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THERE is a certain pragmatism that comes along with a position in German at a university in the Deep South. A Yankee neophyte begins to appreciate the impact of southern history on the task at hand when class rosters first appear: German surnames are largely absent. Most students do not enroll in German to touch base with their ethnicity. Not only is the “roots” factor unreliable as a recruiting tool, but almost unknown is the cuckoo-clock, bratwurst, and oompah-band perception of German culture still current in other parts of the land. Should mid-western colleagues ever become uneasy when contemplating these supports for their enrollment figures, they would do well to look to the South. German immigration has been minimal, and the population is concentrated not in cosmopolitan cities but in parochial small towns. The challenges facing the discipline are nowhere clearer. The response may be as pragmatic as Business German, offered as part of the degree program at Mississippi State University, where the number of German majors has risen from a worrisome three to a proud fifteen within two years (for other possible responses, see Blackwell). That is a step forward for American Germanics.
Unfortunately, considerations of this sort remain largely unknown to PhD candidates. Conversations with colleagues from other language disciplines suggest that, whatever the language or literature under study, the emerging PhD stands on the wrong side of a very wide gap. The transition from graduate study to professional responsibilities is anything but fluid. The measures suggested here are designed specifically for departments of German; however, they would be appropriate for most foreign language departments with terminal degree programs.
The beginning assistant professor of German must often learn pragmatism on the job because many PhD-granting departments eschew it—directly or indirectly, by design or through neglect. The posture assumed, often unconsciously, is that the department trains intellectuals, not professionals. The emphasis carries implications both for the job market and for language education in departments that only hire new PhDs. Upon appointment, the beginner emerges from the warm self-containment and intellectual rigor of the dissertation process into a cold world inhabited by eighteen-year-olds who do not want to take German “because it's hard.” The amount and the kind of pragmatism applied to that harsh reality have an impact on teaching effectiveness and professional fulfillment. Some pragmatism is unavoidable. My thesis is that it should be introduced at an earlier point in the proceedings—in graduate school. 1 It might then be used in a new arena—in the job market.
The job market is nothing if not pragmatic. Most positions open because the impending departure of a faculty member spells potential weakness for a department, weakness in its performance of teaching, research, and service. Logically enough, a search committee tries to meet anticipated needs in these traditional areas of professional activity. Small private colleges and large public universities may define the mix differently, but the three areas are so ingrained in our collective consciousness that they will inevitably influence the deliberations of many if not most research committees.
PhD candidates should be reminded periodically that such expectations await them in the job market. Graduate faculties should translate passive anxiety about the placement of their students into active measures designed to meet search-committee expectations. Such measures can appear prominently on the curriculum vitae of a new PhD. The suggestions that follow are offered as examples, not as a program. Any program would have to reflect additional, local factors.
Graduate teaching assistants who are particularly effective should receive recognition from their departments. If awards or prizes are given by a larger unit within the university—for example, by the college of liberal arts—students are even better served. The department might offer two prizes of its own each year, naming them after a distinguished professor emeritus or a renowned Germanist. A faculty committee would visit classes taught by teaching assistants and make recommendations at a department meeting. The prizes will mean more both in the short term and in the long if they include a token sum of money. If funds cannot be raised in any other way, each member of a faculty of ten might contribute five dollars. The resultant fifty could be divided in half for two Renowned Professor X Awards for Distinguished Instruction. Not only would this serve as an incentive to improve teaching but it would also shout “Excellence in Teaching” from the vita.
The beginning dissertator should be steered away from topics so specialized that there is little hope a reputable monograph series would accept them. Vanity-press and quasi-vanity-press operations should not be considered. When the dissertation has been defended successfully, the department should help its graduate convert the dissertation into a submissible manuscript. This responsibility should not be abandoned because of the recent appearance of paid “editorial consulting services” (see McMillen).
A German department might also consider forming a permanent student research collective. Such a group might try to produce one journal article in the course of a calendar year. One member of the collective would be a practiced publishing scholar on the faculty.
Service is the area of traditional professional activity for which emerging PhDs are least prepared. And yet there are service responsibilities that traditionally fall to junior faculty members. For instance, many departments sponsor a German table, a German club, or a German house. Senior faculty members may not want to be involved themselves, but they will usually agree that something of the sort is needed. Of course, this attitude is regrettable. It is also widespread, so widespread that service activities can be viewed by the PhD-granting department as a likely expectation—stated or unstated—of a search committee.
Departments at doctoral institutions should sponsor German clubs, and PhD candidates should be encouraged to participate. Each dissertating graduate student should be designated a “German Club Advisor,” should attend some (more than two) meetings, and should give at least one program and preferably two. This activity can find its way into job interviews. Small colleges will be impressed, while senior faculty members at large institutions may be relieved to see such burdens passing to younger shoulders. For their part, graduate students will develop a much more accurate impression of the range of professional assignments in their futures.
Before such measures can be taken, faculties of PhD-granting departments must climb attitudinal mountains. As a first step, one member might be given oversight responsibility, particularly in the area of service. But such a placement officer might also be empowered to put hard questions about publishability to dissertation directors, to monitor the work of the research collective, and to chair the teaching awards committee. The placement officer would also check graduate placement vitae for misspellings, typographical errors, and mistakes in idiomatic usage. Just as damaging is the solipsistic vita, the one unconsciously organized to meet idiosyncratic, psychological needs rather than the needs of the search committee. A vita with entries under the headings Teaching, Research , and Service will have a competitive advantage.
Finally, when vitae are in finished form, graduate departments should conduct mock MLA interviews—preferably in a local hotel room. The “search committee” should have as members native speakers of English and native speakers of German. The latter should be prepared to ask too slowly, too clearly, and in gently paternal/maternal tones, “Sind Sie je in Deutschland gewesen?” (“Have you ever been to Germany?”) Those who cannot play these so-familiar roles in all seriousness should not participate. Native speakers of German from other departments would be ideal members of such a search committee.
The overriding concern behind all these measures is the competitiveness of top students for open positions and therefore the future welfare of foreign language instruction in the United States. At a time when fewer students are beginning graduate programs, it is of critical importance to the foreign language profession that the most promising degree recipients do secure work. The new PhD who has the kind of preprofessional experience suggested should be easy for a search committee to identify as an attractive addition to its language program—whatever the level of sophistication and whatever the geographic location.
The author is Associate Professor of German at Mississippi State University.
1 Interest in pragmatism as a component of graduate education was apparent at the Conference on Graduate Foreign Language Education held at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville on 15–17 November 1985. See MLA Newsletter 18.1 (1986): 18–19.
Blackwell, Jeannine. “Turf Management: Or, Why is the Great Tradition Fading?” Monatshefte 77.3 (1985): 271–85.
McMillen, Liz. “A Doctoral Dissertation Is Not Yet a Book, Young Tenure-Seeking Scholars Are Told.” Chronicle of Higher Education 6 Feb. 1986: 23–24.
© 1987 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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