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Introduction
The Academic Workforce Advocacy Kit brings together a set of reports and guidelines on faculty workload and staffing norms developed by the association since the 1990s. Armed with these facts and figures, buttressed by goals and guidelines endorsed by the largest professional association of scholars in the country, we can begin to do the hard work of describing the situation in our own institutions; comparing it with the situation on the national level; confronting administrations with the facts, needs, and relevant standards; and educating the public at the local and state level.
—Catherine Porter, Summer 2009 MLA Newsletter
The MLA Executive Council created this issue brief to inform members of the profession and the general public of the circumstances faced by the academic workforce in the humanities. It provides background information and explains the council’s working assumptions. The brief then lays out an agenda and recommends a course of action to improve working conditions for the academic workforce.
"We urge the profession to turn its attention to the full range of faculty members teaching in departments of English and other modern language departments. And if, as we believe, the profession is becoming increasingly divided into a teaching faculty and a research faculty, we urge our colleagues to consider the consequences of such a division. We hope our report can newly inform the discussion of the academic labor market and assist efforts to bring respect and equity to all who are teaching on our campuses."
This report presents statistical information from United States government sources about the composition of the faculty across the modern languages in United States institutions of higher education.
"In the context of globalization and in the post-9/11 environment . . . the usefulness of studying languages other than English is no longer contested. The goals and means of language study, however, continue to be hotly debated. Divergent views concerning language and its many functions are reflected in differing approaches to the study of language."
This report examines current standards and emerging trends in requirements for tenure and promotion in English and foreign language departments in colleges and universities throughout the United States. The report is based on a survey of more than 1,300 departments at institutions across the nation and includes 20 major recommendations for change.
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