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An audio version of this blog post may be found here.It was the first morning of my vacation. The restaurant at the resort had a waiting list for breakfast patrons. The hostess took my phone number and said I would be called when a table opened. I thanked her and walked to find a comfortable spot in which to wait. Not far from the dining room, guests could choose to linger in any of three adjoining rooms--the bar, lobby, or library.I chose to wait in the library. The room was ringed with mahogany shelves carefully adorned with books and creative objects.  Statues, framed paintings, and board games were on display. The room reminded me of magazine covers from Architectural Digest or Good House Keeping. The many chairs and couches were positioned to invite guests to linger in small groups, or to simply sit and read. I picked a chair facing the wall of windows. The windows provided a view of the sprawling pasture setting. I noticed a scrabble board was set on a table near the windows and a chess game was set at another table near the entry door. I, indeed, felt as if I was visiting a friend or relative’s home.As I waited, not because they were loud or intrusive, I overheard a grandfather teaching his grandson to play chess. The boy was about six or seven years old. With the grandfather seated on one side of the board and the boy, kneeling in the chair on the other side, the granddad invited the boy to make the first move. As they played, the grandfather patiently explained the way the boy might move varying pieces. Several times, he encouraged the boy to consider a strategy. At the end of the game, the grandfather showed the boy how to reset the board for the next people who might want to play. I overheard the grandfather say he had taught his daughter, the grandson’s mother, how to play chess when she was about the same age as the boy.Even when I am on vacation, I am thinking about and identifying teaching moments. This tender teaching moment between grandfather and grandson was poignant, delicate, and beautiful. It was not extraordinary. Its beauty was in the ordinary occasion of a grandfather taking time, one-on-one, to play with his grandson.Some of the best, most tender, teaching occurs one-on-one.Classrooms can be marvelous arenas for superb teaching. Classrooms can be sites where the relationship between instructors and learners transforms. Equally ripe with possibility and beauty are the one-on-one relationships between faculty and students which happen beyond the classroom. Teaching students in one-on-one modes has the potential to assist students in ways that the classroom encounter cannot. The opportunity of a sustained conversation with one student can sometimes lead to a long-lasting, life-changing connection.While I was on a faculty, with intention, as part of my teaching agenda, each year I chose to work with a student teaching assistant (TA) and a student research assistant (RA). I considered these relationships with students as key to my teaching responsibility as the courses I taught in classrooms.My practice was to meet weekly with each of the two students to facilitate our prescribed tasks. Then, once a month, if the students were interested, I would convene them for a meal to discuss larger theological issues, hear how they were managing in the day-to-day reality of graduate school life, and encourage conversation about their occupational aspirations and dreams. My aim for these one-on-one relationships was to aid their health and success.I honed my listening skills by teaching one-on-one. Spending time in one-on-one conversations allowed my primary focus to be on the questions, curiosities, abilities, and perspectives of the student. These one-on-one relationships allowed me to make stronger recommendations for further graduate study, employment options, or give my opinion about life’s unexpected twists and turns.  A regular dimension of this kind of teaching was when I was able to write very considerate, in-depth, letters of recommendation for my students because I knew the student as a person and not just as a student who had done well in my class. Occasionally, if there was trouble, my relationship with the TA or RA allowed for convincing intervention or advocacy.My practice of intentionally constructing ways of working one-on-one with students comes from my own experiences in graduate school. When I was in graduate school, the professors for whom I was their TA and RA became my career-long mentors and friends. The three-faculty people who I worked closest with in graduate school have been influential in guiding my entire academic career.Recently, I referred one of my current mentees to my mentor for guidance on an issue for which he had expertise. I told my mentee that I was putting them in touch with their “grand-mentor.”Through these connections I know I am a better teacher and colleague. Last week, a mentee who serves on a university faculty and just received tenure, called me and asked me to talk with one of their doctoral students. I was delighted to assist. Just like grandfather was so glad to teach grandson, I am overjoyed to reach out and support a student of my student.

(An audio version of this blog may be accessed here.) The rank of senior scholar is the highest and most revered. The hierarchy of the academy creates senior scholars by assigning newly minted faculty with the status of junior scholar, then over several years through a process of review, tenure and/or promotion, some colleagues reach the status of senior scholar. Promotion to senior scholar, as either Associate Professor, or Full Professor, is perceived as a badge of worthiness and nobility. The academy requires professorial participants to either ascend or be jettisoned. In some schools, earning the status of senior professor means having fought, brawled, struggled, and won. Senior scholar status is entitled to previously unavailable resources, and opportunities—goodies not afforded the junior scholars. Senior scholars are expected to have responsibilities and obligations which are not the onus of junior scholars. However, at some schools, there is not a clear demarcation between the obligations of junior or senior scholars—juniors are given duties and responsibilities similar to, or aligned with, those given to senior scholars. All this is to say, there is a great deal of variation between schools when one considers the culture, hospitality, duties, and obligations attributed to junior/senior scholar status. I am not suggesting that one model is superior to the others. I am suggesting that one needs to read the context and know which model is functioning in the school where they are employed. Who teaches senior professors how to be good senior professors? How do senior professors get mentored into their duties, power, influence, obligation? Who shows senior scholars how to transition from the institutional patterns, habits, and behaviors of junior status? How does the institution assist senior scholars in becoming their most generative selves in this season of seniority? By what process are senior scholars given permission to wield their power for the best impact upon students, community, and the institution’s future? What if most senior scholars operate as novices in the community structure? What if, without senior scholars who are mindful and present, the community cannot become healthy nor flourish to its potential? As I think of my own vocational journey, I have not been privy to conversations about identity as a senior scholar. Without benefit of critical reflection for planning, and without imaginative reflection for doing, it has not been easy to know what to do, or how to be, or what to be about, as a Full Professor.  I have never been part of a conversation which helped me parse, decide, live-into, or imagine how the authority of the rank of senior scholar could be used, might be used, or should be used. When I was promoted to the rank of Full Professor, I was glad for the pay increase. Equally true was my lack of interest in the institutional loyalty that was so often inferred by some administrators. I have learned to be a senior scholar by watching and engaging, that is, by trial and error. I have learned from the modeling of others only because I paid attention to those in this rank and wondered about their lives and professional decisions. In so doing, I have noticed three personas of senior faculty, or three modes of professionalism for the highest faculty rank: Gatekeeper, Historian, Elder. I am sure there are other modes. For now, I want to describe these three. Senior Scholar as Gatekeeper The gatekeeper recognizes the power and influence of the highest rank and intentionally wields that power in decision making opportunities which form and shape the institution and its future. In acknowledgement of the gatekeeper’s authority, colleagues assign the gatekeeper as chair of the most central and significant committees. The gatekeeper is consulted on major institutional decisions by the highest administrators including the trustees. If this persona is considerate, gracious, humble, community minded, and collaborative, the colleague is contributing to an ethos of cooperation, deep listening, and shared care. The danger of this persona is when the person operates through power-mongering, tyrannical, opportunistic, mean-spirited, and bigoted decisions. Schools can be treacherous when these people attend to maintaining the oppressive status quo which results in deepening the toxicity of the school’s ecology. Senior Scholar as Historian This persona works as being the reminder, the memory keeper, or the historian. Having served on the faculty for a long period of time, the person has a long memory from years of experience and participation. When the new people, new programs, new projects, or curriculum changes are considered, the person playing the role of historian will recount the moments when, in the past, a similar attempt was considered or made. The voice of the historian is often used to hold the institution accountable to the mission, legacy, and tradition. The historian often holds dear those colleagues who are no longer employed by the institution or no longer members of the faculty by invoking their names at meetings or telling stories about “the good old days.” This persona can be quite helpful as an institution plans for the future and is able, with memories of the past, to press forward and adapt. The person can also hold the institution hostage to the past and to earlier decisions which are not adequate for unfamiliar futures. Senior Scholar as Elder This person may or may not be elderly, per se. This person recognizes that they are no longer in the fray of accomplishing status and rank, and makes use of this phase of professional life to regularly provide insight, wisdom, and assistance to others. This person uses their power and influence to build community, mentor others, and be personally creative. They create time to regularly sit with individuals and groups for wise counsel. The communal role of the elder is reinforced by the way members of the community respect them and treat them with kindness, deference, and regard. They are admired and respected. Elder scholars will often take on the mantle of making “good trouble” so that the more vulnerable colleagues are not blamed or receive retaliation in difficult institutional battles. They can afford to risk, stick-their-necks-out, knowing their status means that they will receive little reprisal. I suspect I most admire the mode of elder because I come from a tradition that promotes, and depends upon, those at the highest ranks to reach back, reach down, reach out, and help. The Black church tradition has its gatekeepers and its historians. But we revere our elders. In my tradition, we defer to Big Mama, Mother of the Church, the Saints, the Teachers, and the Prayer Warriors. I am working on my elder persona. The toxic environment which plagues so many faculties is not lodged in the brick, mortar, and drywall of buildings. The toxicity permeates the relationships of the community. The lack of care, unfriendliness, bigotry, and acts of dehumanization reside in the ways people treat one another. Toxic environments—relational patterns of ugliness, shaming, blaming, ruthlessness, and deadly competition—might be inherited, but they are upheld and maintained by our choices of continued violent behaviors, lack of relational skills, and low emotional intelligence. Senior scholars, as gatekeepers, historians, and elders have the power and authority to shift and repair toxic environments in schools—if we would.

All storms are not the same. A light summer rain is not a category five hurricane. You must learn, in your context, to identify those storms that can be refreshing, and even enjoyable, and those storms that are life threatening and require you to batten down the hatches or evacuate. My Uncle Frank was a loving and unconventional man. He stood about 6’4” tall. He had a medium build. He was bald on the top of his head with a hair-ring around the sides. He wore a size 15 shoe and an extra-large hat. Uncle Frank was light-hearted and laughed often. He and my parents had grown up together in Cleveland, Tennessee. The Meridiths, the Bullocks, and the Westfields had known each other for many generations. By the time my brother and I were born, Uncle Frank and Aunt Emma, with their four children, lived in Philadelphia – near our family. My father treated Uncle Frank with the respect given an older brother. Our families were family to each other. Uncle Frank worked for a company that would buy out the local amusement park for its employees the Sunday of each Memorial Day weekend. Frank would accept the five tickets given each employee, then barter, negotiate, and acquire twenty or thirty more tickets so he could host a grand picnic for the extended family. My birthday is May 28; we would celebrate at the amusement park. Every year Uncle Frank would tell me the picnic was for my birthday. I loved Uncle Frank and Uncle Frank loved me. Uncle Frank would reserve a pavilion in the picnic section of the park just for his guests. The annual event felt like a family reunion. Upon arrival at the pavilion, each family would claim two or three picnic tables and set-up their spot. Each family brought food and beverages, more than enough to share.  The picnic was a grand feast with all-day rides, card playing (spades, bid whist, pinochle), lots of laughter, and being together. It was a day of excitement and fun. I have fond recollections of all my amusement park picnics, but there was one that was the most remarkable.  It was a sunny Sunday. Our family arrived at the park about 10am. We parked in the parking lot, then hauled our food and picnic supplies from the parking lot to the reserved pavilion. After greeting everyone, my brother, father, and I left my mom to set up our picnic tables. We went to ride the rides promising to return in two hours for lunch. We started with a ride on the Wild Mouse--the wooden roller coaster. Then the bumper cars, Ferris wheel and then the teacups. It happened when we were in line for a second ride on the roller coaster. Without warning--the wind whipped up with prolonged gusts. The sky darkened.  It began to drizzle. The drizzle turned to downpour. My dad told us we needed to go back to the pavilion. My brother complained because he wanted to ride, even if it was raining. Dad grabbed my hand, told my brother to move quickly and pointed in the direction of the pavilion. With a pout, my brother trotted ahead of us.  The downpour increased. As we jogged, it seemed as if everyone in the park was running - looking for shelter from the storm. It was pandemonium. By the time dad, brother and I got near to the pavilion the rain was teeming from the skies. The thick rain made it difficult to see. The winds were erratic. My mother was standing at the edge of the pavilion watching for us and, no doubt, praying. When Mom saw us at a distance, she began to call my father’s name and wave her arms. Dad picked me up, grabbed my brother by the hand and jetted to my mother. Everyone in the pavilion was packing up. My mom dried us off with an extra tablecloth and paper towels. As if out of nowhere, Uncle Frank ran into the pavilion and hollered, “Don’t leave!” Hearing Frank’s voice, people paused. Everything but the rain and the wind stopped to listen. Frank said, “Don’t go! The storm is not going to last long. Don’t go!” Several families ignored him – packed quickly and launched out into the mean weather headed back to the parking lot to drive home. Uncle Frank came over to my parents and repeated, “The storm will not last long. We are safer here than on the road.” My parents hesitated. They did not know what to do. Uncle Frank collapsed a card table, leaned it against a pavilion wall and instructed me and my brother to go under. We did. Frank covered the table with a tablecloth and made sure there were no exposed edges to be caught by the wind. Uncle Frank instructed us, “Stay there until we call you out!” The storm lasted another thirty or forty minutes. They were long and frightening minutes. Then, as abruptly as the storm had started--it stopped. With the stillness, my brother and I peeked out from behind the table. My father said, “Come on out, it’s over.” We crawled out and I looked around the pavilion. The only folks who had stayed were Uncle Frank, Aunt Emma, their four kids, our family, the Conway Family, and the Simmons Family. Anything uncovered in the pavilion was soggy or drenched, but no one was hurt. As if by magic, the thick black clouds continued to part, and the blue sky returned. The sun shone bright, again. The winds were gone. Together we cleaned up the pavilion and reestablished our picnic. Families had left covered dishes, coolers, and lawn chairs. Dad and Frank organized items they would return in coming days. My mom and Aunt Emma took inventory of the food and reset one large table of food and a beverage station for everyone. Mercifully, my birthday cake was unharmed. In about thirty minutes we heard the amusement park rides restarting. And here’s the best part--for the rest of the day there were no lines for any rides! Since most of the people in the park had fled during the storm, those of us who had braved the storm were now free to ride any ride without having to wait in line.  That day, I rode the roller coaster twenty-seven times! That day I rode every ride in West Point Park! That day was one of the best ever! Years later, I asked Uncle Frank how he knew we should stay at the pavilion during the storm. He said, “All storms aren’t the same. Even bad storms aren’t the same kind of bad. That storm came up so fast and unexpectedly, I knew it was going to move through just as quickly. I also knew driving in that kind of weather would have been more dangerous than hunkering down in that pavilion.” With a wry smile, Uncle Frank continued, “And, it was your birthday – we had not cut the cake!” Friends, storms in our careers are like this. Ask yourself, which storms are simply part of the ecology of faculty life, and which storms are potentially life threatening or cataclysmic? Negotiating the processes of hire, tenure, renewed contract and promotion is distinctly different from navigating in an institution that is restructuring or has filed for financial exigency. Learning to advise students, lead faculty committees, and find a suitable publisher can be challenging, but all are elements of the academic landscape.  How do you come to know what is usual and what is dangerous? We all need an Uncle Frank who can tell us if we should hunker down or run! Thank you, Uncle Frank.