A college town?

In the midst of a weekend of ups and downs, in which I questioned again my location in this place, it occurred to me that as a "college town" this place is not particularly intellectual. A colleague mentioned this to me a short while back. There are not bookstores, the coffee shops, and the intellectual life we often times associate with a college town. Instead, near campus there are many bars, catered towards undergraduates. In town, there is a chain book store beyond the college bookstores near campus. Okay and when I say bar, I mean not really a bar, because bars cannot exist here as they must sell food. There is a small, great art center and a small farmers' market. But this town does not exist for faculty. It is exists for students. And this is a mistake in my mind. It needs to cater to not only the students, but also faculty, and the local folks.

This post comes after attending a reception at the University's President's house last night for new faculty. The short remarks centered on how much the faculty matter and our great credentials. That's nice. I am proud of my education and I would like to use it to research and do teaching, which would allow me tenure. Yet, our locations I do think have an affect on our abilities to do such things, or at the least allow the process to be easier.  And I wonder if the University, one of the largest employers in the area, thinks of the livability, which relates to our productivity, for faculty. Yes, the students tuition pays our salary, but your viability as an institution, beyond athletics, which is another story, rests on having faculty. We need support. We need spaces for faculty to engage in intellectual stimulation. We need to feel welcome in the places we live as faculty here, instead of feeling marginalized by our status affiliated with the University and for some of us, as outsiders to the South.

This brings me to another point I have been wondering about lately. After attending a few new faculty orientations and such, many, many people have gone to school here for some degree. Granted one of the meetings was in my college, in which half the faculty taught comp classes, I would assume as temporary faculty, but still I heard over and over how many degrees faculty had granted by this institution. While I've heard it is somewhat common to hire professors who completed their undergraduate work at an institution, especially private schools or maybe even a school like this one because of its location, I've also heard it is not good practice to only hire your own. This is because when people come from different places and are taught at different institutions they bring new ideas.  While I know some of us are not from here and from what I know there are quite a few of us with PhDs from good schools (and my point is not to get into I went to a good school, etc, but for the fact that many of us did work our tails off in PhD programs at other places, I do think we should be proud), but I feel that we are looked at with suspect. Maybe this happens other places... I cannot generalize from only my experiences here. And yes, maybe this is because I am still feeling like an outsider here, moving from a large metro area, with numerous amenities and institutions of higher education, and prior to that my college town, which did have coffee shops, book stores, and more of an intellectual atmosphere around campus beyond the football culture.

So, maybe marketing folks should talk to faculty. Maybe they should talk to us social scientists... they use methods similar to us.  Some things here have to be catered toward faculty or they are going to leave. And not all faculty are rich, so high priced eateries are not what I am talking about. And to ask so simply, this could even be a Target for right now or a grocery store that is note one of the ones we have here.  But oh, I wish there were spaces for faculty and this town was not catered towards students or just buying new shit just to buy it.

And my last point here is that some faculty also have children and we are supposed to be delighted by the child development center as an amenity. We couldn't afford it. But my point is not that it should be affordable (and I have a different thought on this and maybe we should make it this way to allow students to use it), but that the small things for faculty to mix and mingle cater towards those without kids. Why not family friendly events?

Maybe some of my dreams will come true. I do hope to stay here. I really want to keep my academic job. And this means getting tenure. And some people may say why are you not writing your research to get tenure. Well my friends, as someone trained in mental health, having an outlet for my thoughts is part of my self-care. And as I say again,  doing more writing makes you better no matter what it is, right?