Last year was one of the most difficult years I have ever had as an academic. Despite all the global troubles—political turmoil in the US, a worldwide pandemic, and depressed enrollment at institutions of higher ed—, I had some serious personal dilemmas that exacerbated an already worrisome experience.
With the transition to online learning (a modality ill-equipped for language instruction), I found myself begrudgingly creating (and frequently re-creating) PowerPoint presentations to accompany my synchronic lectures. In many ways, I felt like I was reinventing the wheel for several courses that I had already taught into a medium that I would never teach in again. Let’s face it: PowerPoint presentations are tediously time-consuming. All the information has to get front loaded and deliberately organized in such a way that its complexity scaffolds—moving from introductory principles to lower-level activities and then progressing into some higher-level exercises. In short, these are things that I intuitively do in the face-to-face classroom. When I have to spell it out in such a methodically organized way on a PowerPoint, I find the preparation immensely taxing and the execution too inflexible. As a whole, online teaching is a very frustrating ordeal. Can I do it? Yes. Do I wish to do it again? No, I would prefer not to.
2020 was supposed to be a celebratory year for me. After six years at Buena Vista University, I had made sufficient progress towards receiving tenure: my teaching portfolio was robust and student feedback was promising; the service I performed at both the university and community levels was substantial; and I had received virtual guarantees from many of my colleagues that all these contributions—from teaching to service to advising—amounted to an airtight case for tenure. Imagine my surprise when in March, after six strong years of full commitment to this institution, I was summoned to visit with the provost who, reading from a prepared document, informed me that due to financial hardships incurred over the last half decade, the university would be eliminating my teaching line. I would be granted an additional, terminal year as an assistant professor, but there would only be one full-time Spanish faculty member at the university in fall 2021.
Everything reached a fever pitch the following academic year (2020-2021) as I tried to balance a frantic and desperate job search with my regular teaching duties during the middle of a pandemic when all my instruction was shifted to an online format. After many applications, scant interviews, and one campus invitation, I miraculously received a job offer at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI, in February. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to be offered a job at this time. Higher ed has acutely felt the economic pinch of the pandemic. Many institutions, like BVU, have opted to severely restructure themselves by lopping off faculty from ‘under-performing’ majors (I do not like this term—I feel that it takes a very cold, stoic approach to evaluation that overemphasizes classroom enrollment numbers and popularity rather than intrinsic value). What’s more: entire majors have been eliminated, such as BVU’s theater program. I am alarmed by what is going on at colleges and universities across the United States and am especially concerned for liberal arts programs, which do not frequently enjoy the same popularity as STEM majors. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario where former small liberal arts colleges revert to trade and/or pre-professional schools, eliminating language and arts programs altogether. Unlikely, but not infeasible.
In short, I am glad to find myself in the fortunate position of teaching at Hillsdale in the fall. I will be joining an already robust department of 5 (!) faculty members, all with unique disciplinary focii. The institution itself epitomizes what a liberal arts education should be—an opportunity for growth and exploration as students study diverse topics with qualified professors. This is a place that values all modes of scientific and artistic inquiry; it strives to orient students in their discovery of “the good, the true, and the beautiful.” I’m excited to open this new chapter in my academic journey.