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AFSNews December 1997 (Part Eight) |
Programs and Curricula
Amy Shuman said she and her colleagues at Ohio State are currently in the process of putting together their program of study: "We're asking, 'What should a folklore program be today?'" She noted that there seems to be a strong demand for training in fieldwork. Shuman explained that since OSU's folklore program is part of the English Department, it is possible to offer potential graduate students full tuition plus a generous stipend.
A discussion ensued about the merits of the terms folklore and folklorist versus other terms. Michael Ann Williams said that "hearing about a desire to change the name of the discipline makes our students nervous." Paul Smith said, "The value of the term folklore varies widely from place to place. At Memorial University of Newfoundland it's a positive thing." Margaret Mills said, "One of the chief impediments to using the term at our institution is that the field is seen to represent low theory."
Elaine Lawless said, "Folklore students in our department say, `I'm a folklorist,' loud and clear. The students we're training now are the best hope for the future of our field." Amy Shuman said, "Our students who do folklore are very positive and enthusiastic about it, whereas other students in the English Department are very discouraged and disengaged." She observed that, at the undergraduate level, students are permitted to appreciate what they study, while at the graduate level students' papers that are too appreciative of the material are seen to be weak and lacking in critical capacity. She said her students understand the differences between folklore and cultural studies, and they're disgruntled by cultural studies theory but enjoy folklore high theory.
Courses and Requirements
Discussion then shifted to departments' core courses. Michael Ann Williams said all graduate students at Western Kentucky are required to take 6 core courses within the department--a total of 18 hours. Ruth Stone said Indiana University has expanded the number of its core courses and this has strengthened the department. One of the first courses graduate students take is one that includes presentations by the department's faculty members about their research.
The desirability of interdisciplinary training was discussed. Deborah Kapchan said that a problem the Texas program has had is what to include in its single core folklore course. At first, this course dealt mainly with the history of the discipline, but this proved to be dull. Later, the course dealt mainly with contemporary folklore studies, which students found much more appealing, but it didn't give them much information about the history of the field.
Discussion then addressed comprehensive examinations. Charles Zug explained that North Carolina has a reading list that is regularly updated; it contains about 50 items. Graduate students in UNC's folklore program take courses broadly within the university and are expected to cover areas represented by the literature on the reading list. "Maybe our program is too loose," he observed.
Amy Shuman said that while there isn't a folklore program, as such, at Ohio State, folklore is one of the 9 areas covered by the English Department's comprehensive oral exam. She said the department's Ph.D. candidates all seem to want required courses. She also said she would like help in determining what a core course should constitute, and what a course on the history of the discipline should encompass.
John Vlach discussed the objectives of the M.A. thesis and the Ph.D. dissertation. The thesis is primarily meant to demonstrate one's scholarly skills, while the dissertation is meant to be a fresh contribution to knowledge, he said. At George Washington University, the thesis is typically 80-150 pages in length. He said he thinks of the thesis as a "banner students can wave" when they are looking for a job or attempting to enter a Ph.D. program.
Paul Smith said Memorial University's program combines the best of the British and American systems, resulting in a defined course structure and high standards for theses and dissertations. The typical M.A. thesis is 400 pages in length.
Steve Siporin noted that students at Utah State have alternatives to writing a thesis. For example, instead of a thesis, students could take extra courses or submit two publishable papers.
Elaine Lawless discussed courses and exams in her program at Missouri. "We don't have core courses," she said. "What we teach is based on who's there to teach courses." With respect to exams, students make up their own reading lists in consultation with the faculty and then work with professors to develop exam questions. Though somewhat loose, this system works very well, she said, and the process of question development is extremely useful to students.
Teacher Training
Amy Shuman said that at Ohio State graduate students who are about to teach undergraduate courses are required to take an upper-level course that involves teaching a course with a faculty member. Together the graduate student and the professor work out the syllabus, plan readings on certain topics, review teaching skills and review students' term papers and exams. This teaching course is required for graduation from the graduate program.
Paul Smith described two ways graduate students at Memorial University gain teaching experience within the program: through work as a teaching assistant and through mentored teaching of an entire course. In the case of the former, graduate students are paid to assist a professor with elements of one of the five core courses; they're not expected to work on the entire course. In the case of the latter, they are paid (at the full course rate) to teach an entire undergraduate course.
Ruth Stone said that Indiana University has instituted a curriculum of teaching folklore and this is her department's first foray into a comprehensive look at teaching folklore. Some mentoring is also provided to graduate students teaching alone at other campuses.
Peter Tokofsky explained that the program at UCLA is rethinking what the core curriculum should be at the graduate level. With regard to teaching by graduate students, he said graduate students in the folklore program are involved in teaching the undergraduate Introduction to Folklore course. They teach the first semester under his guidance and handle the course by themselves during the second semester. Funds are not available to hire graduate students to teach other courses. He noted that Introduction to Folklore typically has an enrollment of 125 students per class.
Michael Ann Williams said that Western Kentucky's folklore program has added a 9-hour certificate for teaching at the community college level, which is in addition to the 36-hour requirement for the M.A. This course of study is offered by the university's Department of Education. She said the course is of particular benefit to students who want to go into teaching.
Folklore Departments in the University Community
Ruth Stone said one problem her department faces within the university is convincing administrators that the Folklore Department is not anomalous within academe. Thus, she said, it would be extremely useful to have access to information that can be used to compare the various North American folklore departments. Data to be shared among the departments might include: number of students, student-faculty ratio and faculty pay ranges.
Margaret Mills noted some of the challenges facing the folklore department at the University of Pennsylvania. "The department is seen as an anomaly within the university," she said. "Another serious issue relates to mission and outreach. It's crucial for us to get out of the ivory tower and thus be linked with the entrepreneurial direction of the administration."
Mills also said that while the University of Pennsylvania is very concerned with placing graduates in academic positions, it doesn't seem to be aware that other kinds of placements are also valid. "I'd like to see us teaching more effectively in the public-sector area," she said.
Charles Zug said that the creation of profiles of the folklore programs would permit department heads to use them to strengthen their hands when dealing with administrators. For example, on occasion it might be useful to point out that other departments do things the way your departments does things, or would like to do things.
Ruth Stone noted that a recent development at Indiana University's folklore department is a tremendous increase in the number of applicants from foreign students, who usually have full funding as well as jobs waiting for them back home when they complete their degrees. She also noted that her department cut admissions by 40 percent this year since nearly everyone accepted last year (27 in all) decided to attend.
Margaret Mills said that Penn admitted 8 new graduate students this year, 6 of whom are likely to enroll. Half of the applicants are from other countries.
Minority Participation in the Field
The group then addressed the subject of minority participation in the field. John Roberts said that a recent AFS-sponsored study revealed that obstacles to minority participation include: the field's lack of visibility, the lack of courses that appeal to minorities, the lack of jobs in the field (or at least the perception that there aren't any jobs) and stiff competition with other fields for top minority students.
Elaine Lawless remarked that African American students at the University of Missouri flock to courses on African American literature but they are not particularly interested in folklore courses. Michael Ann Williams said, "We haven't been able to sell African American students on the idea that a degree in folklore is a good idea."
Charles Zug suggested that the field might reach out more aggressively to the historically black colleges and universities. Marcia Gaudet asked if it would make sense to take a "folklore road show" to historically black colleges and universities and other schools with significant numbers of minority students.
John Vlach commented that the problem of minority recruitment is not unique to the field of folklore. The best students are in great demand. George Washington University struggles hard to keep minority students, partly with financial packages for them. GWU's American Studies Department (where Vlach teaches) is also working with the National Park Service to hire African American students to work at historic sites of significance to African Americans.
Peter Tokofsky said UCLA is the most culturally diverse university in the country. But his program engages in intense competition, especially with Indiana and Penn, for minority students. He asked, "How do people feel about advising students to go into folklore versus studying folklore within the context of another department, such as ethnic studies, that will better prepare them for the job market?" Roberts replied, "I don't know of any African American folklorist without a job. In addition, every year there are jobs in African American literature that go begging." In other words, he said, African American students in folklore are on the same footing as African American students who go through other departments when it comes to securing a job.
Tokofsky mentioned that undergraduate folklore courses can be a major tool for recruiting minority students (and others) into folklore graduate programs. Williams said courses on cultural diversity can lead students to folklore courses. At Western Kentucky, courses on cultural diversity are better "feeder courses" than Introduction to Folklore because every student has to take such a course or another that fills this slot.
Preparing Students for Employment
At this point, the discussion turned to the departments' role in preparing students for work in the field of folklore and elsewhere. Nick Spitzer observed, "I see the academic programs as a pragmatic delivery system. We need to figure out how to make it work for the field and for the people in the community."
Alan Jabbour noted that the American Folklife Center has a program for graduate students who do work at the Center as interns. Thus the Center participates in the "academic funneling process" to a certain extent. He also said, "We need to think about how people are led into our field."
Marcia Gaudet observed that students earning degrees from her program do well on the job market because of the diversity of their training, which includes courses in English as well as folklore. She said she is now working with Maida Owens, Louisiana's state folklorist, to convince the state legislature to create 4 new public-sector positions and base each one at a different Louisiana university. Under their plan, one position would come to the University of Southwestern Louisiana. If this comes to pass, Gaudet hopes that the folklorist assigned to her university will be able to teach a course in her department.
Amy Shuman said her department seems to be able to find jobs for all its students in the area of rhetoric and communication. Elaine Lawless said that students with interdisciplinary training and creativity can get jobs. To give our students the best chances of meaningful employment, we need to do a better job of getting them to think about where they're going to go with their degrees from day one, she said.
Ruth Stone said her department thought most graduates were getting jobs in the public sector but did a study and found that three- quarters of the graduates found academic jobs, but not necessarily in folklore. Having this information is very helpful in getting students to prepare for employment.
Job-Search Workshops
Margaret Mills suggested that having a job-search workshop at the annual American Folklore Society meeting might be useful. Jo Radner asked if the society could bring a traveling program about job searching from graduate program to graduate program so students can start thinking about this early in their graduate school careers. Amy Shuman said Radner's idea is particularly important because, since the job market shifts, a regular program can take change into consideration. She said applied linguistics is an area that is opening up right now and there has been an explosion in foreign- language teaching that has led to jobs for people who can teach culture along with a language. Thus, she said, we must train students so that they are qualified as applied linguists or foreign-language specialists as well as folklorists. Marcia Gaudet added that folklore programs must be aware of the requirements for getting academic jobs in certain fields so that they can make sure students can meet them.
Paul Smith said he and his colleagues at Memorial University have tried to establish a hierarchy of training that prepares students for employment. That training includes: work in an archive, work as a teaching assistant and work as a lecturer. Payment is provided to the student in each instance.
Shalom Staub said that since the job market is always shifting we have to be able to assess shifts swiftly if we are to guide and counsel students adequately about the kinds of jobs that are available and how to prepare for them. It's mind boggling that graduate students still think they're going to get teaching jobs, he said. But that's the work for which they are most qualified. Staub added that there should be an institutionalized awareness of what's happening in the job market.
Compiling and Sharing Information About Graduate Programs
John Roberts returned to the issue of compiling and distributing information about the folklore graduate programs. There seems to be a need for a central office to serve as a clearinghouse for information about academic programs in folklore, he said.
Ruth Stone said that if a comprehensive guide to folklore programs could be created, one that describes departments' strengths and other details, it could be put on the World Wide Web for students to examine.
Elaine Lawless proposed that the AFS News be used to showcase folklore graduate programs; perhaps a special issue could be devoted to the subject.
Charles Zug noted that the UNC program recently completed a 10-year review. He said it would have helped strengthen the program's case within the university if information about other folklore programs had been available.
Jo Radner asked what statistics are needed to compile and share. John Roberts then read a list of data it would be useful to compile. These data included: number of faculty, number of undergraduate students, number of graduate students, degrees offered, financial aid available, institutional structure, special programs, archives and special collections, range of faculty salaries, course enrollment statistics, application/acceptance ratio for graduate students, number of minority applicants, number of international applicants, colleges and universities graduate students come from, average GRE scores of applicants, number of graduates and placement of graduates of the program.
Formally Constituting the Department Heads as a Group
John Roberts led a discussion on how to more formally constitute the department chairs as a group. One idea was to create a section of AFS. Roberts suggested that such a section might also include the chairs of undergraduate folklore programs since it is important for the chairs of undergraduate and graduate programs to establish a dialogue.
Elaine Lawless asked how department heads could establish an AFS section. Roberts replied that any group can petition to become a section. Lawless said a section meeting held in conjunction with the annual meeting of AFS would make sense. Michael Ann Williams said that while it would be nice to include members of the AFS executive board in section meetings, it is more important to schedule meetings at the convenience of department heads.
Deborah Kapchan said it would probably be difficult to convene a meeting like the present one every year. She said she would prefer to meet at the annual AFS meeting and deal with issues specified in an agenda prepared in advance. Roberts said most section meetings held during the AFS annual meeting are scheduled for one hour, but it would probably be possible to arrange for a longer session. He said the AFS executive board will work with the AFS program committee to schedule a department heads section meeting at the next AFS meeting, in Austin.