The Marion L. Brittain Teaching Fellowship: A Model for Postdoctoral Training

The Marion L. Brittain Teaching Fellowship: A Model for Postdoctoral TrainingAuthor(s): Daryl S. OgdenSource: Profession, (2000), pp. 138-148Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595712 .

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The Marion L. Brittain Teaching Fellowship: A Model for Postdoctoral Training

DARYL S. OGDEN

If you were, like me, a recent English PhD trying to enter the academic

marketplace in the mid-nineties, it was, to quote the "Final Report of the

MLA Committee on Professional Employment" (and to paraphrase A Tale

of Two Cities) "the worst of times amid the best of times" (28). The "Final

Report," of course, simply articulated what everyone already knew and still

knows, that while the general American economy is happily humming

along with unprecedentedly low unemployment rates, "in the fields of lan

guage and literature professional tidings have been dismal for some time,"

especially because "if present employment patterns continue fewer than half the seven or eight thousand graduate students likely to earn PhDs in English and

foreign languages between 1996 and 2000 can expect to obtain full-time tenure

track positions within a year of receiving their degrees" (29). Writing his inau

gural President's Column in the January 1995 MLA Newsletter, "Jobs: What

We (Not They) Can Do," Sander Gilman responded to the bleak structural

problem facing young scholars in English and foreign languages by propos

ing a reorganization of the way that research universities churn out large

populations of unemployed and underemployed scholar-teachers. Moti

vated by several conversations with dispirited job seekers at the 1994 MLA

Annual Convention in San Diego, Gilman proposed that humanities de

partments learn from their cousins in the natural sciences by offering two

The author is Assistant Professor of English in the School of Literature, Communication, and

Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Profession 2000 138



DARYL S. OGDEN ||| 139

year postdoctoral teaching fellowships that would represent "a first tier of

employment" in which "these new PhDs [would] become better teachers"

(5). In the scenario envisioned by Gilman, postdoctoral positions would be

created by shrinking the swollen ranks of language and literature graduate programs among research universities; these positions would be adminis

tered by a national application process and matching system similar to the one employed for placing medical residents. Gilman argued that such a sys tem, which he suggested should include faculty mentoring and a limited

benefits package, would create meaningful employment opportunities for

young scholars otherwise disposed "to go to law school or medical school

because they [didn't] see the sense of spending five years studying German,

English, or comparative literature with no chance of getting a 'real' job" (5). Constructive as Gilman's column seemed, Michael Berube pilloried the

proposal as a "bizarre suggestion" for addressing the fundamental problems of the language and literature job market (57-61). Gilman, Berube claimed, did not recognize the plan's complicity with the darker administrative goal of downsizing humanities departments and effectively concluding the era

of academic tenure in American universities and colleges. It was Berube's contention that implementing such a system would create a permanent ac

ademic underclass (although Berube would be the first to acknowledge that

such an underclass already exists, with quite grim prospects for its future) of

"Optionally Mentored Gilman Fellows" with salaries of $20,000 per annum (60-61).1 Yet as someone in January 1995 who had been thwarted in his first attempt to find a tenure-track position and who was, as a conse

quence, hanging by his fingertips from the academic precipice, I was

frankly encouraged by Gilman's proposal. After all, a mentored postdoc toral teaching fellowship at an excellent research university sounded much better than either of the two depressing alternatives that lay before me:

leaving academia altogether or compromising my professional and financial future by agreeing to teach as a part-time adjunct somewhere?anywhere?

with neither benefits (even of the limited sort that Berube ridiculed) nor

mentoring. I was especially attracted to the idea of having an opportunity to be an experienced postdoc; now knowing my way pretty well around the

politics of theory, literature, and pedagogy, I believed that I could cultivate

significant intellectual and professional relationships at an institution that would complement my graduate training.

Since 1996, however, my academic autobiography has proved to be more comedy than tragedy. In that year I was fortunate to parlay a two-year visiting assistant professorship in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture (LCC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology into a satisfying tenure-track position. Unlike many of my academic contemporaries, I



140 HI THE MARION L BRITTAIN TEACHING FELLOWSHIP

therefore didn't experience a personal sense of disappointment over the

fact that Gilman's proposal was never acted on, at least not in the form he

described. Yet once I began my new position as an assistant professor, I

found it impossible to close my eyes to a large population of colleagues at

Georgia Tech who literally embodied the structural problems of the aca

demic job market. These colleagues were fifteen ABDs and postdoctoral Marion L. Brittain teaching fellows (named in honor of a former Georgia Tech president). Brittain fellows, I learned shortly after my arrival in At

lanta, predominantly taught service courses, particularly classes in first

year composition, technical communication, and public speaking. In those

days, however, Brittain fellows constituted a nascent program still very much in the process of defining itself. Most problematic about the pro

gram was the fact that a significant infrastructure had not yet been estab

lished to provide the fellows with what I regarded as the key feature of

Gilman's proposal, namely, genuine faculty mentoring of young scholars

and teachers. Brittain fellows performed exemplary teaching service in my

department but did so for low pay (although their salaries were higher than

Berube's imagined Gilman fellows, and they did enjoy full retirement and

health benefits) and minimal additional professional training. So it was

with Gilman's admonishment very much in the front of my mind that in

my second year at Georgia Tech I became the Brittain fellow coordinator.

In that new capacity I was determined to improve the professional

prospects of the fellows and to fill in more concretely the blanks of what

Gilman meant by mentoring. While my intention here is not to champion Gilman over Berube (or

vice versa) or even to reconcile the differences between Gilman's proposal and Berube's critique, it is my hope that the ensuing description of the

Brittain Fellow Program will show that a version of Gilman's idea can in

deed become a positive model for interim academic employment if the

kind of safeguards that Berube points to are put into place. Attempting to

achieve a kind of equipoise between Gilman and Berube seems to me es

sential if we are to respond proactively to the job crisis in the humanities

and in such a way as to avoid further entrenching the Tale of Two Systems

currently in place, one system for the privileged few who find tenure-track

employment and another for the disenfranchised majority forced into the

lifestyle of academic nomads?far less exotic versions of Matthew Arnold's

Scholar Gypsy condemned to spend their working lives as frantic com

muters shuttling back and forth in some cases among four or five institu

tions without any assurance of long-term employment or health and

retirement benefits. What follows is an account of our achievements over

the last several years in the Brittain Fellow Program, which I believe to be




one of the most dynamic and hopeful models for postdoctoral humanities

training in the United States. This account is not, however, intended to be a form of self-congratulation. Besides highlighting the dimensions of the

program that I am proud of, I have also attempted to point in the direc

tions that this program (and, by inference, other programs of its kind) must grow if it is to fulfill its promise of being at the vanguard of postdoc toral training nationwide.

As Brittain fellow coordinator I have been fortunate to gain the strong

support of my department and institution to ensure that the fellowship of

fers the essentials of meaningful interim employment in academia (espe

cially within the specific context of Georgia Tech), as defined by the

following criteria: the opportunity for real scholarly and pedagogical devel

opment; a substantial mentoring program, including the opportunity for

fellows to participate in a series of professional development workshops;

training in new media design and pedagogy; and full retirement and health

benefits. By combining these features, the fellowship offers a stable schol

arly and teaching track for those young scholars committed to staying in

academia as well as a valuable opportunity for all fellows to supplement their academic credentials and to retrain themselves in a burgeoning (and

high-paying) field by exploiting the department's high-level resources in its

New Media Center and its graduate program Information Design and

Technology. Of course, our ability to train Brittain fellows in new media is

specific to the strengths of my department?other departments and insti

tutions may have quite different strengths?but I want to emphasize that similar training resources should be identified in every teaching and re

search institution and made available, in particular, to adjunct faculty mem

bers. Unlike so many English departments that employ non-tenure-track instructors as adjuncts and provide them with very little hope for profes sional advancement, in my department we take seriously our mission to

provide the fellows with experience and training that will give them good professional options, both within and outside of academia.

There are currently eighteen Brittain fellows in my department. They come from PhD programs in English, comparative literature, and anthro

pology (although we are interested in recruiting fellows from other disci

plines as well). Each fellow is offered a three-year teaching contract, renewed annually, with full portable retirement (TIAA-CREF) and health benefits.2 Brittain fellows may successfully complete their PhD before or

after arriving at Georgia Tech, although more and more of them arrive on

campus with the PhD in hand. This circumstance is no accident, for we

have actively worked to recruit postdoctoral applicants in recent years; such recruitment required a change in the terms of the fellowship, which



142 HI THE MARION L BRITTAIN TEACHING FELLOWSHIP

formerly stipulated that new fellows begin as ABDs. We felt that recruiting non-PhDs placed too much pressure on all but the most advanced ABD

fellows. In the two years since altering the terms of the fellowship to enable the recruitment of PhDs, we have found that postdocs tend to benefit more

from the kinds of mentoring and training offered here because they are not

faced with the challenge of moving to a new city and university, learning a new curriculum, and completing a dissertation all at the same time.

An important material and symbolic feature of the program is the tech

nological infrastructure and physical placement of fellow offices. Without

exception, Brittain fellow offices are integrated with faculty offices. This

integration avoids a common problem encountered by adjunct instructors

throughout academia, namely, being shunted off to an obscure corner of a

department's office building, preferably out of sight and mind (as we all

know, a distressingly high proportion of adjunct instructors at many insti

tutions don't have an office at all). The flow of foot traffic in my depart ment therefore leads to organic and spontaneous conversations that are

good for morale as well as for professional, intellectual, and social ex

change. Brittain fellow offices are shared by two people; each office is

equipped with a recent generation of Macintosh computer and accompa nied by unlimited e-mail and Web access. Fellows also have voice mail and

enjoy copying and mailing privileges, especially advantageous during the

high job market season of October through December, when photocopy

ing and mailing can become extremely expensive enterprises. By contrast

to the perception of adjunct instructors at many institutions, Brittain fel

lows are regarded by everyone at Georgia Tech?administrators, tenured

and tenure-track faculty members, students, and, indeed, the fellows them

selves?as an integral part of the department's community.

Depending on the curricular needs of the department, from five to eight fellows are selected each year through a national search process (the most

recent group hails from Brown University; Duke University; Emory Uni

versity; Indiana University, Bloomington; New York University; State

University of New York, Albany; State University of New York, Buffalo;

University of Wisconsin, Madison; and University of Wisconsin, Milwau

kee). Advertisements for the fellowship are placed in the MLA Job Informa tion List as well as the Chronicle of Higher Education and in various electronic

news group lists. In the spring all incoming Brittain fellows are mailed a

detailed orientation packet, including potential course textbooks in cultural

studies, sample course syllabi, and exhaustive information about moving to

Atlanta. Before the beginning of each academic year a week-long orienta

tion is conducted for the incoming group. During orientation the new fel

lows become well acquainted with one another as well as with other



DARYL S. OGDEN III 143

members of the faculty and with the established fellows from previous

years. The orientation introduces the new fellows to the department's writ

ing program and curriculum, provides them with several different teaching models in a series of workshop sessions, and encourages collaboration be

tween fellows and faculty members. By its very nature, then, the fellowship

provides a close-knit community of scholars and teachers, because from

day 1 people are working and socializing with one another in an environ

ment similar to that offered at the inception of many graduate programs. This orientation helps avoid the problem that many departments face, of

employing isolated and marginalized adjunct faculty members.

Throughout the academic year fellows receive constructive feedback

from the Brittain coordinator with respect to their teaching materials, in

cluding syllabi, homework assignments, and essay assignments. To facilitate

pedagogical development further, the Brittain coordinator attends at least one class session a year of each first- and second-year fellow and writes a

detailed critique of the experience (third-year fellows have the option to

decline a class visit). This critique forms the basis for a later meeting be tween the coordinator and the fellow to discuss what things are going well

in a class and what things might need improvement. Producing the critique also helps the coordinator write a strong and detailed letter of recommen

dation that is included in the fellow's placement dossier. I emphasize to the

fellows that a letter of recommendation coming from beyond their PhD

program serves an important strategic function on the job market, because it demonstrates their ability to succeed in a new academic environment.

The writing curriculum employed by my department is a quite sophisti cated and demanding two-semester sequence intended to serve as the in

tellectual foundation for our undergraduate major Science, Technology, and Culture (STAC). The first course focuses on the discourses of cultural

studies, while the second concentrates on the cultural studies of science and technology. These are by no means traditional composition courses.

They are taught, rather, as high-level introductions, with an emphasis on

primary readings in cultural theory (e.g., works by Raymond Williams, Clifford Geertz, Cornel West, Gayatri Spivak, and Laura Mulvey) and on

the critical practices of science studies (e.g., works by Thomas Kuhn, Eve

lyn Fox Keller, Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, and Stephen Jay Gould). Fellows enjoy a wide degree of freedom to teach the cultural artifacts and forms of representation that represent their intellectual interests?includ

ing, but not limited to, literature, science, film, television, and new media. The writing curriculum adds considerably to the teaching experience of the fellows because although the department's Writing Committee has

worked hard to establish a coherent and ambitious writing program, each



144 II THE MARION L. BRITTAIN TEACHING FELLOWSHIP

fellow designs a syllabus within the broad parameters of the curriculum. This latitude allows fellows to portray their experience within LCC as far more than simply teaching traditional composition classes. Indeed, fellows

accurately represent themselves on the academic job market as eminently

qualified to teach courses in literature, film, literary theory, and cultural

studies, as well as in the emerging fields of science studies and new media. In addition to being encouraged to exercise their pedagogical creativity

in curriculum development, fellows are given valuable opportunities to

teach in state-of-the-art networked computer labs. These teaching oppor tunities are accompanied by extensive pedagogical training sessions that show teachers how to employ new communication technologies responsi

bly in the context of teaching cultural studies, science studies, and writing. Consequently, the fellows are doing the most innovative and exciting

teaching nationally in digital communications. These technological tools

have by no means replaced the traditional teaching of writing, but they have certainly made students and instructors aware of the writing process in new and intellectually stimulating ways. (The use of computers to teach

writing at Georgia Tech is not a backdoor attempt to integrate distance

learning into our curriculum, something that I and my colleagues are con

vinced limits contact between students and instructors and represents one

of the greatest threats both to a traditional college education and to aca

demic employment.) What is perhaps most crucial from the fellows' pro fessional point of view, the ability to teach effectively in computer labs

responds to a need shown increasingly in academic job advertisements for

faculty members who are trained and experienced in electronic pedagogy. Not surprisingly, several fellows have gone on to tenure-track positions for

which they were explicitly recruited to develop and expand programs in

electronic pedagogy. In order to combat the impression that fellows and faculty members are

separated from one another by their different identifications within the

department, each fellow is assigned to a tenured or tenure-track faculty adviser within LCC whose scholarly and teaching interests relate to the

fellow's. This relationship is intended to provide the fellow with a mean

ingful faculty contact, someone with whom to share scholarship, teaching ideas, and job-search materials for constructive feedback. Faculty advisers

frequently write letters of recommendation for the fellows with whom

they've been paired. The faculty advising program is intended as the foun

dational element of the professional development dimension of the fellow

ship. In the fall semester, a series of five professional development

workshops are conducted in consecutive weeks and organized on the fol

lowing topics: formatting the c.v. and putting together the placement



DARYL S. OGDEN III 145

dossier, writing the job letter and dissertation abstract, writing the state

ment of teaching philosophy, selecting and editing a writing sample, preparing for the MLA (or other professional organization) interviews. In

early December, each fellow is given the opportunity to undergo a practice interview with tenure-track faculty members. Since formally implement

ing the professional development aspects of the fellowship four years ago, we have seen twenty-one of thirty-three fellows receive tenure-track assis tant professor offers as well as long-term instructorships-lectureships at

every conceivable kind of university and college across North America, in

cluding research universities, teaching universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges.3 Some of these institutions are Boston Univer

sity, the University of Waterloo, Arizona State University, Indiana Univer

sity of Pennsylvania, the University of West Georgia, Clayton State

College, and Dillard College.

Beyond professional development workshops targeted at the high sea son of the fall MLA search, seminars are also conducted throughout the

year on placing essays in scholarly journals, turning one's dissertation into a

book manuscript, and identifying and communicating with academic

presses for placing book manuscripts. Several fellows participate in disser tation and book manuscript writing groups. Fellows are also regular partic ipants in the department's Works-in-Progress Seminars (WIPS), which occur three times each semester. These seminars are intended as an oppor

tunity for fellows and faculty members to share in an extended format their current research projects. Fellows generally present on chapters from their dissertations and receive detailed feedback from one another as well as from faculty members. These seminars are intended to knit the depart ment into a single intellectual community. Several fellows have used the WIPS format to develop scholarship that has subsequently been accepted for publication in academic journals. Each fellow also receives a significant amount of travel support for attending academic conferences.

For those fellows interested in making themselves more attractive to both academic and nonacademic employers, the department's graduate program Information Design and Technology and its continuing-educa tion curriculum in the New Media Center offer exciting options. One of the privileges fellows enjoy is that they may audit, free of charge, graduate courses in new media. These semester-long courses in multimedia design, graphics, video production, and Web design add enormous value to the fel lows' experience and qualifications. As employees within the department, fellows may also formally enroll in continuing-education classes and earn

certificates over a two- to three-day period in the latest developments of new media technology. Fellows variously integrate this training into their



146 III THE MARION L BRITTAIN TEACHING FELLOWSHIP

teaching or use it as a platform to explore other career opportunities. Over

the past four years, at least four fellows have left academia and now work in new media or high-tech companies. The Brittain program therefore at

tempts to be flexible in responding to some of the structural flaws of the current academic job market?a market that, as the "Final Report" makes

clear, simply can't sustain every qualified job applicant.

Beyond the pedagogical, scholarly, and new media opportunities of

fered, peer-elected fellows also work on several important departmental committees, including the Executive Committee (the most powerful com

mittee in LCC), the Writing Committee (which oversees and sets curricu

lum for the writing program), and the Brittain Committee (which addresses professional concerns particular to the fellows). This committee

work is intended not to be an onerous addition to the Brittain workload

but, rather, to function as a guarantee that Brittain concerns will be repre sented to the department at large. Some of the work that has been accom

plished by these various committees over the past several years has

markedly improved both the working conditions and professional qualifica tions of the fellows, ranging from the addition of voice mail and better and

faster computers in Brittain offices to the establishment of the curriculum

for the writing program to the creation of a cultural studies textbook cur

rently in development with a major publisher. This departmental service also provides the fellows with valuable committee experience within an aca

demic context, experience that has a number of direct benefits, not least of

which is that it can be highlighted in job applications and in letters of rec

ommendation. Crucially, committee work teaches fellows what to expect when they embark on what will hopefully turn out to be a tenure-track ca

reer. A disproportionately high number of fellows who have served on de

partmental committees have indeed found tenure-track employment, a

correlation that I believe should not be underestimated. The breadth of

committee responsibilities embraced by individual fellows who have gone on to succeed in the most compressed academic job market in history sug

gests to me that the common assumption that young scholars must produce a phalanx of published articles and, ideally, a book just to be seriously con

sidered for employment is both erroneous and alarmist. In my experience since 1996, the great majority of Brittain fellows who have continued to

work in academia beyond their days at Georgia Tech shared one thing in

common?and it's not an eminent publishing record. Though they were all

excellent scholars and teachers, arguably the most important professional skill acquired by the fellows during their time in Atlanta was learning how

to represent the fullness and diversity of their professional experience, both

at Georgia Tech and in their graduate program. Indeed, the extraordinary




balance of their experience as instructors, scholars, and committee mem

bers may have made many Brittain fellows attractive to prospective aca

demic employers. Not a single one of the twenty-one who continued on an

academic track after Georgia Tech has done so as a consequence of being offered a book contract (indeed, at least two fellows who began excellent

tenure-track positions in the past year did so with no publications to their

credit). For those dissertation advisers who drill into their students the im

portance of publishing at the expense of other forms of professional devel

opment, the overwhelming success of Brittain fellows in finding academic

employment might be puzzling. But in fact it's not puzzling at all. Based

largely on their rich professional experiences at Georgia Tech, Brittain fel

lows speak, both metaphorically and literally, to search committees as intel

lectual peers who are well prepared to undertake the challenging work of a

humanities department in all its forms?in scholarship, teaching, and ser

vice, the three pillars on which most successful careers are built.4 As I hope to have demonstrated, the Brittain fellowship offers one im

portant model of meaningful interim employment within academia. Unlike so many adjunct and temporary faculty members nationwide, Brittain fel

lows are provided with three-year appointments, valuable opportunities to

develop professionally beyond their graduate programs, and a dynamic ac

ademic and professional community in which to work. That said, no one in

my department is under any illusion that the Brittain program represents a

postdoctoral Utopia. Indeed, in order to ensure that holding the Brittain

fellowship remains a desirable goal among the best young scholar-teachers in the nation, my department and my institution must work hard as advo cates for the fellows in the following discrete areas: first, Brittain fellow salaries should rise at a rate commensurate with their tenured and tenure track colleagues (as a corollary to this, summer teaching support should be offered to supplement the incomes of those who need or desire it); second, travel money for research and conference presentations should be made in

creasingly available in order that fellows can make useful professional con

tacts and continue to develop as scholars beyond the PhD; third, class size

should be significantly reduced from the current figure of twenty-five to no more than eighteen, so that fellows can perform even more innovative, hands-on, and creative teaching than they already do?teaching that is es

sential both for the intellectual development of first-year students and for the pedagogical development of the fellows; finally, Brittain fellows should

enjoy more opportunities to teach intermediate and upper-division courses, which will further enhance their professional qualifications. Over the last several years, as my department's success in placing Brittain fellows in tenure-track positions has gained attention, we have seen an astonishing



148 II THE MARION L. BRITTAIN TEACHING FELLOWSHIP

rise in the quality of fellows, who now come from some of the best doctoral

programs nationwide. The responsibility that I bear along with my col

leagues is therefore to make sure that the advantages of the current surplus of academic talent do not accrue to Georgia Tech alone. We have an ethi

cal and moral responsibility to take care that those advantages are also dis

tributed to our fellows.

NOTES =^

!In defense of Gilman against Berube, I should point out that in a recent interview I conducted with Gilman to learn more about the response to his proposal from 1995, he

made clear that in his view a disturbingly high proportion of language and literature

graduate students and assistant professors are effectively unmentored in terms of pro fessionalization. If this is true (and based on my own anecdotal knowledge, I would

concur with Gilman), then we already work in a field overpopulated by what Berube

calls "optionally mentored" young colleagues. 2With respect to benefits, then, the Brittain fellowship is significantly more ambi

tious?and expensive?than what Gilman originally proposed (which should please Berube).

3To clarify these numbers, fifteen fellows received tenure-track offers, while another

six received long-term non-tenure-track offers. Nine of the thirty-three fellows cited in

these statistics will continue as Brittain fellows in the 2000-01 academic year and there

fore remain on the academic job market.

4To learn more about the Brittain Fellow Program's professional development di

mension and placement record, please visit the following URL: http://www.lcc.gatech . edu/faculty/brittain.html.

WORKS CITED

Berube, Michael. The Employment of English: Theory, Jobs, and the Future of Literary Stud ies. New York: New York UP, 1998.

"Final Report of the MLA Committee on Professional Employment." ADE Bulletin 119

(1998): 27-45.

Gilman, Sander. Personal interview. By Daryl Ogden. 16 Feb. 2000. -. "Jobs: What We (Not They) Can Do." MLA Newsletter 21A (1995): 4-5.



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The Marion L. Brittain Teaching Fellowship: A Model for Postdoctoral Training