Invisible Service Roundtable Highlights, virtual ASECS meeting 2021
There are multiple manifestations of invisible labor: uneven levels of service and mentorship, inequity in terms of who is making things happen behind the scenes, and so on. In the 2021 ASECS Women's Caucus roundtable session, chaired and organized by Marilyn Francus (West Virginia University), panelists discussed how to make that invisible work visible, acknowledged, valued, and compensated.

Nicole Aljoe, Northeastern University
  • One of the most effective ways to counteract the invisibility of service labor is to name, describe, and track that labor. It’s quite easy to overlook many of the campus activities that we engage in, but taking the time to detail and document exactly what these are is incredibly helpful for making academic labor more transparent—effectively pulling away the veil that is often drawn across these activities—as well as helping to more effectively account for our time in keeping with our designated workload ratios.
  • It also counteracts the ‘magical thinking’ that tends to happen around service labour and activities. Documenting them makes you literally see that these are activities that take time.
  • Which activities should be documented? I’m not talking about required unit committee meetings which are usually accounted for with some kind of attendance-taking, but rather the ‘other’ work that often slips through and is not documented. My general rule of thumb is that anything that you are asked to do beyond unit committee meetings, and/or all requests that involve either your time and your expertise should be documented. Depending on your institution this might include:
    • Invited classroom visits/talks (favors for colleagues)
    • Campus talks/panels/interviews
    • Non-committee meetings outside of regular office hours
    • Informal mentoring and advising, students and colleagues
    • Service writing (reviews, observations, etc.)
    • Student recommendation letters
    • Non-class-based teaching and research (“Independent”/Directed Studies)
    • New course preps
  • Documenting service and teaching-service like “independent” studies with students makes it easier to plug specific details of our time onto our established work ratios.
  • Workload ratios are essentially maps of the range of activities that comprise our academic jobs. Attending to the ratio is not about developing an ideal ‘balance,’ but rather acknowledges and provides clear ‘buckets’ for the three major components of our jobs. For example:
    • Tenured faculty member at a Research 1 institution with a 2-2 teaching load.
      • 50% research, 30% teaching, and 20% service.
    • Tenured with administrative role and one course release
      • 40% research, 20% teaching 40% service.
    • Tenure-track faculty member at a Research 1 institution
      • 60% research, 30% teaching, 10% service.
    • Teaching intensive faculty at a R1
      • 70% teaching, 20% research, 10% service; sometimes the amounts for teaching and service are reversed.
  • When service activities are detailed in this way it provides key irrefutable data that can be used to exactly and more inclusively document the significance of ALL our contributions to higher education institutions.

Jade Higa, Iolani School, Honolulu, HI
  • Maintain your boundaries. For those of us who identify with one or more marginalized groups, students can see themselves in us and they sometimes look to us for comfort, validation, or advice around their intersecting identities. While this work is necessary, it is important for us to maintain boundaries so that we have energy to continue the work.
  • Be compassionate to yourself. As teachers, particularly humanities teachers, we will likely always be on the front lines of emotional work because we engage our students as humans. So, while we have compassion and grace for our students, we also need to have compassion and grace for ourselves.
  • Advocate for institutional support. “Self-care” is not the only answer. “Self-care” often relies on a certain economic and social status, and it also puts the onus on the individual to make time. Make the case for, and seek out, institutional support for your invisible service.

Regulus Allen, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Administrators:
  • Administrators need to acknowledge that faculty from marginalized groups can face what Amado Padilla calls "cultural taxation" and what Laura E. Hirschfield and Tiffany D. Joseph call "identity taxation"; this is the extra burden of DEI service placed on faculty specifically because of their marginalized identities (serving on diversity taskforces, mentoring junior colleagues or students, advising student groups, etc.)
  • Administrators need to acknowledge that cultural or identity taxation takes place in addition to general service burdens not necessarily related to diversity, for which faculty from marginalized groups also bear a disproportionate amount
  • Administrators should conduct audits to achieve greater transparency about the time commitments for service responsibilities and the distribution of labor; they should create systems to delegate service more equitably
  • If faculty members conduct a disproportionate amount of service, they should be compensated with course releases, financial awards, research support, etc.
Faculty:
  • Faculty should email their chair or otherwise document the many teachable moments they undertake outside of the classroom; they should include this documentation in their RPT files as evidence of service
  • Administrators should accept a wider range of evidence of service (emails, calendars) to help make invisible labor more visible in the RPT process
Universities:
  • Universities that stress DEI initiatives, yet have low representation of faculty members from marginalized groups should recognize that diversity labor performed at such an institution is “extraordinary” service; they should treat it as such in the RPT process.

Cynthia Richards, Wittenberg University
  • Consider running for public office, because it is an extension of our work as faculty—advocating for our students, fighting for them outside the classroom.
  • Service can be a way of increasing one’s public profile and doing the public-facing work that is so essential to the future of the humanities.
  • We have the skills as English professors to communicate effectively with general audiences and to make the case for our students’ needs and to provide a counter-narrative to the dangerous myths that discredit their work
  • Tell your story to your students. We often assume that our authority as professors, and in particular as female professors, resides in our elite status and that we can best be recognized as campus leaders by emphasizing our successes and not the struggles along the way. Yet our struggles can help our students connect and regain their faith in their futures.
  • Think of yourself as an educator in addition to being a professor. As educators, our work correlates with the ongoing public service of hardworking public-school teachers, beleaguered public school administrators and even parents who homeschool their kids. These connections elevate the work we do and do not diminish it.

Check out the expanded version “A Professor’s Lessons from Running for Public Office” https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2021/08/20/lessons-about-higher-ed-professor-learned-running-public-office-opinion

Joseph Bartolomeo, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • STRIDE training for all search committee members in place of requiring that each committee include a member of an underrepresented group, thereby protecting the time and research capacity of diverse faculty members.
  • Competitive Research Development Awards for a semester release from teaching and service, for associate professors whose significant service obligations have constrained their progress. Criteria for the award include a research plan and convincing evidence that the award will lead to promotion within three years.
  • Eligibility for promotion for associate professors with relatively modest research profiles but with outstanding and sustained contributions in teaching or service—such as creating new degree programs, obtaining significant external support for teaching or diversity initiatives, or serving in major leadership roles at the department, college, or campus level.
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Christy Pichichero, George Mason University
  • Expose discriminatory gaslighting
  • Name it: identify the practice of discriminatory gaslighting--when dominant social groups use these psychological tricks to maintain their power and privilege, by sowing self-doubt and dependence in minoritized groups through subtle or quite explicit messaging.
  • Document it: as noted by Regulus Allen and Nicole Aljoe.
  • Use your power: ask for course releases.
  • Become involved in faculty governance: create the faculty handbook; ask faculty affairs for robust mentoring and affinity groups; participate in writing promotion and tenure requirements; participate in shared governance.
  • Acknowledge that DEI is everyone's work.​​