), Self Governance (an amorphous concept that suggests that students should govern themselves), PioneerWeb (our installation of the Blackboard Learning Management System), GrinnellShare (our SharePoint installation, available at https://grinco.sharepoint.com, leading some of us to refer to it as GrinCo), Academic Alert (a note to Academic Advising that a student is struggline in class), and more [10].

Many things are poorly or inconsistently documented. Policies regarding faculty are spread out between The Faculty Handbook, handouts on the Dean’s SharePoint site, unpublished policies in the Dean’s office, and the results of faculty votes, which appear only in the minutes of faculty meetings. We can’t even agree what status some things have. For example, since the one contract I signed with Grinnell says, The Faculty Handbook is included in this contract by reference, I’ve always treated the Handbook as contractual. However, others don’t consider it contractual because it has the disclaimer The Faculty Handbook, while dealing with employment policies and procedures, is not intended to provide any assurance of continued employment and should in no way be construed as an employment contract. [11]

It can be hard to find things. Because policies and practices are spread out, you can’t necessarily figure out where to find one. Because a previous administration insisted we move policies and practices off the public Web server and onto GrinCo, you can’t do a Web search to find relevant ones [12]. See the list of links at the end of this document for some places to look.

Many staff are under compensated. Although Grinnell tries to tie administrative and faculty salaries to national norms for top-tier liberal-arts colleges, it ties other staff salaries to regional norms. And, well, it’s Iowa. So regional norms can be low. Nonetheless, we have excellent staff. Treat them nicely!

Different academic departments [14] behave very differently. Some departments meet weekly; some meet much less frequently. Some departments include everyone in meetings; some limit participation. (Does everyone include SEPC members?) Some departments try to rotate classes; some give people ownership of classes. Some departments try to keep sections of introductory courses similar; others provide faculty with more freedom. Faculty in some departments take leaves when they come up; faculty in other departments try to balance leaves to limit how many people are on leave at once. If you hear a colleague in another department say something about how things are, realize that it may be different in your department.

We have great students. I mean it. In general, I’ve found Grinnell students to be nice people, smart, dedicated to schoolwork, broad in their interests, and committed to making the world better. Not everyone fits all five categories, but most do. Many (most?) of our third-years and seniors can do research on par with early graduated students.

Nonetheless, students can be sharks toward first-year faculty. At least when I started, students would attack any perceived weaknesses they saw in new faculty when they filled out end-of-course evaluations. It seemed particularly bad for female faculty (and, presumably, faculty of color). I don’t know if that’s gotten any better, but I wish someone had told me that.

There’s this weird midwest thing that discourages people from celebrating accomplishments. When I started at Grinnell, we didn’t even announce it when faculty published books. Why? I think someone told me We don’t want to have someone stand out. There was a period in which we started having a talk and snacks when someone published their book. Do we still? I’m not sure. In any case, it’s better, but it’s still a bit weird. You can see some accomplishments at the end of the Faculty Meeting Agenda, and there’s an annual list of Faculty accomplishments, but I’d like to see bigger celebrations.

We have a surprisingly strong alumni network. At least it was surprising to me. Our alumni generally love Grinnell. Well, they love their colleagues and they love their faculty. They also love some staff members who made particular differences in their lives. But that doesn’t always translate to a love of the institution or a willingness to donate. Most are passionate enough about their concept of Grinnell that they are frustrated by some decision (or decisions) that have been made on campus. However, if you ask them to help current students, most alumni will leap at the opportunity.

There are many unexpected pots of money on campus. You should know about Faculty Development Funds, but there’s more. ISC [15] has funding to help you develop your teaching. Among other things, they can fund travel related to teaching, whether for you or for your class. Or they could; things change. The Wilson Center [16] will support some activities related to innovation and leadership. For faculty in the Sciences, the Midstates Science and Mathematics consortium will sponsor travel to other institutions in the consortium for collaborative projects.

We are still working out the faculty/staff divide. Perhaps that’s true everywhere. In academia, there seem to be approximately four classes of employees: administrators, faculty, professional staff, and other staff. Often, faculty have rights and privileges that aren’t conferred to professional staff or other staff. But professional staff can have skills and degrees that should make them comparable to faculty. Faculty don’t always treat staff with appropriate respect, but I think it’s getting better. The College is also getting better about breaking down boundaries; for example, what used to be a Faculty Friday lunchtime discussion is now a Community Friday discussion. On the other hand, we still seem to celebrate faculty accomplishments (when we do) more than staff accomplishments. And we pay faculty for participating in summer workshops, but don’t always pay staff [17].

On that note, Grinnell provides some great opportunities for faculty and staff development. These range from small events, like the weekly Community Fridays, to multi-day summer workshops. It’s worth paying attention.

That’s probably enough for now. Perhaps I’ll come up with more later. Or my readers will.

Here are some electronic resources I regularly use when I need to find out things on campus. (Remember that people are always a great resource.) I’ve left out things like GrinnellShare because most folks have them linked already.

• The Dean’s office on GrinnellShare. Source of all sorts of useful information.
  • Faculty Resources. Guidance on all sorts of things, from your annual research funding to department reviews and beyond.
• The Faculty Handbook. Policies and procedures relating to faculty.
• The Staff Handbook. Policies and procedures relating to faculty and staff. (Unfortunately, The Staff Handbook is locked up on GrinCo.)
• The College Catalog. General academic policies.
• Self Service. Our platform for managing grades, advisees, budgets, and such. (There’s also a Self Service that runs on College-owned Macs and is used for installing software.)
• SAL. Where we enter Academic Alerts when students are struggling. I’m not sure what SAL stands for. Perhaps Salesforce Academic Link.

[1] Thank you to that person who probably prefers to remain nameless.

[2] More than a quarter century.

[3] Send me email.

[4] At least we had an endowment of over two billion dollars. The stock market seems highly volatile these days.

[5] I must include that last part because the administration keeps telling us that salaries are our biggest expense.

[6] Some people think that students can’t take more than 48 credits from one discipline. They’d be wrong. You can take more, you just can’t count the additional credits. At one point, most people couldn’t count more than 48 credits from one department. However, with the advent of departments like French and Arabic, the policy changed.

[7] That comment was for faculty.

[8] I like to use TLAs for Three-Letter Acronyms.

[9] We have a three-page handout of acronyms that faculty receive at NFO (New Faculty Orientation).

[10] Perhaps I’ll start a Grinnell Lexicon in a future musing.

[11] I deal with the apparent inconsistency by observing that the Handbook by itself is not a contract, but it becomes contractual when included by reference in a signed contract.

[12] Can you tell that I’m bitter about this issue? I consider it one of Grinnell’s most significant failings. I regularly hear from prospective faculty who are frustrated that they couldn’t find out about important issues because they were hidden on GrinCo.

[14] Faculty tend to use Department to mean Academic Department. Non-faculty use Department to mean things like Admissions or Student Affairs. That can create confusion when, say, a policy refers to a Department.

[15] Remember that one? Instructional Support Committee.

[16] Officially, the Donald and Winifred Wilson Center for Innovation & Leadership.

[17] Payment for summer workshops is complicated. Staff and faculty on twelve-month contracts aren’t paid for participating in summer workshops, even though such participation requires additional work beyond their regular responsibilities.

Version 1.0 of 2024-08-06.