WDL 5 PIPs and Sabbaticals

I've been lucky enough to receive three sabbaticals over the past 26 years.  In this post I'll explain how I got them.

I asked for them!

That's it! 

Okay, a bit more information?

I can't really answer the "how" with any assurance because the decision-making took place in the interactional space of a committee and that committee's relationship with department chairs and deans.  Nevertheless, I may have some insight as a one-time member of that committee (now called PIRT, the Professional Improvement Resource Team and once called FPIRC [Faculty Professional Improvement Resource Committee] and then FPISC [Faculty Professional Improvement Support Committee).

So, once again and first of all, you can't get a sabbatical unless you ask for a sabbatical.  Nothing ventured, nothing win.  "Beard the lion in his lair, none but the brave deserve the fair."

Second, I presented clear outcomes for my sabbatical proposals that related to my professional improvement plans (see long list below).  And both the sabbaticals and my PIPs were tied to my own growth as a teacher and professional academic.

Third, I was able to deploy the rhetoric of community to articulate how my sabbaticals would "benefit the department and the students."

Fourth, I did the work I was supposed to do, admitted honestly when didn't meet certain goals and explained why, and turned in my final reports in a timely fashion. 

Fifth, I didn't bridle at constructive criticism and help given to me by my designated evaluator and others who wanted me to succeed.

And finally, I like to think that my attitude toward professionalism had something to do with my success at COCC.   One thing that differentiates a profession from a mere "job" is that time is more analog than digital.  Time balloons or contracts around the needs of particular activities.  It isn't measured by punching in and out.  I have a colleague of long tenure at the college who has an oppositional point of view.  He is cranky about his work here and sees his summers as inviolate.  He will not give "non-contracted time) to the school.  I, on the other hand, have always seen the actual tasks I have to perform as more important than the clock time I'm given in which to perform them.  Therefore, I've had no problem dedicating summers to research or, as for this last sabbatical, filmmaking.

PIPs and Sabbaticals

You should know that almost every one of my PIPs had some update or change halfway through.  Also, I experienced some level of failure, something I didn't get finished, in each of my PIP cycles.  You will notice, too, that the actual four years mentioned don't always line up with clarity and precision -- like so much else in our little college.

PIP Cycle #1 (1989-1993)

This two page professional improvement plan had no fancy formatting.  It's in all-paragraph form, is only two pages long, and had this as it's "to do" list:  "Over the next four years my professional improvement has three primary objectives.  First, I want to complete the work on my doctoral dissertation.  Second, I want to develop my ability to teach communication courses which serve the needs of individuals and the communities they inhabit and construct.  Third, I would like to continue my development as a cultural analyst."  I had an update and revision in October 1990 in which I deleted a plan to take a naturalistic methods course and instead turned my attention to my work with Phi Theta Kappa.

Sabbatical #1 was spending Fall Quarter, 1992 in a dorm room at the University of Utah wrapping up my dissertation and working with my committee.  This was the quarter I developed carpal tunnel as I was spending 5 - 8 hours a day writing, most of it in a very cold student office at the Marriott Library.

PIP Cycle #2 (1992 - 1996)

This is the first PIP with fancy formatting (underlining, italicized sections, an abstract with more detailed explanations following.)  I copy by hand below the abstract.

Four areas of development

1. A study of the narratives used to express identity during the crisis of loss.  This study will involve the construction of a reading list, some course work in qualitative research methods, immersion in a local hospice program, and the production of a book of stories about identity in crisis.
2. A study of the uses of TQM communication methods in academic institutions.  This study involves the creation of a reading list, continuing discussion with local advocates of TQM, attendance of TQM seminars, and discussion with communication scholars about the critical view of TQM.
3. Investigation of the appropriateness and possible development of a speaking across the curriculum program for COCC.  This involves reading the current material on SAC, updating that material through interviews with the participants of some of the better known studies.
4. Course work upkeep.  I would like to keep my PIP moneys open to the serendipitous availability of workshops and seminars (often made available through the Speech Communication Association) on the topics of my communicaton courses, especially the courses on intercultural and small group communication.

PIP Cycle #3  1996 - 2000

There were three areas of development: 

1. A study of technology and communication education, with a special focus on distance education and public speaking.
2. The development of my understanding of love and communication with a focus on the creation of workshops about managing long term personal relationships through appropriate use of communication skills.
3. Investigating identity, gender and communication.  This area has two creative foci:

             a.  The development of a class on communication and gender.
             b.  Writing a book about the Lonergan Case, a famous trial of homefront America.

Sabbatical #2:  Spring/Fall 1999 for time off to research and write the book.  Research took place in New York and Toronto, Lonergan's birthplace.  In the midst of constructing the book two events happened that cancelled out the "true crime" plan.  First, a better, more important writer beat me to the punch when Dominick Dunne published a major article and then a book about the Lonergan Case (I DID get a convention paper out of my research, however.)  Second, I discovered that I was a poet, not a fictionist.  Eventually I wrote a poetry collection based on my Lonergan research.  When I wrote my report on my inability to write the complete book, Kathy Walsh, Humanities chair at the time, convinced me to take the word "failure" out of my report.

PIP Cycle #4  2000 - 2004

Once again, I had four areas of focus.

1)  I will continue developing my skills as a provider of online courses.

2)  I will develop the speech communication curriculum

          a.  By creating a new communication course for EMT students.

          b.  By working to get the new entrepreneurial education, skills-focused communication courses into the schedule.

3)  I will work with a trainer to improve my classroom delivery skills in the area of humor and friendliness.

4)  I will complete my MFA program and better my fiction writing skills in order to finish the novel begun in my last PIP.

Sadly, the long-distance Creative Writing MFA program with which I was involved folded under the weight of poor administration and poorer digital skills in its unhappy faculty.  With the MFA as a goal, however, I was able to teach creative writing at COCC for four years.  I also spent a huge chunk of money for a day with a trainer who basically told me stuff I could have picked up from books.  In some ways it was a waste of money.  But the fact that I spent so much to have someone tell me the old cliches forced me to believe them.  She taught me about detachment, self-love and humor while walking around the green parks areas of East Portland. 

PIP Cycle #5:  2004 - 2008

Original PIP Goal #1:  Create a hybrid Interpersonal Communication Class to serve double the number of students was changed to

Revised Goal #I:  Gain the skills and understanding important to a mid-level manager at a community college.

Goal #2: Create outcomes analysis test for Small Group Communication, Interpersonal Communication, and Foundations of Public Speaking.

Goal #3  Create a Visual Rhetoric Class.  (this moved to the next cycle.)

Goal #4  Updating skills in all areas.

(In my final report assessment of this goal, I say,

Assessment: As a member of PIRT, I realize that this particular Goal is a too undefined.  I don’t think there’s a way to assess my success here except to show the little video I created for chairmoot.

PIP Cycle #6 2009 - 2013

This PIP has a "vision statement" that contains the key goals

Vision Statement

In this Professional Improvement plan I want to serve my program and my discipline through enhancing assessment of student learning outcomes while serving myself by diving back into my discipline with a new class and a new area of scholarly interest. My first two goals focus on assessment. Ever since I committed to the quantitative analysis of student learning outcomes, I’ve wanted to create a visual/audio performance-based tool for Interpersonal Communication that could be used by anyone who taught it.  My first Goal will be to work in a team to create such a tool.  A couple of years ago I “rubricized” my public speaking course so that I could more easily quantify student success or lack thereof.  I would like to share these rubrics more widely so that public speaking teachers around the country have the ability to use them.  My second two goals focus on my own redevelopment as a communication scholar.  I want to get back into the basics of my discipline by creating a communication survey course that should also increase my program’s FTE.  Finally, I want to return to my scholarly focus on the mediated construction of identity (see my dissertation) by finding out how scholars view the creation of identity on blogs and social networking sites.

Sabbatical #3:  Academic research and writing and film making.
During that time I was able to do a very complicated but ultimately failed study of web-performed DIY identity of community radio stations and placed it in a panel I constructed for WSCA.  Others on the panel were along Dr. Bouknight and two folks from the University of California at Santa Cruz.  I also worked with Lilli Ann to complete three short videos that I have since used to teach assessable skills in the interpersonal communication courses.  You may see the best one, The Snake Conflict, on Vimeo.

So that's it.  How to succeed in academbusiness by really trying.