WHATEVER

[Andrea Nelson]

Dear Seelangers:

I would like to respond to Gary Toops's comments, recreated below.

I agree with him that the job description of most Russian professors and
scholars most likely does not include "job hunting" for one's students.
However, the spirit in which Professor Ervin's comments were made, in my
opinion, is what it's all about.  That is, being aware of the possibilities
that an education in Slavic can provide an undergraduate and/or graduate
student and, perhaps most importantly, encouraging the best and brightest of
our students to feel welcome to strive for a place in the Russian and Slavic
sectors of the academy.  While it goes without saying that positions in the
academy are now not as plentiful as they were in years past, we should not
be discouraged from either encouraging our students in their future
endeavors or honestly communicating the passion that we feel about our
specialities.

Sincerely,

Andrea Nelson
Department of Russian
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010



 At 11:28 AM 8/25/96 CDT, you wrote:
>As so often happens on SEELangs, the discussion has gone rather far
>afield in a relatively short time.
>
>In the past twelve years, not one student has ever approached me
>about securing a job involving Russian or other Slavic language
>skills, nor has any administrator suggested that I duplicate the
>function of the university's job placement services.  On occasion
>I may have directed one student or another to specific locations
>on the Internet where employment notices are regularly posted, but
>SEELangs has never been one of those locations.
>
>It is ironic that the same people who claim to print out and post
>every forwarded job announcement that appears on SEELangs also
>claim not to have the time to monitor one or two other subscriber
>lists or to direct their students to those lists.  Students who
>are serious about finding a job are going to do their own job
>hunting (and not rely on "hot tips" from their Russian prof!),
>and it is no more incumbent upon me to provide students with reams
>of downloaded job announcements than it is upon me to clip want
>ads for my students from the classified section of the New York
>Times or Nezavisimaja gazeta.
>
>The word "comfort" has cropped up several times in this discussion.
>Yes, it is comforting to know that we in the profession have not
>been lying to our students when we say that we are providing them
>not just with knowledge, but with a marketable job skill, and that
>we have the periodic Slavic-related job announcement to back us up.
>
>But that was never the issue.  The issue was and remains (and where
>are the techno-nerds screaming about "wasted bandwidth" when you
>need them?) whether SEELangs should replicate other, equally
>accessible subscriber lists and whether it should continue to be
>used as a dumping ground for every even remotely Slavic-related
>job posting by someone who himself is not even a subscriber to
>SEELangs.
>
>
>Gary H. Toops                               TOOPS at TWSUVM.UC.TWSU.EDU
>Associate Professor                         Ph (316) WSU-3180 (978-3180)
>Wichita State University                    Fx (316) WSU-3293 (978-3293)
>Wichita, Kansas 67260-0011 USA              http://www.twsu.edu/~mcllwww
>
>