"The Essential Functions of the Position: Collegiality and Productivity"--Job Analysis in Mad at School?

While I was reading the third chapter of Mad at School, I was struck by how much this idea of the "essential functions of the position" resonates with Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  After I read Wilson's chapter on Job Analysis (which I reflected on earlier), I was struck by this idea that the ADA really impacted job analysis by requiring jobs to determine "essential functions" (Wilson 227).  This created a greater need for the work of job analysis and pushed on the field in this direction.  I really think that what Price is doing in chapter 3 is job analysis--she's examining what the essential functions are of an academic job and then pushing the envelope.

This seems to be needed because while the corporate sector has gotten into practicing job analysis while advertising positions, this hasn't really infiltrated academia yet.  Yes, administrative and secretarial and janitorial etc. positions on campus often have very thorough job analysis reports, but with the more intellectual labor on campus, this seems to be absent.  What are the essential functions of being a professor?  Research, teaching, service, (and collegiality?) of course!  But wait: what do those even mean?  And what do they mean for people who are instructors and not professors?  For grad students and not instructors or professors?  For someone with mental disabilities?

Price asks,

What are the 'essential functions' (Americans with Disabilities Act) of academic employment--specifically, employment as a faculty member?  How are those functions defined, evaluated, and rewarded?  What happens to faculty with mental disabilities in this system?  And finally, how might recognition and accommodation of faculty members with mental disabilities enrich academic discourse?  What might 'universal design' come to mean if it is applied in professional kairotic spaces?  (105)

These are excellent questions.  I think that Price does a good job of showing how these essential functions of research, teaching, and service (and collegiality) are problematic, how they're rewarded (tenure), and what happens (people fall out of the system).  While she does address ways to change, I don't know if any of them feel super accessible to me.  I want change!  I do!  But I'm still not really sure how after this chapter.

Going back to the idea that I want change, this passage stood out to me:

Is it possible that fluency in kairotic space is an essential function of an academic job?  Is it true that a faculty member who is unable--perhaps occasionally, perhaps often--to make predictable, material appearances in kairotic space, or who is unable to operate smoothly in such spaces, is unqualified?  Are we ready to say that people with sever depression, or schizophrenia, or agoraphobia, cannot be professors?  I want to say no; I want to imagine an academic workplace where accommodations for mental disability are feasible, where we can bring our differences to work in ways that enrich our students, our colleagues, and ourselves. (112)

Huh.  Part of me feels like many in the field have come to believe that one of the essential functions of the professorate is a "sound mind."  But, that's obviously not the case.  How do we challenge this, though?  I mean, I'm just a grad student--I don't currently make decisions on hiring or tenure or anything really, so what can I do?

Okay, now that these feelings of helplessness are out there, here's something more uplifting: "But still more valuable to me have been those occasions on which my nondisabled allies have chosen to speak out" (133).  This reminds me of a TED lecture that I watched last night about the "bystander approach" to sexual violence prevention.  It's the idea that those who are affiliated with people who are being abused or doing the abusing can take a "leadership opportunity" to either help the person out of the abusive situation or to confront the abuser.  I have seen similar discussions in WGST about speaking out when others say things that are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc--that silence is consent.  I have trouble with this idea of silence as consent, because it assumes the person seeing/hearing has the power and position and ability to do the confronting, but I think it comes from a good place.  And I see this here too.  So, maybe one thing I can do is question people when they try to pathologize students, peers, professors or support my peers, students, and professors.

Overall, I think this is a really interesting chapter not only because it invokes I-O job analysis, but also because it aims to improve the working conditions of academics. The tenure clock and division of research/teaching/service doesn't work for everyone, but not everyone can choose not to get tenure or not to do research (because of needing health insurance, for example)--we need to be honest about this!  Discussions are starting in regards to what the professoriate even means: this should be one of the first things universities do.  Conduct job analysis.  Determine the essential functions.  Restructure departments to make positions more accessible.

I really think we can do this :)

Price, Margaret.  "The Essential Functions of The Position: Collegiality and Productivity."  Mad At School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011.  103-140.  Print