Cheryl Miller Dellasega

In my office, I ate the sandwich I had packed knowing it would be a tight day, mentally rearranging the afternoon to allow me to get Meg and Tyler through dinner and homework in time for Ben to take them to soccer practice while I returned to meet Sandy.  It was no different than many of my workdays, but I felt energized until walking in the door to class, a three-hour seminar on advanced applications in nutrition that taxed the stamina of both my students and me.

Fortunately, one of the tricks I learned during my rough first year of teaching was to include a hands-on activity to break up long lectures; today that involved small group work on developing special dietary plans for patients with nutrition problems.  It was the kind of exercise soon-to-be graduates rated highly; those good evaluations from senior students would help with my tenure application, especially if Dr. Hart was going to criticize my performance in the classroom as well as with research.

In addition to the length of class, I dreaded seeing Rick Stein, the most difficult student of my career and a good part of the reason for my lack of teaching confidence. He had been a challenging student from his freshman year, but thankfully, he would graduate in the spring.  That didn’t mean our remaining time together would be less difficult.

For once, he didn’t interrupt my lecture to point out a perceived mistake or overlooked fact, but he still sat in the front row, glaring at me with narrowed brown eyes. As soon as class ended and before I could escape to my office, he jumped out of his seat, waving the homework assignment I had returned in my face. He was over six feet tall with the exaggerated, muscular curves of a bodybuilder and the menacing looks of a television villain.

He said, “This is the first assignment of the semester and you’re already targeting me.  I’m protesting this grade. I’ve never received anything lower than an A in my three years of college from any professor but you. This is unacceptable.”

It was an outrageous claim considering how poorly he performed in every other nutrition course I taught, but faculty had been getting memos lately about handing out higher grades than students earned. “Grade inflation will not be tolerated,” the notice from President Martin had said, but when overbearing parents and entitled students made life miserable for the teacher who gave a B rather than an A, we all knew who would prevail.

“Rick, you can see from my comments that you didn’t address four out of the five criteria on the syllabus.” I continued gathering up my things and edged toward the door, desperate to be on my way.

A few other students stopped filing out of the room, watching us like drivers rubbernecking to see a car accident. Faima Mahair, my teaching assistant, backed away from the two of us.

“We’ll see, we’ll see. I know you’re on tenure track, and I can make things very uncomfortable for you.”

I tried to return his gaze evenly. “You didn’t meet the requirements, and now you’re very close to violating university behavioral conduct guidelines.”

For a moment, he towered over me as if ready to say more, but then he picked up his things and left.

Once everyone was gone, Faima looked at me, wide-eyed. “I never want to teach if I have to deal with students like him.”

***

Wade Cross, my office mate and a junior faculty like me, came in just as I was sorting my class handouts into file folders for next year when I taught it…if there was a “next year” for me.

“Hey, Lacey. How was the camp-out?”

I repeated the summary I’d given Sandy, and he brightened.

“It’ll be awesome when I can take my boys out in the woods for an overnight,” he said. “They’ll love it, and what better way to get out of town on a football weekend?”

The idea of Wade and his extremely active three-year-old twins in a tent for an entire night almost made me laugh, but I didn’t want to ruin his enthusiasm. I was about to dash out the door when I remembered my surprise meeting.

“Dr. Hart had Florence set up an ‘urgent’ meeting with me tomorrow. Has she gotten in touch with you, too?”

“No, but maybe she will. I’m sure he just wants to make sure everything for your sixth-year tenure review is in order.”

“That’s what worries me. I know we both got brutal two-year reviews, but then fourth year went easier, right?  It seems like this year should be a slam-dunk.”

Secretly, I knew his chances for tenure were better than mine. As a graduate of Yale, he was automatically part of Dr. Hart’s clique of male Ivy Leaguers. In addition, unlike me, he was the kind of easygoing teacher who ad-libbed lectures, dropped into the gym for a game of pick-up basketball with students, and participated in their rallies and fundraisers. He had a Gumby obsession that led to good-natured teasing and was readily available to review papers or craft grant submissions for Dr. Hart at all hours. His payoff was bound to be tenure, while I, the department’s first female hire, was on less secure footing.

Both of our spouses had jobs that assured a steady income (my husband, Ben, was an accountant, and Wade’s wife, Gracie, was a nurse), but earning tenure was a deal breaker none of my teachers had discussed in graduate school: if denied, I would be out of a job. Maybe if I had known that I would have pursued a more secure career track.

Wade toyed with his Gumby keychain. “Well, until we get that final notification from the university, we’re like those little ducks circling around on a runner at the carnival, with the tenure review committee holding popguns, trying to shoot us down.”

He wasn’t wrong. Tenure track was a ticking timer that started the moment a new faculty stepped on campus, counting off the days until six years later when either termination or a lifelong guarantee of employment would result. Although there were criteria for all candidates, the unspoken achievements often swayed decisions. Little things like rave reviews posted online on Rate My Professor, networking across campus, favorable appearances in public media, and even being respectful of senior faculty by always using their titles and never assuming a first-name basis were factored into tenure and promotion decisions off the record.

I said, “Dr. Hart has a good reason to shoot me down. He gave me permission to use SIMS data for publication, but when I opened the disk, the numbers were way off. Faima and Sandy looked at the file, too, and it didn’t make sense to them, either.”

“Faima? She’s one of the best graduate students we’ve got.  And if Sandy couldn’t figure it out, no one can”

“I know.  Sandy’s taking a second look at it and we’re getting together tonight to see what she comes up with.”

“That’s weird. I’ve worked on that data without any trouble. Maybe it’s a defective disk?”

I shook my head. “Already suggested that. Do you think Dr. Hart might be setting up a test to see how good a researcher I am?”

“Come on, Lacey. Geoff doesn’t want to see you crash and burn.”

Wade was on a first-name basis with our chair and an optimist about our boss. It would be hard to convince him that failure was exactly the outcome I suspected Dr. Hart wanted, despite his pretending support whenever we were with other people, but that wasn’t a topic I could discuss with anyone other than Ben and Sandy.  Even the handful of classmates I kept in touch with from my doctoral program were shocked when I hinted at the outright sabotaging Dr. Hart directed at me.  While they admitted it was common for women to face a different set of expectations in the world of academe, none of them knew about the side of him that emerged in the privacy of his office. There, he made it clear he wasn’t about to accept a female faculty in the Department of Nutrition, even if there were affirmative action mandates.

Seeing me crash and burn wouldn’t bother him in the least.