Japanese Instructors

[Martha Sherwood]

I thought the following memo would be of interest to those people on the
SEELANGS list who are concerned with the low pay of language instructors
and the threat of closure of departments with declining enrollments (The
Klanderud's list people).  I recently had the office management of the East
Asian languages Department added to my workload and have ended up being the
effective coordinator of their summer program.  Here we have a situation
where there is plenty of student interest, but the pay is so low that
no-one actually qualified to take the job is willing to do it.  The memo is
a petition to the University to allow us to hire a person who is capable of
doing the work but does not have the paper qualifications to be appointed
at the rank of instructor.  There is also a mostly useful but excessively
rigid collective bargaining agreement between the University and the
Graduate Teaching Fellows Union involved.

I think a number of Slavic departments, including our own, are threatened
by the low salary issue. Immigrants from poor and politically unstable
countries are willing to put up with more than are the Japanese, but even
they have a limit.

Martha Sherwood
Office Coordinator, Department of Russian
""        ""              , East Asian Languages
University of Oregon





15 May 1997


To:     Steadman Upham, Dean
        UO Graduate School


From:   Wendy Larson, Head, East Asian Languages



        Nancy Iwakawa, Summer Japanese Language Coordinator


RE:     Appointment of K.... S.... as an instructor


The Department of East Asian languages and literatures requests permission
to hire K.. S.., who is currently a graduate student in our MA program and
has been admitted to our Ph.D. program for fall term, as a Summer Session
instructor at 1.0 FTE.

In order to run a successful summer intensive Japanese program offering
first through third year Japanese, we need to be able to hire three
full-time experienced Japanese instructors.  These courses can be taught
effectively only if there is one full-time person available to oversee the
entire course, with the assistance of one or more graduate teaching
fellows.  A pedagogically sound intensive language course cannot possibly
be taught by a team of inexperienced part-time graduate students alone.
Only two of our academic-year Japanese instructors are available to teach
in the summer, and the pay we are able to offer is insufficient to attract
a competent person from outside the University.

K... S... taught second-year Japanese during the academic year 1996-97 and
is thus experienced and qualified.  She did not intend to enroll at the
University this summer, and thus employing her full time will not hinder
her academic progress.  The salary level we are offering her is somewhat
higher than what she would have received as a graduate teaching fellow.
She is financially unable to accept a GTF position at .49 FTE and, if we
are unable to offer her a full-time position, will take a full-time summer
position she has been offered elsewhere.

If this petition is not approved, it will prevent the Department of East
Asian Languages from offering a course (Third Year Japanese) for which
there is definite demand and which several students absolutely must have in
order to graduate on schedule at the end of summer term.