This is a familiar scenario in Australia, too, where some appointments are academic and others "professional" or general, and some universities have reclassified their academic language and learning (ALL) staff from academic to professional, and/or restructured their work so that it's in a "hub" or "one-stop-shop" in the library, or with "student engagement" or student services. The problem is not so much the pay, which is broadly similar, but the lessened visibility, the replacement of research opportunities with other duties, and the separation from discipline teaching staff -- and very importantly, being run by people whose expertise is in management, not education, and who know nothing about academic language and learning. As has happened to you, Lucie, and I'm so sorry to hear it.
All through my career -- 27 years of ALL teaching at an Australian uni -- I struggled with the fact that nobody other than us and our students knows what we do, no matter how much we try to tell them. I now think that in any case, they don't care what we do, so knowing what it is might not help. But if anyone would like to see arguments that we have tried to use, you might like to go to the Proceedings of our national Association's conferences, available online at http://www.aall.org.au/conferences
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www.aall.org.au
1999. Conference, Language and learning: the learning dimensions of our work. (57.48MB) Refereed Proceedings of the National Language and Academic Skills Conference ...
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Scroll down to "2003", click on "In the future....", and when the Proceedings for that year's conference appear, there's a paper starting on p. 43 called "Academic and/or general? How the classification of LAS advisors affects us and our institutions".
all the best for your future, and the future of your work,
Kate
Sent: Saturday, 23 April 2016 5:12 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: sad news from the University of Alberta
On Friday, April 22, 2016, Lucie Moussu <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear friends and colleagues,
It is with a broken heart that I share with you the news that the University of Alberta has decided to move the Centre for Writers, currently housed in the Faculty of Arts, into Student Services. As a result, I was told that I will no longer be Director of the Centre for Writers as of June 30th, 2016. An administrative director will be hired sometime this summer. I will retain my tenured appointment with the Department of English and Film Studies, with a yet-to-be-determined teaching assignment.
I won’t let this change affect my commitment to the CWCA and IWCA (and other professional organizations), or my writing centre scholarship. I will take the upcoming year to write a few articles about my writing centre research, attend conferences, get a bit of rest after 10 years of administration, and explore other employment opportunities.
In the meantime, I am grateful to be able to concentrate on our annual conference, and hope to see many of you next month in Calgary. I have no doubt that we will have a chance to discuss this recent administrative decision at the UofA further. Indeed, with such administrative decisions being made with increasing frequency (last year at Wilfrid Laurier, and more recently at UBC), perhaps the CWCA needs to develop a clearer strategy on how we might get ahead of future such announcements.
Best,
Lucie.
—Lucie Moussu, PhD
Director, Centre for Writers
Associate Professor in Writing Studies
University of Alberta
Chair, Canadian Writing Centres AssociationCWCA representative, International Writing Centers Association