University Partnerships with the Corporate Sector : Faculty Experiences with for-Profit Matriculation Pathway Programs [1 ed.] 9789004259263, 9789004259249

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University Partnerships with the Corporate Sector

Innovation & Leadership in English Language Teaching Series Editor Martha C. Pennington (City University of Hong Kong)

VOLUME �

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ilelt

University Partnerships with the Corporate Sector Faculty Experiences with For-Profit Matriculation Pathway Programs

By

Carter A. Winkle

LEIDEN | BOSTON

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. issn ����-���x isbn ��� �� �� ����� � (hardback) isbn ��� �� �� ����� � (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, idc Publishers, and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother, Connie Winkle

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Contents Preface ix

Part 1 Contextual Perspectives 1 The New University Context: Outsourcing and Corporate Partnerships 3 2 The New Context of English Language Programs within the Outsourcing Movement 18 3

An Exploratory Study 31

4 Methodology for Researching Practitioner Perspectives in the Corporate Sector Partnership Programs 46

Part 2 Front-Line Perspectives on Corporate Sector Partnership Pathway Programs 5

 English Language Program Administrators 67

6

 English Language Program Administrator–Faculty Border Crossers 117

7

English Language Teaching Faculty 162

8

Faculty in Academic Disciplines 194

Part 3 Reflections: Looking Backward and Forward 9

Review and Discussion of Findings 221

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 Into the Future 234

References 269 Index 277

Preface Education can be acknowledged as a sort of Winkle “family business.” Just as doctors, lawyers, engineers, musicians, athletes, and farmers seem to run in families, so too do educators. Both of my parents worked in a public university, and each had parents who were educators. A brother and two sisters are also teachers, as are a great number of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Whether it is our nature or nurture that we have in common, there is something in us Winkles that inclines us to pursue careers in education and, in general, in service to others (including pastoral). Consequently, although it took me a while to find my teaching vocation, having first pursued careers in both the performing arts and corporate finance in New York City, it would seem perhaps inevitable I would become a teacher. I got involved in English language teaching after the events of 9–11, which set in motion a period of reflection, questioning, and self-reassessment that led me to a decision to pursue an occupation of service to others. My first experience was with the for-profit Berlitz Language Center in Miami, Florida, where my status as a native speaker of English was deemed suffi­ cient   to justify putting me as a teacher of English language learners. I had gone to Berlitz as a way to “try on” teaching, to see if it would be a good fit for my disposition. My first day with students I had not yet completed the absurdly condensed, week-long required teacher-training activities. Still, this initial step to the front of the classroom, which occurred long before I understood concepts of curriculum, pedagogy, or indeed the linguistic features of my mother tongue, confirmed English language teaching as my new vocation. Perhaps my interest in issues related to the corporatization of English language programs stems from these early experiences as an English lan­ guage  instructor with Berlitz. The Berlitz Method I was taught to use in my classes followed a mechanical “3Ps” – presentation, practice, performance – approach, presumably designed to be teacher-proof, in which the materials were prescribed and highly pre-structured. As a native English speaker, I had subconsciously acquired the rules governing English’s grammar; but early in my teaching, I was not far beyond merely being able to identify the most basic elements of language. The limitations of Berlitz’ instructional training were being highlighted on a daily basis, and it was not long before I started looking into university Master’s programs in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and applied linguistics in order

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to more formally and concretely prepare for the discipline of language teaching. While pursuing and after completing a Master of Arts degree in Applied Linguistics, I taught adult English language learners in both IEP and EAP courses – most frequently grammar and composition. The programs where I taught were all housed in public colleges or universities and were administrated and taught by employees of those institutions, though both contexts relied heavily upon part-time adjunct instructors in non-tenure-track, contingent faculty status. Whether as cause or effect, these programs were largely viewed by those from other academic disciplines as remedial and ancillary. Yet I and many of my colleagues perceived what we were doing as central to the university mission and, moreover, as academically rigorous and professional. In my case, having pursued a Master’s in Applied Linguistics degree through a program which included expectations for conducting and reporting educational research, I had always seen myself as an academic – one engaged in ongoing classroom-based inquiry, empirical research, and the presentation of research findings and the sharing of curricular and pedagogical strategies at professional conferences. It was then natural for me that, after a number of years of teaching, I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction with a specialization in TESOL. My immediate intention in entering this doctoral program was to develop my understandings of curriculum design and pedagogy so I could connect my teaching ability and knowledge to my past managerial experiences in corporate finance in order to one day explore the possibility of an English language program directorship. At first I thought to secure a job teaching English in the university where I was enrolled as a Ph.D. student. However, recalling my early experiences of the corporate sector in English language teaching, I was disappointed to learn that the language program on my university’s campus was outsourced to a for-profit subsidiary of Berlitz: an ELS Language Center. Rather than return to the for-profit sector from which I had long-since departed, I continued teaching grammar and composition to ESL adult students at Miami Dade College as an adjunct instructor. Eventually, I secured a position as an adjunct instructor in my university’s teacher education programs, where I taught courses preparing pre-service early and middle childhood teachers, school counselors, school psychologists, and future educational leaders to meet the cultural and linguistic needs of children for whom English is a second language. A most significant event on my path toward this book occurred in March of 2009, when I attended and presented (Winkle, 2009; Winkle & Moya, 2009)

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at the International TESOL1 Convention held in Denver, Colorado. There, I attended a session given by Sheila Mullooly, a former instructor in the Oregon State University (OSU) English Language Institute, entitled “Privatization of IEPs” (Mullooly, 2009). Mullooly’s former employer, OSU, had announced 8  months prior to the TESOL Convention a contracted partnership with INTO University Partnerships, Ltd. (INTO). INTO OSU officially began serving students in its English language programs in June 2009 and in its pathway program in September 2009. Mullooly presented findings from what was described as a four-participant study of program director attitudes toward corporate sector partnerships between private educational service providers and universities with academic English language teaching programs. Only one of the study’s four participants – the Center Director from the INTO program at University of Manchester in the United Kingdom – shared positive experiences about their university’s for-profit corporate sector partnership. While ostensibly presenting findings from her research study, Mullooly’s clearest intention for her TESOL convention session was that she had come to warn us: “This is what is coming. Beware.” She stated that her self-initiated departure from OSU, as well as the departure of numerous others, occurred because of the partnership negotiations, which she said were handled badly, and Yerian (2009) reported that as a result of the partnership with INTO, OSU lost its Commission on English Language Program accreditation (CEA; http:// www.cea-accredit.org). According to Mullooly, INTO and university administrators were engaging in a top-down strategy of getting buy-in from university provosts and presidents, intentionally circumventing participation by IEP administrators or faculty. Attendees of the TESOL session – who were for the most part hearing for the first time of the “threat” of takeover of university English language programs by private companies – were agitated and aggressively queried Mullooly for additional information: “What can we do?” “How can we protect our institutions?” In order to prepare for such overtures, Mullooly suggested that teaching professionals would have to educate themselves and then go back to their academic institutions to educate their universities’ governing authorities before they were approached by outside for-profit

1 Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc., or TESOL, is the dominant international professional association for professional English language educators. It organizes an annual international convention, as well as numerous national and regional conferences around the world.

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educational service providers such as INTO University Partnerships, Kaplan Global Pathways, Navitas, and Study Group (see Chapter 2). That session at the TESOL Convention was for me the most memorable conference presentation I had ever attended, as I felt the attendees were fighting for their academic lives – their identities as teachers and as academicians. That single presentation – my own experience of it, as well as the feelings of fear, concern, and disorientation shared with previously unknown colleagues – set into motion the central inquiry of my Ph.D. thesis. There is little literature examining the phenomenon of corporate sector partnerships in developing and managing credit-bearing EAP matriculation pathway programs, so I decided to enter the field, see for myself what was happening, and then share my findings with others. I finished and defended my doctoral thesis at Barry University approximately 2.5  years after attending Mullooly’s memorable TESOL presentation, after having presented findings associated with my exploratory study at Phi Delta Kappa’s Research Symposium (Winkle, 2010a) and at the Southeast Regional TESOL Conference (2010b), both held in the Miami metropolitan area. It was with great anticipation that I returned to TESOL’s Annual Convention and Exhibition to present my dissertation thesis findings in Philadelphia in March of 2012 (Winkle, 2012a). The session was well attended by both English language program administrators and teachers as well as by a number of individuals who I presumed to be representatives from one or more of the corporate education service providers who engage in the types of partnerships being explored in my study. The reception was extremely positive overall, but I did encounter some push-back from those I imagined to be from the corporate sector. Reaching beyond the international community of TESOL professionals, in April 2012 I presented findings specifically relating to the experiences of the faculty teaching disciplinary content courses to pathway program students at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Vancouver, Canada (Winkle, 2012b) as part of the Narrative Research special interest group. In addition to that presentation’s emphasis on the faculty’s experiences teaching in the pathway programs at their universities, this presentation also included discussion of the narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) research methodology employed for my study. By this time, I had submitted a proposal and was in discussions with the editor of the Innovation and Leadership in English Language Teaching series, Professor Martha C. Pennington, who also attended my TESOL 2012 (Winkle, 2012a) presentation, about crafting a book for the series from my Ph.D. thesis. In committing to do this book, I was not only committing to do another “pass”

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through the text of my thesis, in order to rethink it and recast it in a new and more discussion-embedded form, but also to add to it by including a new section exploring institution-developed alternatives to corporate-partner matriculation pathway or bridge programs in tertiary settings. This new section includes descriptions of “home-grown” alternatives developed and implemented by five U.S. universities that created conditional admission, or other alternative bridging programs rather than contracting with a for-profit education service provider. Suggestions for needs analysis are also included. In developing this work, I have substantially rethought and reworked my Ph.D. thesis, with major revision and rewriting of every section. Of particular note is that I have added much more than was included in the original report of the research of my own reflections and analysis, in an attempt to further digest the information from participants in the context of the literature review, including some new sources added for this book, and to make relevant connections and observations for readers. These changes have inevitably altered the findings presented and broadened the orientation beyond the specific confines of narrative inquiry as adopted for the thesis project, while still retaining most aspects of the underlying philosophy and qualitative stance of the original research. There are multiple audiences for whom this volume will have interest. First, it is of direct interest to English language program faculty and administrators who work in universities that are being targeted, who anticipate their institution being targeted for a corporate sector partnership, or who are currently operating under one of these partnerships. It also has obvious interest for university administrators such as university presidents, provosts, academic deans, international program directors, and department chairs working in institutions which are being courted or which anticipate being courted by for-profit education service providers for the purpose of engaging in corporate sector partnerships resulting in matriculation pathway programs for international students. Another audience of this book is faculty in academic departments, most of whom are impacted by the increasing number of international students in their classes and so by their institution’s policies for recruitment and for cultural and language support of those students. A final potential audience is university faculty and scholars with interest in the changes occurring as universities become increasingly corporatized by outsourcing various functions and by setting up partnerships with for-profit companies. I close this preface with a brief acknowledgement. First and foremost, I extend my deepest gratitude to the participants of both my exploratory and dissertation thesis inquiries for having trusted me to accurately and ethically share their stories. I am thankful to the academic community of the Adrian

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Dominican School of Education at Barry University, and most especially my dissertation thesis committee, including Drs. Victoria A. Giordano (Chairperson), Jill Beloff Farrell, and John “Jack” Dezek. I give thanks to a number of English language program administrators who were generous with their time and expertise, allowing me to discuss with them and include in the final chapter of this volume descriptions of their institution-developed alternatives to corporate partnership models: Randy Hardwick, Tobie Hoffman, Jacqueline McCafferty, Nicole Sealey, and Scott Stevens. I am also especially thankful to my husband, family, and colleagues for their patience and understanding as I foolishly (some would say) “jumped from the frying pan and into the fire” by taking on an extensive book project so soon on the heels of completing my Ph.D. dissertation thesis. Finally, I am exceptionally thankful to Professor Martha C. Pennington, editor of this series. Certainly I am grateful for the opportunity she afforded me to have my work included in Brill’s Innovation and Leadership in English Language Teaching series, but more significantly, I am thankful for the stalwart and caring mentorship she has provided me throughout this project.

part 1 Contextual Perspectives

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Introduction to Part 1

Part 1 of this book is organized as an orientation for readers of contextual matters related to my research, the foundation of this book. Part 1 begins with an exploration into the contemporary trend toward corporatism and outsourcing in higher education (Chapter 1). Chapter 2 discusses and reviews the ways English language programs – specifically those which had historically been developed, administered, and implemented by host universities and their faculty – have now become part of the outsourcing movement through private sector and university partnerships. Also included in Part 1 is my reporting of an exploratory research study which I conducted in the context of an intensive English program on the campus of a university which was, at the time of the inquiry, in negotiation with an education services provider for the purpose of developing matriculation pathway programs (Chapter 3). Finally, Chapter 4 provides readers with an orientation to the narrative inquiry research methodology employed for the dissertation research project, as well as methodological clarifications of how the thesis has been reanalyzed, recast, and transformed for the purpose of this book.

chapter 1

The New University Context: Outsourcing and Corporate Partnerships Introduction First they outsourced the university cafeteria, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a cafeteria worker (Glickman, Holm, Keating, Pannait, & White, 2007). Then they privatized the university bookstore, and I didn’t speak up because I didn’t work in the bookstore (Gupta, Kanthi-Herath, & Mikouiza, 2005). Then they outsourced university library’s cataloging, but I didn’t speak up because I was not a librarian (Dhiman & Sharma, 2010). Now they are coming for the Intensive English Program.1 My intention through my research inquiry is to examine issues related to the targeting of colleges and universities – in particular, those with institutionadministered Intensive English Programs employing English for academic purposes curricula – by for-profit educational service providers for corporate sector partnerships resulting in matriculation pathway programs. My own perspective on the topic arose from the synthesis of my subjective experiences vis-à-vis the topic and my review of existing literature. This chapter provides readers with an overview of literature exploring both overt and covert forms corporatization of higher education which helped to situate my research study.

Framing the Investigation in Context

Outsourcing of non-instructional services, such as cafeteria services, bookstore operations, and campus security, have become accepted practice at institutions of higher education (Gupta et al., 2005), as such support services are considered to be outside the core academic mission of colleges and universities. Such outsourcing is part of a trend toward a more corporate model of higher education (Andrews, 2006; Fink, 2008) that has recently been accelerated by the creation in academic departments of public-private partnerships such as with research 1 The introductory preamble is an homage to Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem, “First they came for the Communists,” circa 1946 (Marcuse, 2010).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi ��.����/�����������63₋��2

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institutes, hospitals, and corporations. A less obvious form of instructional outsourcing can be observed in the use of adjunct or contingent rather than full-time, permanent faculty (Lerner, 2008). This form of outsourcing results in commodified and downsized university faculties who have a less central and less significant role in university governance and policy-making, as academic administrators take on the role of corporate manager or CEO (J.A. Jones, 2008). The implications for faculty working within a corporatized model of higher education are neither well understood nor well described in the literature. Both the outsourcing of ancillary services (Glickman et al., 2007; Gupta et al., 2005) and less obvious forms of instructional outsourcing, such as the elimination of tenured faculty in favor of contingent and adjunct faculty, are taking place in higher education and have been well-documented in the literature (Andrews, 2006; Fink, 2008; Fulcher, 2007, 2009; Lerner, 2008; Levine, 2001; Meyer, 2006; NEA Higher Education Research Center, 2004). Less noticed have been cases in which entire instructional departments or programs have been outsourced or privatized (Fulcher, 2007, 2009; University and College Union, 2013; Weinstein, 2000). One prominent type of case is that of the university English language program. Universities often house intensive English programs (IEPs), typically located within Continuing Education divisions, English or Linguistics departments, or International Studies programs, charged with preparing English language learners for university study (Hamrick, 2011). These programs, which generally have a history of affiliation and standards connected with such organizations as TESOL (www.tesol.org) and NAFSA – Association of International Educators (www.nafsa.org), are undergoing significant change, as their host universities are being targeted by for-profit educational service providers aiming to set up corporate sector partnerships that will incorporate the functions of the IEPs (Reeves, 2011). Such partnerships typically include the corporate partner’s assumption of responsibility for recruiting international students and for administering the English language program, within a structure that includes English for academic purposes (EAP) matriculation “pathway programs.” The corporate partner puts these pathway programs into place and then is to manage students’ course of study within them as well as the articulation of those programs with other academic departments in the university. These EAP matriculation pathway programs are set up to make it possible for advancedlevel English language learners who have not met language requirements to be provisionally admitted into credit-bearing, disciplinary content courses and programs (Fulcher, 2007, 2009; Mullooly, 2009; Redden, 2010; Yerian, 2009). These courses are often taught by faculty who have little or no experience teaching international students with developing English proficiency and who

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may be neither willing nor able to provide the cultural and linguistic support which those students need (Fulcher, 2009). The IEP faculty, on the other hand, who are experienced in providing for these needs, may have their role reduced, as international students take fewer or shorter English classes and are moved out of English classes and into classes in academic departments at an earlier stage than in the past. In addition, the IEP faculty, who have generally operated with a degree of curricular and pedagogical autonomy within the overall university structure, albeit oftentimes in a marginalized status (Case, 1998; Fulcher, 2009; Jenks, 1997; Jenks & Kennell, 2011), may have their freedom threatened by the control of the for-profit corporations running the programs where they work (Redden, 2010; Yerian, 2009). The phenomenon of corporate sector partnerships between universities and private, for-profit educational service providers setting up matriculation pathway programs for non-English-speaking international students is relatively recent, particularly in U.S. contexts. This phenomenon has been more prevalent in the United Kingdom and Australia, where such partnerships are relatively well established. Universities in the United States thus appear now to be the new frontier for these partnership efforts (Graves, 2008; Jenks & Kennell, 2011; Lewin, 2008; Moser, 2008; Mullooly, 2009; Neznanski, 2008; Redden, 2010; Yerian, 2009). While there has been journalistic attention given to the phenomenon (Graves, 2008; Levin, 2010; Lewin, 2008; Moser, 2008; Redden, 2010), research on these kinds of partnerships has been minimal in U.K. (Fulcher, 2007, 2009) and Australian (Dooey, 2010) contexts, and published literature examining the impact of such partnerships on faculty status and implications for curricular and pedagogical autonomy in U.S. contexts is nonexistent. The present work considers these types of partnerships as an extension of the general trend toward corporatization of higher education through privatization and outsourcing (Andrews, 2006; Dickeson & Figuli, 2007; Fink, 2008; Fulcher, 2009; Lerner, 2008), aiming to describe their impact on English language teaching professionals and other university faculty.

Privatization and Outsourcing: A Trend Toward Corporatization

Due to its perceived cost-saving advantages, outsourcing, or privatization, which in educational contexts involves a shift from public to private financing, has become increasingly accepted practice (Glickman et al., 2007). In educational contexts, such a shift to private financing may take place for a number of reasons, including those related not only to cost savings and generation of revenue, but also to such matters as improvement of the quality of service,

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management of human resources, concerns of safety and liability, and the acquisition and maintenance of equipment (NEA Higher Education Research Center, 2004). Given its perceived advantages, privatization and outsourcing are often seen by educational administrators as a desirable way forward, affecting instruction and a wide range of other institutional functions in academic contexts, from elementary to university level. While the terms privatization and outsourcing are often used interchangeably – both in the literature and in this book2 – others make the distinction that privatization involves movement not only of practices but also of policy-making and management responsibilities to the private sector (Dhiman & Sharma, 2010).

Types of Outsourcing

Savard (2004) studied the outsourcing of different kinds of services in Canadian K–12 settings, noting the influential role played by governmental policy and media rhetoric during the Reagan and first Bush administrations in the United States in driving the outsourcing of instructional services in Canadian schools. Savard categorized the types of services outsourced in the Canadian primary and secondary schools as hard, professional, and instructional soft services. Payroll, transportation, food services, security, nursing, and janitorial services are examples of those classified by Savard as hard services, while provision of clinical psychologists, speech pathologists, or sign language interpreters would come under the heading of professional services. Some examples of instructional soft services are driver education, physical education, tutoring and remedial instruction, and – significant to Savard’s research focus – English language instruction. 2 For the purposes of confidential and ethical reporting – in both this book and the research studies from which the experiential stories of university professionals working in corporate partnership settings originated – I have intentionally adopted a somewhat ambiguous or interchangeable orientation to the concepts of privatization and outsourcing. Each corporate educational services provider’s partnership model differs in its degree of management and policy shifting from university “control” to that of the corporate partner, ranging from insourcing, to outsourcing, to privatization. Indeed, even within an educational service provider’s portfolio of partnerships, individual agreements with host universities will have their own negotiated characteristics. By adopting an ambiguous and less specific orientation to outsourcing and privatization, my intention is to afford an additional layer of privacy to my research participants, while also noting the connection of these two types of business-oriented practices in university development and specifically English language program development at the present time.

The New University Context

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As in K–12 settings, higher education has a history of outsourcing both hard and professional services in Savard’s (2004) terms. A study by Gupta et al. (2005) based on a survey of 138 private and public university presidents or vice presidents in the U.S. states of Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia found that a number of services were commonly outsourced – especially food and vending services, bookstore operations, custodial services, and security, but also the services of housekeeping in dormitories, laundry, janitorial and facilities management, mailroom, and payroll. Survey respondents identified several motivations for outsourcing these non-instructional, hard services – such as cost savings, pressure from peer institutions to improvement of quality of services and staffing, moving responsibility from full-time employees, and concerns of safety and liability – and they reported that the university presidents were generally satisfied with these outsourcing decisions. As Gupta et al. (2005) and others (e.g., Glickman et al., 2007) maintain, outsourcing such non-instructional services makes it possible for universities to concentrate on their core functions and areas of competence, that is, educational instruction and research. Counterbalancing such positive views of outsourcing in university contexts are other studies that report some of its negative impacts, such as an in-depth case study by Glickman et al. (2007) on the outsourcing of food services on one university campus. Glickman and colleagues report a number of difficulties that arose from outsourcing food services to an outside vendor, most notably student dissatisfaction and high employee turnover based on perceived job insecurity, which led many of the university’s most skilled employees to apply for similar jobs at other in institutions. In addition, the private vendor reportedly violated contractual terms related to the university’s hiring standards and compensation policies. Beyond the hard services, which have been a main target of outsourcing, a type of professional service that has been impacted by outsourcing in universities is that of library services, primarily electronic cataloging (Buttlar & Garcha, 1998; Dhiman & Sharma, 2010; Libby & Caudle, 1997) and information technology services within libraries (How, 2007). In the context of library services and information centers in universities, Dhiman and Sharma (2010) define outsourcing as the “contracting to external companies or organizations functions that would otherwise be performed by library employees” (p. 95). The authors specifically distinguish between outsourcing, which is payment to outside providers for services such as electronic cataloging – the most common form of outsourcing in library contexts – that would otherwise be performed by library staff, and privatization, which includes not only specific functions but also policy-making decisions and core day-to-day management of library services by for-profit organizations outside of the library.

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Libby and Caudle (1997) carried out a randomized survey on the outsourcing of cataloging services in university libraries listed in the American Library Directory. Based on 117 survey responses, Libby and Caudle determined that only 28% of respondents had or were outsourcing cataloging services at that time, leading the authors to conclude that such outsourcing was “not a prevailing trend among academic libraries” (Libby & Caudle, 1997, p. 556). However, a randomized survey published the following year by Buttlar and Garcha (1998) of 275 academic libraries reported different results. Buttlar and Garcha’s study, which captured job function changes of catalogers over a retroactive 10-year period, indicated a trend toward outsourcing of university library cataloging functions, coupled with a trend towards “catalog librarians…spending more of their time managing the system and less time cataloging” (p. 319). Buttlar and Garcha’s survey results further revealed a consensus among respondents that the outsourcing of cataloging provided more time for administrative and professional activities. The situation of academic librarians is relevant to that of English language teaching professionals. The contexts in which both of these groups work show similar trends towards privatization, and thus can make for useful comparison in terms of the changes and issues involved. In addition, both groups have traditionally been viewed as professional service providers rather than scholars, and both have therefore been subjected to a framing of their work as fundamentally different from, and of lesser importance than, that of other university academics. This framing of their work has resulted in a continuing condition of marginalization and questioning of their professional rank and status within the academy (Bolger & Smith, 2006; Gillum, 2010; Riggs, 1999; Weaver-Meyers, 2002; Wyss, 2010). Instructional outsourcing in higher education can also be seen in moves to reduce or eliminate tenured faculty positions in favor of shorter term, contract-based contingent or adjunct faculty positions (Andrews, 2006; Fink, 2008; Fulcher, 2007; Lerner, 2008; Levine, 2001; Meyer, 2006; NEA Higher Education Research Center, 2004). This is also a trend which is having a strong impact on English language teaching at universities – and, more generally, on all kinds of faculty employment.

Shift from Tenure and Secure Employment

Many studies point to policy shifts away from an academic tradition of tenured faculty as a sign that an institution is trending toward a corporate model (Andrews, 2006; Fink, 2008; Fulcher, 2007, 2009; Gupta et al., 2005; NEA Higher

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Education Research Center, 2004; B.A. Jones, 2008; J.A. Jones, 2008; Lerner, 2008; Levine, 2001; Meyer, 2006; University and College Union, 2013). In universities across the English-speaking world, university administrators are taking opportunities to reduce tenured positions by attrition, as faculty positions which have formerly been tenured are no longer ordinarily filled by tenuretrack personnel when vacated (see, e.g., Fink, 2008; Fulcher, 2007, 2009; Gupta et al., 2005; J.A. Jones, 2008; Lerner, 2008). In addition, academic positions for long-term, full-time faculty may be filled when they become vacant by faculty in categories of employment representing a lesser commitment by the university, such as short-term or part-time instructors. As a result, adjunct or parttime contingent faculty become the norm, with saving to the university in the way of non-instructional expenses – such as health and retirement benefits and office facilities costs – and additional financial gain, as adjunct instructors can often be employed for teaching courses which generate the most income, such as high-volume introductory courses (Lerner, 2008). In the context of university-based English language preparation courses in  Britain, Fulcher (2007, 2009) maintains that English has been commodified  as the academic lingua franca, which has generated a strong consumer market for language instruction and a financial incentive to employ contingent faculty to teach English. Within this perspective, international students  are viewed as revenue generators for educational institutions, and English language teaching is viewed as a commercial activity whose profits can be maximized through what Fulcher describes as a de-professionalization of English language teaching manifested in the hiring of adjunct faculty and the outsourcing of English language instruction to third-party vendors, as is happening in the United Kingdom. Added to Fulcher’s observations of the lowered position of English language teachers, the University and College Union’s (UCU, 2013) Stop privatization campaign pack: Privatization and how to  stop it: A briefing for activists cites instances in the United Kingdom in which full-time English language faculty were transferred out of departments and then were replaced by new staff hires with lower qualifications paid at lower rates. English language teaching is impacted by the major changes which faculty employment is experiencing within the academy. Based on employment and compensation data from the College and University Personnel Association3 focused on the teaching of history in institutions of higher education, Lerner (2008) maintains that the annual income of contingent full-time faculty and part-time adjunct faculty are both below the poverty line. Those at the bottom 3 Lerner (2008) does not provide a reference, though her tables indicate 2005–2006 data.

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end of the faculty scale are the large number of non-tenured, “journeyman” instructors and adjuncts paid as short-term hourly employees without benefits, while those at the higher end are the tenured faculty on permanent status with benefits. Thus, the new faculty hiring trend towards employment of high numbers of contingent and adjunct faculty is creating a two-tiered faculty employment structure and also splitting the market within higher education into a two-tiered status (J.A. Jones, 2008; Lerner, 2008; University and College Union, 2013). This two-tiered faculty employment structure and market makes it possible for universities to adopt “star system” (Lerner, 2008, p. 221) hiring practices in which competing universities vie for high-profile academic luminaries who command exceptional salaries (as university presidents, like CEOs of companies, now do). Such competition affects compensation policy, as both Levine (2001) and Lerner (2008) observe, widening the salary gap between the lowest and highest paid instructors. When such two-tiered hiring and compensation practices exist, the enormous differences in positions create the potential for acrimony within a department or school and within the institution as a whole. Lerner (2008) suggests that discord within a department related to the low status of contingent and adjunct faculty may then evolve into institutional discord related to the disempowerment of contingent and adjunct faculty. Related to the idea of acrimony within a department or school as a result of a two-tiered hiring structure, Savard (2004) cites a potential for fragmentation of a school’s culture as a result of outside staff entering the workplace.

Education: Public Good or Corporate Enterprise?

The traditional view of education as a public good has been shifting at least since the 1960s to one that sees education more in business terms. Fink (2008) offers a historical perspective on the shift in higher education to a privatized, corporate model, which he argues began with the emphasis on research universities in the early years of the twentieth century and was further promoted by a dismantling of general education requirements in the 1960s and by declining public support for government financing of institutions of higher learning. Andrews (2006) cites decreased public as well as private financial support for higher education as forcing institutions to seek external funding. In his view, the circumstances which have led academic institutions to align their policies and practices with corporate organizational models have been damaging to the mission of higher education, and he argues that there is a need for re-education of university administrators.

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The University and College Union (UCU, 2013) observes that policies external to the university, which have resulted in tighter public funding, have forced university administrators to seek private sector funding. As UCU points out, in the United Kingdom, many of the available private funding sources are backed by private equity funds or venture capital firms expecting a return on their investment. The UCU, along with Andrews (2006) and others (e.g., Cudmore, 2005; Meyer, 2006), connect the corporate sponsorship of these private grants, which are often earmarked for research that benefits those sponsors, to a withdrawal of public support for government funding of universities, which are no longer seen as benefitting the community. The UCU’s position is that the aims of corporate, for-profit entities are fundamentally at odds with those of education, and so their literature explicitly opposes privatization in the delivery of education. In another historical perspective, Meyer (2006) describes public perceptions of higher education in the 1980s as based on a “trickle-down” concept, such that all members of society – not only those individuals who are able to attend and graduate from institutions of higher learning – benefit from supporting the university, which contributes trained professionals and a  capable workforce to the community, in addition to tax revenues and arts and cultural contributions. This perception has changed, she argues, to one focused on individual rather than societal benefits stemming from institutions of higher learning, as more emphasis is placed in media and public forums on the wage-earning effects of continuing education and a higher degree. A U. S. National Education Association (NEA) Higher Education Research Center (2004) report, Higher Education and Privatization, also points to the contemporary societal belief that education is a private rather than public benefit as related to a shift in the United States of public funding away from institutions and towards individual student aid. The NEA report further points to “increased support from political decision makers” (p. 1) as a main reason for institutions to move toward privatization. Such moves by university administrators towards privatization with the support of politicians fuel additional mistrust of those institutions by the public when these presumed political alliances are revealed. Levine (2001) also maintains that public educational dollars will be increasingly directed toward individual students rather than institutions, which will continue to experience decreased public funding – and thus increased pressure to seek private funding and to outsource and  privatize its operations – due to a decline in public trust in both educational and governmental institutions’ management of public monies. Levin further notes the movement in contemporary society toward a more information-based

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economy, with its premium on intellectual capital, as a significant motivation of privatization in higher education, where information and knowledge become marketable commodities. The marketability of intellectual capital is likewise cited by Gupta et al. (2006) as a motivation for institutions to make significant connections with the private sector. In his doctoral dissertation, Instruction as Service or Commodity: The Outsourcing of Education, Savard (2004) addresses the issue of public interest in education based on interviews with 18 administrators of elementary and secondary schools in Canada that had contracted for-profit educational services. Savard sees the “Education Industry,” as represented in contract instructional services offered by private for-profit providers, to be a threat to the historical role of public education in society. He identifies charter schools – state-regulated private institutions that offer alternatives to public schools – as a battleground domain where outsourced instructional services are making inroads. Of particular relevance to the present work, he specifically investigated the contracting of prepackaged English language programs by Berlitz International and Sylvan Learning Systems. Focusing on Berlitz, Savard (2004) describes their English language program as a “turnkey operation” that includes highly scripted materials, contract instructors expected to abide by the lesson plans without adaptation or professional judgment, and student evaluation processes implemented by Berlitz’s trained instructors. Berlitz markets itself, in Savard’s description, as a substitute instructional service provider, suggesting that contracting with its English language program can minimize or eliminate altogether the need for professionally trained English teaching specialists – with the added benefit to administrators of reduced time and resource needed to be directed to such activities as designing curriculum, hiring and training instructors, and evaluating student progress. All of these processes are consequently surrendered to outsiders by school administrators and teachers, who have been de-professionalized by default. Yet Savard (2004) reports that the administrators’ perceptions of the contracted instructional program were fairly positive in terms of its benefits to both the students and the school overall. The administrators also indicated that use of these services external to the institution, which removed them from any direct involvement with English language provision and relieved them from many administrative responsibilities connected to that provision, in fact enhanced their power – their control and authority as administrators – a point which Savard suggests requires further investigation. Since his focus was on the impact of such contract programs from an administrative

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perspective, Savard’s (2004) study did not assess the impact of outsourcing practices on teachers nor on instruction.

Changing Academic Governance

University administrators are becoming more powerful and more distant from the day to day operation of their institutions, functioning as CEO-like figureheads, high-level decision-makers, and fundraisers who spend significant time away from campus. University presidents project a corporate image and tone in their public appearances as well as their private meetings, operating under the indirect control of the university’s big private, corporate, and political sponsors and under the direct control of the university’s governing board. These have become much like corporate boards of directors, motivated much less by maintaining a social contract between academia and society and much more by the promised profits of adopting free-market business practices (Andrews, 2006). While academic administrators take on  the role of corporate leaders and managers, and the strategic direction and policies of the university are controlled by boards of trustees, the traditional academic governance role of professors is minimized or eliminated entirely, as tenured faculties are downsized or replaced with contingent, parttime instructors. Professors are marketed and consumed as commodities (J.A. Jones, 2008), and so is university research, which becomes a means to generating profit for the institution rather than new knowledge for the society (Andrews, 2006). High-level, tenured and research-active faculty may benefit financially and politically, both within and outside the institution, by such marketization of their own value and that of their research. Within the institution, they become part of the elite, star faculty and administrators who hold power in institutional governance (Lerner, 2008), while the influence of the remaining fulltime faculty is consequently reduced and the large numbers of contingent and part-time faculty have little if any political power or voice in university affairs or governance. In this way, a governance of the many by the few – a sort of oligarchy – is created in an institution which was formerly much more democratically controlled. However, Meyer (2006) cautions against any conclusion that the only voices heard in higher education are those controlled by the “golden rule” that “he who has the gold, makes the rules” (p. 40). She further points out that it is unfair to condemn privatization for creating a loss of faculty influence over university governance while at the same time condemning

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the state for its interference with university governance and independence by its strict oversight of public monies.

Devaluation of Academic Credentials

Increased university elitism is a further result of policies which effectively corporatize higher education, and this will ultimately lead to a devaluation of terminal degrees (Meyer, 2006; Lerner, 2008), especially a degree from lower tiered universities and community colleges not competitive for major public or private funds. While the value of higher degrees in Ph.D.-granting institutions that have star faculty in place will be assured – and indeed may increase as star-system admission policies paralleling those for faculty are put in place for attracting outstanding graduate students – new Ph.D.’s from universities without such stellar status may have difficulty securing full-time faculty employment due to a perceived second tier or lower status position of their alma mater and weakness of its corporate “brand” (Lerner, 2008). As an increasingly stratified system of universities reduces the value of many degrees, it reinforces the maintenance of many with postgraduate degrees in part-time and contingent faculty status. As a further effect of devaluation of degrees, and perhaps also as an effect of the allocation of faculty and other resources, a potential outcome of privatization within public institutions of higher learning, as Meyer (2006) warns, will be a decrease in the number of graduate-level and professional degree programs being offered – especially in the lower tier, more affordable universities – which may further exacerbate a disparity of educational opportunity for low-income and minority students.

Calls for Action

Given the negative effects for what is rapidly becoming a majority of faculty working in relatively weak and poorly paid academic positions, one might think that university-level educators would be rallying against privatization and outsourcing. This is generally not the case, however. Although faculty are aware of the trend towards corporatism in higher education, there has been little united action seeking to stem the tide of far-reaching changes brought about by this trend in the nature of universities (Andrews, 2006; Fink, 2008). Yet it is widely believed (e.g., Andrews, 2006; Fink, 2008; B.A. Jones, 2008; J.A. Jones, 2008; University and College Union, 2013) that faculty hold the solution to their problems and those of their universities under corporate siege.

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With the goal of motivating faculty to take such action, Andrews (2006) provides a checklist of telltale danger signs of impending institutional corporatization and suggests taking immediate action if more than one or two of these apply in the case of a particular institution. The hiring of low-paid, non-tenured contingent faculty is the first sign which Andrews notes, and he suggests that the situation is especially urgent when a retiring tenured or tenure-track faculty member departs and is replaced with one or more non-tenured positions. Other “telltale signs” on Andrews’ (2006) list are: paying academic administrators corporate-level salaries, making available merit-based scholarships, reducing faculty and staff health and retirement benefits, and eliminating currently under-enrolled courses or academic programs that were previously considered essential parts of the curriculum. Andrews also lists an increased emphasis on and funding for collegiate athletics, connected to recruitment and admissions efforts, as symptoms of a university’s corporate disposition. Andrews (2006), building on the work of Hamilton (2002), recommends that university faculty combat corporate influence by working to reestablish and reaffirm the public contract between society and academia through educating themselves and others within and outside their institutions as to the mutual responsibilities of the public and the professoriate regarding the purpose of higher education within a “civilized” society. He speaks of a “continuing education campaign” to educate the public, as well as current students, alumni, and the non-teaching staff of the university, that academics hold societal interests above those of profit-making in their universities. Such education he sees as important to a goal of uniting faculty and others to take back the university from the control of corporate interests. He suggests that professional associations such as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) could organize and unify faculty actions and strategies for resisting and minimizing corporate influence in higher education. A strategy might be suggested in which the AAUP organize lobbying of the accrediting bodies which certify university courses and curricula – since the actions of these bodies have substantial impacts on university policies and practices – to specifically assess privatized aspects of instruction, in addition to hiring and employment practices throughout the university, to determine whether standards are being maintained. The University and College Union (2013), which claims to be the largest trade union and professional association for academics and researchers in U.K. higher education, sees itself as at the center of the battle against privatization of higher education. The UCU website features a series of antiprivatization campaign packs designed to brief activists on strategies they can

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use to counter privatization in higher education. The initial stage recommended for countering what they see as this threat to universities is to ensure that everyone understands the issues and is vocal when engaging with administration. Lerner (2008) charges faculty to actively work to stem privatization in their institutions and specifically charges tenured professors to take the lead in reprofessionalizing higher education, noting that working within unions and negotiating en masse have had some success in California and New Jersey in increasing pay. According to Learner (2008), in the state of Georgia, adjunct faculty organizations not only negotiated increases in pay, but also were able to have a hundred part-time adjunct appointments converted to full-time positions with benefits. She speaks of taking to the streets and fighting through public discourse to win the public, as the ultimate consumers of higher education, to the problems faced in the corporatized university. As Lerner observes, university academics and an activated populace together can be a powerful force for change, as can academics united with unions to bring about changes to state law, such as requiring institutions of higher education to disclose their labor practices to the public. Conclusion This chapter has provided an overview of outsourcing and privatization practices that have affected universities in the current era, with particular reference to the United States and the United Kingdom. These developments, which have occurred at an accelerating pace in the most recent generation of faculty and students, are in line with a shift of the orientation of universities away from a traditional educational mission of providing benefits in the way of knowledge and culture for the communities where they are housed and for society at large and towards a corporate model and all that this implies. The effects of corporatization on universities have been pointed out by many scholars and organizations suggesting actions which can be taken by university faculty to try to counter this change in the nature of education and the consequent negative effects on faculty status, university administration and governance, and other aspects of university culture. It is suggested that these faculty-led efforts need to reach out beyond the halls of academe to engage the general public, faculty unions and professional organizations, and other agencies connected to higher education, to educate them to the faculty perspective and the negative impacts of the strong corporate culture that has taken hold of

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education. The next chapter focuses on one specific aspect of university culture: that which deals with the admission of international students and the English language and cultural support provided to them, and how this sector of the university has been impacted by the movement of universities toward outsourcing and privatization.

chapter 2

The New Context of English Language Programs within the Outsourcing Movement Introduction This chapter extends the summarized review of the literature which supported my original research project, specifically reporting in areas related to both historical and contemporary marginalization and commodification of universitybased English language teaching programs and the English language teaching professions. It further provides an introduction to the phenomenon of the targeting of universities with existing English language programs for corporate, joint-venture partnerships for the development of matriculation pathway programs and international student recruitment. Finally, the chapter concludes with brief descriptions of the four corporate sector education services providers currently at the forefront of such partnerships.

Recruitment of International Students

The internationalization of higher education – especially as regards those institutions classified by the Carnegie Foundation as “Doctoral/Research Universities–Extensive” – has often been considered to be a primary outcome of the globalization of world economies (e.g., Cudmore, 2005; Mohrman, Ma, & Baker, 2008; Stromquist, 2007). Increasingly, academic institutions have adopted a “global market” approach to recruitment of students in which education becomes a service-oriented commodity marketed through international recruitment to potential “consumers” of that service “product” residing in other countries (Harvey & Busher, 1996). In order to achieve “market share” within a global marketplace, institutions must creatively use their in-house resources for marketing or else turn to external, outsourced agents for marketing to attract and recruit international students (Reeves, 2011; Ross, Heaney, & Cooper, 2007). Frumkin and Galaskievicz (2004) and Stromquist (2007) suggest that global marketing in universities is an outcome of institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), which results from the imitation by institutions of the practices of associated institutions. In Stromquist’s (2007) view, academic institutions which have corporate alliances tend to adopt each other’s

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organizational structure and practices as they compete for market share, research dollars, and power within political arenas. Thus, to the extent that certain universities have taken the lead in marketing and recruiting students internationally by use of contract recruiters external to the university, so other institutions which associate themselves with those universities have tended to “follow the leader” in an attempt to remain competitive.

Intensive English Programs

Intensive English Programs have been set up on college and university campuses to help prepare international students who lack the requisite linguistic skills, and often also the cultural knowledge and academic skills, for university study (Hamrick, 2011; Pennington & Hoekje, 2010; Smith-Palinkas, Tortorella, & Flaitz, 2002). In the definition of the University and College Intensive English Program (UCIEP), a consortium of U.S.-based IEPs, an Intensive English Program as one which is “administered by an accredited university or college and receives adequate support from its institution, which at a minimum would include provision for suitable staff, and office and classroom facilities. Although no single administrative pattern is required, the intensive program should be sufficiently independent to permit the smooth functioning of all its activities” (UCIEP, 2007). For this book, as well as the research projects described herein, the researcher has adopted the UCIEP definition, criteria, and professional standards for defining an IEP in a U.S. context. Under the UCIEP guidelines, an accredited IEP will have the following features (among others):

• A program director with a full-time faculty or administrative appointment within the host university; A • core of faculty members working under 9-month (academic-year) or

12-month contracts who hold a Master’s degree or higher in Applied Linguistics, ESL/EFL teaching, or a related field; Opportunities for professional development and financial support for conference attendance by faculty; Procedures for evaluation of administrators and faculty which are in line with those of the host institution; Valid and reliable testing and placement procedures which meet accepted professional standards.

• • •

A fuller articulation of the UCIEP criteria is available via the following web link: http://www.uciep.org/page/view/id/6.

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There is considerable variety in the location of college- and universityoperated IEP programs within the structures of higher education, ranging from Continuing Education divisions to various academic departments and schools (Pennington & Hoekje, 2010, Ch. 3). Beyond English language instruction, these programs often provide testing, orientation, and other kinds of support (e.g., housing and visa services or referrals) to international students, in addition to serving as a site where interns and graduate students from academic departments can gain valuable teaching, observational, and research experience (Pennington & Hoekje, 2010; Smith-Palinkas et al., 2002). Finan­ cially, these programs are expected to be largely self-supporting, though they may still be reliant on their host universities for facilities (Eskey, 1997; Hamrick, 2011). Not uncommonly, they must pay rent for their facilities to the university or rent/purchase their own facilities off campus, and, increasingly, they are expected to return a profit to the institutional unit within which they are housed (Pennington & Hoekje, 2010). While the location of IEPs within the institutional structure varies, if they are considered a unit of an academic institution, their academic and nonacademic staff will be considered employees of the institution. If in full-time 1-year contract status, IEP staff will generally be entitled, like other full-time employees on a 12-month or 9-month academic year contract, to health benefits and possibly also to annual raises, however determined (whether by performance, length of service, or other criteria). While the majority of IEP non-academic (e.g., clerical) staff may be in regular full-time, contract status, receiving a salary and having parity in benefits and employment conditions with other non-academic staff in other departments, this is generally not the case for the instructional staff in IEPs. The majority are most often contingent faculty, without professional rank or tenure-track appointments, and without the type of full-time status and length of employment contract that would provide a salary plus health and other benefits. Rather, they often work on a per-course basis with compensation directly tied to the number of courses taught each term (Eskey, 1997; Rowe, 2011). Commonly, they are working in part-time status, though often teaching more courses than most regular faculty in full-time status, while additionally often being required to perform the same teaching and curriculum development duties as those in full-time employment status (Smith-Palinkas et al., 2002). Given the expectations or requirement of the IEP to be self-supporting or profit-generating, there is an incentive to keep compensation low, even if payroll for adjunct faculty and for paid interns or student-teachers may, in some cases, come out of academic program budgets (Dimmitt & Dantas-Whitney, 2002; Eskey, 1997; Rowe, 2011).

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Although the majority of IEPs are directly affiliated with some unit of the academic institution in which they are housed, some private IEPs, such as Embassy CES, a subsidiary of Study Group, and the Berlitz subsidiary, ELS Language Centers, are located on U.S. college or university campuses. These schools are owned, operated, and employed by the private educational service provider, not by the college or university, which generally leases them classrooms and office space in return for their giving preference to, or exclusively servicing, its own students (CEA, 2011; Reeves, 2011). Many of these privately run on-campus IEP programs are of long standing, having been affiliated with U.S. institutions of higher education for over 30  years. Besides these oncampus private IEPs, private, for-profit language learning centers can be found in many U.S. cities, located within corporate office buildings or stand-alone sites, sometimes close to campus facilities. These include many of the wellknown providers of language instruction such as Berlitz, Inlingua, Kaplan, and EF International Language Centres offering intensive instruction in English language at off-campus sites (CEA, 2011). Accreditation of IEPs An organization which provides accreditation for English language programs and which has been endorsed by the international association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL, 2013) is the Commission on English Language Program Accreditation. Recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education as a national accrediting agency, the CEA offers three types of accreditation: Programmatic, Institutional, and General. Programmatic accreditation is for those English language programs which reside within higher education institutions and are located in academic schools, colleges, or other units of colleges or universities which are themselves accredited by agencies recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education, in addition to IEPs within government agencies. Institutional accreditation applies to those language programs or schools which operate independently from any college or university, such as those which are “governed by individual proprietors, governing boards, or corporate managers” and which “may…conduct classes on a university or college campus by contractual agreements” (CEA, 2013). CEA’s General accreditation is for English language programs outside the United States “in a variety of settings, which meet CEA’s eligibility requirements” (CEA, 2013). The American Council on Continuing Education and Training (ACCET) is an accrediting agency also recognized by the U.S. Department of Education which provides accreditation to educational programs, including English language programs, in the United States (ACCET, 2013).

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While not an accrediting body, the American Association of Intensive English Programs (AAIEP) is a membership organization that promotes the advancement of standards, advocacy, and professional development outreach to member intensive English programs in the United States. It does not limit membership to programs affiliated with institutions of higher education, and it does not divide programs into different categories depend­ ing   on whether or not they are housed within a university structure (AAIEP, 2013). UCIEP is a consortium of U.S.-based IEPs that are governed by universities or colleges in the United States whose membership is limited to those programs which hold or are eligible to hold the CEA Programmatic accreditation (UCIEP, 2013). Thus, programs such as Berlitz, ELS Language Centers, and Inlingua, since they are governed by private entities rather than accredited colleges or universities, would be ineligible for membership in the UCIEP – even though they hold CEA Institutional status. Marginalized Status of English Language Teaching Faculty English language programs and their faculty have historically been marginalized (Carkin, 1997; Case, 1998; Eskey, 1997; Fulcher, 2009; Jenks, 1997; Jenks & Kennell, 2011; Pennington & Hoekje, 2010; Stanley, 1994; Stoller & Christison, 1994) and denigrated as remedial (Jenks, 1997; Pennington & Hoekje, 2010; Stoller & Christison, 1994). In terms of the marginalization of the status of their programs and their faculty and in their classification by others in universities as providing remedial services (Pennington & Hoekje, 2010), they can be compared with first-year writing or “freshman composition” programs or other language teaching units with which, in the view of Pennington and Hoekje (2010), “they form a disciplinary cluster of fields with similar attributes and problems” (p. 11). Pennington and Hoekje’s (2010) review of language program scholarship (especially in their Chapters 5 and 6), shows that there has been scant attention paid in research to the position of IEPs and English language teaching faculty, and this author’s own review also found little contemporary empirical research on status issues of English language programs and faculty. The lack of research on the status and marginalization of IEPs and their faculty provided additional motivation for engaging in the study. There has long been a concern in the professional associations connected with international education in the United States, including those specifically concerned with the teaching of English as a second or foreign language, about ensuring proper qualifications for teachers, program administrators, and support staff working with students coming from other countries to

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study in U.S. universities. In the 1980s, the leadership of the section on Administrators and Teachers in ESL of the National Association for Foreign Student Affairs – Association of International Educators (NAFSA-AIE) organization, in consultation with 100 ESL program administrators active in NAFSA-AIE, developed a set of guidelines on the qualifications for the ESL professional which were published in the NAFSA Newsletter (Pennington, 1990). These included both general guidelines and specific ones for the identified positions of Program Director, Faculty Supervisor or Curriculum Coordinator, and Teacher in any language teaching field. The general guidelines included specialized knowledge and education, usually with a graduate degree, in language teaching principles and practices, second language acquisition, language and culture, and the nature of language and of the target language in social, regional, and functional varieties. Other general requirements included study in a foreign language, overseas experience, crosscultural knowledge and experience, and other personal characteristics. These were in addition to more specialized knowledge and skills related to the different positions. The TESOL association published its own list of qualifications for the field in 2007. Their Position Statement (TESOL, 2007) on the appropriate professional degree for English as a second, foreign, or additional language educator designates a Master’s degree in the teaching of English as a Second Language or a related area, such as Applied Linguistics, and notes that this is a terminal degree for the language teaching field. Other academic disciplines within higher education contexts – for example, Creative Writing and Fine Arts – share the distinction of having an earned Master’s degree (MFA) recognized as a terminal qualification. In the case of disciplines such as Theater, Dance, Fine Arts, and Creative Writing, faculty are generally afforded tenure-line status within their institutions (Grant, 2007), yet the same is rarely the case for those holding a Master’s degree in TESOL, applied linguistics, or similar qualification. Pennington (1992), writing in the 1990s, represents a dissenting view to the position that a Master’s degree is the terminal qualification for the TESOL or English language teaching field, arguing strongly that the field needs Ph.D. qualifications to ensure its academic status and knowledge base. In spite of intense interest in qualifications within the field of teaching English as a second/foreign language, and in spite of arguments that a Master’s in TESOL or similar degree is a terminal qualification, the perception endures that second language teachers have minimal or substandard qualifications. In the view of Case (1998), this enduring perception on the part of others in the academy is a contributing factor to the marginalized status of English language teaching programs and faculty. Stanley (1994) and Case (1998), writing in the

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1990s, maintained that more research was needed on the marginal status of English language teaching professionals. Still, a recent review of contemporary literature suggests that there has not been substantial progress in terms of research in the area of terminal qualifications for English language teaching professionals. While more recent research on the issue of English language teaching faculty as a marginalized population on college and university campuses is lacking, the matter has been explored to some extent through commentary (e.g., Jenks & Kennell, 2011; Pennington, 1991a, 1991b, 1992; Pennington & Hoekje, 2010; Stanley, 1994; Stoller, 2012) and limited research (Case, 1998; Pennington, 1991a, 1991b). Pennington and Hoekje (2010, pp. 10–11) observe that university language programs, like composition teaching programs, are often considered service units rather than academic disciplines, and so are not afforded the same status as other academic units. Stoller (2012) accounted for perceptions of the IEP as a marginalized academic unit within the university by highlighting a number of ways in which it differs from the other academic units: in its non-credit courses and non-degree-granting status, features of the IEP that are connected to its instruction being viewed as developmental or remedial; in the status of its faculty as rarely holding full-time positions with academic rank through either a continuing contract or tenure within the host university; and in the perceived status of English language teaching as not a bona fide or credible academic discipline. Stanley (1994) explored possible reasons for the low status of both English language teaching faculty and programs in higher education in recounting concerns raised through a Higher Education Interest Section of TESOL, many of which echoed those of Stoller and Christison (1994) and later Pennington and Hoekje (2010) and Stoller (2012). Stanley (1994) pointed to a future scenario which has now become reality in a number of language programs around the world in suggesting that academic institutions might replace in-house IEPs with external, for-profit language centers, expressing a concern that this might result in lower pay for faculty and staff, less access to university administrators, and lower social status, recognition, and support from mainstream academic faculty. Case (1998) investigated issues of perceived marginalization of faculty and administrators in an IEP by its host university in the Pacific Northwest. Case’s research focused on the tensions and difficulties that faculty in a university IEP experienced when they were involved in developing a required faculty evaluation system. The evaluation system, which replaced that previously used in the IEP, had to be in line with the host university’s expectations for and manner of assessing mainstream faculty. This raised many issues related to the IEP

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faculty’s work and employment status vis-à-vis faculty in other academic departments. The faculty in the IEP where Case functioned as a participantobserver all had Master’s degrees and 3 or more years of teaching experience. Although their focus was primarily on teaching – and in this they differed from faculty in other departments who were more focused on research – many regularly attended and presented at academic conferences and viewed themselves as scholars and language teaching professionals. Some of the IEP faculty pointed to their teaching demands as making it difficult for them to focus on publishing in academic journals, and some preferred to be identified as instructors with a largely teaching role rather than as professors expected to research and publish. The newer members of the faculty were especially eager to develop their teaching skills. Criteria such as requirements to present at academic conferences and publish journal articles, which reflect the responsibilities of tenure-line faculty in academic departments, were ultimately adopted for the IEP employee evaluation system. Although initially accepted by the IEP faculty, the adoption of these criteria initiated a process of comparison to the tenure-line faculty in which the IEP faculty became dissatisfied with their marginal relationship to the university and lack of full membership in that group. They observed that they were not eligible for tenure-track positions nor for annual raises in salary which were part of normal faculty compensation policies, and they were not able to serve on university-wide committees. As IEP faculty compared themselves to the norms and values of tenure-line faculty and became positively oriented to that group, this had dysfunctional consequences for them in the way of dissatisfaction with the university and with their own jobs, reinforcing their sense of marginalization and leaving some of them with a sense of being “between two worlds and full members of neither” (p. 16). Case recommends that IEP faculty and administrators need to raise their visibility to the host university and to clearly demonstrate their academic contributions to the university. He further recommends that they identify opportunities for dialog with host-university administrators that allow IEP members to educate their colleagues on the history and context of IEP work that have led to the current status of its faculty and its marginal position within university communities.

Corporatization of Existing IEPs

The present inquiry investigates the experiences of faculty who are working in U.S. institutions where corporate sector partnerships have been set up to

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handle both the recruitment of international students and the administration of the IEP and to provide a pathway into academic programs with support­ ive   English language study. These EAP matriculation “pathway programs” provide international students, many of whom will not have met insti­ tutional   language proficiency requirements for full matriculation, access to credit-bearing, disciplinary content courses, together with EAP language support, in the universities with which they establish partnership arrangements (Fulcher, 2007, 2009; Mullooly, 2009; Redden, 2010; Yerian, 2009). There are numerous for-profit education service providers, and not all of them engage in corporate sector partnerships responsible for both IEP administration and international student recruitment and offering credit-bearing EAP matriculation pathway programs. Those education service providers which do offer universities such arrangements usually enter into multi-year profitsharing arrangements based on student tuition fees. Key examples are INTO University Partnership, Inc. (Epstein, 2010), Kaplan Global Pathways (Lewin, 2008), and Navitas Education Centres (Redden, 2010). In one case, that of INTO USF (University of South Florida), a 30-year agreement was signed (Redden, 2010). Reporting on these partnership pathway programs in the United States has primarily occurred through mainstream media such as The Chronicle of Higher Education (Moser, 2008), Inside Higher Ed (Redden, 2010), The New York Times (Levin, 2010; Lewin, 2008), and The Oregonian (Graves, 2008), among others (Fulcher, 2007; Neznanski, 2008). Although some information is available on the impacts of these kinds of partnership arrangements on students (Dooey, 2010), there is as yet no published research investigating the impact of these programs on faculty. According to journalistic reports, matters of curriculum and instructional decision-making remain under the control of existing professionals teaching in both the IEP and pathway programs (Epstein, 2010; Redden, 2010), though this has not been empirically studied, nor has the teaching of pathway courses by disciplinary faculty who may not be adequately prepared to meet the cultural and linguistic needs of international students whose English language is not at the level needed for university study (Fulcher, 2009; Lewin, 2008). Because the joint venture typically results in a new corporate entity existing outside both the host university and the for-profit educational service provider (Redden, 2010), there have been some unforeseen negative consequences of the joint partnership arrangements for IEPs and their host universities. One of these was that the CEA began removing its programmatic accreditation from IEPs which were viewed as no longer under the governance of colleges or

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universities (Epstein, 2010; Klecic, 2010).1 Some institutions’ success at staving off proposed corporate sector partnership arrangements at their universities has been attributed to such a threat to accreditation status. Some universities which had been approached by for-profit education service providers have opted instead to develop their own bridge or pathway programs within existing IEPs to assist international students in transitioning into university life and regular academic classes (Redden, 2010). Partly as a result of issues arising from institutions that have either been targeted to implement joint-venture restructurings of their IEPs or that have already undergone such restructuring, AAIEP (the American Association for Intensive English Programs), TESOL, and UCIEP (2010) issued a joint position statement on governance for English language instruction at institutions of higher education in which they advised caution when considering partnership proposals as well as greater transparency by academic administrators and fuller participation on the part of IEP faculty and administrative staff in governance of the host university.

Major Players in International Student Matriculation Pathway Programs

Among the many private, for-profit education-service providers, four which offer corporate sector partnership agreements with colleges or universities to develop and implement credit-bearing EAP matriculation pathway programs are identified as having gained footholds in the United States. Because this book includes the reporting of research participants’ experiences from two empirical studies which involve these corporate entities, the descriptions which follow are general and do not include explicit details of their university partnerships or joint-venture structures. This limitation is in line with my aim of protecting participants’ identities. A link to each company’s corporate website has been provided, and readers who wish to learn more about these service providers’ offerings are encouraged to explore their web pages and contact corporate representatives independently.

1 Universities were required to provide evidence to the CEA that their language programs remained under full governance of the host universities in order to restore accreditation status, describing any substantive changes which had occurred as a result of the corporate sector partnership.

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INTO University Partnerships Headquartered in London, INTO University Partnerships, Ltd. (INTO; http:// www.into-corporate.com/en-GB/home.aspx), is a privately held, for-profit company which offers long-term joint venture partnerships with universities targeted to increasing international student enrollment and success. Presently, INTO has 10 university partnerships in the United Kingdom: City University London, Glasgow Caledonian University, Manchester Metropolitan University, Newcastle University, Queen’s University Belfast, St. George’s University of London, The University of East Anglia, The University of Manchester, UEA London, and the University of Exeter. INTO announced its first U.S. partnership, which was with Oregon State University, in July 2008, and the first INTOallied students arrived there in Fall 2009 (INTO Press Information, 2008). As of the beginning of 2013, three other U.S. universities besides the University of Oregon have partnered with INTO: the University of South Florida, Colorado State University, and Marshal University. Other attempts to develop INTO university partnerships in the United States have been unsuccessful (Mullooly, 2009; Redden, 2010). Kaplan Global Pathways Kaplan Incorporated (http://www.kaplan.com/) is a well-established educational service provider that is a subsidiary of The Washington Post, a publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The Kaplan, Inc. corporate structure has four major divisions, the best known of which is Kaplan Test Prep, offering test preparation materials and courses for more than 90 standardized tests, including those which test English proficiency. The other divisions are Kaplan Higher Education, offering degree-granting educational programs; Kaplan Ventures, its venture capital investment division, which develops specialized education programs; and – of most direct interest to the present discussion – Kaplan International, housing their university preparation and pathway programs, including Kaplan Global Pathways (Kaplan, 2013). As of the beginning of 2013, Kaplan has partnered with two U.S. universities: Northeastern University in Boston, reported by Lewin (2008) to be the first partnership of this kind in the United States, and, more recently, the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Navitas University Pathways Similar to Kaplan, Navitas University Preparation and Pathways Programs (http://www.navitas.com/university_transfer_program.html), headquartered in Australia, has an international presence, and its parent company, Navitas Ltd., is a publicly traded company – in this case, trading on the Australian

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Security Exchange. Also similar to Kaplan, Navitas operates under four primary divisions, though with both similar and different emphases from those of Kaplan: an English division focused on English language learning services for non-native English speakers as well as teacher training; a Professional division focused on corporate professional development; a Student Recruitment division focused on recruitment of students from India and China for “educational institutions in major Western countries”; and a University Programs division, which includes their university pathways program (Navitas, 2013). In the United States, Navitas partnerships are in operation at the University of Western Kentucky, the University of New Hampshire, and three campuses of the University of Massachusetts. Study Group University Pathway Programs Study Group (http://www.studygroup.com/language-education/embassy -university-pathways) – a former Australian company founded by current INTO University Partnerships CEO, Andrew Colin (Study Group, 2011), which is now wholly owned by a private equity group based in the United States – is in the business of preparing and coordinating matriculation access for international students wishing to attend undergraduate and graduate programs in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom and needing to learn English. Through its various subsidiaries, which include Embassy CES, a private, for-profit educational service provider in the United States, Study Group and its partner subsidiaries have developed a number of different models for partnerships with universities, from admission agreements following preparatory EAP instruction to more formalized, credit-bearing matriculation pathway programs in institutions such as James Madison University, Dean College, and Fisher College (Redden, 2010; Study Group, 2011). Conclusion This chapter summarized literature specifically related to recruitment, English language teaching professionals and programs, and the phenomena of corporate partnerships with colleges and universities resulting in matriculation pathway programs. Internationalization of universities is argued as the impetus for a more heightened focus on international student recruitment, as well as the development of matriculation pathway programs for non-native English-speaking international students who may not yet meet universities’ admissions requirements. An unsurprising feature of such endeavors is the fact that most of those recruited for such programs will be full-fee paying

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international students. IEPs on campus have traditionally provided the mediation pre-matriculated ELS students receive, but their historically marginalized status on campus affords them little power in developing articulations between their programs and the university’s academic degree programs. Likewise, within the new paradigm of corporate sector partnerships, how and where language programs exist organizationally will have an impact on the accreditation of such programs and will influence the opportunities for advancement for English language teaching professionals within the academe at-large, perhaps marginalizing them further. Chapter 3 illuminates findings from an exploratory study which I conducted which aimed to understand the experiences of English language teaching professionals whose institutions were currently being targeted for corporate sector partnership with a for-profit education service provider (Winkle, 2010a, 2010b).

chapter 3

An Exploratory Study Introduction Toward the end of my doctoral coursework, I carried out an exploratory qualitative investigation on the perceptions of English language teaching professionals working in programs which at the time were currently being targeted for corporate sector partnerships that would result in EAP matriculation pathway programs. The qualitative study (Winkle, 2010a, 2010b), was expected to reveal issues or questions that might be appropriate for my Ph.D. research. The two overarching questions for the exploratory study were the following: 1.

How do English language teaching professionals whose teaching institutions have been targeted for corporate sector partnerships describe this experience? 2. What are English language teaching professionals’ perceived threats or opportunities vis-à-vis the potential corporate sector partnership? The findings from the exploratory study, as recast and reinterpreted here, serve as background for the main study reported in Part 2 of this book and as an introduction to the context of the research. As such, they join with the narrative researcher reflections of the Preface to further orient readers to my position as researcher (Merriam, 2009) and experience-informed presuppositions prior to beginning fieldwork for my thesis. Context The English Language Institute (ELI) at “Mountain Valley University” (MVU),1 located in “Ridgeview, Montana” in the United States, has been operating for nearly 30 years and is accredited by the CEA. Its aim is to help international students prepare for entry into MVU by developing the academic English ­language skills needed for academic study. In addition, the program serves a site where those studying in a Master’s course in TESOL can gain practical 1 A ll participant names, university and corporate partner names and locations are pseudonyms.

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experience through observing classes and working as teaching interns. It also serves as a site for research by MVU doctoral students in Second language acquisition (SLA). Table  1 indicates the pseudonyms, faculty types, and full- or part-time employee classifications for participants included in the exploratory inquiry at the MVU ELI. Several months prior to the beginning of my exploratory study, the Program Director of the ELI had learned through outside channels of the university leadership’s intention to form a corporate sector partnership with “Joint Venture Partnerships, Ltd.” (JVP). Soon after that, the Director was summoned to the office of university leadership to be informed about the potential assumption of management of the ELI by JVP. Based on conversations with the program director of an ELI which had already experienced a corporate sector partnership, she and her administrative staff first attempted to make the university administration aware of the potential pitfalls of entering into such a partnership in order to forestall or derail it altogether. By the time interviews for the exploratory study were conducted, a partnership agreement was being negotiated, but not yet executed. Still, changes in perceptions of the pending partnership had already begun to occur: administrative staff, who had initially expressed fearful and negative reactions to the forthcoming JVP partnership, began to show signs of optimism. The faculty, in contrast, had yet to experience these effects. Thus, although I had originally intended to study perceptions of the potential impact of a corporate sector partnership at their institution, I soon learned that – even before the partnership agreement was in force – my participants’ professional lives were clearly Table 1

Elizabeth Estelle June Lucy Robert Patty Tina

Participant classification: exploratory study

Faculty type

Classification

English language program director/administrator English language program staff/administrator English language program staff/administrator English language program staff/administrator English language teacher English language teacher English language teacher

Full-time faculty Full-time staff Full-time staff Full-time staff Adjunct faculty Adjunct faculty Adjunct faculty

Note. All participant names are pseudonyms, and monikers may have been gendered differently than participants.

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in flux. Several of the participants used the metaphor of a “runaway train” or “rollercoaster” to describe their experiences in the months preceding JVP’s assumption of control of the program. Program members were having trouble understanding what was going on and getting a clear view of where the program was headed. A reoccurring theme expressed by participants was that everything was changing very fast: “…if you would have spoken to me last week, my attitude would be significantly different than it is today” (AdmnStaff_Lucy.01).2

Thematic Experiences: Being Targeted for Corporate Sector Partnership

The experiences of ELI faculty and administrators, including the Program Director, were partly similar and convergent and partly different and divergent. In what follows, I summarize program members’ experiences as falling under a number of themes, each of which illustrates contradictions, or paradoxes. Quality of Communication A main theme involves communication in the program in relation to the pending arrangement with JVP. ELI administrators and faculty differed substantially in their perceptions of the quality of communication in the time period since having first learned that MVU was considering a corporate sector partnership with JVP. Through my interviews, I discovered contradictory realities of (i) open communication between and among program administrators and faculty, ­co-existing with (ii) parallel perceptions of secrecy at various levels within the organization and alternate ways of knowing through corridor conversations. A Culture of Openness: I Tell Them Everything I Know A readily observable feature of the program was its culture of open communication between program administrators and faculty. Yet at the same time, there was some withholding of information from faculty by the Director and 2 The transcription conventions for the exploratory study and the thesis have been modified slightly for this book to move them closer to ordinary punctuation conventions, such as a use of comma rather than dash or ellipsis for pause, and also to remove some of the false starts and other kinds of disfluencies, in the interests of readability. In addition, the amount of text included in quoted parts is limited, representing selected excerpts rather than full narratives. This is a change in the methodology from the thesis to this book (see Chapter 4 for further discussion).

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other administrators, as a natural consequence of differences in their positions and sometimes for other intentional reasons as well. These experiences seemed to trend along a three-level continuum based on employee type and responsibility. The Program Director, Elizabeth, expressed a sense of communicative transparency in the quality and dissemination of information in both face-toface and e-mail communication. Yet at the same time, as can be seen below in the representative excerpts from her interviews, she sometimes held back certain information from the faculty, apparently out of a sense of being protective of them. I tell them everything I know, except I put a positive spin on it for them. (AdmnStaff_Elizabeth.01) I go to a faculty meeting, and I tell them there’s this company; this kind of thing might happen; this is what it would look like; here’s what could happen for you; you’ll keep your jobs; there may be management opportunities for you; there’s blah, blah, blah…. It is a two-track thing: I tell them the truth about where we’re at, but there is no point in scaring everybody, just no point in that. (AdmnStaff_Elizabeth.02) I mean, it will be very interesting for you to talk to them, find out what they think they know. Now, they don’t know anything from this past week yet. I sent them a message last week telling them everything I knew up to that point, which was pretty much, ‘a contract’s being negotiated, and that I know nothing about what’s in the contract’…. (AdmnStaff_Elizabeth.03) The administrative staff – who worked closely with both the Program Director and the faculty and who, in a sense, functioned as “border crossers” in their roles communicating with both the Director and faculty – revealed that they were sympathetic to those on both sides of the “institutional divide” existing between administration and instruction in academic programs.”I have been very candid with the group of people [faculty] that I am friends with as far as sharing the information…and I do kind of feel like there is a divide here between administrators and faculty; and I’m clearly on the administrator’s side of that divide” (AdmnStaff_Lucy.02). They also acknowledged that their positions as administrators gave them access to information that faculty might not have. Estelle, for instance, confirmed that the staff was generally better informed than the faculty and that what seemed like a deliberate strategy of staged dissemination of information might rather be a matter of unfortunate

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timing due to the ever-changing nature of the negotiations, and the fact that the Program Director herself was being kept in the dark. Estelle suggested the Program Director may also have decided to withhold some information from faculty in an attempt to protect them from the stressful experiences shared by ELI administrators during what might have been perceived as the ELI’s attempts to derail the partnership between JVP and the university. As she related: Elizabeth is…right now talking to the staff; we keep them up to date. But the next step is the faculty. The faculty has not gotten a lot. Like, Elizabeth sent an update the other day, like, “I don’t know much yet” – because, at that time, we didn’t know much yet. But I think probably next week she’s going to meet with the faculty and talk with them. Because I think that is critical. A lot of companies and organizations think the opposite, think that they don’t need to know this yet, and they…create fear and mistrust. To me, it is like, maybe you don’t have to say exactly everything, but say as much as you’re able to say to, prepare [people] for something bad, or make them, you know, calm down about it. (AdmnStaff_Estelle.01) During the period of the interviews, which was months before the JVP partnership took effect, many of the teaching faculty expressed dismay at how information had been shared thus far. Representative reflections from two faculty members demonstrate a sense of not being sufficiently included in the chain of information about the impending takeover by JVP and a resultant “fear of the unknown” based on incomplete information and rumor: We’ve had lots and lots of rumors and a couple more meetings – little bits of information trickling out…. They [the ELI Director and administrators] have been in meetings, and those meetings are only at the top level of the ELI, and none of that information has been conveyed to the entire faculty. And what little bits I know additionally are from individual conversations and rumors and second- and third-hand reports. So nothing else has been said to the entire faculty. (Faculty_Robert.01) Just like the university has badly run this, I think the ELI management badly ran it – because you fear what you don’t know. And there are lots of rumors…and that caused a lot of worry, which it needn’t have done if information had been available, if there had been a concern and understanding of what the lack of knowledge meant; but there wasn’t. (Faculty_Tina.01)

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Yet, as a result of my interviews with Elizabeth and the other administrative staff, I shared Estelle’s sense that information was being kept from faculty, in part, in an attempt to shield them from the negative experiences the administration had been enduring. I therefore asked Tina about whether she thought that the administration had in fact been trying to protect the faculty by withholding some information about the takeover. Her response was, “we weren’t protected” (Faculty_Tina.02), and she elaborated as follows: Elizabeth’s tears…. We don’t know why there are tears. We saw her emotions, but we never saw the information, right? And we never saw what went into the fight [i.e., the initial efforts to highlight negative consequences of the partnership] and things like that. We just saw the emotional result of the fight. And not just Elizabeth – I mean, everybody was up and down. So, it is like, we weren’t protected. We got the emotional fallout, but we didn’t get any of the kind of information that would let us rationalize. (Faculty_Tina.03) This view was not shared by all faculty. Patty, for instance, surmised that the perception that the ELI administration was being guarded about what information got shared and when may simply have been a reflection of the timing of information flow from the university and JVP: Well, I think there has been hesitation to say anything because there are so many unknown variables. So the Director can’t go into a faculty meeting and say, “Don’t worry; you’ll be fine.” And she also doesn’t want to go into a meeting and say, “Worry! This is terrible.” (Faculty_Patty.01) A Culture of Secrecy: They’re Telling Us Nothing A recurring theme in the interviews with program members was their perceptions of secrecy, especially on the part of the university leadership, whom they believed had withheld information from the ELI administrative staff. This sense of not being part of the university’s communication with JVP about the ELI led both administrative and faculty participants to express feelings of being “outsiders” in decision-making about their own work context. The Program Director told me that she first learned of the potential partnership in a meeting with a university administrator which had been requested in an e-mail message which did not disclose the topic or reason for the meeting. Elizabeth shared her frustration on learning that a corporate sector partnership of the ELI with JVP had been in discussion for some time and was in fact already well along in the process of coming into being:

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So, basically, the whole thing had been going on, and we were notified at the last second, kind of. And you can tell because they were secretive about the topic. They just wanted to hit us with it. It’s kind of, “We’re going! Alright?” …And that made us very angry, obviously. (AdmnStaff_Elizabeth.04) So, anyway, they are moving forward; they’re making a deal. And again, they are telling us nothing. Right? …MVU is telling us as little as possible. (AdmnStaff_Elizabeth.05) Members of the administrative staff also reported feeling that the university was withholding information from the ELI and keeping it out of the discussions with JVP, thus corroborating the Program Director’s views: She [Elizabeth] didn’t know what it was about. So we didn’t know, no. And, of course, before then, we were thinking, “What could it be?” We were like, “Okay, have you done anything horrible?” And it was such a high level…. This could be potentially bad; it could be like “Have you done anything unethical?” We were like, “What is it?” (AdmnStaff_Estlle.02) When asked whether they had been invited to the meetings, June replied: Not at all: I have not been invited to any of the meetings. No, no, no, no; not at all. I’ve not been invited, I’ve not been asked. (AdmnStaff_June.01) When asked whether they had been kept out of the negotiations with JVP, Lucy responded: Well, I do kind of feel like we’ve been kept out of the process [by MVU] until very recently, like the last couple of days. (AdmnStaff_Lucy.03) In their interviews, faculty shared a similar sense to that of the ELI administrators of being left out of the process involving the takeover by JVP. However, in their case, the focus was on the secrecy of the ELI administration rather than university leadership. Thus, Robert remarked, “I think a whole lot more is known officially [by the ELI Administrators] that isn’t being shared” (Faculty_ Robert.02). Beyond the fact of their being left out of the process, some faculty interpreted what they saw as a failure to include them as evidence of their not being valued enough to make meaningful contributions. With this in mind, Tina defended the faculty’s right to be included by stressing their qualifications:

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There could have been much greater participation on the part of the faculty in the fight, right? A lot of stuff is being done, like proposals, plans…. We’ve had no input on that. Now, there are a lot of creative, clever, smart people who could have contributed, but…all the action has been totally in that inner circle. (Faculty_Tina.04)

Alternative Communication Channels: In a Corridor, You Can Become a “Knower” Because of their sense of being excluded from important information and the decision-making process, some faculty relied on alternative ways of finding out things about the forthcoming takeover by JVP. As Tina remarked: I heard in a hallway conversation, you know, in that sort of serendipitous, fortuitous way…, because it wasn’t new to me in the faculty meeting. (Faculty_Tina.06) There is this idea of knowers and not-knowers. And if you’re in the right place and the right time, you know; in a corridor you can become a knower. But there is no systematic information disbursement, and I think that has contributed to the level of concern – because of this feeling of powerless, you know? …You fear what you don’t know. ­ (Faculty_Tina.05)

Some faculty members who were connected to the administrative staff were able to learn information that had not been made public. The following comment by Patty demonstrates an alternative, unofficial channel of information that was open to some faculty: I was privy to lots of that knowledge. And…I guess I got pulled into a couple kind of casual meetings here and there because I was still at work – and they [the ELI Administrators] were still there. And I would walk by and they would commiserate about the next thing that was ­happening. (Faculty_Patty.02) In sum, all participants in this inquiry – the Program Director, the administrative border crossers, and the English language teaching faculty – each within their sphere of responsibility, felt that the communication of relevant information about the forthcoming corporate partnership had intentionally been withheld. In all cases there was the perception that university leader­ship was deceptively intent on forcing a top-down agenda of engaging with an

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outside vendor for the purposes of international recruitment and matriculation pathway program development and implementation. Others – in particular, the English language teachers – perceived secrecy on the part of the Program Director; and while some criticized her for lack of openness, others suggested this was merely her way of protecting subordinate faculty and staff from the anxieties she and some of the border crossers had been suffering.

Threats to Job Security, Programmatic Quality, and Professional Identity A second prominent theme which emerged both in observation and interviews with program members was that of perceived threats to the quality and type of work which people would be doing as a consequence of a corporate sector partnership.

Threat to Work Quality: It Isn’t Only a Job Initially, the possibility of a corporate sector partnership elicited fears of job loss on the part of both ELI faculty and administrators. However, by the time of the interviews, most program members felt reasonably secure that they would not be fired or forced out of a job. Yet an important issue remained and was nearly universal: “Will I want this job?” This concern can be seen in the comments of both Elizabeth and Lucy: Nobody here [neither MVU nor JVP] wants anybody to be shoved out because it is going to lead to bad press…they will find a place for me. My question is, would I like the place? (AdmnStaff_Elizabeth.06) Last week I was looking for grad programs. I was ready to leave…because I thought that this was going to become a job I didn’t want. I wasn’t worried about losing my job. (AdmnStaff_Lucy.04) A comment by Patty shows a similar concern about the type and quality of the teaching job under JVC: For me it was a little bit of concern about my job – a bigger concern about what my job would be like because I felt like I probably would get to keep it. (Faculty_Patty.03) Tina reflected the strong sense of dedication to the work as more than “just a job” which many teachers feel:

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I was perhaps less concerned about my job – losing it – than I was about the integrity of the program, my feelings, …my belief in the program, and the sort of dedication to the program that we feel. I mean, we work our butts off for the ELI, and it’s not for Elizabeth, and it’s not for the ­students; it is much more for this entity that we belong to. And it was like, I don’t want to work without that feeling, you know? And the idea of working my butt off to line somebody’s pocket just goes against every instinct of rightness that I have. (Faculty_Tina.07) These professional administrators and faculty had enjoyed freedom and autonomy in terms of program development, curriculum development, and pedagogical decision-making. So, while having somewhat transitioned from their original fears of job loss to a state of confidence that their livelihoods would not be in jeopardy as a result of the partnership, many had concerns that the program quality might suffer and that the university’s partnership with the corporate vendor might result in a job or position in which they would find less satisfaction.

Threat to Work Autonomy and Professionalism: I Don’t Want to Be Cookie Cutter Tina’s belief in and dedication to the program as revealed in the comment above was shared by many who feared that a JVP partnership would have a detrimental effect on their autonomy and professionalism in their work and consequently negatively affect the quality and professionalism of the existing program curriculum and instructional practices. Many were worried that JVC would be controlling the program: “What we were afraid is they were going to come in and tell us how to do things” (AdmnStaff_Lucy.05). Tina voiced the worry that professional qualifications might no longer be required to teach in the program: What would you require [as a credential to teach]? Just a warm body then? You have to have people who know about teaching; otherwise it is just warm bodies. (Faculty_Tina.08) Elizabeth reinforced this view and also brought up a fear of loss of quality: To me the problem with JVP coming is that they were going to ruin it! … I was afraid they would destroy our quality; I don’t want to be cookie ­cutter. (AdmnStaff_Elizabeth.07)

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Patty expressed a similar generalized fear of deterioration of the program, in addition to a specific fear of loss of Elizabeth as a high-quality administrator: [My fear is] the program falling apart. That’s what happened in [city where a similar corporate sector partnership occurred]. It happened at [university name]; they lost money, they lost jobs…. But bigger than all of that was the fear of losing Elizabeth – because I think that she runs a very good ELI, for whatever faults she may have. (Faculty_Patty.04) In the face of the takeover by JVC, the faculty expressed support for the program’s administration: regardless of any criticisms they might have of the Program Director, they were much more negatively disposed to any managers which the outside corporate body might try to impose on the program.

Threat to University Educator Status: We See Ourselves as Academics Program members, especially the faculty, had a strong sense of professional identity as university-level educators and employees in an academic institution. In order to teach in the MVU ELI, faculty must have completed a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics or other a relevant field, and a number of the ELI faculty members were pursuing doctoral degrees at the time of the exploratory study. In addition, many of them had scholarly profiles and were active in research and other professional development activities such as presentation of papers at international and regional conferences. A main concern for faculty was becoming associated with the corporate world: My impression was, this can’t be good because my particular desire is to be affiliated with a university, not with a company. And I would see this as something like Berlitz. That’s not what I see my teaching as; so, for me, the idea of not being affiliated with a university was sending up red flags. (Faculty_Robert.03) I think many people – maybe not even consciously – but many people go into teaching because they don’t want to participate in this kind of corporate world, myself being one of them. (Faculty_Patty.05) There is a certain group of instructors who, frankly, are looking for other employment…. Most of us, who don’t want to be part of a commercial venture and prefer to be a part of the university – and see ourselves as

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academics – really would rather not be affiliated with a company, …a commercial venture. (Faculty_Robert.04) A similar point of view was expressed by some in the ELI administration: One of our staff members in particular has been very upset about this because s/he wants to be a university employee. Part of the reason I went into academia is I felt like that’s…a nice…collegial and kind of safe career path – like you don’t need to worry about all the back-stabbing and profit-grabbing of business. (AdmnStaff_Lucy.06) Such negative views of links to private companies and corporate culture, which might be echoed by other university employees, are obviously at odds with current attempts by universities to link to and model themselves on corporations. Repositioning for a New Reality The journey of program members from the initial discussions of privatization of the ELI to the period of negotiations and then contracting with JVC in which the university was engaged at the time of the interviews was one of considerable distress and fear. After getting over the initial shock, the journey was one that brought some participants from resistance to reluctant acceptance and nervous anticipation of their still unknown future. The process leading to gradual acceptance and anxious anticipation is captured well in this comment by June: I feel like it’s a train rushing along, and…people in it are really excited. At the beginning it was like, “Oh, no! I don’t want to get on! I’m scared of this train. I don’t know what’s in it, and I don’t know how it’s going to affect me!” But as it has gathered momentum, and people learn more about it, and you were told much more…. Well, they weren’t very, very pleased in the start, but then the university decided this is where they want to go. So, it wasn’t a case of the ELI saying yes or no; it was a case of the ELI having to do it. (AdmnStaff_June.02) In some cases, program members, though sometimes reluctantly, admitted to being optimistic about the future: “Okay, let me just say it directly: I’m pretty excited about it now….” (AdmnStaff_Lucy.07)

Reluctant Acceptance: It’s Not Going to Be as Dark and Threatening as I Thought ELI administrative insiders, or “knowers,” were more likely to have come to terms with the new corporate sector partnership arrangements than were the

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faculty. Many were surprised at the journey they had taken, one that had led them from active resistance to acceptance, and even to becoming one of “them”: Yeah, it’s kind of like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” I mean we’ve certainly felt that way. (AdmnStaff_Lucy.08) The Director and others on the administrative staff came to realize some possible advantages and opportunities provided by their new affiliation with JVC. Elizabeth and Estelle revealed their changed perceptions in the following reflections: I came back from seeing another program and I felt like a traitor. Because…I told my ELI I went there thinking, “Well, maybe this is good for the university, but it is terrible for the ELI,” and I came back thinking, “This is stupid for the university, but it might be really good for the ELI.” And the reason why I thought that is because I saw ELIs with 700 students and ninety positions and a bunch of management positions – things that are usually just not available to ELI professionals – and some of them very highly paid, and many of them overseeing credit programs in the university, working with deans and faculty. And I said, “I can’t ignore what I’m seeing!” I saw it, you know? (AdmnStaff_Elizabeth.08) So we started understanding much more – what was going to happen and how it was going to unfold. So, my feelings now are very different than they were before. Like, I feel that perhaps it’s not going to be as dark and threatening as I thought…. I think it’s going to be okay for the most part. (AdmnStaff_Estelle.03) This change of heart on the part of the program administration, which was less in evidence in the faculty, is perhaps a reflection of a difference in perspective as well as a difference in available information. Enhanced Status: Going from Ugly Step Child to Preferred Child A common perception of ELIs is as a marginal or service operation that gives them a relatively low status within their host universities. The situation in the ELI at MVU was no different, as all of the program members who were interviewed described the standing of the program in these terms. The impact of a corporate sector partnership with JVP could then be seen as potentially helping to raise the status of the English language teaching unit, and indeed some of the participants could already notice such an effect on the ELI and, in some cases, on their own status as individual professionals. As one of the teachers reflected:

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…and there were, I think, inroads made. I think it is becoming more and more apparent that the university is going to pay attention to us because now they’ve got stakes. (Faculty_Patty.06) One of the administrative staff made a similar comment: For the ELI, I think this is a great deal. I think the ELI is going to become…. I mean, I’ve spent the last two days in meetings…with people from all over this university that would never have met with me before, never would have had reason to know I existed before. (AdmnStaff_Lucy.09) Another administrative staff member was quite upbeat about the future status of the program: Another thing that I think is going to be great is going to be that – finally, finally, finally – I think the university is going to look at us differently. I think in many programs, the ELIs are like – I don’t know, the, out-­ofstate cousin, the foreign cousin, that comes to visit. But with JVP, these meetings are amazing…. All these people – these big people at MVU – working for our school [the ELI]; I’ve never seen that. They are going to make stuff happen. (AdmnStaff_Estelle.04) As the Program Director speculated: We’re actually going to end up the preferred child. We’re going to go from ugly step child to the preferred child. And that is a freaky thing – because I have certainly never experienced that or felt that. (AdmnStaff_Elizabeth.09) These reflections represent a remarkably big change from the initially negative and hesitant reactions of program members. It seems that the JVC partnership with MVU, after a period of fear and adjustment, looked quite promising.

Connection of Exploratory Study to the Overall Study

Particularly salient in informing questions related to the current study were contradictory issues concerned with professional status. On the one hand, concerns were expressed to me by ELI administrators and faculty about a potential loss of autonomy in administrative, curricular, and instructional decision-making that could result in a reduction in quality of the program.

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On the other hand, I witnessed the expressed anticipation by some ELI administrators and faculty that their currently marginalized status as a program, and in some cases, as individual academic professionals, might potentially be elevated within the broader university community as a result of the corporate sector partnership. I also noted the fluidity of faculty membership in “knowing” and “not-knowing” groups within the ELI community and, for some, roles that involved crossing borders within the program (e.g., between administrators and faculty) and also between the program and the mainstream university community. Gaining an understanding of program members’ perspectives on how their professional status and autonomy were impacted by their institution’s partnership with a for-profit education-service provider was a significant motivator in my decision to pursue the larger line of inquiry that resulted in my Ph.D. dissertation and, ultimately, this book. Conclusion This chapter reported findings from an exploratory research study I performed near the end of my doctoral coursework, conducted with full approval from my university’s Internal Review Board. These English language teaching professionals’ host university was in the midst of negotiations with a corporate sector educational services provider. While a fear of the unknown was a dominant theme within this inquiry, intensified through their perceptions of less than ideal communication, secrecy, and perceived threats to the quality of their existing programs, I left with a sense of optimism on the part of administrative “knowers” that – for teachers, at least – things might not be as daunting as they had first feared. I wondered whether or not a “clumsily managed” exploration, negotiation, and implementation of such corporate sector partnerships on the part of high-level university leadership would have a lingering effect on the faculty and staff who were on the receiving end of the top-down leadership approach. How was the disciplinary faculty teaching academic content responding to this fast-approaching new paradigm? The experience of meeting and interviewing colleagues in the field in the midst of their coming to terms with what they saw as the approaching new paradigm for their programs led me to the much broader study explicated in Part 2 of this book. Chapter 4 provides readers with an orientation to the narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) research methodology which I employed for my main research project and then the further methodology involved in developing that project into the present book.

chapter 4

Methodology for Researching Practitioner Perspectives in the Corporate Sector Partnership Programs Introduction The intent of this inquiry is to examine issues related to the targeting of colleges and universities with institution-administered Intensive English Programs (IEPs) employing English for academic purposes (EAP) curricula by for-profit educational service providers for corporate sector partnerships. Specifically, the focus of the original narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) is the partnership’s impact on faculty perceptions of professional status, as well as faculty autonomy in curricular and instructional decision-making. Broadly, the inquiry is situated from a perspective that views these types of partnerships as an extension of a general trend toward a corporatization of higher education through privatization and outsourcing (Andrews, 2006; Dickeson & Figuli, 2007; Fink, 2008; Fulcher, 2009; Lerner, 2008). In this chapter, I review considerations and details of the methodology of the original research and the modifications to that methodology which have been made to produce a distinctive work in this book.

Qualitative Methodology and Narrative Inquiry

My ontological and epistemological outlook, as one who views knowledge and knowing through a sociocultural theory of mind, is that there is no absolute reality waiting to be discovered. Inquiry grounded in qualitative methodology takes for granted a generative, constructed reality which is both multidimensional and in a continuous state of change (Merriam, 2009; Patton, 2002). The intent of the investigation is to reveal, examine, and retell the experiential stories of faculty impacted by corporate sector partnerships; therefore, qualitative methods are appropriate, as these approaches can help in “understanding how participants perceive their roles or tasks in an organization” and in “determining the history of a situation” (Merriam, 1995, p. 52). Through participants’ experiential stories, the research attempts to “offer readers a place to imagine their own uses and application[s]” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 42).

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As a means to understand the experiences of faculty impacted by the phenomena under study, I designed this qualitative research as a narrative inquiry, the study of experience “in which humans, individually and socially, lead storied lives” (Clandinin, 2006, p. 45). Moen (2006) contends that individual human actions and experiences within social contexts may best be understood through narrative inquiry. She reflects on narrative methodologies synthesizing both sociocultural (or Vygotskian) theory and Bakhtin (1986) concepts of dialogue, stressing that stories are told in context. She also suggests that people’s stories might be analyzed as a way to gain insights into the experiences of others. In Moen’s (2006) view, narrative inquiry provides Vygotskian (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978), composite “units of analysis” (p. 59). With the aim of understanding a complex whole, one should resist the deconstruction of experience into its constituent parts. Therefore, rather than merely identifying experiential meaning through an analysis of excerpted quotations from transcribed interactions, in the thesis (Winkle, 2011a) extended first-person narratives were co-constructed with the participants (Clandinin, Murphy, Humber, & Orr, 2010), using primarily their own words in order to create stories from which the researcher and others could make their own judgments about the impact of the corporate sector partnerships. Narrative inquiry is informed by Dewey’s (1938) writings and his concep­ tion  of experience (e.g., as reviewed by Clandinin & Rosiek, 2006), characterized through personal and social interaction; through physical, sociological, and psychological situation or context; and through continuity, whereby experiences grow from and develop into experiences on a continuum of an imagined past, an imagined now, and an imagined future (Clandinin, 2006). This grounding in experience leads Clandinin and Connelly (2000) to their framework of a three-dimensional narrative inquiry space, suggesting that narrative inquiries involve both inward and outward, as well as backward and forward, along the dimensions of interaction, continuity, and situation or place. Narrative inquiry is both the recognition that humans, individually and socially, live “storied lives” (p. 8), as they use narratives to try to make sense of their world to themselves and others, as well as being a research method in which narrative inquirers collect, reconstruct, retell, and descriptively analyze these stories in order to understand a phenomenon. As a qualitative methodology, narrative inquiry challenges the formalistic basis of so-called “objective” research and causes the researcher or inquirer to negotiate the “formalistic inquiry boundar[ies]” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 45) between narrative and more traditional, “objective” or reductionist forms of inquiry.

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For the original investigation on which this book is based (Winkle, 2011a), I collected and reconstructed participants’ stories about their work experiences, told within the context of our interview conversations, through a process of “restorying” (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002, p. 329) which focused on those aspects of participants’ experiential stories that illuminated issues related to the inquiry’s guiding questions. These participant stories were recast – “restoried” – in the genre of continuous, first-person performative monologues in the voices of the participants.1 In the restorying process and through my own experience listening to and participating in the initial telling of participants’ stories told during face-to-face encounters, I attempted to create a resequenced reimagining of what it would have been like to hear participants’ stories told in context: an uninterrupted soliloquy of their experiences.

Participants and Sampling

No more than 15 purposefully selected participants were desired for this study. All prospective participants in this research were adult faculty working in college or university contexts where corporate sector partnerships resulting in pathway programs were in force. With the aim of examining a diversity of faculty experiences, three specific categories of faculty were recruited in roughly equal proportions:

• English language teaching faculty across different areas of specialization (e.g., grammar, writing, reading, listening/speaking); • Administrative faculty within English language teaching IEPs (e.g., directors, middle-level administrators, or faculty involved with marketing); and • Discipline-specific faculty (e.g., in Business, Engineering, Political Science) teaching in pathway programs.

I identified participants for the inquiry through purposeful network sampling (Merriam, 2009). In order to initiate the network sampling, as well as to avoid coercion through direct contact with potential participants, I used my personal e-mail account to distribute a recruitment e-mail message via the following professional academic e-mail listservs:

1 These monologues were then re-enacted by others to become video performances (see Winkle, 2011b).

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TESOL Higher Education Special Interest Group (SIG) TESOL Intensive English Program Special Interest Group (SIG) University and College Intensive English Programs (a consortium of IEP Directors) The recruitment e-mail directed prospective participants to self-identify and initiate contact with me if interested in participation. In addition to guidelines for how potential participants could express their interest or willingness to participate, as well as providing general information regarding the purpose of the study, the recruitment e-mail also asked recipients to consider forwarding the recruitment message to faculty and colleagues whom they knew were currently teaching disciplinary content courses in EAP matriculation pathway programs. In replies to prospective participants, I additionally requested that these individuals consider forwarding the recruitment e-mail to colleagues. In order to facilitate purposeful selection of participants from the prospective sample pool, the recruitment e-mail asked prospects to include the following demographic information in their e-mail which indicated their willingness to participate: 1.

Self-identify as (a) an English language teaching professional, (b) an English language program administrator, or (c) disciplinary faculty teaching academic content; 2. Provide their title and faculty rank (if applicable) within the college, university, or program; 3. Indicate the number of years they had been teaching in the program; 4. Indicate if they had taught in the program or institution prior to the corporate sector partnership; and 5. Indicate their institution’s name and its U.S. state and city. During the recruitment process, 14 prospective participants self-identified as potential participants. Therefore, all interested prospects were given the opportunity to participate. Of the 14 individuals who agreed to participate in the study, four self-identified as English language program administrators, three as English language teaching professionals, and two as disciplinary faculty teaching academic content. Four participants described their institutional roles as being split between administrative and language teaching domains of their institutions’ English language programs, and one English language program administrator self-identified as a tenured faculty member with teaching

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responsibilities in an academic department. I sent confirmation e-mails from my password-protected, personal e-mail account to each of the 14 prospective participants in order to arrange for an interview day, time, and location convenient to the participant. Materials The primary instrument of qualitative research is the individual researcher (Merriam, 2009). In this qualitative inquiry, I as the researcher engaged in reflective, narrative journaling prior to conducting the study and maintained a field-notes journal throughout the research process. The qualitative orien­ tation of the study design acknowledges my role as a participant in the inquiry (Patton, 2002) whose life experiences, biases, and prejudices must be fully revealed and examined in an effort to provide rigor, reliability, and validity to the findings. My own theoretical perspective as a sociocultural theorist further impacted my understanding of participation, and my actual participation, in the study. Sociocultural theory, also known as sociohistorical or Vygotskian theory, contends that all knowledge originates and is constructed socially within its cultural context (Vygotsky, 1978). If cognitive development and higher order thinking occur not as a result of social mediation, but rather, as the mediation is taking place within its cultural context, then the interjection of a researcher into the context in which the phenomenon is occurring through face-to-face interview and dialogic, mediated interaction will have an impact on the data derived and its interpretation. Indeed, given the dialogic, mediated nature of the interview process, the data derived and constructed from this research method are co-constructions by me, as interviewer, and each interviewee. Narrative inquiry, as a qualitative research methodology, is reliant upon such a co-construction of data at the point of generation at the research site, as well as during the validation of the restoried participants’ experiences prior to analysis (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). I used a semi-structured interview protocol to guide discussions with participants during our face-to-face conversations. Each conversation lasted between 60 and 120 minutes and was audio-recorded using two separate digital devices. Additionally, any asynchronous e-mail exchanges that took place during the restorying (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002) and validation (Cho & Trent, 2006) processes were also collected as field texts (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) and served as data for the study.

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Procedures Data Collection I collected data for the study primarily through single face-to-face audiorecorded interviews with each participant utilizing a semi-structured interview protocol. In the first meeting with each participant, she or he was given an informed consent form and provided ample opportunity to ask and have answered questions about the study and her/his participation in it before signing. I verbally reminded participants that they could withdraw from the study at any time with no consequence to themselves, and that, in such a case, any and all data associated with past participation would be immediately destroyed. I scheduled each participant conversation for 90 minutes. Several participants elected to continue the interview beyond the 90-minute appointment in order that their stories be fully heard and understood. Additional interviews, either face-to-face or by telephone, were not deemed necessary by either the researcher or participants as a means to gaining deeper understandings of experiences described in the initial interview. Publicly available text related to the programs in which participants work were also collected for analysis; none of this was provided directly by participants. It was made clear to the participants that they could refuse to answer questions or have the recording device turned off and then turned back on or not resumed at their discretion, though there was never a case of a participant asking for the recorder to be turned off in any of the recorded sessions. However, participants did occasionally flag or caveat certain revelations with requests that particular stories or details of stories not be used or be significantly altered before using. I encouraged such forewarnings, and notations of such events were recorded as field notes and later entered alongside participant transcriptions. Immediately following each interview, I reflected and took field notes concerning the experience of the interview, and these were later incorporated into the transcription files. In my process of transcribing the audio recorded conversation, field notes taken during the interview meetings and my post-interview reflections were transferred into digital form alongside the dialogic transcriptions. Pseudonyms were used to identify the digital recordings of participant conversations, and these were saved as password-protected files on my personal computer and back-up storage device. I carried out all transcriptions of the audio-recorded interviews, and all participant- and institution-identifying information were altered through the use of pseudonyms to protect confidentiality concurrently with the transcription processes.

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At the initial meeting, I provided each participant an opportunity to create a password with which to open password-protected documents that would be transferred to and from participants during the data analysis and validation processes via the password-protected personal e-mail account of the researcher and the e-mail account identified by each participant for such correspondence. Some participants opted to forego password protected attachments or requested that correspondence be sent through their personal e-mail accounts. Any attachments to e-mails, for example, drafts of participants’ restoried experiences for their review during validation processes, were password-protected documents at the election of the individual participants, using the passwords selected by participants at the initial interview meeting. Data Analysis and Interpretation An initial analysis of the raw interview data occurred concurrently with my processes of transcription within Microsoft Word. I utilized a fourcolumned transcription document template capturing: (a) turn number, (b) transcribed participant and researcher discourse, (c) interlocutor pseudonym, and (d) researcher reflections and field notes. During the transcription process, the  researcher reflection column became the site for my remembrances from the interview and its context, as well as for my preliminary reactions to the data. It also became the digital location for handwritten field notes taken before, during, and after each of the interviews. I later analyzed such field note entries during the reconstruction of participants’ experiences as a means  of identifying, exploring, and reflecting upon my own participation within the inquiry. It was at this time that I first considered removing one participant from the study. During the transcription of the interview of this particular participant – an individual who had self-identified as an English language teacher with border-crossing administrative responsibilities – my field notes, as well as the physical and emotional experience of re-hearing the interview recording, triggered intense remembrances of the somewhat painful and seemingly inconsistent and vague interview experience. One such field note taken shortly after the participant had left the interview site read, “Why on earth did [s/he] agree to meet with me? [S/he] answered as if [s/he] was on the witness stand and didn’t want to weaken [her/his] alibi!” Responses to questions were not particularly revealing and were often along the lines of “It depends” or “I don’t know how I felt.” Follow-up or probing questions were met with ambiguous responses and occasional shoulder shrugs that went unrecorded by the digital audio recorder, but were later recorded in field notes and my own remembrances. Perhaps that had been a particularly bad day for this participant, but

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the general attitude throughout the interview itself seemed fairly negative and almost aggressively uncooperative. In spite of misgivings about this participant’s negativity and the guarded and relatively minimal responses given to the interview questions, I held out the hope that systematic and in-depth analysis of the data might reveal a pattern in these responses. S/he therefore remained within the group of study participants at that point.2 To facilitate the illumination of experience through the examination of the “storied lives” (Clandinin, 2006, p. 45) of faculty impacted by corporate sector partnerships, data from responses collected from participants through interviews, asynchronous e-mail exchanges, and field notes were transformed through “restorying” (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002, p. 332) into narrative portraits of participants, utilizing a three-dimensional space approach (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002). In the restorying process, I made use of the Adapted ThreeDimensional Space Structure, a graphic organizer adapted from a model originally developed by John Creswell (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002) to aid in the holistic analysis of narrative data. I mapped key components from identified stories under Narrative Inquiry’s three dimensions of (1) Interaction, (2) Continuity/Temporality, and (3) Situation/Space, and into the six subcomponent cells of the graphic organizer: Personal, Social, Past, Present, Future, and Situation/Place. This occurred concurrently during secondary analysis of the transcripts and while listening repeatedly for relevant stories surfacing from the interview recordings. The intention was to use the graphic organizer as a tool to sketch out and visualize the elements of the participants’ stories, viewing empty cells or gaps as potentially indicating a need for participant clarification through follow-up interview or the asynchronous e-mail exchanges which would occur during the collaborative process of restorying with the participants. Researcher field notes pertinent to the identified story were incorporated within the graphic organizer cell designated as “Social.” The Three-Dimensional Space Structure was adapted by me3 to include an area for reflective analysis which takes into account Reference Group Theory constructs from which the restoried narratives would later be further examined. Identified connections of participants’ stories to the constructs of normative and comparative reference groups, relative deprivation, and anticipatory socialization (Merton, 1968; Merton & Kitt, 1969) were explored through my own notation or narrative in this field spanning all three dimensions. In carrying out this analysis, researcher field notes, field texts derived from 2 S/he was however eliminated later; see below. 3 Permission for use and specific adaptation was given by Sage Publications.

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e-mail exchanges with participants, and other field text sources which were pertinent to this analysis were also taken into account. I attempted to use the graphic organizer to tease out or untangle stories that might have been cloaked within the transcripts of the uncooperative participant discussed earlier. Efforts to identify meaningful and emergent stories were not successful, and I made the decision to remove this participant’s data from my study, leaving 13 remaining participants in the study. Once relevant experiential stories were identified and mapped onto the Adapted Three Dimensional Space Structure graphic organizer, I resequenced and restoried (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002) the experiences into individual narrative portraits as composed field texts (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) that could form units of analysis for examination, reporting, and reflection. The participants’ own words were significantly drawn upon and resequenced during the process of constructing these texts. Organized into personal anthologies of experience (Winkle, 2011a) vis-à-vis the research questions posed in this inquiry, these units of analysis consist of narratives which introduce the participants through the voice of the researcher, followed by 4–10 first-person monologues in the voice and words of the participant which attempt to recapture my own experience of listening to the stories as told by the participants in the face-to-face conversations, retaining their humor, their hesitations and hedgings, their ranges of emotion, and their personal dispositions. Multiple stories were collected and then restoried as monologues for each participant. Each series of narrative monologues for each participant was then concluded with a brief research-reflective précis, or summary. Participant narratives, separate and apart from one another, were created and maintained in password-protected files on my computer. While most stories selected for inclusion were chosen in order to address the specific research questions posed by this inquiry, some participant stories related to the practicalities of their contexts’ pathway programs (e.g., descriptions of new curriculum or of admissions, progression, and exiting processes or criteria) were included to provide readers unfamiliar with pathway programs some background information as to how such programs operate. These programdescriptive stories also serve to reveal aspects of participants’ individual contexts in which their stories were being lived. In some cases, these contextually descriptive narratives revealed unanticipated findings not directly associated with the research questions, and therefore their inclusion was, in my view, essential and contributive to the study. I sent participants draft narratives via e-mail in order to work with them in memory-checking, reviewing, and providing feedback (Merriam, 2009; Polkinghorne, 2007) during the co-construction of the field texts (Clandinin et

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al., 2010). In most cases, participants indicated upon initial review that the narratives accurately portrayed their experiences: “I see no reason to make any changes…. It feels like I’m reading about myself in a Studs Terkel oral history,” said one. However, all but two participants indicated that redactions, clarifications, or softening of language would be required. Most required two to four e-mail exchanges about the narratives in order to come to agreement on both the content and tone of these accounts. One participant wrote the following representative comment in the e-mail accompanying requested modifications: Carter, I think the narrative definitely rings true. I think I come across as a bit of an arrogant jerk, but that’s probably accurate. ☺ I went through and highlighted stuff that I’d like stricken/changed. It’s mostly about [supervisor’s name]. If I’m staying here, I don’t want to say bad things about my boss. Although some requested modifications had to do with my own misunderstandings or misinterpretations of story content – for example, the number of contact teaching hours or credits for a particular course cited in the narrative – nearly all revisions or requested redactions were in an attempt to soften criticisms they had made of their programs, supervisors or peer faculty, institutions, or the corporate partner. In cases where the requested edits or redactions were particularly relevant to the research questions for my study, I carefully attempted to negotiate acceptable versions of the interviewee’s experience by providing alternative text that would characterize the essence of the story or incident, yet distance or otherwise mitigate the story through more hedging language, such as “from what I heard” or “as it was told to me,” for example. Many participants themselves provided or were invited to provide alternative text which was used to supplant the segment in question. Through negotiating e-mail exchanges, I prompted several participants along the lines of the following: …it is important that you are comfortable that the narratives are reflective of your experiences, but do not jeopardize your relationships. At the end of the day, these are your stories, not mine. I am merely facilitating the organization of your stories as units of analysis which shed light on the research questions being explored in this inquiry. At times, I employed additional anonymizing strategies, such as changes in the gender of either or both participants and the characters playing roles within their stories. In some cases, however, sections of stories or entire

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stories, ultimately, had to be removed from participants’ narratives in order to meet their own required level of comfort. These negotiations typically occurred asynchronously by way of e-mail exchanges with attached draft Word documents; a brief conversation via Skype helped to finalize a remaining concern for one participant. Negotiations of the narratives were not always smooth or successful. In one case, a participant sent an e-mail to me expressing regret: s/he had made the decision to withdraw from the study, being uncomfortable with the narratives. S/he communicated that although the co-constructed narrative were indeed reflective of the authentic experiences, s/he feared the inclusion of the stories would potentially damage relationships at the worksite. The participant wrote: Hi Carter. So sorry for my delay in reading through the narrative. I hope you won’t be too upset with me, but after reading this, I realize that I’m not anonymous at all, even with changing the names; I’m concerned about having all of this information made public. If possible, I’d like to rescind my involvement in the study. I really am sorry, but I really don’t want anyone to be upset or be hurt and I think that would happen with this. Please let me know if withdrawing is possible. In responding to the participant’s email, I acknowledged that pseudonyms and red herrings of intentionally misdirecting detail may do little to disguise the content of her/his experiences: …I understand that the “content” of the narratives may be what you feel identifies you – and that the “pseudonyming” doesn’t help or change that. My hope would be that we could get the content to a comfort level that lessens anxiety (or potential repercussions) should anyone connect the dots and identify you…. Ultimately, this participant decided to return to the narratives: Hi Carter. I read through the narrative again and think I can modify to  make it more comfortable for me…. I have to warn you, there are significant chunks that I’ll have to delete. I’ll let you decide if it’s still useful. I’ve really given this a lot of thought, and initially, I wasn’t sure why I was so uncomfortable with this. Part of what I discovered is that saying these things in a discussion with others allows for the opportunity to clarify, get feedback, explain, use appropriate tone/facial expressions, etc. When it’s in writing it loses so much and really just sounds like a gossip/

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slander rant. I know you spent A LOT of time on this, and I really am sorry for the impact my adjustments have made…. I’ll get the edited version to you as soon as I can. In the end, the changes, softenings, and limited redactions requested by this participant were minimal and did little to impact the meaning of the shared stories or the ways in which her/his experiential stories interacted and intersected with the research questions posed in this study. In addition to the participant who was removed from the study during the initial analysis phase, a second participant had to be removed from the inquiry due to issues of timing and work-related obligations: the individual who had self-identified as an English language program administrator and tenured faculty member with teaching responsibilities in an academic discipline (i.e., outside the English language program). While the faculty member originally agreed to remain a participant for future work with the researcher to finalize her/his narratives so that they could be considered for inclusion in future projects, publications, or presentations related to the subject of this inquiry, s/he later made the decision to withdraw entirely. With the removal of this individual’s data, 12 participants remained. Table 2 indicates the faculty position and employment status of each of the 12 participants. The final group of participants consisted of four self-identified as English language program administrators who, depending upon the organizational location of their program, had the potential to have faculty appointments by the university. In all cases, these individuals had 12-month full-time contracts which afforded them university benefits such as healthcare, paid time off, and disability insurance. Three who self-identified as English language teaching professionals were also among the participants, and two of those were full-time instructors with university benefits. Four participants described their institutional roles as being split between administrative and language teaching domains of their institutions’ English language programs, and these individuals I classified as being English language program administrator/English language teacher border crossers. Finally, two disciplinary faculty members teaching academic content in matriculation pathway programs were among the participants. Neither of these participants held terminal degrees in their academic fields: one was a full-time instructor, and the second was an adjunct faculty member specifically hired to teach credit-bearing disciplinary-content pathway courses. Once the restoried narratives were validated and finalized to the satisfaction of each participant, I uploaded the individual portraits into NVivo, a computer software program designed to aid in the organization, coding,

58 Table 2

chapter 4 Participant classification: thesis study

David Pullman Oliver Harvey Rick Alvey Terri Waterman Ivan Tower Pam Davis Anne Rivers Ellie Parker Kevin Andres Sabine Reinsch Christopher Walker Mike Duffy

Faculty type

Classification

EL program administrator EL program administrator EL program administrator EL program administrator EL program administrator/English language teacher border crosser EL program administrator/English language teacher border crosser EL program administrator/English language teacher border crosser English language teacher English language teacher English language teacher Academic content: communications Academic content: business

Full-time faculty Full-time faculty Full-time faculty Full-time faculty Full-time faculty Full-time faculty Full-time faculty Full-time faculty Full-time faculty Full-time adjunct Full-time faculty Part-time adjunct

Note. All participant names are pseudonyms and may have been gendered differently than participants. Actual gender distribution is six female and six male.

and analysis of qualitative research data. The digital NVivo project files were password protected and maintained on my personal computer. Each participant’s narratives were coded to identify experiential stories (Olleren­ shaw & Creswell, 2002) or reflective passages that address the research questions posed in this study, in addition to identifying and coding any unexpected illuminations which emerged from the data and which were considered to be relevant to the participants’ experience. The narrative stories were further coded in relation to the sociological Reference Group constructs of anticipatory socialization and relative deprivation (Leach & Vliek, 2008; Merton & Kitt, 1969) in order to identify and examine issues related to participants’ perceptions of status within and between potential membership groups. Analysis of the resultant coding reports from NVivo, in conjunction with analysis of field notes, as well as holistic re-reviews of the narratives themselves, guided me in my writing of the my reflective précis, which is a researchergenerated narrative serving to add concluding reflections to each participants’ own personal anthology of experience (PAE) (Winkle, 2011a). Chapters 5–8 of this

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book present newly recast anthologies for each inquiry participant, with the original researcher reflections expanded and other framing commentary added to excerpts from the participants’ stories. These original personal anthologies of experience were later included in an additional cycle of analysis for the purpose of identifying shared or contradictory ideas, perspectives, or experiences among the participants and the researcher (Polkinghorne, 2007). This concomitant analysis of findings in relation to the research questions posed in the original study in revised form constitutes the substance of Chapter 9 of this book.

Ensuring Validity and Reliability of Results

“The purpose of the validation process is to convince readers of the likelihood that the support for the claim is strong enough that the claim can serve as a basis for understanding of and action in the human realm” (Polkinghorne, 2007, p. 476). The claim made through this inquiry is that the narrative stories presented are reflective of the experiences of the participants. This chapter has detailed the procedures for recruitment, data collection and analysis, and the restorying of participants’ stories as a means to providing the reader with confidence in the methods employed in the inquiry on which this volume is based. As has been articulated throughout this chapter, I engaged in selfreflective narratives and maintained field notes throughout the research process, and these field texts were analyzed and incorporated into the reporting of the inquiry, revealing and examining experiences, biases, and prejudices in an effort to provide rigor, reliability, and validity to the findings (Polkinghorne, 2007). These ongoing researcher-generated texts further served as an audit trail (Merriam, 2009) of all processes, procedures, and decision-making justifications throughout the inquiry have been analyzed and incorporated into this book.

Illuminating Experience through Empirical Research: Further Methodology in Developing This Book

The four chapters comprising Part 2 of this book represent a reanalysis and elaboration of the data originally collected, constructed, analyzed, and validated as participant narratives in my Ph.D. dissertation thesis, A Narrative Inquiry into Corporate Unknowns: Faculty Experiences Concerning PrivatizedPartnership Matriculation Pathway Programs (Winkle, 2011a). In addition to

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integrated author discussion, I have carefully abridged, restructured, adapted, and synthesized those research texts which are anticipated to be most salient to the expected readers of this book. Continuing with the general format of the thesis’ personal anthologies of experiences, each participant story begins with a brief introductory narrative in the voice of the researcher which introduces the anonymized participant to the reader. This is then followed by a brief overview of the issues and themes encountered through our conversation. Each of between 3 and 10 areas of thematic exploration is then presented. Finally, I provide a brief Researcher Reflection or summing closure for each participant’s experiences. In addition, each chapter offers a brief view of the group of participants whose experiences are presented in that chapter. As part of my dissertation thesis project, I developed a companion YouTube channel (Winkle, 2011b) where readers can access and experience for themselves the performed video representations of administrators and faculty sharing stories of working in institutions with corporate sector partnership matriculation pathway programs. The hyperlink is provided here and on the Brill website for the series: http://www.youtube.com/user/ WinkleAtBarryU. The individuals who agreed to represent the narrative inquiry participants are not the actual participants in the research. The readers’ performative interpretations of the narratives are their own, based on their personal interpretation of the experiences described in the restoried narratives. Further methodology related to the development of this book concerns the collection of program data described in the final chapter of Part 3. Included in Chapter 10 of this book are unanonymized examples of five universities in the United States which, rather than through partnership with a corporate sector educational service provider, collaboratively developed within their institutional settings their own matriculation pathway alternatives to corporate partnership models. In order to identify such programs, I sent an email through the TESOL International Association’s Program Administration Interest Section listserv and began correspondence with those who expressed an interest in sharing information about their programs for this book and also in a colloquium presentation session which I organized for the 2013 TESOL Convention held in Dallas, Texas (Winkle, Hardwick, Hoffman, McCafferty, Sealey, & Stevens, 2013). In addition to gathering information through our email correspondence, I examined each program’s web pages to aid in my understanding of their programs. Through communication by telephone and on the Internet, I had informal conversations with the five directors or associate directors of institution-developed pathway programs in order to gain

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clarity about their universities’ offerings. I then drafted narrative accounts and sent them to the directors or associate directors for clarification, amendment, and validation. Through an iterative process of review and revision, the unanonymized narratives took the forms which are now included in Chapter 10. In preparation for reading Part 2 of this book, it is perhaps useful for readers to be reminded of a number of points as reviewed in the following paragraphs. It should be noted that all participant, academic institution, and private sector corporate names and locations have been deeply anonymized. In a number of cases participants’ genders have been reclassified. Additional “red herrings” have been added to aid in the protection of research participants’ identities. The narrative excerpts included in the following chapters are represented through the use of inverted commas or quotation marks (“ “). Readers should be clear that the first-person narrative monologues from the original research thesis (Winkle, 2011a) were co-constructed narratives. The participants’ own words were significantly drawn upon and resequenced during the process of constructing these texts, but they do not represent a verbatim transcription of the recorded interview. The co-constructed narratives were then validated by the participants as being representative of their experiences and authorized their use in the dissertation thesis and subsequent publications and presentations associated with the research. The narrative inquiry from which these findings are derived is not a case study. Readers may be tempted to make connections among participants who appear to be working within similar pathway program models in order to make judgments about those anonymized corporate partners or host institutions. Be reminded that in order to protect the identity of participants to a degree to which they felt comfortable sharing stories related to their professional livelihoods, multiple levels of anonymizing strategies were employed. Therefore, when reading stories told by two or more participants that seem to share the same corporate-partner pseudonym – for example, “PassageMaker Partnerships” – assumptions should not be made that the participants in fact work within the same institutions or in contexts which share the same corporate partner. Finally, it is important to emphasize that my dissertation inquiry attempted to illuminate the individual experiences of each faculty participant, not to pathologize or venerate any particular corporate partner, corporate sector partnership paradigm, or in-force corporate sector partnership university site. The inquiry was guided by the following overarching research question:

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1.

How do English language and disciplinary faculty teaching academic content describe the impact of their institution’s corporate sector partnership?

The following additional questions were also posed in an effort to focus the inquiry toward curricular and instructional aspects, as well as academic statusrelated aspects of the phenomenon: 2.

Do faculty describe institutional status as being impacted by the corporate sector partnership, and if so how? 3. How do faculty experience implementation of the corporate sector partnership? 4. Do faculty describe curricular and pedagogical autonomy as being impacted by the corporate sector partnership, and if so how? 5. How do faculty describe their beliefs concerning impact to students and host institutions as a result of the corporate sector partnership? Conclusion This chapter provided the thesis research inquiry’s methodological description, rationale, and background. Specific and detailed procedures for participant selection, data collection, analysis, and interpretation were integrated into the narrative of this chapter, as well as descriptions of measures taken in efforts to provide rigor, reliability, and validity to the findings. It further provided an articulation of the reanalysis and alterations necessary for my recasting of the original inquiry’s findings into a format appropriate for this book and its intended audiences.

Concluding Remarks to Part 1

Part 1 has oriented readers to contextual matters related to my research, preceded by the book’s Preface which attempts to provide transparency in respect of my own historic orientations, biases, and perspectives vis-à-vis the topic of university partnerships with the corporate sector. Part 1 has situated my research from a perspective that perceives such partnerships as an extension of corporatism of higher education and as the continued commodification of English language teaching programs and professionals, both of which have a history of marginalization on university campuses. It has further provided

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a briefing on some of the primary corporate players in the area of corporate sector partnerships between universities and for-profit education service providers, and it has concluded with a detailed description of the research methodologies employed in the execution of my narrative research inquiry and the revised treatment of findings in this book. Part 2 reports the front-line perspectives of those faculty and English language program administrators who elected to share, through participation in my research inquiry, their experiences working in tertiary settings where matriculation pathway programs were in place.

Part 2 Front-Line Perspectives on Corporate Sector Partnership Pathway Programs

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Introduction to Part 2

Part 2 of the book consists of four chapters comprised of researcher commentary and salient excerpts recast from the restoried narratives of each of the 12 faculty participants from my original doctoral thesis (Winkle, 2011a). These are the stories of people who have been involved with corporate sector partnerships in a range of different kinds of relationships with those programs – from leading them, to teaching English or other subjects in them, and to combined administrative-teaching roles. In some cases, they express their experiences as largely positive, in others, largely negative; and in still others they are expressed as a combination of negatives and positives. In the interests of giving a balanced and informative picture of responses to corporate sector matriculation pathway programs, those with the most positive views are presented first in each chapter, with the progression across individuals being from most positive to most negative. The organization of Part 2 is as follows: those participants who classified themselves as English-language program administrators (Chapter 5); participants who did not so easily fit into rigid distinctions between English language program administrators and English-language teachers, the self-described “border-crossers” of the English-language-program professions (Chapter 6); those faculty from my inquiry who self-identified solely as English language teaching professionals (Chapter 7); and finally, the academic content teaching faculty engaged to teach courses to ELLs enrolled in EAP matriculation pathway programs (Chapter 8).

chapter 5

English Language Program Administrators Introduction Four administrators of English language or matriculation pathway programs elected to participate in my research inquiry. In some cases these individuals were actively involved in the transformation of their institution’s English language program to one which now includes corporate-partnered matriculation pathway programs. In other cases administrators were hired after their institutions had already entered into partnership agreements with the corporate educational services providers. For still others – some who had been employed prior to and during the negotiations for corporate sector partnership, but who had various levels of ancillary involvement – describe experiences of being “blindsided” or circumvented by both the corporate partner and their university’s leadership. I first introduce Oliver Harvey, a pathway program administrator at a U.S. university who had previous experience in a pathway program with the same company in the United Kingdom. Oliver’s story is followed by that of Rick Alvey, who started out as a Peace Corps volunteer and ended up as an ELI Director in a recently partnered university language program. Next is the story of Terri Waterman, an Assistant Director in an academic preparation program who made it through a relatively difficult period in which the program where she worked set up a partnership with a corporate sector education services provider. Last in the line of stories of English language program administrators is that of David Pullman, who left the Directorship of a corporate sector partnership program when he could no longer feel proud of the work there. The four administrators working for different programs recount some similar and many different experiences – experiences which the administrators view from varying perspectives, positive as well as negative.

Oliver Harvey

Oliver’s Background Oliver Harvey assumed his role as the Director of Academics for Rock Island University’s PassageMaker pathway programs in Davenport, Iowa, as someone who had himself survived the turmoil and upheaval of transitioning from a

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more traditional university-based IEP to one in collaboration with a for-profit corporate partner when he was an English language teacher in the United Kingdom. Years prior he had graduated from university with a degree in French, but knew he did not want to be a French teacher. Eventually, Oliver got a job working with international students and completely loved it. He fell in with a group of English language teachers, many of whom worked for the British Council in one of their centers in South America during the academic year but returned to Britain every summer to teach in a university EAP program. Oliver decided he wanted to obtain formal certification for his teaching: “I found out about the qualifications you need to teach ESL, what to do, and I went off to London and got the RSA CTEFLA1 certification, which, in the U.K., is the first qualification for teaching ESL.” For a number of years he then made annual pilgrimages abroad to teach for the British Council, each summer going back to teach at the U.K. university and coordinate social programs for international students. He returned to London and completed additional teaching qualifications, including the DELTA2 which he reckoned would increase his employability: “At the time working in universities as an ESL instructor was all hourly pay, and it was very difficult to get work – very similar to what I’ve heard the situation was here. You were basically living term to term or semester to semester. Then I realized that if I wanted to get something more permanent [in the U.K.], I should do the MA.” Completing an MA at a British university, Oliver was offered an opportunity to teach a course in the very program he had just completed, dividing his teaching between the MA program and the university’s Language Center. With Oliver now a full-time lecturer with relative comfort and job security, the university began promoting an agenda of internationalization on its campus, and its gaze fell upon the Language Center, leading to a corporate sector partner­ ship   with PassageMaker. After a time, Oliver pursued an opportunity to administer the academic side of a relatively new corporate sector partnership in the United States, situated at Rock Island University, and upon gaining acceptance by both the university and language program faculty and administrators, he remains as a steady advocate for the public–private model adopted by RIU.

1 Royal Society of Arts/Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Adults: A pre-service teacher certification program which in 2001 was replaced with the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults). 2 Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults: An internationally recognized preservice teacher certification program for teachers of English language.

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Oliver’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership I was grateful to be able to meet with Oliver so that he could share his unique perspective of having transitioned to a partnership pathway program in the United Kingdom while an English language teacher, only later to take on a critical role in administration at a recently transitioned corporate sector partnership matriculation pathway program in the United States. Oliver recounted remembrances of both his United Kingdom and Rock Island University earlydays experiences, discussed opportunities and limitations felt by teaching faculty, and shared what he feels are some of the strengths of the PassageMaker partnership and its programs, as well as some of the ongoing challenges he and his colleagues continue to face.

Oliver’s First Encounter with PassageMaker in the United Kingdom Oliver took time to orient me to his previous U.K. language center setting. Even prior to their partnership with PassageMaker, his university had been trying to work out where the Language Center should sit within the academic institution. This is not unlike universities in the United States, where intensive English programs are found housed under various aca­ demic  and non-academic schools, colleges, departments, or units. As Oliver related: We had been in the Faculty of Humanities, and then we were moved into being a Central Service. We got moved around a bit. They could never quite decide where to put us. The biggest shift came when they took the MA away from the Language Center and put it into the School of Education. They also moved all languages other than English into a School of Modern Languages, and that basically left us as an English language teaching unit, an ELI. And at that point we totally became a service, so we were kind of comparable to the library. I think we were a little bit uneasy about becoming a service, but the university didn’t change any of our contracts or anything, pretty much carried on as a trimmed down version of what was there before. Oliver described this as being somewhat of a crossroads for many of the faculty, as those who had a foot in both the English language program and the MA in TESOL program had to decide where they wanted to be. Oliver chose to stay in the Language Center as he wanted to teach EAP rather than go down the more academic research route to become a research lecturer: “I wanted to stay on the practical side of things” where there was a combination of

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hourly-paid EAP teachers and a small number of full-time faculty who were considered “non-research-active faculty.” When Oliver and his colleagues first heard that PassageMaker Partnerships was in talks with the university, they knew nothing about the company: “We did know these types of pathway discussions were going on generally. We’d heard that the university on the other side of town had been talking to [a different for-profit education service provider], and we pretty much suspected that they might have been in discussion with [our university] as well. But PassageMaker? Nobody had even heard of PassageMaker at that time.” Oliver shared that there were heated and drawn-out discussions as faculty and staff began to learn more, “and we fought hard against it. We raised all the concerns that we had about the quality of teaching dropping and, you know, the whole idea of profit model and mixing public and private partnerships, the whole works – everything!” Oliver paused to reflect and then offered, “You know, at every university it is exactly the same; it’s hilarious! I mean, it’s not hilarious because it is an awful process to go through. It was horrible. It was a horrible process to go through; it really was. At the time, our student numbers were dwindling, and the university had a lot of attention on us because of this focus on internationalization. The International Office was supposed to be doing our recruitment: we had no remit to recruit for ourselves; we were kind of powerless, and the International Office wasn’t delivering students.” The university gave the Language Center faculty a choice: do nothing, do it yourself, or go with PassageMaker. In his view, “[d]oing nothing was not really an option. In other words, if we didn’t want PassageMaker to sign up with the university, then we needed to have a plan for how we were going to match what they said was going to happen with PassageMaker in charge: you know, deliver the numbers of students they were promising. And there was just no way. We couldn’t do it. We had no marketing, and the International Office wasn’t going to be part of it. So effectively, we weren’t offered a choice.” Once the partnership agreement was signed, faculty and staff of the Language Center were left to decide whether or not to leave or “throw yourself into this and see what happens.” Not knowing what would happen, Oliver elected to stay, thinking that “[i]t could actually be a good thing. I stayed and decided I was going to have a go and see what happened: I could always leave if it didn’t work out.” In Oliver’s U.K. context, very few employees left as a result of the partnership. A significant change that occurred was that the programs took on a more corporate model of operation: “Before the partnership, we were effectively running like an old-school language center in the U.K. in the sense that people had a job, and then they were expected to do it, but really, nobody was

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managed at all.” Oliver clarified that in the United Kingdom everybody is on a scale, and so every year one’s pay goes up the scale; it is not performancerelated. “But what happened after PassageMaker came along,” Oliver observed, “was kind of the opposite.” PassageMaker administration started managing teachers more closely, “and one of the big switches was switching to a nineto-five working day. You couldn’t just teach your classes and then be off to who knows where. The expectation was that you put in a full working day, and this didn’t sit well with some who were accustomed to an academic lifestyle.” So while the majority of teachers and administrative staff remained following the partnership with PassageMaker, some did leave. Oliver maintained that these were “for the most part, the ones who had just been coasting along, doing the least that they had to do to do their jobs, but not really pulling their weight.” It was a cultural shift in terms of how people were managed, but Oliver reflected that he saw this tightening of expectations as a positive outcome of the partnership. Because he had been running programs before PassageMaker came along, Oliver carried on in that role. For most of his time working under the new PassageMaker partnership at a U.K. university, he managed a series support classes for direct-entry international students: students who had matriculated but still needed support. The partnership contract stipulated that the university paid an at-cost charge to PassageMaker to deliver that program for them, with Oliver as manager: “I ran that for several years, and I just totally enjoyed it. I was given a lot of freedom, and so that was the first time I’d really enjoyed managing, enjoyed running a program.” It is worth mentioning here that, according to Oliver, the United Kingdom PassageMaker Centers are structured differently than those in the United States. In the United Kingdom, according to him, they are structured as pre-university programs, and PassageMaker students are not yet students of the university. Faculty and staff also are not employees of the university: they are employed by the jointventure entity made up of the university and PassageMaker. PassageMaker Centers in the United Kingdom are “effectively a pre-university college that merely exists on campus.” After a few years of managing the PassageMaker support programs for admitted international students, Oliver decided that he might be interested in moving up to an academic directorship position, but the individual currently filling that role seemed unlikely to retire soon. Oliver discovered that a Director of Academics position was being advertised at Rock Island University in the United States, and “it seemed like a natural next step because I’d been managing programs for ten or eleven years.” He applied for the competitive RIU appointment and was offered the job. Oliver wanted to make it clear: “I wasn’t

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unilaterally moved or just put here by PassageMaker. I had to go through the whole university interview process.” The Faculty at Rock Island University Now at the helm of the Rock Island University PassageMaker Center, Oliver illuminated some of the differences or challenges he sees as related to the teaching faculty, beginning with the hierarchical structure: “[It is] a little weird here in the States; it’s very clearcut in the U.K. where you’ve got a Center Director, an Academic Director, a Student Services Director, and then teams below that. Here at RIU, my direct line is to the Associate Vice-Provost for International Programs because I am technically RIU faculty. So in the States, all the academics – all the instructors – they’re all university faculty.” I queried Oliver as to whether or not these full-time university faculty could ever achieve faculty rank beyond Instructor (e.g., Assistant or Associate Professor). According to him, even with a Ph.D., it would not be possible within the university structure because PassageMaker is not considered an academic department. Because the relatively new PassageMaker matriculation pathway programs are growing so quickly, Oliver confided that it can be challenging finding qualified instructors: “We’ve never compromised on minimum qualifications.” The general requirement for teaching in the RIU PassageMaker programs is a Master’s degree plus two years of experience, although “[t]he actual subject of the Master’s degree varies slightly, and it kind of depends on the combination between degree and experience. We have some really good people who have a Master’s in, say, Education with a specialization in ESL and who’ve then taught ESL in colleges or went abroad to teach or have other relevant experience. So we wouldn’t discount them.” The program prefers to hire teaching faculty with a Master’s in TESOL or Applied Linguistics whenever possible, but “we do have some good teachers who come from other backgrounds. We’re a practical teaching unit. You don’t need to be a researcher; you don’t need a Ph.D. to teach well. We try to get a balance between more experienced people and fresher people who are new to the field and who bring other things with them, for example, the use of technology, you know, which some of the older instructors are struggling with sometimes.” Personally, and because of his experiences working in the United Kingdom at a PassageMaker Center, Oliver had already made peace with the idea of there being a separation of English language teachers from more academic departments with opportunities for rank and promotion through researchrequired faculty lines. He believes the new teachers he hires also share his perspective: “My sense is that most English language faculty are more concerned

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with having a full-time position that has benefits rather than a career trajectory in more traditional academia. Most of the people we’re hiring are newer people, and that’s the job they’ve interviewed for, and that’s the job they’ve been appointed to; it’s what they expect.” At the time of our conversation, the RIU PassageMaker Center had just sent out offers for eighteen 12-month contracts as RIU faculty Instructors with full benefits. Oliver believes there are exceptional opportunities for teachers because of their continued growth. Oliver acknowledged that teaching faculty who were in the RIU’s English Language Institute prior to the PassageMaker partnership might view the post-partnership changes quite differently: “I think, however, it’s been more of a challenge for [pre-partnership faculty] because there is a change in the working model: they’re not teaching 14 hours a week, they’re teaching 18, and I think many are aware that some instructors in other departments who are teaching fewer hours are being paid slightly higher salaries. They used to be able to disappear without formally taking vacation days between terms without any questions being asked, but now that has been more closely managed. So there has been kind of a culture change which is a challenge for people who were at the ELI before the joint-venture.” Oliver sees the status of the Language Center itself as having “rocketed in the university with the partnership with PassageMaker. Perhaps the status of the center was more directly impacted than the status of the actual faculty. ELIs typically have been programs that nobody cared about on campus, and they were just kind of left alone, nobody really paid attention to us. But here at RIU, just like it was…in the U.K., as soon as the senior management of the university had invested in this joint-venture idea, it rocketed up the agenda. All of a sudden, we have deans all over us. The PassageMaker Centers are crucial to the successful internationalization of the university.” What Works and Remaining Challenges Through my conversations with Oliver, it was clear that he is an advocate for both the public-private partnership between the university and PassageMaker, as well as the conception and realization of the matriculation pathway programs currently in place at RIU. This could be seen in his many statements pointing out positive achievements of the private partnership and countering any negative perceptions: “There is a lot that’s working about the partnership with PassageMaker. As I’ve said, the elevation of status for the center within the university has been great. We’ve a heightened profile and a direct link to senior management of the university, so our needs are constantly being addressed and usually met.” Job creation for both English language teachers and administrators was a theme often raised by Oliver. “It’s been just

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phenomenal!” Oliver reflected that former “nay-sayers” were among those who have benefited most from the partnership: “When I think back to when [I was an English language teacher and] we were fighting against the joint venture at [our university] in the U.K., we were all in a room with thirty or forty people, and I think it was the PassageMaker people who pointed out that it was the established full-time faculty who were most aggressively fighting the partnership, but there were an awful lot of people – part-time faculty – sitting in that room thinking, ‘This is going to mean jobs. I can finally get a mortgage,’ you know. So the job creation aspect of the partnership is one not to be underestimated.” He shared that at RIU a good number of now full-time faculty were once contingent instructors who “basically lived term to term, and had a pretty awful lifestyle with no guarantee of anything. [They] couldn’t get mortgages, couldn’t get established anywhere. So suddenly there are all these twelvemonth contracts with benefits.” As he acknowledged, “Yes, the pay might be slightly in the lower end of the sector, but the guarantee of work is there.” What constitutes full-time English-teaching faculty at RIU is a 12-month contract, “but for as long as somebody wants to stay, and unless there’s unsatisfactory performance, they’re going to be able to stay.” Another positive aspect of the partnership from Oliver’s perspective is the physical resources being made available to the language programs. At the time of my visit, plans were well along in terms of a new student residence and teaching facility; though for Oliver the funding for this new facility remained somewhat vague. “Most ELIs and language centers are in pretty gritty accommodation, and I don’t know if you’ve seen the new building being built, but it’s pretty spectacular. It is purpose-built: twenty-six classrooms, every one with a smart board, [and] fully networked. It is a beautiful modern building, [including] six staff rooms with ten instructors in each.” According to Oliver, the existing curriculum of the former ELI was still being used and had “been pretty much left alone. PassageMaker doesn’t push a curriculum onto the universities that it partners with.” The credit-bearing disciplinary content courses within the pathway curriculum are “based on the structure of the programs as designed in collaboration with the various academic departments. We’re in this stage now where we need to be reviewing in more detail the content of some of the pathway classes and making sure that as well as meeting the requirements of the university…it’s matching the needs of the students.” Whether or not the credit-bearing pathway curriculum met equivalent learner-outcome requirements to those of non-pathway course sections was less clear. The tremendous growth of the programs Oliver noted is both an indicator of what is working, as well as one of his significant challenges. He cited the

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corporate partner’s international marketing effort as being responsible for providing significant student numbers: “That’s really working well. We’re at about 700 students now, whereas three years ago there would have been 100 or 150 people this time of year. We’ve got 700, and we’re expecting to go to 850 in September, and we’ll probably touch 1,000 a year after. We are two years ahead of the original target, so PassageMaker has delivered, totally delivered.” Oliver said that PassageMaker is prepared to field any number of students, but it is “more up to RIU to put the brakes on it – to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ It’s all connected to what percentage of international students RIU wants on campus, and that in turn is related to what percentage is exiting the pathway program Language Center because a number of the students won’t make it: there’s a certain percentage that matriculate and a certain percentage that don’t.” In other words, the RIU PassageMaker pathway program can accept, collect tuition, and move a greater number of students along the curriculum, since, in reality, not all will be able to actually matriculate into degree-earning academic programs, and others may decide to apply and attend elsewhere. While it was definitely a good thing in Oliver’s view to have such high student numbers, “this rate of growth is also a challenge. There’s no doubt about that. Keeping up with the rate of growth is the single biggest problem, and I literally have spent the last three or four weeks recruiting new faculty. We’ve done thirty-seven interviews and made eighteen 12-month contract offers. That was hugely time-consuming. So being a young center is challenging as we identify where the needs are and what’s needed to fill those needs: dealing with the whole growth of the center and all the challenges that come with that, but we’ll get there.” A challenge that Oliver faced when he first arrived was filling the shoes of his predecessor. Indeed, replacing the shoes altogether might be a more appropriate metaphor, as the prior pair was not well appreciated by the existing English-teaching faculty since he had been a top-down appointment by the university and the corporate partner. As Oliver recounted, “I wasn’t the first Director of Academics for the PassageMaker Center. PassageMaker and RIU had appointed a Director who was excellent in working in the area between the university and the PassageMaker Center, but he had no ESL background and did not engage with the ESL staff at all.” Oliver clarified that the former director did, however, play a necessary role during the early stages of the partnership by creating a strong link between the PassageMaker Center and the non-ELS university faculty and administrators. He recalled: When I first arrived, I met with each of the faculty one-on-one to get a sense of where they were and what they thought the needs were of the

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program. New ESL instructors really hadn’t been getting any kind of orientation at all before I took over. That was one of the things that people talked about a lot when I first got here and started meeting with faculty, so we’ve now got an orientation checklist. There was no supervisor structure before, so instructors didn’t have a named person who was responsible for them; whereas now when a new staff member comes in, they’ve got a supervisor. We still haven’t been able to really establish the kind of 8-to-5 be-on-site culture that I’d like to engender, but most are coming around. A remaining small challenge that Oliver noted was the fact that, with the higher profile of the Language Center and the AcademicPrep pathway programs, their departments were being assigned blame for any language-related challenges appearing on campus: “Any time a university faculty member has an issue with an international student, they just assume it’s a PassageMaker student. We had an advisor in Engineering who spoke to a Saudi student and he called us complaining that he couldn’t communicate with him. ‘So-and-so student is at a ridiculously low level and shouldn’t be in the university.’ But in 90% of the cases, it turns out to be that it’s a conditionally admitted student who is actually not one of ours: he’s actually an RIU student who is taking some intensive English classes with us, but who was conditionally admitted by the university or the department.”

Our Students Outperformed Domestics and Direct-Entry Internationals “Did you see the sophomore grades?” Oliver was excited to share with me the GPAs being reported for the first cohort of undergraduate Business and Engineering pathway students who started their sophomore year in September. They conducted a comparative analysis of the pathway students and the university’s domestic students and direct-entry international students. The findings were important: “The average GPA for direct-entry inter­national students was 2.64, domestic students [was] 2.74 and the former Pathway students [was] 2.78.” Through their analysis, the program demonstrated that the pathway students outperformed both the domestic and direct-entry international students, and this – Oliver adds – “even though [the pathway students] didn’t have the GPA requirements for direct entry.” According to Oliver, that same pattern of performance was echoed in the winter term GPAs as well. An additional success Oliver shared was that the Passage­Maker Center had rolled out its graduate-level pathway pro­grams in both Business and Engineering earlier

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that year. Oliver said these programs were working well, and he told me about some of their matri­culation  criteria: The students that are in the MBA are doing really well. The way the MBA Pathway is currently structured, the pathway completers basically still have to go through the normal admissions process as an international student direct-admit. Masters of Engineering graduate pathways students don’t need to take the TOEFL, but there are not TOEFL or GMAT waivers for MBA graduate pathway students. The difference being that they’re being considered for admissions with a GPA slightly lower than an international student who didn’t come through the pathway. Think of it this way, these students normally would have been rejected by the university because of their GPAs. So instead of being rejected, they’re effectively borderline students getting a second chance by studying in this graduate pathway for a year. In the first year, as Oliver recounted, almost half of those students in the graduate pathway “fell down on the TOEFL test. They didn’t get the TOEFL they needed to enter the MBA program. That’s when we saw that we needed to build in more TOEFL prep in the curriculum.” The present structure of the graduate pathway programs does not have a way to facilitate remediation of pathway coursework. As a consequence, “[t]hose students who didn’t pass it went off to study elsewhere. I mean, they could come back if they could make the TOEFL: the only thing they were missing was the TOEFL, so if they could take and pass it, they could return.” For the graduate Engineering pathway, Oliver explained, the situation is a little different: “Engineering accepts the GPA from the end of the graduate pathway for admissions and don’t require the TOEFL. Graduate pathway students in Engineering move directly into the Engineering programs at the end of the pathway, so long as they meet the minimum GPA requirements. It is only the MBA that is holding onto the TOEFL and GMAT as additional requirements for matriculation.” Yet the MBA program administrators may be willing to take another look at these requirements: “They’ve said that they need to see a couple of years-worth of students to make the decision, but they’ve acknowledged that they would be happy to drop the TOEFL requirement if, you know, the evidence shows that the students coming off the graduate pathway are sufficiently up to standard. I’m pretty confident they will be. So hopefully in a few years we can remove that obstacle for those Business students.”

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Researcher Reflection: Oliver Harvey Oliver’s perspective, as a one-time English language teacher who had himself experienced a corporate sector partnership transition at his former institution, and now as a senior administrator within a different university’s context, highlights the universals of such partnerships as well as his view that each institutional implementation is unique to the negotiated agreements and individual cultures of the host university and its leadership. The IEP which Oliver joined as a PassageMaker administrator had fought the private partnership but was not set up to effectively oppose it, and there were challenges to its implementation on campus. Oliver acknowledged that the transition from autonomous IEP to PassageMaker Center can be “a horrible process to go through,” but he presented himself as one who decided to stick around to see what happened, and found that, for him, the career opportunities the partnership provided outweighed the temporary period of turmoil. Oliver noted some complaints about the pathway students being unprepared but pointed with pride to their success in terms of GPA. He suggested that the corporate sector partnership had made many positive changes, such as their new facilities and connections of the IEP to higher level administration. The status and perceived importance on campus of the English language programs, and specifically the matriculation pathway programs, is viewed by Oliver as having risen tremendously due to its critical and transformational role in the successful internationalization of the host university. Less so, acknowledged Oliver, has the status of the English-teaching faculty risen in concert. Yet the cultural shifts that Oliver described – the resistance of some, especially former ELI faculty, to give up their “academic lifestyle, put in a full [eight-to-five] working day,” and be paid “in the lower end of the sector” – may be ones that could potentially lead to feelings of frustration and further marginalization of a historically marginalized class of academic professionals (Jenks & Kennel, 2011). Still, as Oliver rightly pointed out, “the job creation aspect of the partnership is one not to be underestimated,” and clearly, the rate of growth for such programs, and their needs in respect to the hiring of faculty, have been quite high. In Oliver’s particular context, that has translated to more full-time teaching positions with university-provided benefits packages.

Rick Alvey

Rick’s Background Rick is currently the Director of the English Language Institute at Top Tier University in Rivertown, Wisconsin. “Many moons ago,” he was a Peace Corps

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volunteer in South America helping to develop an emerging ecotourism endeavor. In his second year there, he met his would-be wife, Carol, who had joined as an English language teacher. Once Rick had finished his commitment with the Corps, he stayed in South America for an extra year, waiting for Carol to finish her contract, but he needed to make money. Following some gentle prodding by the director of the American Cultural Center, Rick began teaching English language courses, having had no prior experience. When they left South America, he and Carol began teaching English in various international situations, including a year teaching in Hong Kong. His experiences teaching English led Rick to realize the value of getting proper educational credentials: “After that year, I decided, well, if I’m going to be doing this for a living, I need to get a degree. So I went back to the States, and I started a Master’s degree in TESOL.” He later rejoined Carol in the Middle East, and there taught for a number of years before moving back to the United States, where they did what he wryly refers to as “the adjunct shuffle” for quite a few years. As he elaborated: “You know, then as now, it was kind of difficult to find any kind of permanent situation as an English language instructor.” Ultimately, Rick was fortunate to be hired into a full-time lecturer position at Top Tier University (TTU) teaching in the English Language Institute. ELI instructors are considered regular university lecturers with all the benefits that come along with that; however, they are required to teach more contact-hours than lecturers in other fields, including foreign language faculty. After several years in that position, and when the anticipated successor to the directorship became unexpectedly unavailable, Rick stepped into the role and has now been the Director of the Institute for 7 years. Rick felt the need to clarify: “We say ‘Institute’ like it’s a building or something, but it’s not. It’s just a…name.” Historically a relatively small intensive English program, the ELI has typically had fewer than 30 students at any one time, “[b]ut we’re expecting to grow, you know, enormously now that TTU has partnered with Education Syndicates Partnerships, Ltd.,” their first cohort of students having reached the half-way point of their first semester in the program. Rick’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership I met with Rick in an empty classroom a few buildings away from his office on campus. He shared with me his rather peculiar experience of first learning of the partnership with Education Syndicates, the for-profit education service provider with whom TTU had recently decided to affiliate. He also shared some programmatic descriptions of the Education Syndicates model as Rick views it, while noting that the program is still shifting and finding its bearings. While a common refrain heard by many participants in this study was that

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their own universities “could have done it [created matriculation pathway programs] themselves,” Rick’s institution was unique in that it already had an existing agreement with the university for a matriculation bridge from the English classes to its degree programs; but it appeared that no one in the senior administration was aware of it. I Read about It in the School Newspaper Rick explained that the ELI faculty or administrators were not brought into the early discussions of the partnership with Education Syndicates: “The first time I even heard the name Education Syndicates was from a senior university administrator, and the comment wasn’t even directed to me: I just happened to overhear the name being mentioned.” The ELI is a relatively small program which is operationally separate and autonomous from the university. They did little recruitment other than “targeted advertising” and indicating their existence on the university webpage: “International students make inquiries from our webpage or they get forwarded to us by someone in admissions when they don’t meet the university’s language requirements.” Rick recounted a story about a local Saudi national who approached the ELI, saying he could informally act as an agent for them and help recruit Saudis into the ELI: “This was just after we’d worked out conditional admissions criteria for internationals with the university. So we had been trying to partner with this guy to try to get some more students, and it kind of backfired. Actually, it really backfired. And this backfiring required some explanation to one of the university lawyers and a senior administrator from Student Affairs.” As Rick related, “It was during those high-level discussions that it came up – this Education Syndicates partnership idea was mentioned, and that it was coming to TTU in the future. I think it was the lawyer who said, “Well, you know, we don’t want to get into this kind of relationship with an agent when we have this Education Syndicates thing possibly coming up.” But this wasn’t said to me, and frankly, I didn’t ask. Because at the time…, I didn’t have a clue what they were referring to. I didn’t know enough to know that it involved me, that it would involve the ELI.” The next time Rick heard something more concrete about the partnership was through an unconventional source: “I read about it in the student news­ paper. It was a story, something to do with a building on campus that was potentially going to be repurposed to house this new Education Syndicates Partnerships recruitment program.” He continued, “So yeah, even as the Director of the ELI, I wasn’t made aware of it until it was pretty much a done deal.” Rick said he later heard that there had been some kind of steering committee early on to discuss the possibility of a recruitment group like Education Syndicates, but he was never invited to be involved, nor was he aware of it.

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This was in spite of the fact that “[t]here had been a lot of meetings with faculty about what’s been called ‘the internationalization of the campus,’ and Education Syndicates is one aspect of these key objectives for the university that was proclaimed from up above a couple of years ago.” The ELI has a faculty advisor who is himself a Professor of English, the ELI being housed in the English Department within the College of Arts and Letters, which is somewhat atypical for an intensive English program. “He’s a full professor,” Rick observed, “and after we started getting some wind of these different things, finally he emailed somebody and said, ‘Hey! Hey! Yoo-hoo? We ought to be included on these conversations!’ And so he was included in on these things at that point as the ELI representative, but this was after they were already quite a ways into the negotiations: he was included, but not me – not at first.” Ultimately, Rick was brought in when they needed to develop the curriculum that the ELI faculty would be delivering to the Education Syndicates students. As he recalled, “once we were finally brought into it, I think we were considered important; [laughs] it just took a while to bring us in. We did have some input into how it would work, and they took our suggestions in terms of TOEFL scores and cut-offs and things like that.” Now that the programs are set up, most of Rick’s interactions with Education Syndicates have more to do with numbers: “how many students are coming, how many have gotten their visas, things like that. We don’t get that information as quickly or as early as we might like for scheduling, but that’s the name of the game. We don’t control that program, but at least we still have our ELI.” The Pathway The pathway programs are distinct and separate from the ELI, yet some ELI faculty are contracted to teach some Education Syndicates class that students take as part of their program. Not only the programs are distinct: “Even physically we’re in two different buildings, though everybody has these dreams of putting us all together in one place; financially that’s not going to happen anytime soon.” The ELI is housed in Webb Hall, which Rick described as “a very old building with minimal air-conditioning that hasn’t been renovated. [laughs] Well, I guess it was renovated at some point, but it was probably sometime in the 1950s. It is kind of falling apart.” It is there that the ELI offices are located, along with several classrooms that the ELI has traditionally used. The Education Syndicates offices are in Christiansen Hall, “which is – you know, in order to be fair – it’s also a very old building that has not really been fully renovated. But of course, they have remodeled the Education Syndicates offices, and they have better air conditioning. And they have their own small wing with offices and classrooms.”

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Rick frequently reminded me that the Education Syndicates pathways programs are very new at TTU as he described some of their features: “It’s really just started; this is our first cohort, and it’s small.” As to admissions requirements, “To get into the pathway, applicants have to have at least a 475 on the paper TOEFL or the equivalent in IELTS or IBT or something else.” Once admitted, the TOEFL score determines what classes they take: Those who come with a 475 to 500 take only ESL courses: they would take 16 credits of ESL over a semester, which is two eight-week terms. Now, those who come with scores between 500 and 525 take eight credits of ESL and one freshman-level content class, and it could be any on the menu of available courses, but the plan is that it will be Math since it tends to be less language-heavy. Those who come in at 525 and above – and even if they come in at 550, 550 being what they could be accepted to university at – those students would still start with the ELI’s University Preparation for International Students course because it’s very much a bridge kind of class with a lot of cultural stuff, and a lot of stuff about education in the United States. The University Prep course counts for four credits of English, and then they’d take eight credits of two freshman-level content classes. The cohort that was registered at the time of our conversation was enrolled in both Math and Sociology courses through Education Syndicates. Rick went on to describe some of the early challenges when working with Education Syndicates as related to recruitment and admissions: “[Education Syndicates] has already tried to make exceptions to the entrance criteria. As Education Syndicates started getting applications submitted for consideration, and on the third application, they said, ‘Well, can’t we bend the rules for just this one?’ I was like, ‘We just started this,’ you know? It was a student who had something like a 460, not 475. ‘Couldn’t he possibly come?’ And now they’re getting so many applications from students who are below 475, and the university doesn’t want to lose all of these students, this potential revenue.” Rather than admit students to the pathway who do not meet the minimum entrance criteria, the university and Education Syndicates is considering opening an off-campus branch of the ELI “where Education Syndicates provides housing and we provide ESL instruction until they can get the 475 TOEFL score: act as sort of a feeder school for the pathway.” Rick described a “Composition for Internationals” course curriculum which had existed prior to the partnership with Education Syndicates. The course, which had been developed for non-native speakers of English,

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is supposed to be as rigorous as the mainstream first-year composition course in terms of the number of essays they write and the use of academic resources; but the “internationals’ sections provide a little extra grammar support, and their readings may be a little different from the readings of the mainstream course.” Both courses are English Department courses, but the ELI faculty always teaches the international sections.3 Rick shared that this course is currently under review and in the process of being rewritten in order to provide more cultural emphasis to the required readings and writing topics.

Segregated from Matriculated Students in Disciplinary Content Courses As is usual at U.S. universities, all students at TTU must take introductory courses within a “core curriculum” or “general education” requirement. The basic disciplinary content courses for pathway students are completely segregated from those for the matriculated students: “They have their own Education Syndicates sections of Math, History, Theatre – whatever. And they’re taught by faculty rounded up by Education Syndicates.” Rick was unclear as to how Education Syndicates recruits its teaching faculty, though, initially, they reached out to various university departments to see if faculty wished to teach these courses: “I think they are required to initially offer these sections to TTU faculty as overloads before bringing in Education Syndicates’ own adjuncts. They said, ‘Okay, we want to develop these courses,’ and they approached each department and said, ‘Do you have someone in your department who would like to do this, maybe develop the syllabus for this class, or teach a special section?’ For this semester,” Rick disclosed, “it was all very last minute finding these faculty. And I think that, for fall, it’s going to be pretty much last minute too; but hopefully, moving forward from there it will get a little more settled. And they definitely need training. We’ve not been approached to develop training for the content faculty, but maybe Education Syndicates is doing something.” Prior to the start of the pathway program, Rick had not had a great deal of interaction with faculty teaching disciplinary content. But recently, things have changed:

3 Such courses in writing for ESL students designed on a first-year or freshman composition model, but specially adapted for non-native speakers and often taught by ESL specialists, are relatively common in English departments or writing programs at U.S. universities.

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One of them approached me asking for suggestions. The Math professor teaching the Education Syndicates cohort came to me, and she said, right from the very beginning…, ‘We should really get together, and maybe you can help me with these students.’ They were having some trouble knowing the difference between, for example, one tenth and five-to-the tenth power, and this kind of stuff. She came to me. I gave her some information. I have this list of kind of tips and, you know, what you should do and what you shouldn’t do: repeating and using synonyms, writing things down on the whiteboard, you know, pretty basic kind of stuff. But she was very receptive and wanted to work together; she asked me if I could do some stuff with Math in my class to kind of help her out, which I did. Not all faculty were as collegial, and when Rick suggested an interdisciplinary conference between himself and one of the academic content-teaching faculty members teaching Sociology, he was rebuffed. His story, which follows, made clear the need for professional development for those faculty unprepared to provide linguistic and cultural support for English language learners. Yet they would not ordinarily ask for any help: “The Sociology professor [laughs] – he’s an Associate Professor and I don’t know if he volunteered to teach this section or if he was asked to, but I was the one who contacted him.” Rick had contacted him as Rick teaches this professor’s same pathway students in the University Preparation for International Students course that helps get students organized for university studies in the United States. As Rick related, “In addition to writing and language support, we teach them academic skills like how to put all their dates on their calendar, how to use Blackboard, and that kind of stuff.” This meant that Rick had access to students’ syllabi for all their courses and assignments. On this basis, he thought he could help the pathway student bridge to their Sociology class: I had gotten to a certain point in the term where, in my class, we start working on written responses to readings, you know, a very typical college-level activity. So I thought it might help to talk to their Sociology professor because I knew that they were going to have to do reading response papers for his class. The Sociology class has been hard for them. The reading is very difficult, and I think the time periods and the concepts that they’re covering are a little over-ambitious, but this is what the course normally is in the mainstream. Anyway, he gives them two readings a week – primary sources. And he wants them to read those, and during any two weeks, he wants them to write an essay talking about how those two primary sources relate to each other and how they relate to the

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sociological construct. Okay? So I thought – since they were going to be doing written reading responses in my class anyway, I thought – well, we’ll do that. You know, we’ll do that in our EAP class as practice for their content class. So Rick got in touch by email with the Sociology professor, who “wrote back saying he thought that that would be unethical, you know, to use the same assignment for two classes. And I said, well, you know, ‘You would be looking at their Sociology content – you would really be looking at the content – and I would be looking at the writing process and the mechanics and how well they’re using sources that we’ve just been going through.’ And at that point he copied in the Director of Education Syndicates, and he said, ‘I think that this would be highly unethical,’ and ‘We would never allow a student to use the same assignment for two different grades in two different departments.’” Rick then responded to the Sociology professor, “If you don’t want to do it this way, please be aware that these students will need a lot of instructions on how exactly to do this reading assignment.” He suggested that he could use older papers for his students as models, if the professor could provide these. However, the Sociology professor objected, saying, “I don’t use models in my class. I throw all of my student papers away as soon as I’ve graded them. I don’t use models because I don’t want everybody to produce a paper that looks the same.” Rick concluded from this exchange that this professor “just really doesn’t understand these students at all.” Then Rick wrote him back, asking if the current students had turned in any papers yet: “And so I said, ‘Have they turned in any? What were some of their problems? If you can tell me what they’re having trouble with, then I can focus on that.’ And he said, ‘Well, no; they haven’t turned in any yet.’ Well, you know, I wonder why! Maybe because they don’t know how to do this!” Rick then showed the faculty advisor (the English professor) these emails, “and he said, ‘Clearly he has no clue what’s going on! If he contacts you again, send him to me.’” Rick felt that the Sociology professor was in effect saying that a Master’s degree in TESOL “wasn’t good enough to be making suggestions about what he should be doing in his classroom. And how annoying that he copied all his emails to the Director of Education Syndicates as if he’s my supervisor! So we did do, you know, what I thought he wanted as the reading response for them as a task in my class, but as far as I know, none of them has turned in any of their papers to him yet.” Rick does acknowledge that, while these are still early days in the partnership, there are higher level administrators at the university who recognize the need for faculty training. “The woman that’s sort of the force behind this whole

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Education Syndicates thing on campus – she’s a Vice President of something or other here at the university – she gets it. She gets it, and she knows that people are going to need training, and she’s the one that’s put together a committee to look at this, and yes, I’m on the committee. You know, she wants everybody on campus to sort of get up to speed so that they understand how best they can serve this international population. I think that’s what we all want.” According to Rick, “Overall, on campus, everyone is very supportive of the partnership with Education Syndicates, and we want it to work. It’s just that there are still a lot of kinks to work out.” We Already Had What Education Syndicates Was Offering Rick is at peace with the partnership, but still finds some frustration and a fair dose of irony in the fact that TTU had already had a conditional admissions bridge program in place: “[I]n a lot of ways, it really doesn’t make any sense. The ELI had already worked out the logistics for conditional admission of international students with the Admissions Office. And we had had our own bridge program for years, but nobody else in the university seemed to know that, of course. The ELI wasn’t on anyone’s radar.” Rick’s addition of “of course” seems to suggest that it was usual at that time for the university to be unaware of what the ELI was doing. As he goes on to describe it: [W]e had this brief window of time – about two months before this debacle with the “Saudi agent” – where we were basically operating as our own pathway program before we had even heard the name Education Syndicates. We had a brief window of time where we were accepting conditional-admission students, and these students would be processed by the Admissions Office, and then they would come to the ELI. Once they get 550 on the TOEFL, they could enter the university, having already been approved. But in the meantime, so long as they had at least a 500, they could begin the bridge program, taking one or two regular university courses. And these courses are mixed, you know, with matriculated students. So in the ELI’s bridge, they’re taking one or two regular university courses and one or two ESL courses at the same time. In Rick’s view, “this would be a better experience than the Education Syndicates Pathway: they’re getting support from the ELI, but the content courses they’re taking are with matriculated students – not segregated from the mainstream university population. So basically, see, we already had what Education Syndicates was offering, but we didn’t have any recruitment; we just could have used help identifying students. Even now, we still have ELI students

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doing that – taking bridge courses – even without conditional admission.” To Rick’s recollection, the agreement between Education Syndicates and TTU has a 5-year term, which to him begs the question, “[W]hy couldn’t we have done this ourselves? I mean, the university could have sent someone to China. Before all this, the university had had no international recruiting – zero international recruiting. And so for the amount of money that’s going into Education Syndicates, they could have just sent a couple of people overseas: TTU might have been able to do it without having to partner with a private company.” The transition has been smooth, but there has been some slight pushback in terms of equity: It’s not a really big deal, but the arrival of Education Syndicates has bred a little bit of resentment because the ELI has always had to beg for everything: our housing, beg for classrooms; there’re just no busses on the weekends on campus in the summertime; there are no meals on the weekends in the summertime; there are no meals during holidays, you know? The dorms close during holidays; the writing center can’t help ESL students to the degree that they need, but they have nowhere else to go for help. We’ve had to fight for everything on this campus, and we were always just kind of ignored by the university. Now Education Syndicates comes to town, and people are bending over backwards to do things for them. The university has a private shuttle bus picking up Education Syndicates students from their dormitory on the weekends…. It does make us feel, you know, like, “Hello, we’ve been here all this time doing the same thing.” And now they’ve just discovered that this whole world exists. So some frustration exists; but then again, at the same time, this partnership is bringing the ELI a lot of business and job security for the faculty. Indeed, since the partnership, and along with their expectations for future enrollment, the ELI has hired two full-time lecturers for the fall. In Rick’s view, the affiliation with Education Syndicates has improved the status of the ELI on campus: “In the past, I would say that we have definitely felt marginalized. Things have improved in the last couple of years, and especially with this coming of Education Syndicates, people have actually discovered that we exist. Before that, they didn’t even know that we were here. So I would say there has been improvement.” At the same time, Rick stressed the still low status of the ELI: “All universities have their hierarchies, and our College of Arts and Letters isn’t at the pinnacle: just about everybody else at the university and then the College of Arts and Letters. And then within Arts

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and Letters we’ve got the English Department, and then at the very bottom of the English Department is the ELI. So clearly, you know, the Business School and the Engineering School and all of those are viewed as way more important than Arts and Letters on this campus. You can tell just by looking at the buildings. See all those beautiful new buildings on campus when you drove in from the airport? They aren’t ours.” As these comments indicate, Rick realizes how far the ELI still has to go to have a position like that of other academic departments even in the College of Arts and Letters, while remaining positive overall: “Still, I think that our lot has improved, and it will continue to improve because we’re seen as important to this endeavor succeeding, whereas before, nobody really understood what we did or how we did it.” Researcher Reflection: Rick Alvey Rick’s willingness to share his early-implementation perspective was greatly appreciated, though when he had initially responded to the recruitment e-mail, he had expressed concerns that their program was “not far enough along yet for [him] to have any useful information.” I knew from other researchsite visits that many of these programs underwent periods of anxious turmoil prior to and leading into the implementation of their universities’ corporate sector partnership pathway programs, and so I considered that there would likely be stories to be told and heard. Rick’s site was unique in that the period of chaos and disorder shared by so many other ELIs had somehow not occurred at Top Tier University, or at least seemed limited or minimized. Through my own review of available online minutes from Rick’s institution’s Faculty Senate meetings, it was clear that the university faculty took pains to see that the university controlled all aspects of the partnerships, and in particular, the curriculum and instruction. Perhaps this was a factor that helped to ensure a smooth transition into the corporate sector partnership arrangement. Within the ELI, there were realizations that decisions impacting the lives of people who worked there were being made without their participation, and some feelings of resentment or relative deprivation were experienced regarding Education Syndicates’ more favored and catered-to treatment by the university, when the ELI had historically been ignored. But with the arrival of Education Syndicates and the pathway programs, the status of the ELI was, in Rick’s view, itself elevated, and they are now seen, he says, as being critical to the successful internationalization objectives of the university. Rick’s stories of attempting to work with disciplinary faculty highlight differences in the academic priorities and expectations of the English language teaching professional versus the faculty member teaching disciplinary content. Rick’s run-in with the Sociology professor who was teaching his same

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pathway students suggests that English language teachers and disciplinary faculty may not operate within the same kinds of educational cultures. In this particular case, the disciplinary faculty member seemed to be focused on preventing students from copying previous students’ papers – perhaps connected to a fear of plagiarism – while the English language teacher was focused on assisting students’ transition to their academic writing assignments. Rick’s stories of his contacts with disciplinary faculty further reveal areas where the practiced knowledge of English language professionals could and perhaps should be tapped in order to provide professional development for faculty teaching disciplinary content. However, this raises the uncomfortable issue of perceived status in higher educational settings for academic professionals who are viewed as service providers rather than generators of new knowledge (Christiansen, Stombler, & Thaxton, 2004; Gillum, 2010): Will the experiential knowledge of a 20-year English language teaching practitioner with a Master’s degree be valued by tenured or higher status faculty teaching in other academic disciplines? The fact that the ELI teachers’ offices and classrooms are not at the level of the pathway provider’s administrative spaces raises a further question about the status of English language teachers within the pathway provider company itself.

Terri Waterman

Terri’s Background Terri Waterman, Assistant Director of Academic Services for Pacific Beach University’s (PBU) AcademicPrep Center, never wanted to be a teacher. She had been an English major in college who was really more interested in journalism and creative writing, and had never actually considered English language teaching until she succumbed to a desire to live overseas. As she recalled: “It seemed like teaching English would be the easiest thing for me to do to make money, so I moved to [Asia] and taught English there for five years. As I was there I realized that I liked it – a lot.” Terri decided to get a Master’s degree at a university in a big city on the East coast, not so much because of the quality of the program, but because she liked the city. “Of course, when I got there, I realized it was a very good program, so I kind of felt lucky.” There she taught in a traditional ELI context as a graduate teaching assistant, and honed skills in the use of technology with English language learners. Upon graduation, Terri returned to Asia, where she taught for a year in a university before returning to the U.S. following a lead from a former colleague about a position in PBU’s English Language Institute. As Terri framed our discussion:

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“I’m one of the carryovers from the old ELI. Yeah, I was there when it all went down.” Terri’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership Rather than meeting in her office, Terri and I found a quiet table in the university’s commons area at an hour when most college students would be hitting snooze alarms for the second time. She was one of a number of administrators and faculty who had been at PBU’s ELI when the private partnership was established. Throughout our conversation, Terri described the painful transformation that the former ELI underwent in that process: from one which ran successfully and autonomously for decades, to one now housed within a non-academic unit and “micromanaged” by both university administrators and the corporate partner’s home office abroad. Still somewhat early in the university–corporate partnership, Terri characterized the university’s “mission of tuition” as one that is driving pathway enrollment numbers to a level Terri believes is unsustainable. What further became clear to me as we spoke was Terri’s own transformation in her professional identity from one who sees herself as “the fixer” – one who by nature takes action to improve processes and “make things more efficient, make things better for faculty” – to one she now describes as being a “reluctant fixer” identity. She lamented, “The more involved the corporate offices of AcademicPrep gets with what I do on a daily basis, the more frustrated and depressed I get. Honestly, I don’t know if I ever really had that ‘fixer attitude’ once the AcademicPrep thing took hold. I consciously have turned away from that tell-me-what-you-needdone attitude. Now, it is more like, ‘What can I do to make the lives easier for the teachers, for the people on the academic side, because the rest of it is a mess!’” Still, with all of the turmoil she and others experienced during the transition, Terri recognizes that there have been positive outcomes from the partnership with AcademicPrep in terms of more full-time positions and opportunities for advancement for those interested in a move from teaching to administration. “Has it been a pleasant thing? I don’t think so. Most teaching faculty really weren’t involved in the early and painful stuff – and maybe that had its own stresses of feeling in the dark and vulnerable – but for the administrators of the ELI, it was really stressful and aggravating: none more so than the former ELI Director, Carmen. I think the faculty are thankful now that they didn’t have to be involved in all of that. Going through the transition from the old ELI to the AcademicPrep partnership was stressful and painful, but still, in a very real way, I feel pretty grateful for the whole experience because I’ve learned a lot about myself, both as a person and as a professional.”

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Transitioning to the Partnership When the administrative team of the former ELI first learned of the university’s intention to partner with AcademicPrep, there was an initial attempt to forestall the agreement by educating university administration to the pitfalls of such a partnership and, as well, to Terri’s and the ELI Director’s own belief that the ELI and university could develop matriculation pathway programs for ESL international students themselves without having to profit-share and be guided by AcademicPrep and their particular matriculation model. “We quickly got up to speed with what AcademicPrep was all about, and we fought hard to stop the partnership at first. But really, by the time we had even heard it was a possibility, it was actually already a done deal. Maybe the contracts hadn’t yet been put together or approved, but the Provost was on board with it, so it was going to happen regardless of what we did or said.” Several ELI administrators were then brought into the transition team, at least initially. As Terri began to get more involved with the corporate partner, as well as with university faculty and administrators, her feelings toward the university began to shift. “You know, before this all happened, I had a much more positive opinion of the university’s administration, but then I started to see that they really hadn’t thought this all through, and how they were also sort of motivated by the prospect of bringing in dollars. And they couldn’t see that, it was just so obvious that PBU could do this themselves and make a lot more money. Instead, they partnered with this mediocre company, and they are now giving away half the money for doing very little, and I was like, ‘You can’t see that? I shouldn’t be the one at this table that sees that.’” Because one of Terri’s roles within the ELI was that of being “the IT systems gal,” she was pulled into a good number of early meetings with faculty and administrators from the College of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, and School of Business programs, and there she discovered just how invisible the ELI had been to the university community at large, “some never even realizing that we existed.” She went to these meetings prepared to share all of possible contributions the ELI could make, but her recitation of the ELI’s contributions fell on deaf ears. “At first I was kind of excited. I would say, ‘Here are the things that the ELI has to offer,’ and ‘Here are the things that we need,’ and ‘Here’s how we can do x, y, and z.’ We were trying to make the best of things, as well as protect the integrity of the program. But it then became very clear that no one was listening. No one really wanted to hear what we had to say about how things should be structured. I think they wanted us to have the illusion that we were somehow involved in the transition: I don’t know, to make us feel better about the partnership; to stop fighting it.” She and the ELI Director recognized that the administrative leadership and the corporate partner were going to

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structure the programs the way that they wanted, and so Terri found herself becoming sidelined and ignored in the transition team. “Yeah, it was a very narrow window where we had a place at the table. It quickly became that only people on the corporate side get to sit at the table. Really, that’s how it still is.” Terri attributes some of her lack of involvement in the transition to her own actions. In the lead-up to the partnership, the ELI Director had rushed through several promotions with new job titles which mirrored the organizational structures evident in other AcademicPrep partner universities. She had been promoted to the role of Operations Director, but as her opinion of the corporate partner and its partnership with the university developed, Terri quickly realized she wanted a “buffer” between herself and Aca­ demicPrep’s corporate office. “I wanted the Program and Academic Directors to be that buffer.” So Terri asked for and was granted a demotion so that she could avoid AcademicPrep’s corporate office from making requests directly of her. Making Bad Ideas Work The frustrations of working with the corporate partner that led to Terri’s decision to step back in both involvement and job title arose through her desire to become “the fixer” again. “Post-partnership, I really can’t be the fixer. Look: one of the things that I really don’t like is making other peoples’ bad ideas work. I’m good at what I do. I can make a lot of things work, but I do not find any satisfaction from making a bad idea work.” Terri felt that she was currently in a state of being asked “to make bad ideas – bad processes and bad policies – work…better.” Terri shared with me a number of the “bad ideas” which were particularly aggravating to her. AcademicPrep had decided unilaterally that a score of 5 on the IELTS4 would be the point of admission for the Pathways Programs. They were apparently equating an IELTS score of 5 with that of a TOEFL score of 61. There was professional agreement among the ELI’s English language teachers and administrators that the two tests’ scores could not be considered comparable, and frustrations emerged when AcademicPrep’s response was that the admission criterion was already “in market.” That is to say that the admissions minimum score of 5 on the IELTS was already stated in AcademicPrep’s brochures and websites, and these criteria had already been 4 IELTS: International English Language Testing System. Like the TOEFL, the IELTS is a widely used test for assessing learner’s ability to understand and use English at a university level.

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communicated to their recruiters. AcademicPrep refused to change the criterion. Terri fumed: “Even if that score is in market, …I think PBU still has the right to change it; that’s why we have a network of regional directors to get messages out to the recruitment agents. Isn’t that what we’re paying half of our profits for?” According to Terri, in the first year of the partnership, most of the prospective students were submitting IELTS, not TOEFL, scores, for obvious reasons: “When you have two tests that you’re saying either one is okay, but one scores significantly lower than the other, well, then, everyone takes the one that is easiest to pass: the IELTS. And so a lot of them were coming in with IELTS fives, and we found that some of them didn’t do well in the Pathways.” Ultimately, Terri worked with the Program Director to have the IELTS minimum score raised to 5.5, which she felt was a significant advance in identifying qualified pathway program candidates. These were all improvements over the earliest admissions when the program was accepting AcademicPrep’s own internal assessment, which was being administered and evaluated by the very agents who were recruiting the students and who arguably would have ulterior motives for getting high numbers of students admitted. “These agents were getting paid based on the number of students who were admitted into the Pathway! See a problem with that?” Application processes were further complicated during the transition when AcademicPrep insisted that the former ELI’s online application be removed from the website: all applications were to be funneled through AcademicPrep’s corporate site. When it became evident that student queries and applications were taking a steep dive in terms of numbers, Terri had to explain that this occurred because she was told to take down the online application: “And those applications were not coming through AcademicPrep’s channels, they had been coming through ours. And they said, ‘Well, put it back up then.’ And I said, ‘Okay,’ and I put it back up. A week later they told me, ‘Take it down again because they’re not the right format.’” The ELI had been using an application which might better be described as a two-page inquiry. AcademicPrep’s application was eight pages long. The length of this form to her exemplified problems with letting AcademicPrep handle things through their corporate site. And the length of the form was not the only problem Terri had with it. What Terri perceived as outsourcing or subcontracting by the corporate partner was an additional “bad idea” that brought agitated animation to her reflective remembrances. She recalled that AcademicPrep had implemented a “new and improved” PDF version of the application to be downloaded online, and in Terri’s words:

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…it was as if you’d asked a chimpanzee to make a PDF! The formatting was a mess. Fields were formatted with two decimal-point places, so it was like, you’d type in your birthday, and it would be “9.00 – 28.00 – 1983.00.” And what that tells me is, AcademicPrep outsourced or subcontracted to some guy in Vietnam or wherever for the least amount of money you could pay him. It was a train wreck! And that PDF application was indicative of the whole thing. What frustrated me most of all was that, by this time, AcademicPrep had already sent around a triumphant email announcement to everyone saying, “Hey, we have a beautiful new online application now; aren’t we great?” And it’s like, “Did none of you try to fill this out?” That’s what it tells me. Not one of you tried to type in your birthday or whatever, because if you had, you’d know this wasn’t okay. And it is that arrogance that is really infuriating to me. It wasn’t just the application; it was with everything. Look, I don’t mind trying to save a buck; that’s fine. But then, you’ve got to try it out. At the time of our conversation, Terri confided that PBU’s AcademicPrep pathway programs were still not seeing a lot of recruited students from the international AcademicPrep agents or their corporate website. Most of their students were still word-of-mouth, based on the decades-earned reputation of the former ELI and of Pacific Beach University itself. “It takes so much energy to fight against bad ideas,” Terri sighed. “And nobody cares. Nobody values what we English language teaching folks have to say. So it’s like, okay. Then why do I care?” We Could Have Done This Ourselves Terri was clear that the idea of creating a matriculation pathway program for English language learners is an excellent idea. “It’s a good idea, but it isn’t AcademicPrep’s idea. We had wanted to create a bridge to the university long before AcademicPrep came here, but PBU wouldn’t do it. The most significant thing that AcademicPrep brought to the table – something I don’t know how we at the ELI could have done – they brought leverage.” Through her laughter Terri suggested that because it had committed so much money to the partnership, “the university was willing to jump on a lot of things like removing the SAT requirement, which we at the ELI had been trying to get waived for years, and the university wasn’t bending on it at all. Leverage. And then the minute they removed the SAT, all the rest of the pathway stuff we could have done… ourselves.” And by “we,” Terri makes clear that she is referring to the entire university community, not just the ELI “because it would have required a lot of interdisciplinary partnership.” According to Terri, “Our Program Director put

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the pathway together. Nothing is AcademicPrep. None of the curriculum is theirs. They had nothing except the leverage and the push that occurred at the very top levels of the university. And…that had to come from them. The ELI could not have supplied that leverage. We tried, but no one listened.” So while the idea of a pathway program is a “good idea” from Terri’s perspective, it was a bad idea in terms of the university deciding to give up tuition dollars in exchange for “almost nothing, other than someone to tell them, ‘Hey, do this.’ And even the ‘this’ they were telling them to do was usually flawed. The reality is that PBU and we in the ELI had to do all the work.” Terri is optimistic that “after a few years of growing pains” the pathway programs at PBU will ultimately work. She attributes the generally successful transition to the faculty and staff of the ELI: “I think that AcademicPrep lucked out because the ELI was already so good. We had a great reputation. We had great teachers and a really strong curriculum. And there aren’t so many IEPs in this country that could have delivered as well as we did during this kind of transition – the way that we delivered during the first year of the partnership.” Yet, unfortunately, it is Terri’s belief that no one involved in the partnership at PBU really recognizes the ELI faculty’s contribution to making it work. “I think they are all leaning back in their conference-room chairs congratulating one another, saying, ‘We did it! Job well done!’ But they don’t really see that it was the old ELI faculty, and yes, the academic content faculty, who were really the ones who did it – not AcademicPrep.” AcademicPrep’s “very expensive ready-made framework” was attractive to the university leadership, but Terri is firm that the pathway programs could have been accomplished without having to engage with a corporate partner. “The minute you open the door for a bridge program by eliminating the SAT and providing a way for students to get a TOEFL waiver, we could have delivered as many students as PBU wanted.” Before the partnership, the ELI had been attracting and servicing around 300 students without waivers, based, according to Terri, on the reputation of the ELI. This was a major point of frustration for Terri. “We had been trying to overcome these university roadblocks for years, but nobody would listen to us. We’re bright people. We could have done this.” Fitting In Terri is trying to give this new paradigm “a fair shake.” She does not have ambition to move elsewhere within the university, feeling that she already has the best job for her. As she told me, “I don’t want to be the Academic Director, and if ours leaves, I would not accept a directorship role. And I certainly don’t want any job that ties me any closer to AcademicPrep corporate. I’m trying to

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figure out where I fit in.” Terri shared that she sometimes fantasizes about going back to being a teacher, perhaps going overseas to teach English. She does not see herself as a typical academic, and she has not been particularly active in the professional organization, TESOL. The reason is related to her distaste of corporations: “Everything that has a brand on it – a corporate brand – makes me angry at a very irrational level. And professional organizations kind of rub me the same way. I’m really not a joiner, and so I think I resisted TESOL for a long time for that reason.” She is a member of the union, and she acknowledged that “when this was all going down with AcademicPrep in the beginning, we got a lot of support from the union, not that it changed the outcome.” Terri remarked that corporate branding of the matriculation pathway programs is evident on the PBU campus: “To some extent, we’ve all been branded as AcademicPrep on campus. Maybe you’ve seen the AcademicPrep PBU golf and T-shirts that some wear. For myself, I know that I’m a PBU employee, that, yes, I work within the Academic English Program at PBU, and that one of the things we do is we deliver courses to AcademicPrep pathway students; but, you know, we are a separate entity from this corporate thing called AcademicPrep. Does everybody on campus get that? Probably not.” Indeed, the university needed to create clear and legal separations between itself and the public, corporate, and quasi-corporate aspects of the partnership in order to appease the Commission on English Language Program Accreditation (CEA) and to demonstrate that the Academic English Programs remain solely within the purview of the university, while the matriculation pathway programs exist as a public-private hybrid outside of CEA oversight and accreditation. The experience of the transition impacted how Terri views the university: “I have a complete disregard for what anyone at the university might think of me.” Then, through her laughter, “Well, I take that back. The people who are second and third level are great. It’s the top level of the university that I’ve lost respect for. What’s funny is that I was, you know, I was, definitely, on PBU’s side when all of this started. I really wanted to stay with PBU and worked hard to, sort of, protect it. But then when all of this happened, and I got to see the inner workings of everything, it’s like, ‘Oh, you guys are the same.’ Like, ‘If I’m working for AcademicPrep or if I’m working for the university, it is the same: student numbers and student dollars are really all that matter.’ Now, all I want is buffers between me and the top. That’s all I want, because it’s really no different. The ambitions of the PBU bigwigs and the ambitions of the CEO of AcademicPrep headquarters are the same: a lot of their thinking is the same.”

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Terri also considers a future life beyond PBU and AcademicPrep as a consultant, leveraging her experience and knowledge to help others create matriculation pathway programs. She feels like she “gets it”: “I understand exactly what a university needs to do to get international students, if that’s what they want to do. Having been here before, during, and after this kind of transition, I feel like I understand it in a very personal way. I’ve lived it. I’ve experienced the whole thing. Partly because it was so chaotic, I was involved in a lot of different things, and so I got to see a lot of different sides. And so I do feel like there is…value and there is knowledge here worth knowing. But it still just makes me feel a little bit sad when I think, ‘Why are universities willing to give this stuff away.’ It’s not hard, you know, to set this kind of thing up. And there are plenty of companies like Hobsons or IDP5 that are willing to just do the recruitment piece, and you don’t need to give them their own department and half of your profits.” Terri offered her reflection on why partnering with an educational service provide might appeal to university administrators: “I recognize that there is a lot of fear in administrators; and the idea of giving away responsibilities appeals to a lot of them because then they don’t need to worry about screwing it up: it’s somebody else’s thing. ‘We didn’t screw it up; it was those guys we hired.’ So if they can just stand back and count the money, that appeals to them. But that’s not what education is about.” Promotion to and from the Pathway Programs While international students who meet admissions standards may directly enter the AcademicPrep matriculation pathway programs, students of PBU’s Academic English Program need to successfully exit Level 4 of their five-level intensive English program in lieu of a TOEFL or IELTS score. “We’ve become very firm about level promotions, and we’re looking closely at that curriculum right now. Once a student completes Level 5, they can get direct admission to PBU, or you could get into the Accelerated Pathway without a TOEFL. Before, a Level 5 exit was only a TOEFL waiver for the local community college: PBU wouldn’t give it to us. So, because of all this, we’ve become even firmer about not promoting people if they’re not ready; it really carries weight. If your teachers say you’re not ready, that really is our trump card.” Terri’s concerns are less related to transitions into the pathway programs, and more related to exiting the pathway and entering the university degree programs, as she expressed to me: “It’s not a good thing, but right now, there is some massaging to get people who don’t quite meet the [various academic] departments’ requirements for matriculation. For example, maybe a grad 5 Both Hobsons and IDP Education offer international student recruitment services.

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pathway student’s GRE or GMAT score is 20 or 30 points too low, or they got a ‘C’ in one or more of their Pathway courses. According to the brochure, this means they do not qualify to progress to PBU. But the departments end up letting some of them in.” Terri stopped short of classifying this as unethical. She affirmed that “grades aren’t being changed. In fact, we have actively worked against that kind of thing. I was just talking to one of the Pathways Coordinators recently. Well, one of the responsibilities of the Pathways Coordinators is that they meet with students and they do kind of progress report kinds of things pretty frequently. Well, this student knew that she was failing and that she wasn’t going to be promoted. She was going to be sent home. So this student went to one of her teachers (not one of ours, one of the PBU content faculty) and said, ‘You can’t fail me because I’ll have to go home.’ And so the faculty member called up the Coordinator and said, ‘I didn’t realize that my grades were going to have that kind of impact; can you please let me know what her status is?’ And our Coordinator said, ‘No: tell me the grade. That’s not how it works.’ And I was really kind of blown away by that. Good for the Coordinator!” Terri made clear to me that it was the university, not the language program faculty, who from time to time attempted to interfere with promotion or admissions decisions: “None of that kind of stuff was happening from us. It was all PBU. I mean, PBU wants to get as many international bodies into these classrooms as they can. I don’t get involved with promotion or admissions decisions. I just create the reports based on data. We make honest reports, and if the university decides that they are going to lower their standards – I mean, it’s kind of like what they do for athletes. It’s the same kind of thing. I’m glad I don’t have a role in promotion.” No Expectation for Faculty Rank When the partnership between PBU and AcademicPrep took place, the English language programs moved from an academic department into an administrative unit. While the former ELI did not have a tradition of affording teaching faculty with academic rank within the university, this new line of reporting for English language teaching professionals makes this transition even less likely. As Terri reflected about the status of the ELI teachers: I don’t think that any of the English language faculty would ever expect to move up to the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor. A full-time faculty member here is Instructor or Senior Instructor. Yeah, I’ve read some of the conversations on the TESOL listservs about some ELIs and their universities moving in that direction, but here, I think people

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are more interested in getting a full-time job with benefits. Before, everyone was adjuncts. I was on the hiring committee for the last ten lines that we hired; we’re getting a lot of lines that we would not have gotten before. Over time that cap at Senior Instructor may become an issue, especially if other institutions start to do it first. I don’t think people care about that right now. But yeah, I have heard people talk about the fact that there are Spanish faculty at the Assistant Professor level who only have Master’s degrees, including…even…a full-time Spanish faculty here at PBU who we didn’t think…was good enough to work with us. There is no doubt in my mind that the best language teaching in this university is happening in our area. And whenever I see how Spanish classes or French classes or Chinese classes are taught, it’s like, “Oh, I didn’t realize that people still did it like that. [laughs] The audio-lingual method? Honestly?” “Us” and “Them” According to Terri, there is a real divide between the language program faculty and language program administrators, and she and other administrators having been working hard to bridge it. And because of the rapid growth of the programs, teachers were provided opportunities to take on administrative roles, which served in some ways to exacerbate the divide. “I think being in the two physical spaces has not helped, being in two different buildings; but I think that even before that, there was definitely a feeling that Carmen and I, and a couple of other administrators…knew things and were not telling the teaching faculty. And I think that, now that the partnership is in full force, they’re now seeing these other people – teachers like Carla and Donna, who have been pulled from the teaching ranks – the ‘they’ who were ‘us’ have become more of ‘them,’ AcademicPrep people.” Terri further elaborated, describing an “us-and-them” situation that is expanding as people move into new roles and take on administrative responsibilities in lieu of or in addition to teaching. “Some of it is just what happens when things get big quickly. You end up with these different kinds of groups, and you don’t have as good of communication, and you don’t have access.” Terri related her observation that the teachers were less directly connected to the program administrator: “Everybody doesn’t get to just stop by the Academic Programs Director’s office whenever they want anymore; there are just too many new people, new teachers. Administrators get access to her, but most of the teaching faculty are now distanced by an additional level of administration. That is definitely something I’ve noticed.”

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Another salient aspect of the change in employee relationships which Terri shared is that those administrators and faculty who see themselves on “the academic side of things” seem to explicitly avoid getting involved with the AcademicPrep side of things, many preferring work assignments within the Academic English Program. She noted the contrast between now and how people had felt before in terms of wanting or not wanting to be kept in the loop: “During the transition, I think there was frustration because people didn’t know what was going on. Now, I don’t think they want to know what’s happening on the AcademicPrep side.” As for herself, since she has an administrative position in the Pathways program, Terri feels that she is “still kind of stuck with a foot on both sides,” but is “trying to separate [her]self from the corporate stuff as much as possible.” Again, she mentioned the desirability of having buffers: “I like my buffers. I know that the former ELI Director, Carmen, has really tried to put a wall between herself and AcademicPrep. Her managing the CEA reaccreditation has helped because the CEA is accrediting the language programs – not AcademicPrep pathway programs – and so it means that the language program side has to become a real thing with boundaries separate from AcademicPrep. Once that is codified and written down, it may be easier to defend those walls. I’d like to keep to my side of the wall as much as possible without fear that it will topple over me.” Preparing Disciplinary Content Faculty In terms of specific pedagogical preparation of the mainstream faculty teaching disciplinary content courses for their work with English language learners, Terri related that there has been no support given to those teaching creditbearing content courses in the pathway programs: “I don’t think there has been any kind of preparation or support given to the academic content faculty at PBU.” While on campus, I learned of PBU having given so-called “cultural diversity training” to PBU faculty, but Terri could not offer any insight into its quality or content. “So far as I know, the English language teachers weren’t consulted about [the diversity training]. And I’ve certainly not heard anything about training the content folks on the actual teaching of English language learners – you know, strategies for teaching or assessing English language learners – and I haven’t heard of content faculty asking us for help. But, our faculty would clearly be a great resource for that kind of thing if they’d ask. But you know, it isn’t as if these faculty have never had international students in their classes, and so I think that they think they know what they’re doing with English language learners.” Terri predicted that there would be problems down the line: “Once or if we have a few semesters of AcademicPrep students failing Engineering or Business classes, that will get their attention. They want more

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students in their programs. I don’t think they’re unhappy, yet. Because it does seem like, if you want to have international students – which is a great ambition as a college – you need to understand what that means. You can’t just want to cash their checks and then that is the end of your involvement with it. I think it is going to come to a head this fall. The College of Business might throw a fit.” According to Terri, the numbers expected for the Business Pathway in the following semester are “huge.” She suggested that “they’ve caught wind of it, but they don’t know quite how big it will be. And, really, we don’t know. They’re just projections at this point, so we can’t say, ‘Oh, you’re going to have 250 students’ and then show up with 100. But, they’re not prepared – not for the numbers and not for the level or quality of students they will be getting.” In terms of how the academic, credit-bearing disciplinary courses are structured within the pathway program, Terri highlighted some positive changes that are currently being implemented, such as less segregation of the international students from other students: You know, most of the undergraduate content courses have been segregated. The AcademicPrep students have had their own sections apart from mainstream PBU students, but that is changing. University Experience is going from segregated to desegregated. Now, Math was always commingled. I think there is definitely recognition that more integration of AcademicPrep students with mainstream PBU students is better. That seems to be pretty strongly supported, which I think is great. For the graduate pathways, that was pretty much already the case: except for the English language support classes, the graduate pathway students are already in with mainstream students from day one. But is the mainstream content faculty prepared to work with such a diverse population? I can’t really say for sure. Biggest Challenges Terri identified the programs’ rapid growth motivated by profit as one of the major challenges PBU faced in the first year. With increased enrollment, it was necessary to identify and hire a great number of new teaching faculty. As she saw it, “The first year was crazy. We were being asked to double in size and get accredited for three programs, two of which were brand new. To try to do all those things at the same time is dumb. What happens is you can’t do all three things well. You may be able to do it, but there is definitely going to be a sacrifice in quality. You simply can’t. If you’re trying to add fifteen new instructors

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for the fall, you can’t get fifteen good instructors in one semester. It just doesn’t work that way. We had such fast growth that we lost three people. It happens when you grow too fast and you don’t have enough staff or enough time for training. It’s easy to see, but nothing is being done about it. We’re still grow, grow, grow! Just bring in more bodies!” Terri told me that she had made an attempt to get something done about what she considered this too-rapid growth of the program but had not succeeded: “Carmen and I went to Karl three weeks ago and said, ‘You really need to think about capping for the fall term. This is not going to work,’ and he said, ‘We’re not capping.’” The result was a feeling of lack of control and powerlessness: “So it’s like, okay: not my problem anymore. But then, that’s completely consistent with both AcademicPrep and PBU. That’s why I feel like, you know, I can’t fight this. Both AcademicPrep and PBU are totally, totally, happy to do that.” Students who had been enrolled in the former ELI’s programs voiced negative impacts to Terri. “We just did a student survey – you know, as part of our CEA accreditation process, and there is definitely a sense among the students that we only care about money now. I thought that was very interesting, because I don’t think they are wrong. Part of it is obvious, because we jacked up our tuition like 70% from around $3,600 to $5,300 or $5,400, or something like that. We’re also not seeing the diversity of students that we’d hoped for. In the old ELI, and in the Academic English program now, we’ve always been a little Saudi-heavy in our classes, and, you know, students don’t like being in class with all people that speak one language. And I feel like AcademicPrep isn’t really helping because AcademicPrep only recruits Chinese students for the Pathway Programs. Students are complaining about too many Chinese students.” Terri revealed that AcademicPrep has tens of agents in China, but perhaps only one in Africa and one in South America. She made a point of observing that “they only recently added the one in South America, and they were…so proud and announced it like it was some big thing. One? Wow! Forward thinking! Look, their recruitment is fine; it’s not bad, but it’s just not necessary, and it’s too expensive.” AcademicPrep Is Good at… A query into what AcademicPrep might be doing right in terms of the partnership was met with the same kind of sarcastic humor Terri had demonstrated throughout our conversation. Within her revelations she voiced frustrations that the corporate partner was brought into the picture in the first place, as well as her strongly held opinion that the university is paying for so-called services it could have managed on its own. A sense of how Terri’s answers tended to evolve to sarcastic observations about the corporate partner can be

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gained from the following comment: “You know, when this all started, I felt like AcademicPrep was not very good at what they do, and I still feel that way. Well. Okay. There’re actually very good at what they do, but you have to recognize that what they do is talk universities into giving them lots and lots of money. They are unbelievably good at that. The rest of it – the rest of the promises they make – they’re not very good at. But we knew that. We knew that then, when the smell of the partnership first blew onto campus.” As Terri continued, I could see her sarcasm turning more negative, to cynicism: They’re also really good at figuring out how to get us to pay multiple times for the same thing. So like, we split profits. So I would think that the half of the profits you get is for your systems, is for your agents. But we end up paying for all those things separately, before the profits are split. So we pay a technology fee to the technology people that the corporate office uses; it has nothing to do with what we want or need: it’s their MIS system that we have to use and pay, like, a couple grand every month. And then there is this new system that they’re putting into Admissions, and there’ll be a monthly license fee for every user. We pay the agents, and then there is this 5% management fee thing that we give to them – all before any of the profits are split up. So it’s been really very informative for me to see, ‘Oh, that is how you make money in business: you make people pay a couple of times for the same thing.’ I guess it’s true that AcademicPrep has to pay PBU for a few things, too. They rent PBU rooms and, maybe, technology, so it could be that it goes both ways. Maybe the goal for both of them is to minimize the profits for tax purposes, and just get as much as they can out of the black box of tuition before the profits are split and taxes get applied. Researcher Reflection: Terri Waterman Terri radiates confidence and charisma, in addition to having a pervasive sense of humor that included a taste for irony and sarcasm. A “carryover” from the former ELI, Terri and other administrators were pragmatic when facing the inevitable partnership. Through preemptive restructuring of her responsibilities and title, Terri was successful in negotiating membership into what would ultimately become the AcademicPrep operations center at Pacific Beach University. Her knowledge, experience, and skills as “the fixer” were valued by the new Center Director and Assistant Director who were brought in from the university to supplant the existing ELI Director. Throughout our conversation, Terri shared challenging experiences of attempting to accept decisions she did

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not agree with and to take on practices of her new membership group which required her to “make bad ideas work.” These experiences were often accompanied by the sense that her efforts were never valued or appreciated by the corporate partner, leading her to feel ignored by and cynical about the company she works for: “Nobody cares what we have to say.” As she noted more than once, she had come to feel that she needed to focus on her academic work and to keep her distance from the corporate side of program operations. Terri’s orientation to her new peers ultimately became somewhat challenging, in that she rejects many of the corporate offices’ practices and norms. This is most evident in her specific request that she have her title – and where possible, her job responsibilities – compartmentalized and distanced from the more corporate-services side of the organization, preferring to adopt a more academic identity which she perceives will require less contact with the corporate partner’s center of operations abroad. Still, when meeting with Terri, it was clear that her attitude, demeanor, and humor are all colored by a sense of optimism. While she described the implementation of the corporate sector partnership as one which was stressful and painful, and while she was highly critical of many aspects of it, she likewise expressed her gratitude for the experiences of working in the new partnership arrangement, which she feels have provided an opportunity for reflection about herself both as a person and as a professional. Ultimately, Terri’s stories reveal a person who, through her talent and competence, maintains access to a membership group to which outsiders might imagine one would aspire within the structure of such an organization. Yet she herself in many ways rejects such membership, and is contemplative about her future and the possibility of leaving behind the bureaucracy of administration in favor of the more learner-centered identity of language teaching faculty.

David Pullman

David’s Background David Pullman is a former director of the JVP-affiliated matriculation pathway program at Bay City University in Waterside, California. Like many involved with English language education, David came to teaching through an interest in foreign languages and international travel; both his high school and undergraduate studies focused on foreign languages. After working briefly in the tourism industry in Europe, David’s first English language teaching experience was through a teacher exchange program in Asia: “It was a governmentsponsored program working in public junior and senior high schools. Like me,

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most of these people were completely inexperienced as teachers, the requirement being that we were mostly native English speakers who could, you know, demonstrate good values and be cultural ambassadors.” After several years in Asia, David was hired by an Asian school in Central Europe to teach English and French, still without any formal credentials or a Master’s degree. As David realized, “You can get by for a while without a graduate degree,” but he “eventually decided to go to London for a Master’s in TESOL.” When David began teaching in the United States, he worked at a number of for-profit, private language schools, mainly through hourly paid jobs. David was then hired by a British company to open and operate a new private English language school, which he directed for nearly 10 years. During that time, David became heavily involved with the leadership of the CEA. He participated in accreditation site visits and established relationships with numerous language program directors and faculty, many of whom worked in academic English language programs on college and university campuses. Experiencing “just a little bit of burnout” from his directorship with the private language school, David began exploring the possibility of finding an administrative position with a university-based English language program. A former colleague alerted David to a position at Bay City University as an Assistant Director of the English Language Institute (ELI), and he applied. He was unaware at the time that he would one day direct this program, and additionally, be asked to take on the responsibility of directing a matriculation pathway program recently begun as a result of a partnership between Bay City University and Joint Venture Partnerships, Inc. (JVP). David’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership Meeting with David off campus at a nearby coffee shop, our conversation began with personal reflections and painful remembrances of the early days of turmoil as the matriculation pathway programs of Bay City University were first being implemented. David recounted the pressures he felt working in an environment of high accountability for progression and matriculation, with little administrative university support or pre-implementation preparation. Lack of admissions control and quality of recruited international students were among the most salient challenges faced. We discussed the nature of English language teaching as a profession and its role in higher education, as well as the perceived status of those who choose such work as a career. From a practical perspective, David shared general information regarding the overall structure of Bay City University’s JVP pathway programs as a means to orienting me to “how things work” at his particular institution. It should be noted that David no longer works for Bay City University. Through our discussion,

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David candidly shared some of the reasons for his departure, many having to do with ethics and personal pride. A Leap into the Unknown According to David’s narrative, the introduction of the JVP pathway program could be said to have been done hastily, without any of those at the university having a full understanding of what it was going to entail. This was in part because the university administration had not done enough groundwork and consultation about the program. The university was eager to bring in a large new group of fee-paying students as soon as possible, and in a sense left a lot of the details to JVP. The launch of the program was thus a leap into the unknown, a journey into uncharted territory. As it turned out, recruiting numbers and financial concerns associated with the program and its students ended up trumping university policy and admission standards. As David related, university administrators had not worked through logistical issues, such as pathway student advising, progression and remediation within the pathway program, or their subsequent matriculation into the university’s academic degree programs. This was in part because the academic dean within whose college the pathway programs were situated was unsupportive of ESL programs and faculty. As David commented, “Our Dean – who negotiated the program with JVP – detested ESL, describing it as ‘tacky’ and ‘schlocky,’ and describing ESL teachers as ‘untalented’ and ‘low-rent.’” Admissions and curriculum were thus developed by non-ESL administrators from Bay City University’s College of Adult Education and JVP without the involvement of English teaching professionals employed by Bay City University. David noted that corporate-partner recruitment agents are financially incentivized to get students into the program, “but who’s watching the agents to know that they’re serving the best interest of the university?” Students recruited by the corporate partner and admitted into pathway programs are not, he believes, “as academically qualified as their transcripts seemed to be saying.” As David reported, “Students were supposed to have a required minimum of 500 on the paper-based TOEFL to enter the pathway, but when they actually arrived in California and we gave them the test at the beginning of the program, we found that many of them were actually way below that: way below. We had no idea if the scores being sent were those of the actual student showing up on campus or…something else.” He observed that in fact there was some evidence of cheating: “Application materials would occasionally show up – and we didn’t know how upfront JVP was being about how many of these were coming in – but, when we caught it [though this was not the responsibility of David or his colleagues], we’d say, ‘Look at this admissions essay we

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found. Look. I just found it on the internet!’ But then JVP would just let the person write another one!” In addition, pathway students had unfair matriculation GPA requirements: “It was 2.5, but it’s just been raised to 2.8, …but the GPA for domestic high school student applying to Bay City is 3.8! ‘What’s going on there?’ you might wonder.” Another issue David raised is that JVP’s recruitment of international students lacks cultural and linguistic diversity; it is “heavily Chinese.” Moreover, those international students are not being integrated into the university, according to him: “The students are completely segregated; they’re not living with – nor are they taking classes with – mainstream domestic students. It wasn’t really on JVP’s radar or their agenda to do the work of getting students involved in university culture.” As a further problem with the corporate sector partnership, students arrive with erroneous notions that, once accepted into a pathway program, they would automatically be accepted into, for example, the School of Business at Bay City University: “Yes, all of this is in the brochure: all of the admissions requirements and all of the exit requirements, but the students didn’t get it…. [O]n the front of the brochure and on the website, it always said, ‘guaranteed.’ It said something like ‘Your guaranteed pathway into,’ you know, whatever program in the university. But it’s not guaranteed. It’s not.” A further frustration David shared related to recruitment involves Bay City’s decision to allow JVP to set up their own test preparation and private language center on the university grounds to act as a feeder school to the pathway programs. International student applicants to the pathway program who do not meet admissions criteria are directed to the JVP centers. This is in direct competition with the university’s existing English language program and further circumvents Bay City University’s control over admissions to the pathway: “All this is a set-up to try to lock them [international students] into the system earlier and earlier and bring in more and more money: money for JVP, not the university. If these same students had come to Bay City via our ELI, we might have some control as to who makes it through the levels or has to repeat levels before entering the pathway and the tuition would have been Bay City’s.” Pressure to Matriculate Recruitment and admission of what David described as under-qualified students has had a multitude of “ripple effects.” Lax recruitment standards have meant that many students need more help than can be provided in the short time of the pathway program. Hence, many who have finished the pathway program are not ready to join regular academic classes. Yet those accountable for moving the pathway students into disciplinary content classes

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feel considerable pressure, according to David, to pass them through. When the majority could not pass required exit tests, this created a cascade of effects, including “backwash” effects on matriculation requirements which, David claimed, caused a relaxation of those requirements and a lowering of standards. In effect, according to him, the university ended up having a different, and much lesser, standard for the pathway-recruited international students than for their “homegrown” domestic students. When students exited the pathway program, as David commented, most students’ scores were not high enough to matriculate into the university’s academic programs: This was a real problem because…the pathway had been sold to all these departments in the university – graduate and undergraduate programs, right? JVP is going to be giving you lots of international students – fullfee-paying international students. Ca-ching! It’s the promise of a lot of money coming into these academic departments, into the university. So what happens when you’ve got, say, a cohort of 250 [international pathway students], and say 175 don’t get through that final TOEFL test and thirty-minute writing assessment to exit the pathway? It’s kind of a crisis. Not only have the academic departments been saving places for these students – 175 spots that haven’t been given to domestic student applicants because they were being held for pathway students – but now, what about all the projected revenue? What about all the faculty your department hired to teach these sections of “Intro to Whatever”? David noted that there was pressure to matriculate students. With the large number of students who could not achieve the required exit score on the TOEFL at the end of the program, David and his team decided to administer the ETS6 Secondary Level English Proficiency (SLEP) test. “It’s for secondary students! We ended up using that as our ‘your-English-is-good-enough’ test along with a thirty-minute writing task. I guess we rationalized that the SLEP demonstrated that students were at a level of English proficiency that they would be able to exit a high school program: be ready to go into their first year of university. But, we also used it for graduate students, come to think of it! … That’s what we did. And more of them did get through [matriculate], but still, plenty of them didn’t.” In addition, pathway students “own their GPAs” gained 6 ETS: Educational Testing Service is a global non-profit organization that creates and administers research-grounded assessments for a variety of education contexts (http://www .ets.org/).

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in the pathway program in the sense that these follow them throughout their academic careers. Thus, as David stated, credit-bearing courses taken while in the pathway may have a negative impact on international students’ overall GPAs. It might also be argued that pathway students’ GPA could potentially be overinflated by instructors pressured to progress and matriculate students, and thus may present an inaccurate representation of students’ actual performance or ability. David was acutely aware of being held accountable for student results in a program for which he had no control on the quality or readiness of students being recruited by JVP and provisionally approved by the university’s academic departments. He felt that his Dean had unrealistic and uninformed expectations for progression of ESL international students. “So when these numbers would come out, it always came back to me: ‘What went wrong? What didn’t you do, David?’ And, I really felt like, there’s only so much I can do here.” Thus, David, the ostensible director of the program, felt powerless to apply his professional knowledge and experience on his job, and in fact was not positioned within the university structure to achieve the outcomes that his Dean expected. David summarized his plight this way: “I had minimal admissions control, yet maximum exiting accountability. It wasn’t fair, and there was a real taboo about criticizing JVP and the partnership when I was at Bay City. You really couldn’t do that, you know? ‘We’re in this together,’ and ‘We trust our partner.’ It was just kind of off the table. I mean, everybody knew – everybody talked about recruitment problems – about the readiness of students being brought into the program by JVP, but nobody did it in any kind of public way. It wasn’t something you could do openly.” .



The Status of English Language Programs and English Language Teaching Professionals As discussed in Chapter 2, English language programs and their administrators and teaching professionals have been historically marginalized on college and university campuses. English language teaching is sometimes viewed by institutions of higher education as non-academic, preparatory, or remedial. Yet while these programs’ and teaching professionals’ status is typically described through the dichotomy of English language teaching as compared to content teaching within academic disciplines, David’s narratives reveal the subordinated status of Bay City ELI’s from the perspective of a historically marginalized English language program housed within an already marginalized College of Adult Education. Further, outside the governance of an academic department such as Modern or World Languages, David sees the university as viewing language teachers as academic only so long as the language of

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instruction is one other than English. A French or Spanish language teaching faculty member is held in higher regard than an English language teacher. The question of what counts as academic on campus is further complicated in the JVP pathway programs, where “mainstream university faculty” are not teaching the disciplinary content courses, and where an English program administrator, David, is left responsible for recruiting instructors for academic disciplines of which he has had no prior experience. David expressed a semblance of gratitude for the fact that, while student recruitment for the pathway program was handled by JVP, the academic development and delivery of curriculum was overseen by Bay City University; “and that was a good thing. Our Dean laid down the law on that. When the partnership was being initially discussed, there was a lot of nervousness on campus [about who would control curriculum],” and whether or not “Bay City [was] being used as a corporate pawn.” This control of curriculum extended to faculty teaching disciplinary content within the JVP pathway programs, as well as the English teaching faculty. However, even with this academic control, David described both the ELI and JVP pathway programs as having low status at the university. “ESL programs are sort of marginalized on campus, regarded as non-academic, mostly not-for-credit preparation, or even remedial, which I don’t think is correct at all.” According to David, the Dean of the College of Adult Education, where the ELI and the pathway programs are housed, “had no worries about saying publically that he detested ESL: that he detested it! So there we were, a marginalized ELI being housed within a marginalized College of Adult Education, and even they didn’t want us!” David continued, noting that English language professionals and their programs “really [don’t] have the same respectability [as other departments] on campus. In principle, there really shouldn’t be any difference between what we do with teaching English and what those in the Modern Languages department do teaching French, German, or Spanish, and yet they are treated and paid so differently.” This disparity exists even within the pathway programs where English language teachers are paid significantly less than those teaching academic content in the pathway programs. David elaborated: “And it wasn’t just about academic credentials. You might have somebody with an MBA, for example, or a graduate student in history, but they would still be paid at a higher rate than an equally or more highly credentialed English language teacher who’d been teaching for 20 years.” As the director of the ELI and JVP pathway programs, David was responsible for recruitment of faculty to teach both English language and credit-bearing content courses in the JVP pathway programs, despite the fact the academic

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content disciplines were not his area of expertise. He recounted the difficulty he had finding people to teach the pathway academic-content classes: “We were not using content faculty from the mainstream university programs, say, from the College of Arts and Sciences; we had to have our own. There really is no connection between the content instruction going on in the pathway and the content instruction in the mainstream university programs. As far as finding faculty, I was on my own. I would advertise on Craigslist, too; [laughs] but I found people!” According to David, a positive result of the joint venture partnership which resulted in the creation of Bay City’s pathway programs was that more fulltime faculty lines have been approved, even though this was not initially the case. “I think they may have eight full-time faculty at this point, as opposed to 50 part-time. So for some faculty, they have more stability, better benefits. Their status as professionals is perhaps a bit elevated.” Yet David related that the majority of full-time positions have gone to faculty teaching disciplinary content as opposed to English language teachers. While university programs, departments, schools, and colleges may be externally deemed academic or auxiliary, whether or not one’s professional identify is that of an academic is a personal matter. Rather than primarily “an academic,” David considers himself to be an administrator with a strong foot in the academic side of things. Yet, as he reflected, “I’m not sure it really matters how I see myself, because I think they really don’t see [what I do] as being an academic enterprise kind of thing. But, I mean, personally, I study; I’m working on an advanced [doctoral] degree.” How Pathway Programs Work at Bay City As I discovered, the structure, curriculum, progression, and matriculation patterns of pathway programs is consistent neither across private sector corporate partners nor among the universities who engage with the same corporate partners for the purposes of recruitment and the development and management of matriculation pathway programs. Indeed, while JVP has developed and markets partnership and pathway program models which they hope potential partner universities will adopt, it appears that each university negotiates how programs will functionally operate in their own particular institutional contexts. David described in general terms Bay City University’s non-credit-bearing pathway programs for international students currently holding Baccalaureate or Bachelor’s degrees who wish to matriculate into Master’s degree programs, as well as the credit-bearing pathway programs for international high school graduates working toward matriculation into Baccalaureate degree programs at Bay City.

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For those international students wishing to be admitted to Bay City University’s Master’s degree programs, their matriculation pathway programs do not earn them university credits. David described the courses written for these pre-graduate-student pathways as being “primarily based on undergraduate content syllabi.” He clarified that “students weren’t earning college credit for those classes; they were just enrichment style courses to give students the chance to learn how to deal with their content, with the reading, with writing papers, and not plagiarizing: that kind of thing. If they met the exit test minimums and requirements for GPA, they could then matriculate into graduate degree programs at Bay City with mainstream students.” Bay City University’s undergraduate student pathway programs, on the other hand, have university credits attached to disciplinary content courses, but none of the ESL courses are credit-bearing. An important distinction to be made is that the curriculum for undergraduate pathway students’ academic content (general education, or core curriculum) courses is not the same as it is for students in mainstream university programs, although “[a] lot of people wanted it to be the same. The idea was that if students were going to be earning college credit for a history course – if that was going to be their first year history elective – then that course should follow the same curriculum. But the College of Arts and Sciences didn’t want us to duplicate that curriculum. They said they owned that curriculum.” And as noted earlier, the instructors teaching the disciplinary content courses were not the same as those teaching in the mainstream undergraduate sections of the same or similar courses. According to David, university transcripts for undergraduate credit-bearing disciplinary content courses do not make a distinction between pathway and mainstream degree programs: “It would just be coded as [for instance] freshman history. So for someone looking at this from the outside, it’s just a Bay City University transcript showing credits in freshman history.” David shared that there were internal concerns that they had “dumbed down” the curriculum for undergraduate pathway students’ credit-bearing courses, though he rationalized providing a tailored curriculum for international students: “I’d like to think that if we had a particular group of students from a different culture, and if they had to learn about U.S. history, that there should be a different way of approaching U.S. history with this group that didn’t have the same background as people who have grown up in this country…. [T]eachers need to respond to the people that are in front of them, so you need to be able to approach history in a different way.” David acknowledged, however, that there is a disparity in that directly admitted international students – that is, non-pathway international students in degree programs – are required to take the mainstream curriculum, and may therefore earn lower

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course grades than their pathway counterparts. David concedes that not all objectives from the mainstream undergraduate curriculum are able to be met with the pathway program courses, and there is no consistency of syllabi – even across sections – in credit-bearing disciplinary content courses: “Each content instructor would design their own course, use whatever textbook they wanted to use. The content faculty weren’t really overseen, and I think there was some sense that they should have been. I wasn’t necessarily qualified to do that myself.” One may observe that from a university accreditation standpoint, this inconsistency in curriculum standards for credit-bearing coursework could prove problematic, jeopardizing the reputation of the university and its academic programs’ accreditation standing. Challenges and Creative Accounting Lower student admissions standards for any academic or pre-academic program may arguably result in exiting students who have trouble meeting required or desired benchmarks. Because the university had invested so heavily in the development of the pathway programs, with their promise of full-fee paying international students, there was pressure for exiting pathway students to matriculate into degree programs where Bay City could then reap the financial rewards of the partnership. According to David, the creation of the pathway programs brought a number of unforeseen consequences which resulted in the university adopting questionable practices. David observed that the Provost of the university pressured academic programs to admit all international students who exited the pathway programs. Bay City University’s College of Business programs are competitive, with admissions GPAs for domestic students and “direct admit” international students “somewhere around the 3.8 or 3.9 figure,” according to David. But for exiting pathway students, the GPA for admissions to the College of Business is only 2.8. Therefore, in anticipation of matriculating pathway students, the College of Business caps the number of openings for incoming non-pathway freshman, reserving seats for international pathway students. It then redirects the overflow of non-pathway or domestic students into other majors when those programs become full. As an undesirable consequence of the pathway program, David pointed to the fact that “[t]here weren’t enough spaces to study Business for domestic students because these places had been sort of reserved for the pathways students who, as I’ve already said, are struggling with English in many cases and have low GPAs” – indeed, lower than nonpathway counterparts seeking admission into the same academic programs. Another challenge pathway Business students were having is their difficulty securing a semester-long internship or “co-op” with a local corporation in the

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community. As David speculated: “Well, look at all the students who are applying for these jobs, especially if you’re a typical American employer; who do you take: the brilliant American kid who can speak and write English well, or the kid who is struggling from China?” An additional unexpected consequence of the rapid influx of non-native English speaking international freshmen into degree programs at Bay City University is its impact on the university’s and its academic programs’ publically reported overall GPA. In order to avoid the negative impact to the university’s U.S. News and World Report ranking, the university appears to be classifying matriculating pathway students as “transfer students” so as not to include them in the figures that get reported: “[B]y some machinations, the university figured out some way to redefine matriculating second-year pathway students as ‘transfer students.’ So now they can enter in September, and Bay City gets to report that its GPA is…much higher than it actually is. Amazing, huh? That’s the whole thing with pathway programs: the university gets…high tuition-paying students in its grasp, but they don’t have to worry about any negative impact to the GPA.” Expressing his exasperation, David continues, “Does it start to give you an idea of how uncomfortable one might feel in that situation, as a person trying to do a good job?” Pride in One’s Work David is no longer the director of the ELI and the pathway programs at Bay City University. While the joint venture with JVP and the pathway programs were not the sole reason he decided to explore opportunities in another academic institution, his negative experiences did play a role in his decisionmaking. “It’s important for me to be proud of the thing that I’m working in,” David said. “Especially near the beginning, I was really trying to be proud of the program. I mean, I could see the rationale for the program, for providing a clear pathway for these students into academic degree programs. And the reason I’m mentioning pride is because, when I realized I didn’t want to work there anymore, one of the reasons was that I had ‘JVP Pathway’ in my job title, and I wasn’t proud of the program. I was not proud of the program. We wanted it to be successful; I wanted it to be successful, but there were so many compromises being made to make it ‘successful’ that I just…wasn’t proud of what we were doing there.” For David there was no straw that broke the camel’s back. There was just “always an inescapable tension at Bay City between trying to establish and manage a good academic program and being sort of a powerless eunuch having to liaise with JVP and having no real support from my supervisor. It was really stressful trying to keep everybody happy. Ultimately, I needed to be happy; so I left.”

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Researcher Reflections: David Pullman David revealed his experiential stories through his recollections of past events, and I was struck by the candor and animation with which he shared his experiences with me, as if he were reliving the frustrations and anxieties which in some ways led him to the decision to leave Bay City University and his directorship position. He had been thrown into the fire of leadership responsibility and accountability within an educational context which was perhaps already inflamed by a lack of a support from its supervising Dean – a man who was extremely disparaging of those working in the field of English as a second language – and which was clearly not adequately prepared to receive student admissions within its pathway programs that first term. Like many ELIs in the United States, the ELI at Bay City University has a long history as a marginalized entity on campus (Jenks & Kennell, 2011). Indeed, David pointed out that this particular ELI had had difficulty retaining leadership, and that its multiple moves within the university colleges and departments ultimately resulted in its current standing within a similarly marginalized College of Adult Education. David shared experiences which provided illumination of significant pitfalls that can potentially come to bear in such matriculation pathway programs, ones which could pose threats to both programmatic and university reputation and accreditation, and which could also drive some experienced academics like David out of their administrative role connected to such programs. Some of these to him represented academic “horror stories” involving admissions fraud and inequitable course content and requirements, in addition to lowered standards, while others were expressions of David’s personal feelings of loss of decision-making authority and powerlessness against the onslaught of what appeared to him to be negative changes. Whether David’s more negative experiences were a consequence of the particular context in which he worked, the details of the specific corporate sector program arrangement on his campus, his own characteristics, and/or other factors is beyond the scope of this study to determine – though I will return to discussion of his experience in relation to that of the other interviewees and reconsider the factors involved in Part 3. Conclusion This chapter provided insights into the experiences of four English program administrators currently working or having previously worked in university settings with matriculation pathway programs for international ESL students.

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While some of the program administrators had a relatively positive experience within the corporate sector partnership program where they provided leadership, all mentioned challenges and “rough patches,” and some spoke at length about their negative experiences. Two of the four program administrators seem to be advancing within the corporate sector partnership structure, while two of them are not. In one of the latter two cases, an administrator requested a demotion to minimize contact with the corporate-partner administration, which she finds to be unpleasant, and in a second case, a program director gave up his position altogether, as he felt he had had to make too many compromises and no longer felt proud of the program he was running. Chapter 6 shares the stories of those English language teaching faculty who “border cross” into the world of administration in their institutional contexts.

chapter 6

English Language Program Administrator–Faculty Border Crossers Introduction Three participants who elected to participate in my narrative research inquiry, all of whom are credentialed as English language teaching professionals, had both administrative and teaching responsibilities. These individuals were coded using some of the self-descriptive language participants used to describe themselves: the “in-betweeners” or “border-crossers.” They offer a fascinating perspective on the opportunities and challenges that presented themselves as a result of their institution’s corporate sector partnership. First is Ivan Tower, a mature English language professional who has taken the private partnership in stride and benefitted from it, while still being able to reflect on potentially negative consequences of this type of arrangement for higher education. Next is Anne Rivers, a pathway program administrator who, while being aware of problems connected to the partnership, is nonetheless very optimistic about the opportunities it promises. The last of the border-crossers, Pam Davis, reveals the anxiety created by the university’s move to a corporate sector partnership arrangement and the compromises this move has entailed both in the English language program and her own career.

Ivan Tower

Ivan’s Background Ivan Tower is a full-time Instructor and Associate Coordinator for Marble Cliff University’s (MCU) Pathway programs in Columbus, Ohio. About 20 years ago, Ivan had worked part-time for the original ELI at MCU during and after his practicum for a Master’s degree in Adult Education with a minor in English Language Teaching. He then went overseas and taught ESL for nearly 20 years, returning to Ohio several years ago with dreams of retirement: “I thought I was going to kick back and watch Halloween pumpkins grow; but I’m also married, and after about three months, I figured, I’ve either got to get a job or get a divorce lawyer. I decided to get a job.” When he returned to MCU, Ivan was originally only working part-time, but he was soon reminded just how much

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he really enjoyed teaching. “And when AcademicPrep took over the ELI that September,” he recalled, “I applied and interviewed for a full-time position and was hired.” Ivan’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership Through my conversations with Ivan, it was clear that he views himself as a pragmatic person who attempts to make the best of any situation. Through his narratives, he shared his perspectives on what has changed and what has remained the same following his institution’s transition into a corporate sector partnership. The excerpts below from Ivan’s narratives help elucidate for the reader some of the inner workings of the pathway program structure where he works and some of the challenges that arise when academic and corporate cultures merge. Transitioning from the Former ELI The timing of Ivan’s return to Marble Cliff University could not have been at a more auspicious time, both in terms of the opportunities which the corporate sector partnership afforded him as a seasoned English teaching professional and those afforded me as a researcher whose aim was to hear and collect stories from people who had experienced the operational and programmatic transitions first-hand. As Ivan recalled, “it was like stepping right into the firestorm, I guess. Just as I was returning to the ELI after nearly 20 years away, the partnership with AcademicPrep was about to go into effect. You know the contracts for the partnership had already been settled; they were moving forward: it was no longer a negotiation. There was a lot of turmoil. The deal was already done.” Like many IEPs of universities targeted for such corporate sector partnership, the ELI at Marble Cliff had attempted to halt the partnership. In Ivan’s words, “The old ELI people were not successful in pushing their agenda, and the partnership with AcademicPrep had been decided upon. There were a lot of people that were unhappy with the decision made by the Provost, and they were, you know, heading for the hills, as it were.” Indeed, many of the former ELI administration and teaching faculty left the university: They weren’t asked to leave, but they chose to pursue other professional opportunities… Most people left…, especially the leadership. I was surprised, and I really couldn’t understand why. You know, you’re presented with a new situation: you should just modify your behavior and change the way you do things. Do that and, hey, you’ve still got a job. So I was a little surprised by that. Seemed like there was this huge fear that a big corporation is going to come in and take over everything and push

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everybody around. But they haven’t pushed a whole lot of people around that I am aware of. Or maybe they felt that the Provost picked AcademicPrep instead of them, and they felt rejected by the university. And that could have been true. Maybe it was decided that what the ELI had done in the past wasn’t good enough and needed to be changed. I was a little disappointed so many left, because some of them were really good teachers, nice people. But I’ve been pretty pleased by the people we’ve brought in. We’ve been able to find a lot of very experienced teachers that have brought some new blood, new energy. It’s good to have a few young teachers around. Ivan paused to count silently in his head: “Yeah, there are maybe only five or six teachers now who were part of the old ELI as full-time faculty. I guess we still have some of the old part-time people who’ve remained part-timers now, but the majority of our teaching faculty is pretty new.” According to Ivan, at the point of the transition and mass exodus of administrators and teachers, “I’m guessing they hired somewhere around ten fulltime faculty with benefits. We have about thirty faculty who are full-time now.” Ivan reflects back to the pre-partnership days when the ratio of full-time to part-time faculty was “about fifty-fifty.” AcademicPrep has hired a good number of full-time faculty as their student population has grown so quickly. As Ivan related, “By far, we’re now larger than the ELI ever was, and we’re expecting to keep growing. Considering all of our programs, it’s between five and six hundred students.” From what Ivan has learned from those who have remained, during the final years of the former ELI, they were generally working with close to 250 students during any single term. This rapid growth has provided for more full-time jobs for English language teachers: “The size of the program has more than doubled. So one of the best things about the partnership is that there are a lot more jobs available in the field. It used to be, in the past – we’re talking about the early 80s and 90s – you could not get a full-time job working at MCU because the people who would get those jobs would hang onto those jobs forever. They just weren’t looking for full-time people then, and that’s part of why I went overseas to teach in the first place. But now, every term we’re always looking for more people. I think that’s been good for teaching professionals and for MCU as a whole. It helped in the long run even though it might have been painful for some of the old-timers that were here before.” The status of English language teaching as a profession arose during our conversation, and Ivan acknowledged that the partnership has not necessarily had a positive impact in that regard: “We were and still are the English-asa-second-language branch of MCU. I don’t know about the rest of the world,

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but in Ohio, you know, the ELI has always kind of been the red-headed stepchild of Marble Cliff University. ‘You folks are teachers, but you’re not professors.’ And that’s still the same. That attitude has remained even with the AcademicPrep partnership. We haven’t had any enormous leap in status on campus, but I do think we’re a little bit more included in things than we used to be. People know we’re here and we’re pretty central to the university’s aim at bringing in more international students. But yeah, not everything has changed as a result of the partnership.” A fear that Ivan believes many of the former ELI staff and faculty fixated upon was that the ELI faculty would no longer be employees of the university. “ – that we’d, all of a sudden, be employees of AcademicPrep; but that hasn’t happened. Existing and new: every teacher is still employed by MCU – even the directors, the Program Director, the Academic Director, and the Business Director – they’re all employees of MCU.” Ivan observed, however, that no AcademicPrep faculty could achieve an academic rank such as Assistant Professor or Associate Professor, regardless of their degree or credential. He used himself as an example: “I’m an Instructor. I can never be a tenured professor at MCU. In our program, we don’t offer tenure; we have one year contracts which are generally always renewed unless you’ve really screwed up somehow.” Ivan sees the reality that “it’s cheaper to hire Instructors rather than Professors. So it’s true, we don’t have these traditional academic tenure positions at AcademicPrep, but neither did the old ELI.” Interestingly, when Ivan had been teaching abroad, his position was tenured: “And it was nice. But, like I said, we’re considered to be just teachers at MCU, and I’m okay with it. I took the king’s shilling, and I agreed to the terms of employment. If you don’t agree to the terms, don’t take the money and don’t take the job. I knew this was how the system worked 20 years ago when I entered the profession. Yeah, I’ve heard that some universities are giving their English language teachers that possibility for mobility in the university, more academic titles; but I don’t see that happening here. It’s not how it’s set up organizationally, and I’m just not the kind of person that tries to change the system. I’m the kind of person that tries to use the system to the best of his advantage, and I don’t feel like I need to make large structural changes to be happy.” For Ivan, his having already experienced retirement once gives him a sense of comfort working in a system others may not see as ideal. In his view: “I’m fifty years old, so I could always retire again. So I’m fine with the way things are. But if people want to change the system, you know, I might give them my support. [laughs] I’ll stick my finger in the air and see which way the wind is blowing, but I’m just not real political; I’m a pragmatist.” Another fear that English language teachers had had as the partnership began to take place and enter its implementation was that the curriculum

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would change drastically because of the partnership. People feared that they would lose autonomy over their classrooms. “But that hasn’t happened as I define autonomy. Instead, I think they’ve given a lot of autonomy to the teachers. The teachers are responsible for running a good academic program. You don’t have to worry about the money. You don’t have to worry about recruiting and all that stuff: that’s AcademicPrep’s job. So where’s the problem? [laughs] I don’t see where the problem is. And there have been no changes to curriculum at all, not really. In the Academic English Program there have been very minor modifications to what was the existing curriculum because the curriculum from the old ELI was pretty good.” Indeed, the former ELI had just undergone their CEA accreditation process, so as Ivan and others see it, the curriculum is in good shape. The pathway program curriculum, however, is all new: “And that is undergoing continuous modification as we learn more about what the students need. But the Academic English Program curriculum has really not changed. It’s all faculty-developed curriculum. It emerges and changes as it normally would anyway. And the business side of AcademicPrep never said a word about curriculum. We have autonomy. We have full autonomy in terms of developing courses and the way we teach courses. So those fears that AcademicPrep was going to impose some top-down sort of curriculum were unfounded. It didn’t happen.” With the introduction of the pathway programs, articulations were drawn between the Academic English Program and the pathway programs so that qualified students could transition if appropriate: “We’re very, very serious about the Level 4 curriculum and exit in the Academic English Program because, if students successfully complete level 4, that’s a backdoor into the pathway programs. So we tell the teachers of level 4, ‘Don’t just let people out; we don’t want any social promotion that will just damage the students and damage the reputation of the program.’” This is important, Ivan suggested, because if socially promoted students “backdoor into the pathway” prematurely, they risk creating a permanent student record that impacts their individual GPAs, as well as the cumulative GPA of a given academic program. As Ivan put it: “It’s kind of like you were warned about in Junior High school when you were in trouble? Once you go into the pathway, your GPA goes on your permanent university record. And it really is permanent as long as you’re at MCU, and even if you transfer, actually. So we pay pretty close attention to Level 4 curriculum now.” How It Works at MCU’s AcademicPrep Because pathway programs follow different models, I asked Ivan to share with me the operational workings of AcademicPrep’s pathways on the campus of MCU. I include some of his detailed descriptions here for the edification of

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readers. It is important to make clear here that an educational service provider who partners with universities to form pathway programs – such as “AcademicPrep,” the pseudonym being used in this book to share Ivan’s experiences – would not necessarily be able to create pathway programs identical to, for example, those pathway programs that exist at AcademicPrep’s other university sites, such as those in Europe or in other states within the United States. Partnerships are negotiated by the host university, and so, while similar in concept, they are not identical. Marble Cliff University has three very separate programs: General English, Academic English, and the Pathway Program. Ivan currently works only with the Pathway Programs, though he made clear that some faculty teach in multiple programs: “Pathway students only take courses in Pathways. Their curriculum is their curriculum. Now, because I’m a Pathway Coordinator, I have a limited number of actual teaching hours, so I only teach Pathway bridge courses for Business, as well as Academic Reading/Writing and Academic Listening/Speaking; but keep in mind, these are not the same courses taught in the Academic English Program: they’re just for Pathway students.” Ivan described their General English Program and some of the possible progressions for students: “It has three four-week terms that occur over a regular university semester, okay? These are people who maybe come in during the mid-term, or maybe they just come because they want to study English for eight weeks, or they’re the spouse of somebody in another program, or the spouse of university faculty – things like that. There isn’t any kind of agreement for completers of General English to get into the Pathway or into the university, for that matter. If you’ve exited Level 5 of GE, and if you have a TOEFL score that is high enough, you could enter the university as a direct admit. You could also move into the Academic English Program, and then, after a successful term of Level 6 coursework – meaning, you pass your classes and your teachers agree that you’re ready – then, we could give you a recommendation to MCU’s Admissions Office that you be considered for direct admission.” He adds, “And I think you could also take and pass Level 4 Academic English, which would then gain entry into the Pathway, if that’s where you wanted to go.” For General English or any program, Ivan emphasized that advisement is key. The Academic English Program follows a traditional ELI model with Levels 1–6. Ivan described the articulation of the Academic English Program with the Pathway Program in these terms: “If you pass Academic English Level 4, you can enter the Pathway. Otherwise, if you go through the whole program and finish Level 6, in theory, you should be able to succeed at MCU.” A TOEFL score that meets the university’s minimum requirement is still needed for full

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matriculation, “but if not, you could perhaps get a written recommendation from your Academic English instructors recommending that you be admitted to MCU, but there are no guarantees.” The AcademicPrep Pathway Program is promoted as a guaranteed pathway to admission to MCU, which means that “Pathway is different. You don’t take any courses in the General or Academic English Programs.” Ivan shared an example of an undergraduate-level student interested in the Business Pathway: “The undergraduate Business Pathway is a three-term Pathway.” (Engineering, Ivan notes, is a four-term Pathway for departmental reasons.) “In the student’s first term as a Business Pathway student, you’re going to take a Pathway Reading-Writing course, a Pathway Listening-Speaking course, a typical freshman-level sort of Health and Human Sciences course, a physical education course, and a Math course. And so you’re getting a total of six university credits of Pathway courses, four credits of Math, and three credits each of Health Sciences and PE. This is what they call ‘the core’ at MCU right now, you know, the Baccalaureate-degree core courses for Pathway students.” With some credit-bearing courses, the Pathway students are commingled with domestic or direct-entry international students, but in others, they are taught in segregated sections consisting only of Pathway students. Ivan elaborated: “With the PE and Health Sciences courses, they’re in with regular MCU students from their first term, and these courses are taught by MCU faculty. For the Health Sciences class, AcademicPrep has a bridge-support course taught by the English teaching faculty.” These are also known as “paired” or “matched” courses, whereby a second course is designed and taught by English language teachers, and its purpose it to scaffold English language learners’ work in the “mainstream” course section. Ivan noted that “for that Health Sciences course, they get the 300-seat lecture hall experience, so it’s completely authentic.” For those classes that AcademicPrep Pathway students take with mainstream students, they have guaranteed enrollment: AcademicPrep reserves these spaces in advance. Ivan gave the example of the classes in Math: “[T]hey’ll have a Math class for each of the three terms. The Math classes are taught by university Math department instructors, but they’re not with mainstream MCU students, though this could change. It is ‘sheltered instruction,’ and the sections for AcademicPrep students are smaller than a typical mainstream section.” In students’ second term, they take a higher level Reading–Writing Path­ way course, an additional sheltered Math course, a sheltered AcademicPrep ­students’ public speaking course – which Ivan suggested has equivalent objectives to the “freshman comp” course taken by matriculated students and is taught by faculty from the Communications Department – and, finally,

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a mainstream course, taken with matriculated MCU students, the curricular focus of which is on culture and diversity. For this course, “there is also a companion bridge course taught by us.” For the undergraduate Business Pathway students’ third term, “they take a sheltered first-year composition class taught by MCU and AcademicPrep instructors under the supervision of the MCU Writing Program. Again, they take one more Math [course], and they take a mainstream introductory Business course commingled with MCU students and taught by MCU faculty. Again, that Business class also has a companion bridge course taught by AcademicPrep. I teach that Business bridge course, by the way. So they’re in the Pathway for one full academic year, or three terms.” A “bridge” course is a concurrent course taught by the English language teachers that supports the English language learners in the work in the credit-bearing disciplinary content course. For students to exit the Pathway, they must have a GPA of at least 2.25. According to Ivan, they have to complete 45 credits and pass both the higher level Reading–Writing Pathway and the “freshman comp” equivalent course. He detailed the pathways for different courses: “For the Business Pathway, they have to get a ‘C-’ or higher in all other classes. And if they do that, they have automatic acceptance by the Department of Business as a second-year student. Engineering Department – same thing, but they have different set of classes they have to take – you get the idea. There’s also a Science Pathway and a General Pathway, which just gains their admittance to the university as a second-year student, sort of as a student with an undeclared major.” Ivan is a strong advocate for the program, but as a pragmatist by nature, he has clear in his mind both the benefits and challenges: “Now, the Pathway Program has some advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is, you know that if you complete it, you’re guaranteed admittance to MCU as long as your cumulative GPA is above a 2.0. There’s no TOEFL requirement at the end of the Pathway. There is a TOEFL to enter the Pathway Programs, and if it’s not strong, we make it clear to them pretty quickly; and we talk about all this stuff during orientation before the term even starts.” Since the Pathway Programs were originally implemented, some changes to admission requirements have been made: “Originally we required a 500, but we’re moving it up to 525 on the paper version of the TOEFL. And you need to have the equivalent of a 2.5 GPA from your high school.” Ivan emphasized that progression was not easy: “It’s not a cakewalk: the program is pretty rigorous. They have to work really, really hard to pass the second term’s Reading–Writing Pathway class and the third term’s first-year Comp equivalent. Those are the two classes that really whack them. Some may have to repeat them, or take another term in the Academic English program if

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they want. The biggest issue is that once you enter the Pathway, these grades count. These are MCU grades. They’re not the old ELI’s letter grades that don’t mean anything; they’re really MCU classes – on the record! On the record! And if you fail one of those courses twice, then that second score stays on your record forever, and it’s going to damage your GPA. It’s going to damage your GPA. So the Pathway’s disadvantage is related to its advantage: you’re playing in the real world of the university.” When the students arrive in Columbus, Ohio, they have already been admitted to the Pathway Program based on their high school records and, most often, their TOEFL scores. Upon arrival, they are given a battery of standardized tests and they are interviewed. Some are not prepared: “For some students we’ll say, ‘Hey, yeah, you’ve submitted all the paperwork required to enter the Pathway, and you’ve pre-paid your tuition, but based on these assessments, it’s not a good idea. You’re just not ready.’” At that point, the students are advised to start with a semester of Academic English before entering the Pathway; but, according to Ivan, “most students don’t care. They’ve met the entrance requirements, so they’ll just try anyway. A few realize they’re kind of in over their head and will listen. Can they change their minds? They could. They could stop the Pathway and go into Academic English, but it’s a money issue. They’re spending their family’s money, and it’s not a cheap program. Not a cheap program.” Managing and Teaching in the Business Pathway The partnership resulted in an apparent need for additional administrative layers, and Ivan was one who benefited from such a need. “I’m the Associate Coordinator of the Business Pathway, and my job is to help the Coordinator with student counseling, registration, and discussing modifications to the courses as we see fit. Each AcademicPrep student has an advisor, and that’s the Coordinator, but we’re getting to the point where, with the number of students we have, she can’t do it alone anymore; we have too many students. And so we’re going to divide the students between the Coordinator and the Associate Coordinator. I believe and hope that I would be getting an additional course release for that. It’ll really add to my workload.” As noted earlier, undergraduates in the Business Pathway take a creditbearing Business course with matriculated students which is taught by university faculty. They also take one of the “bridge” courses taught by an English language teacher as support for the English language learners’ work in the credit-bearing Business course. As he explained: Right now, that’s actually the only course I’m teaching this term. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I go with my students to the

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mainstream introductory Business course, and then on Tuesday and Thursdays, I have two two-hour sections of the companion bridge course. Basically, I re-teach what they covered with the mainstream instructor and provide them with language support that would allow them to pass the mainstream Business course. I don’t have a degree in Business, but I attend their class with them. I read the book. This is my third term teaching this course, and…I’m thinking I could maybe get an ‘A’ in the class! [laughs] I’ve owned three small businesses, so, you know, I understand business pretty well. I was quick to volunteer to teach that class because I thought it would be fun, and it’s a really different kind of class for an ESL teacher. Anyone who’s ever taught English knows that it’s unending. Nobody has ever mastered English. I don’t think I have. Maybe Shakespeare did, but there is no end to the game. Students continually have to study, and they come into your class, and they learn a little bit. Then part of your role is to decide if they’re ready for a more difficult challenge, and you move them up a level. That’s the ESL world. But if you’re teaching a bridge course, you have a very short-term goal: Did my students pass the freshman Business course? You know, if they did, then I can feel good about myself. I feel like I’ve been productive and provided a good service. So I really like teaching the bridge courses, because it really is a very short-term, let’s-get-it-done type of thing.

Professional Development for Disciplinary Content Faculty in Teaching English Language Learners Ivan is clear that he considers one of the greatest assets for faculty of MCU’s AcademicPrep Center to be its Academic Program Director: “When he came in, he introduced us to his annual performance review system, and it’s interesting. The review system had been one modeled on the old ELI’s model where the Coordinators sat in a room for a couple of hours and discussed the twenty teachers and gave them a ‘Good’ or a ‘So-so’ or a ‘Bad.’ It never made anyone feel very good because everybody wants to be considered special, and if they say you’re ‘Satisfactory,’ it…really means, ‘You don’t suck.’ Nobody wants to feel that way.” For Ivan, the new system allowed the faculty to have more input and control over their careers. They were asked to develop annual goals, and oftentimes these goals are centered around professional development for themselves or for their peers. As he elaborated: For example – maybe you want to give a presentation at our quarterly Professional Day that we have. And so you’d do your research, and during that day you’d give a thirty-minute or one-hour talk to the other teachers.

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And that means you have to do a little research, you’re polishing up your presentation skills, etcetera. So you write that down as a goal in your performance review plan. You might write, “Before I present, I’m going to do this and that, and I’m also going to learn more about teaching higher level grammar,” or whatever. And you talk over your goals with your supervising Coordinator – and you meet with them once every term – and it’s like, “How are things going with your developmental goals? How is your presentation going? Do you need any help?” Everyone has their own developmental plan, and at the end of the year, you assess yourself. You self-assess – generally and overall, as a teacher – according to your job description plus your professional development plan items. And you discuss this with your supervisor, and your supervisor either agrees with you or maybe suggests something else, and you come to an agreement on how it should be amended, and then both people sign off on it and you’re done. When the new Academic Program Director first started, he asked Ivan what is dream job would be: “I said, ‘Well, you have my dream job.’ And if AcademicPrep were to, for example, become involved with the University Honolulu, I’d be more than happy go over there and be the Academic Program Director. I think AcademicPrep is supportive of employees who want to continually develop themselves as professionals and move up in the company.” Ivan suggested that AcademicPrep has also been supportive of faculty attending and presenting at national and international conferences. In his own case: “I went to TESOL this year, and AcademicPrep financially supported me to do that. The AcademicPrep corporate office also sponsors an annual internal conference in the U.K., which I went to last year. I got a free trip to Europe and made a presentation…I left on a Thursday, and I had to be back to teach on Monday, so that was not a great trip. This year, you know, I figured: let somebody else go. I could have written a proposal to go again, but in academia, you only have a limited number of bones. I’ve always kind of figured that it’s okay to take a few bones, but you’ve got to share the bones with all the other dogs in the kennel. So I just didn’t even apply this year. I’d really rather not be perceived as someone with a lot of bones.” Ivan feels fortunate to have his Associate Coordinator position, and he acknowledged that some people may see that title as one that comes with power or privileges, including fewer teaching hours: “I know how hard I work, so that’d be just their perception. But it does make me hesitant to apply for some of the trips and perks and things like that – not because I’m idealistic or anything, but I just think that, for a healthy faculty, more people should be involved in these things, and you shouldn’t try

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to grab every piece of cake on the table or all the bones out of the bowl. It’s just fair. Still, those bones can be nice.” How AcademicPrep or MCU is supporting the university’s disciplinary content teaching faculty in terms of professional development in the area of linguistic or cultural support for English language learners is less clear to Ivan. “So far as I know, there’s no formal system for educating MCU’s content faculty: that’s their department’s responsibility. AcademicPrep hasn’t been asked to organize or coordinate outreach so far as I’m aware. I do talk with faculty from different departments. Because I teach a Business bridge course, I approach the faculty, typically after I’ve gone to the lecture with my students. I hang around for a few minutes, and I walk the professor back to his office. And maybe I go visit him a couple of times during the term. They are teaching professionals, and they want their students to succeed, but they want them to succeed fairly. They don’t want to give them any unfair advantage. So they treat them in the same way as any other MCU student. If you have to be able to write a business letter, then you have to be able to write a business letter. It can’t have third grade grammar.” Ivan does not see any big problem with the disciplinary faculty, however: “I’ve found that, generally, it’s a nice, comfortable, and collegial working relationship. They understand that I have a job to do. They don’t tell me how to teach English, and so I don’t tell them how to teach Business or whatever their course is. It’s worked pretty well. I think, generally, we have some pretty good cooperation with the academic departments.” The disciplinary faculty might approach Ivan for advice about how problems students are having in their courses can be handled: “Some have asked me, you know, ‘What are some things I can do to reach these students,’ you know; …or maybe there are some things that they want me to explain more clearly to the students when I’m teaching the companion bridge course. And quite often, what it is that needs explaining isn’t about the content of the course – Business content – it’s about discipline. They need me to reinforce the rules of academia in America.” I asked whether this might mean plagiarism: “Plagiarism? Oh, how did you guess that? At MCU? It never happens. Yep. It can be a problem.” Ivan’s sarcasm implied that plagiarism was more than an occasional occurrence. The MCU faculty teaching the AcademicPrep content courses typically are not the tenured professors; most are adjuncts because, Ivan suggests, they are generally teaching first-year courses: You’d only use a professor for the higher level courses, even if you forget about the AcademicPrep for a minute. If they are full-time faculty and they’re teaching AcademicPrep courses, then they probably have less

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time in the department. In other words, “You’re the new person, so you’re going to teach the AcademicPrep Engineering course.” But, generally, these freshman-level courses – even for mainstream domestic students – these courses are rarely taught by full-time faculty because they don’t want to teach 300 people a general ‘Survey of Engineering’ course, right? And they also have Faculty Senate, committees, or other obligations on campus. Yeah, so for these content survey courses – the ones that the AcademicPrep students take along with mainstream students and are taught by MCU faculty – they’re taught by the same quality, if you will, of instructor that any freshman-level survey course might have. And I think the Engineering faculty has had, like, eight TAs for the lab, and the Business course has two TAs, you know – domestic students with work– study jobs. But remember, the domestic mainstream students are in that class too; they just don’t get the benefit of having a parallel bridge course with me. Academic and Corporate Culture Struggles Ivan does not see any mismatch between the aims of a university and that of a corporation; indeed, he sees great value in the partnership: “In academia, most people have little understanding of economics and the bottom line. But AcademicPrep is a corporation. They’re always going to be looking at the bottom line. In fact, legally, they have to.” As an example, Ivan brings up the issue of class size: “It’s been a reoccurring theme at faculty meetings. It makes sense that a corporation would want to have more students in each class than the teachers would want; the more students you have in a class, the better for the corporation. ESL teachers, however, tend to think – for some reason – that 18 is a magic number. I’m not sure where that magic number came from. Again, I’ve been teaching for 20 years, and I’ve had very good classes with 25 people, and I’ve had really, really shitty classes with ten. It depends on the ten. It depends on the 25. So I’m sure we’re going to continue to have a back and forth with the corporation regarding class size. But I think that it should be expected. So far, we’ve done a pretty good job of keeping 18 as the cap.” Ivan remarked on the corporate culture settling in on the campus of MCU: “Teachers generally like to be dealt with as educators and faculty, not as parts of a corporation. We don’t want to be told that we need to be here 30 hours a week. Because, you know, a lot of teachers are in that habit. ‘I teach 15 or 18 hours a week, so I only have to be here those 18 hours. I can do all my other work at home.’ AcademicPrep likes people to be around here a little bit more because we do have other things going on. There’s been a little bit of pushback from teachers on those sorts of things, about how many hours you

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should be around in during the week. For me it’s not a surprise because you do have teachers dealing with a corporation, and there’s no denying that it’s a different corporate culture.” As he continued, Ivan aligned himself with the corporate view: “It’s a different type of work culture: a conflict between the academic culture and the corporate culture. But we don’t like it when people don’t show up for meetings because they’re not teaching on that day. You know, you’re still an employee of AcademicPrep MCU, and if we have a meeting scheduled – and you’re not taking approved vacation time – then you should go to that meeting. Now, if you’re not full-time, if you’re only teaching one class for us, well, we’d be happy if you came to our professional development days or came to a few meetings, but if you don’t, we’re not going to really give you a hard time about it because we understand that you’re minimally invested.” Fear of the New Paradigm For-profit corporate partnerships with universities are an emerging phenomenon, and for those unfamiliar with it – according to Ivan – there is a great fear of the unknown. AcademicPrep sponsored his trip to a recent International TESOL Convention, and he spent time staffing their corporate booth in the convention exhibit hall. As Ivan reflects on that experience, “It was interesting. A lot of people are curious about AcademicPrep, and some people are against it, very much against it. But the people who were very much against it didn’t really seem to understand the way things work…. I think a lot of academics think of business as evil. If you’re in academia, you probably know what I mean. ‘Oh! Corporate influence! Bad!’ And they don’t realize that, actually, higher education is a business. It’s a business. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have any jobs, right? You’ve got to pay your teachers somehow. So a few people at the convention were very critical of what we were doing and weren’t really interested in learning about it. They didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand.” At the same time, as Ivan recalled his TESOL conference experience, “the people who were interested were interested because they saw it as a way to maybe grow their own programs. You know, some programs are pretty small. Maybe they have some sort of disadvantage geographically or historically. Especially young teachers saw it as a job opportunity.” In Ivan’s view, these kinds of programs are on the rise: “I think this model is going to spread. It’s not going to spread everywhere, but I think there’s a place for it. And I don’t really think it’s anything to be afraid of. All it’s going to do is increase the number of students coming to America to study. It’s not a zero-sum game, so I really don’t see the problem. I’ll tell you…if universities are looking for teachers with experience, and if they hire somebody

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that’s been working for us for a while, they’ll have someone with some experience.” Ivan’s humor, irony, and pragmatism are among my greatest “takeaways” from our conversation, and this was especially evident when our talk shifted to one which considered who should really be afraid of the new paradigm: Look, if universities can do this for ESL, then why can’t they do it for Math? You know, when I was teaching abroad, there was this issue with corporations bringing their own faculty in to teach ESL classes. It was cheaper for the university to completely outsource instruction than to hire their own faculty, you know: like bringing in a Berlitz or something. And I was in a faculty meeting, and they were saying, “Oh, we should just bring in this corporation to teach our English courses.” And I said, “You know, that’s a great idea! And we should also bring in teachers for Math because Math is really easy to teach. We don’t need to hire a tenured professor to teach Math.” And that just shut the whole conversation down. And the truth is this: why do we need a professor to teach Math 101? I don’t know: it’s pretty simple stuff. It’s either right or it’s not. It’s a lot easier than teaching language, where there can be fifty answers to one question…. This is the year 2011, and we’re using a university system modeled on late Middle Ages Europe? Why are we doing that? Is it in the best interest of the society which pays for these learning institutions? Is it in the best interest of the student? I don’t know…. There is a lot of value to this system as we know it, but is it a good investment of resources? I think, for a lot of people, if you ask, “What are your best experiences from university?” it’s going to have nothing to do with Math 101. It has to do with that girl you met on the third floor of the dormitory when you were drunk out of your mind, you know? Then you have a story to tell…. The future will be interesting, and hopefully I’ll live long enough to be involved in the process. It’s interesting. Researcher Reflection: Ivan Tower Ivan’s confidence and affability, united with his humor and self-deprecating modesty, is such that one imagines he gets along with everyone, from the custodial staff of the university to the Provost. Ivan described himself as a pragmatist and one who approaches change confidently with an eye out for opportunity, and that comes through in the detailing of his experiences re-entering the university’s English language program just as the new corporate sector

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partnership paradigm was taking effect amid chaos. While many others feared the unknown and fled, Ivan identified opportunity for himself and for others (Merton & Kitt, 1969). In light of the mass exodus of the former ELI administrators and faculty, his years of experience – which included not only English language teaching and program administration but also owning three businesses himself, giving him an orientation to both educational and business values and practices – and his emotional and chronological maturity were likely attractive to the university and the corporate-partner leadership. Ivan has flourished in the new organizational system, watching the ELI expand and gain more of a central place in the university’s mission even while remaining the “stepchild” of the institution, with its faculty excluded from tenure – a status which Ivan, the pragmatist, accepts. Straddling both administrative and teaching worlds has had some minor challenges for Ivan. While still an active English language teacher within the pathway programs’ disciplinary content bridge courses, Ivan acknowledged that English language faculty may perhaps perceive his administrative role as one which provides additional benefits such as fewer contact hours and higher status. He takes pains to lessen that appearance by being sure not to take too much advantage of the system by taking “too many of the bones” that the organization offers. Based on the time he devoted to explaining the detail of the pathway program and his reflections on the program structure and such issues as student progression through the English language and matriculation pathway, Ivan takes his job very seriously and is quite involved in and knowledgeable about everything to do with the program. His tendency to repeat certain facts about the program in making points about its being neither a “cake walk” nor “bargain basement” suggests that he might have a history of needing to make these points and to highlight them to ­students and perhaps others, such as myself, in familiarizing them with the program. The particular points he emphasized seem to indicate features of the pathway program that he wanted to make sure students understood and also to make sure I understood and so would report the rigor of their programming. An interesting coda to my interview with Ivan were his reflections on what he considers to be antiquated systems for higher education and how outsourcing was gaining ground in universities as a consequence. Picking up on Ivan’s questions about how far this might go, one can ask: if the language program administration and/or its curricular and instructional responsibilities can be outsourced to an entity outside of the university, then indeed, what department will be next? Mathematics? Music? Teacher Education? Where does a university draw the line, if a line is to be drawn?

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Anne Rivers

Anne’s Background While Anne Rivers currently holds an administrative title within PassageMaker Partnership’s programs at Lincoln Park University (LPU) in Saint Paul, Minnesota, she strongly affirms that she sees herself first as a teacher: “I think no matter what position I hold, or no matter what I do, it’s always that: I am a teacher.” That has not always been the case. In Anne’s early professional career, she was a Speech-Language Pathology Assistant. Life circumstances made it necessary for Anne to be able to support herself and her family, and with her Associate degree in Speech Pathology, “[i]t just wasn’t going to happen.” So she returned to university to obtain a Bachelor’s degree in Speech Pathology, and, in addition, Anne added a minor in teaching English as a Second Language: “Well, that part of the program, I just loved it! I got to work with international students; that was what really set me on fire.” For Anne, a Master’s in Applied Linguistics seemed the next logical step, and she applied, was accepted for, and then completed a Master of Arts degree in Applied Linguistics and TESOL at LPU. During her Master’s program – and in addition to teaching experience gained through her program’s practicum – Anne worked at a local community college and at a private language academy as an English language teacher to young-adult learners as a means to diversifying her experience. Since she earned her degree, Anne has been working in LPU’s English Language Institute, the now PassageMaker Center. Anne’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership Unlike many of the participants of my narrative inquiry, Anne suggested that we meet in her office within the PassageMaker Center building on campus. Throughout our conversation, Anne shared her recollections of the transition from Intensive English Program to the current PassageMaker Center with its affiliated English language programs. She relayed her journey from outsider – as an English language teacher in the former IEP – to her current insider position as an administrative boarder-crosser, including the transformations in her personal perspective on the corporate sector partnership, which created a period of turmoil for some, but provided significant opportunities for those who remained optimistic and “focused on the good” of the situation. Our conversation included a focus both on the status of the English language teachers and the PassageMaker programs at the university and also on some of the challenges being faced by faculty teaching disciplinary content who were now charged with supporting the needs of significant numbers of English language learners now appearing in their classrooms and programs, as well as the

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challenges related to the pathway program encountered by the domestic student population. From “the Takeover” to “the Change” Anne had been primarily an English language teacher at the time PassageMaker was making its initial overtures to Lincoln Park University for a corporate sector partnership which would include the development of matriculation pathway programs for both graduate and undergraduate international students. When I asked Anne to reflect upon her remembrances of the early days of the transition, she sat back with a Mona Lisa-like smile and shared, “I don’t have a lot of recollection of this big to-do when we first learned PassageMaker was interested in taking over the IEP.” She shared her belief that the former IEP Director, Claire, had clearly made efforts to keep faculty and staff informed in terms of what was going on, “but I think even Claire’s information was somewhat limited in terms of the higher negotiations within the university. I think she did a pretty good job of, at least, getting the word out there that this was a possibility – and that the IEP administration was working to fight against this.” The former IEP Director made clear to the faculty that she and her administrative team were doing everything they could to prevent the partnership. As Anne explained, “Claire herself was pretty blindsided by the Provost about the partnership, and so she and a few other administrators were doing a lot of research on PassageMaker and were trying to make the case to the Provost that this was, in her opinion, a bad idea. I wasn’t really part of that battle because, at that point, I was full-time teaching. I wasn’t involved in any administrative type things. It was rough for the IEP administrative team, I think. But as teachers, we were fairly buffered from everything that was going on – all this chaos going on in the office with them trying to get reports, get information, do research – with Claire trying to fight all of that.” But for the teachers, Anne reports, “life goes on. It’s day-to-day business. I’ve got classes to prep and ­students to teach. We teachers really didn’t know the full scope of what was going on.” While many of the administrative staff and teaching faculty were experiencing high levels of anxiety during the periods of negotiation between the university and the corporate partner, PassageMaker, Anne tried to keep everything in perspective for herself: “Personally, I really didn’t have many apprehensions. I really had no concerns at that point. For me it was like, let’s just wait and see how things play out. There’s always a call for English teachers. I can go any place in the world and find a job as a teacher. If the program is going to grow like they say, they’re still going to need teachers. I would be more concerned if I was in an administrative rather than teaching role.” Indeed, Anne did share

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that her greatest concern was for that of the IEP Director herself. She feared that Claire’s actions in trying to derail the partnership might result in her being entirely shut out, demoted, or let go entirely by the university. Early on there were a great many unknowns, including whether Claire would stay: “I was more concerned for Claire at that point because she was so adamant and angry over everything that was taking place, and I suppose she had some fear about keeping her own job – or whether or not it would be a job she’d even want to keep.” Anne decided to maintain a wait-and-see attitude: “I was really okay with that. I don’t like to get involved with a lot of fear-based speculation, and there was a lot of that going on at the time.” Anne described herself as a person who thrives on change and who appreciates engaging with new opportunities or challenges. As regards the English language program prior to PassageMaker coming on campus, she told me: “Before the partnership, things were pretty much status quo. We were tweaking and perfecting and making our program better, but we were really just maintaining. It was already a very good IEP, and we had a good number of students, running in the mid-300s. I really didn’t know if or how the partnership with PassageMaker would affect me personally.” Throughout the transition period, one of the “repeated mantras” being circulated was that there would be a great number of opportunities for different types of new positions through PassageMaker, “this company, this organization, or whatever it is.” At the time, Anne did not have an awareness of matriculation pathway programs, but it was for this very reason that she “knew [she] wanted in on it. I love to learn and try something new. I was looking forward to seeing what was going to evolve from that. Now – at least in the pathways area – there is no status quo. There is no maintaining at this point because we’re not there yet. I think that there are so many opportunities for people – whether it’s in the teaching area or the administrative area. Why wouldn’t you be looking at the positives rather than the negatives?” Leading up to the transition, Anne felt like she was on the outside looking in. She was teaching a full-time load of five classes, and from her perspective, that was all she could really focus on at the time: “Whatever else was going on around me was pretty much, they had to deal with that. I wasn’t involved at all. I don’t think any faculty were.” From time to time the faculty would be updated by the former IEP Director, Claire, to share what was happening with the PassageMaker negotiations. Here Anne tread carefully as she offered her perspective on her then-supervisor’s periodic updates to the IEP community: “Claire is not a negative person by nature, but her vibe was really negative at that time. I just didn’t want to be a part of that. It wasn’t personal. So there was a lot of what was happening that I just wasn’t involved in because I chose

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not to be. It was getting to the point where it was really bringing us down. There was a lot of negative attitude toward the corporate sector partnership that was coming down to the English teaching faculty. Time has gone by, and I think people understand more of what’s going on and that their jobs are safe and everything, but I think that that stressful period of time had so much influence on the faculty.” Once the partnership with PassageMaker went into effect, changes were not immediately apparent to Anne, still in her role as an English language teacher: “So when the change actually went into effect – at one point we called it, ‘the takeover,’ but I don’t know that I’m calling it that anymore – I don’t think many of the teachers noticed any differences initially, you know. To be honest, I’m not really even sure when exactly that switch from IEP to PassageMaker Center took place. As teaching faculty, life goes on. The actual switchover didn’t really affect us in that big of a way, and we haven’t lost that many people.” Some faculty have left LPU, but Anne suggests that, for most, the partnership with PassageMaker was not their primary reason. What did surprise her was the fact that when ten new full-time instructor lines recently opened up, only four or five of the English language teachers at the time elected to apply for the positions. The promise of new opportunities for English language teachers as a result of the partnership with PassageMaker bore fruit for Anne. With that, Anne’s perspective of partnership has changed. Her responsibilities have shifted from teaching to administration, as her duties managing and coordinating pathway program activities now dominate her work life. I addition, her new administrative role has changed her way of looking at things: Since I’ve been put into this administrative role, I see things from a totally different perspective. It’s been really interesting for me because, prior to that, my only dealings were with Claire, and so I really was very influenced by her perception of the partnership. Things have changed. I like to think of myself as being my own thinker. I can really sort of discern things and make my own decisions, and before I came over to the administrative side of PassageMaker, I had had very little to do with the new Center Director, Joseph, at all. But now, being put in this position, I’m now kind of in the middle. So while I started off looking at the new Center Director through Claire’s eyes, I soon realized that I don’t see what she sees. I see somebody who is reasonable; who does manage things pretty well. I think he can get a handle on things; I think, like all of us, he’s learning, and he’s not afraid to make mistakes. No, he not an ESL person. But, he’s not afraid to adapt when he needs to do that, and to take people’s

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advice and recommendations. So it’s been kind of interesting to see both sides of it and be able to form my own opinion of him. For Anne the transition from IEP to PassageMaker Center has been challenging, but she is optimistic for its future success. “There have been and still are challenges with the pathways programs because it’s just such a – I want to say ‘a mess,’ but mess is really negative for what it is – but [it’s] chaotic. ‘Chaotic’ is a fair word to apply to where we are now. But I’m optimistic. I’m extremely optimistic.” Status of English Language Teachers and JVP A truism for most English language teachers I spoke with during this inquiry is that, as Anne aptly put it, “IEPs on campus have always been the ugly stepchildren.” Anne suggested that that perception has not substantively changed as a result of the university’s partnership with PassageMaker: “We’re perhaps more visible on campus; they at least know we’re here. The other day I ran into some faculty and she said, ‘Do you work upstairs for PassageMaker?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ So she said, ‘Oh, you’re relatively new on campus, aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘Well, no, not really. We’ve been on campus as the Intensive English Program for about thirty years!’ So there has never been an awareness of us, but now, the word is out there. I don’t know if it’s good or bad.” The status of the former IEP-now-PassageMaker Center has not been elevated on campus according to Anne, “unless you consider that we’ve been elevated to the state of existence!” But she does not have the perception that they are now more valued by the university faculty at large: “I don’t think so at all. And the only reason they’re starting to ask questions and take notice is because we’re shaking their world. That’s the only reason. And right now it’s definitely a one hundred percent negative perception: of us, of our students, of our program, of what we do and who we are. Any time anyone on campus hears, ‘PassageMaker Student,’ it’s like, ‘Argh!’ Or, ‘You work in the PassageMaker Center? Ugh!’ There’s all this negative connotation: very much so. And a lot of it’s politically motivated.” Anne believes that university faculty feel as if the matriculation pathway program idea was pushed on them, “and that they didn’t have a say – forced from above, and they weren’t prepared for it. I think that was the biggest thing. I think people will buy into it if they feel some ownership of it. But to have it just sort of dumped on you, like, ‘This is what it is, and you’re going to do it, and you’re going to make it work!’” Anne interfaces with many of the disciplinary faculty who are now teach­ ing  students in the pathway program. She related her view of what these instructors were facing: “So you’re a Business faculty member, and now you get

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a group of 15 students in your 35-student class, and half of that class is made up of PassageMaker students who can’t perform to your level of expectation. How do you make that work?” Anne takes a stand that she is “definitely on the side of making these programs work, but I think the content faculty really have some legitimate issues. Now, these pushed-down and rushed-through issues aren’t our issues, but we language teachers are the ones that look like the bad guy. They look at us and say, ‘Ugh.’ With those things I can help with, I help. But at some point, it’s like, ‘Talk to the university President, talk to the Provost – talk to, you know, the people that actually made that decision!’” Anne made clear that the partnership with PassageMaker and the subsequent pathway program development “was pushed on [them] too. I think we in the PassageMaker Center bear the brunt of the anger and the frustration, but not reasonably so. But, it is what it is, you know? That’s what we’re up against. That’s our challenge.” While the pathway programs were “pushed on” both the English language and the disciplinary content teaching faculty, Anne made clear that “even though there was a lot of work to do in terms of writing curriculum and getting ready for the new programs, we English language teachers were at least prepared to work with these students. It’s what we do. We know how to teach English language learners, and we understand all of the cultural and linguistic minefields that have to be navigated.” I asked Anne if the English language teaching faculty might be able to situate themselves as the “experts” to the faculty teaching disciplinary content, by sharing what they know about working with English language learners. She suggested that this was not possible: [T]his is a really delicate issue. The answer is no. Not yet: baby steps. I think, for some departments in particular, we have to be really sensitive to tenured faculty, their perceptions of themselves. So to come in and say to these professors, these tenured professors, “Well, we think you need training in this area,” and “These English language teaching faculty with only Master’s degrees, but, hey, a lot of practical experience and knowledge, are going to deliver that training” – that’s not going to go over really well, not with the climate right now. I’m not sure they see us as being on their level. But I think as they start to see us making progress, and maybe they begin to recognize that we’re willing to adapt, and that we’re trying to implement new programs, too – programs that will help the students, and that we’re re-examining language requirements for admittance – well, then maybe they’ll be open to some sort of professional development on teaching strategies.

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With the new structure of the PassageMaker Center as it is located within the university organization, an intensive English program faculty member’s highest possible rank is that of Instructor. This creates a potential gap between them and the other university faculty: “At LPU, I’m not sure if any College, School, or Department can have an Assistant or Associate Professor with only a Master’s degree. I don’t know if having higher-status titles – say, Assistant Professor – would make the content faculty any more likely to respect what we do or be willing to attend professional development workshops that we could conceivably design and conduct; I’m not sure how that would go over.” Anne explained that before the partnership, most of the teaching faculty were adjuncts, and, post-partnership, “some folks will just choose to remain adjuncts because, frankly, some of them are making pretty good money. They may be making close to what I’m making if they’re teaching a four-course load. And at one point they were making more than what I was making in my administrative role, and I was like, ‘Really? Do I really want to be here full-time, busting my butt for 50 or 60 hours a week?’ I mean, I’m not making bad money – I’m not complaining about that, but yeah. Adjuncts are making pretty good money now: their rates have gone up. Before the partnership, we only had a handful of full-time faculty, and it used to be five courses was a full load, but that’s been brought down to four, which most see as glorious.” There were other positive outcomes of the partnership for English language teachers, including the creation of additional full-time teaching lines. “We’ve now got over 15 full-time faculty with benefits, and I think there’ll be more.” Friction with Mainstream Faculty The PassageMaker Center’s pathway programs at LPU are designed for both graduate and undergraduate international students. The majority of the challenges Anne highlighted to me during our conversation seemed to rest with the graduate student pathways, in particular, their writing skills. As she described the situation to me: For the graduate pathway students, there is no “sheltered instruction.” Other than the separate EAP-support courses they get, they’re basically a university student: they are just in there. And it has caused a lot of issues because here you are, testing in with a TOEFL of 65 or 60 or whatever your language skills are – not where they need to be – and here you are plopped into a graduate-level Business Brand Management class, or whatever. Writing has become a major issue: a major issue: not as much as for the undergrads because they’re a little bit more sheltered than the grads in terms of having segregated sections for their content courses;

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but that’s changing. But for the grad PassageMaker students, they’re not prepared for it; the professors are not prepared for it; the American students are not prepared for it. So there’s a lot of friction; there’s a lot of tension; there’re a lot of misunderstandings; and there’re a lot of issues. Anne revealed that the content-teaching faculty in credit-bearing courses are complaining. So too are the domestic students enrolled in course sections heavy with international ESL students. Anne hit upon one of the central findings of my research when she posited during our meeting, “I think what you’re going to find is that it isn’t so much our faculty that is affected by this new pathway paradigm; it’s much more about how it affects administration, how it affects the mainstream university faculty, and what’s happening in the mainstream classrooms and programs, and happening to the American or mainstream students. There’s plenty of friction to go around.” Because of the friction and the types of issues they were dealing with, PassageMaker held a meeting with “the faculty of one college’s departments a couple of days ago. I was invited to the meeting, and I wasn’t really quite sure what my purpose was for being there. It was most of the content teaching faculty, and Joseph and I were there on behalf of PassageMaker, but Joseph only told me that we were going to discuss the language issues of the students. That’s all I knew. Looking back now, I think it was really designed just for faculty to be able to vent their dissatisfaction…. They were very professional. It wasn’t really a bitch session; it was really done professionally.” According to Anne, the biggest complaint was the low language levels of the PassageMaker students in the pathway programs: “You know, it’s difficult for them to participate in class; difficult for them to participate in groups; they don’t understand their professors. Again, this is nothing new for me or for most English language teachers. We know this even from our own students; they tell us all the time. Yes, it’s about taking notes and listening to the professor at the same time, but it’s also content issues that their having difficulty with. And it’s a whole different cultural adjustment for them having to work in teams with other students. It’s (you’ll forgive me) a foreign concept to a lot of them, and they don’t know what to do with that.” What has ended up happening, according to Anne, is that the domestic, native English-speaking students take on the bulk of the responsibility for a student team’s planning, writing, and presenting because they fear the PassageMaker students are not capable of pulling their weight, “and if they didn’t pick up the slack, their own grades would suffer.” Anne returned to the idea that the mainstream university faculty are not prepared to work with this population of students in terms of both their linguistic and cultural needs. In her view, “As much as the mainstream faculty

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would like to think that they think global, when push comes to shove, they really can’t. It’s not that they won’t. I think that they just never have had the opportunity to take what they know and apply it. And it’s funny, you know, the faculty are always on the PassageMaker students, saying, ‘They can’t take what I teach them and apply it.’ That’s one of their big complaints: the application of their knowledge. But I feel like that applies to the faculty as well.” One of the professors in the meeting Anne described had made reference to the fact that they had attended the university’s diversity training session: “He said, ‘I’ve been to the diversity trainings where they tell me what to say and what not to say to the students, in terms of what is ‘correct’ or something.’ Then he said, ‘But, you know, I don’t always apply those things in my class.’ So I was thinking, ‘Yeah, I know!’ So the trainings and workshops and cultural diversity that the university has apparently provided them are great. But now, apply it to your students in class!” There are some professors who Anne feels have been very good about adapting their pedagogical strategies when working with English language learners. “They don’t water down their curriculum. They don’t change what they do, but they’re changing how they do it. Some of them have really done a good job of quickly identifying that they needed to make adjustments to how they approach the content – whether it’s methods or assessment, or whatever it is. But then there are others who are resisting that.” But Anne noticed that those who resist the integration of ESL students in their class sections are the loudest opposing forces in terms of making appropriate accommodations for the PassageMaker students in their classes. As she speculated: “I think it will just take time for them to reflect on what they need to do, personally, you know, as teachers.” Anne described herself as “a buffer between the content faculty and PassageMaker,” and she views her role as critical: “Every time a mainstream professor complains, it comes to me. I try to meet with them personally to get their feedback, get their comments, get their suggestions: ‘What can I do; What can we do; How can we support them better?’ We provide a lot of support services for students here in the PassageMaker Center, and we’re willing to do anything else that content faculty feel would be helpful for students.” A challenge Anne encounters is that disciplinary content faculty frequently rebuff her attempts to provide assistance: Sometimes I can’t even get a meeting with them. They’ll complain, but then they just shut me down, shut me out. They don’t even want anything to do with it. Now, some of them are very open and are willing to do that; they want to be heard; they want to be able to express themselves and their concerns; and they’ll work with me to support our students.

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But then there are others that feel some need to protest, “They just don’t belong here! These students just don’t belong here,” and then ignore me when I email or call, leaving a message asking for a meeting to discuss possible solutions. Maybe they think they’re issuing a complaint to just another level of university bureaucracy, and they don’t understand that I’m also a teacher. I know where they’re coming from, and if they’d let me, I think I could help. Sometimes I think it may be sort of a held-onto resentment of “Why did this get shoved down our throats, and so I’m not going to make this easy for anybody,” and I’m just the one who catches their wrath. Tell it to the Provost, I think to myself. I’m not a punching bag and neither are our students. Anne shared an experience she had with a challenging faculty member: “There was this professor who really dislikes one of the PassageMaker students, really dislikes him. He is critical with him in class, and he has sent the nastiest emails about him. They were just very critical and demeaning. Most were sent just to me. Actually, one was sent to the student, too, and that one basically said, ‘Your language is not good enough. You do not belong in this program.’ But then the others he sent were much worse, you know, in terms of him not being able to even speak a word in class. It was just all very nasty. I responded to him, because I really feel like, now, we have a role; PassageMaker has a role, and I have a responsibility to educate these people on the fact that this kind of email is really not okay.” Anne tried to rationally explain to the faculty member that “[t]here’s a reason why [the student] has a difficult time speaking with you; he’s nervous; he needs processing time; there’re all these things that you just don’t know about a student,” and so she sent him back an email explaining how difficult it is for students in a second language, and she used herself as an example: “My email was about my experience learning a second language. I said something like, ‘It was very difficult for me to process,’ and I gave him some examples of when it was difficult for me, and I said, ‘I’m sure that someone of your stature makes this student very nervous, and so it takes him a long time to process.’ I actually got a very polite thank you email from the professor. I finally did meet him the other day in person, and…that’s just his personality, but it’s a personality that doesn’t translate well through email. He’s too direct, and you can’t be saying those things to students. You can’t be so dismissive of students in emails. It’s just not appropriate, and it’s not professional.” While Anne is careful not to paint all of the complaining disciplinary content faculty with the same brush, she does wonder if “some of this is tied to a fear of foreigners.” She continued, “I think it’s even bigger than fear. I think it’s more that we’ve lived in this small ethnocentric kind of world as Americans

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and never really had to be global, you know, had to be international. And we’ve expected other people to accommodate us, and we’ve never had to accommodate them.” Anne takes on the voice of a stereotypical Midwesterner: “You know, ‘You can come to my world, but you have to learn to be like me. And if I go to your world, I expect you to accommodate me and speak my language’ – that kind of…mentality. And again, I’m generalizing, which is probably so wrong; but…I hear the complaints from the content faculty, and I see the complaints from the American students, that they’re having such a hard time working with the international students…. [M]ay be if there was a little bit more in your worldly experience it wouldn’t be so difficult for you to work together. But they’re still, ‘We want them to do it our way, and if they can’t do it our way, we can’t accommodate them.’ So some faculty are going to do it their own way and just exclude the PassageMaker students. Unfortunately, I think there’s a lot of that all around, which is not a great attitude to have if you’re interested in internationalizing your university.” Researcher Reflection: Anne Rivers Anne was one of the first participants I interviewed during this inquiry, and her candor, instilled with optimism, provided me with a well-balanced assessment of the strengths and challenges academic professionals and their students face when working in institutions with corporate sector partnerships resulting in matriculation pathway programs. Anne found opportunity for and through change where others saw dread (Merton & Kitt, 1969). She is now an administrator, but she firmly maintains her identity as a teaching professional: “I think no matter what position I hold, or nor matter what I do, it’s always that: I am a teacher.” And perhaps it is her strong identity as a teacher with extensive experience working with international students that leads to frustrations when attempting to mitigate the negative attitudes of some mainstream university faculty toward international students. Pedagogical accommodations for English language learners in disciplinary content courses are resisted by some and “off the radar” of others. An observation by Anne that can be highlighted is that professional development for content teaching faculty in the areas of instructional methods, cultural sensitivity, and accommodated assessment for working with English language learners, developed and delivered by experienced English teaching faculty, would perhaps be beneficial and advisable. Yet the issue of both academic and perceived status of those in English language teaching remains: “I’m not sure they see us as being on their level.” It is a delicate issue of power and perceptions of power (Leach & Vliek, 2008). Anne’s perception is that the status of the English language programs and

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f­aculty have not been elevated post-partnership, and that, in fact, university faculty are generally quite negative toward the PassageMaker students, programs, and faculty. Anne speculated that university faculty may in part be resisting making any changes to their practice due to perceptions that these shifts in the academy were imposed from above, in much the same way that the administration and faculty of the IEP experienced turmoil during the initial transition from university-controlled IEP to PassageMaker Center. During the IEP’s transitional turmoil, the teachers, including Anne at the time, were buffered by the then administration of the language program. Anne now occupies the role of one of the new buffers or “punching bag[s],” but, in her case, she acts as the buffer between the mainstream faculty teaching disciplinary content and the administration of PassageMaker. While Anne acknowledged the tensions and challenges, she is extremely optimistic about the success of the programs run through the PassageMaker Center. As noted earlier, Anne was one of my first interviews for this study, and her prediction for this study was one that strongly resonates with my findings from the narrative inquiry overall: “…what you’re going to find is that it isn’t so much [English language teaching faculty] that is affected by this new pathway paradigm; it’s much more about how it affects administration, how it affects the mainstream university faculty, and what’s happening in the mainstream classrooms and programs, and happening to the American or mainstream ­students. There’s plenty of friction to go around.” Indeed.

Pam Davis

Pam’s Background For Pam Davis, the Coordinator of Academic Programs affiliated with Huron Hills University’s (HHU) JVP Center, being a teacher was perhaps inevitable. As she put it: “Ever since I was young, I kind of always wanted to be a teacher. But I was told early on, by my own teachers, ‘Don’t do it!’” Initially heeding their warnings, Pam focused her undergraduate university studies on obtaining a degree in Spanish. During her senior year, Pam decided to take the additional classes required to provide her with the credentials necessary for teaching Spanish in K–12 settings, which she did for 3  years. In addition to teaching Spanish, Pam was tapped to teach ESL and developmental English classes in her school site, and it was this experience that led her to the decision to enroll in a Master of Arts in TESOL at HHU. Following graduation, Pam transitioned from practicum teaching intern to full-time adjunct faculty in the university’s then HHU English Language Institute. Prior to the corporate sector

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partnership with JVP, she was offered and accepted a benefits-granting fulltime teaching faculty position which included some administrative coordinating responsibilities: “I was – and now, still am – responsible for a lot more than I was when I first started as just an ESL teacher, and sometimes I think that the teacher’s life is better. But another part of me thinks moving up – becoming an Assistant Director or, maybe eventually, a Director of a small IEP – that would be great. I guess I do have career ambitions, but I never know if they’re the right ones for me.” Ever since first word of the partnership with JVP, and up through its implementation, Pam has been struggling with whether or not to stay at HHU. She struggles still: “I’m really unsure. This year has been really hard, and while there’s a part of me that wants to see if it gets better, I don’t know. Some days, when I walk into the office, I see that huge ‘JVP Center’ sign, and I’m like, ‘I cannot do this for another year. I feel branded; I just can’t!’ Another day I walk in and say, ‘Oh, I guess it isn’t so bad.’ But I still don’t want to wear the JVP-emblazoned polo shirt…. A polo shirt? It makes me feel like I’m working at Radio Shack or something!” Pam’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership Pam and I debated on where to meet for our conversation about her experiences: in her office, in the food court on campus, or somewhere off campus. It was ultimately concluded that “somewhere that serves wine” would be appreciated, so we met in a nearby restaurant. Pam’s narratives provide insight into the early days of what she calls “the takeover,” as well as the ways in which various camps of “us” and “them” formed following the corporate sector partnership. Pam also shared with me some of the logistical aspects of the pathway programs, especially in terms of progression and matriculation. Finally, we discussed her frustrations with being branded both literally and figuratively, the positive and negative impacts to students as she perceives them, and some of the remaining challenges that she feels are still ahead in terms of the sustainability of the quickly growing programs at HHU. What Can We Do to Stop It? Pam described the period during “the JVP-takeover negotiations” as being extremely chaotic, faculty and staff trying to make sense of what was happening, and identifying ways that the partnership might be derailed: “I was primarily teaching faculty with some Coordinator responsibilities at the time HHU was approached by JVP, and there was a lot of information that was kind of behind closed doors. But I had collegial access to one or two of those closed doors, and so I heard more about the back-office rebellion than did other faculty.” Pam recounted the story of the then ELI Director, Natalie, being told to appear

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for a meeting with the Provost, but that the topic of the meeting was never disclosed. Before the actual meeting took place, the ELI Director “had done some inner-departmental sleuthing and found out that it was about JVP, and that HHU was planning to joint-venture with them, and that this would involve JVP taking over the ELI. And it was very much, ‘Oh my god! What can we do it stop it?’ for literally months as they gathered evidence to demonstrate the potential pitfalls to HHU and the ELI.” Pam described this as an extremely stressful time for everybody, “but for Natalie and the ELI administrators who were part of the inner sanctum at the ELI, they really suffered through most of it.” According to Pam, the faculty was fairly insulated from the pandemonium, as they were busy with the business of teaching students. Yet, although the majority of frustration while attempting to respond to the Provost’s news fell upon the ELI administrators, the teaching faculty was congruently impacted, dealing with the unknowns of the situation: “Still, these months of turmoil were also stressful for faculty because there were a lot of unknowns at the time. Maybe there still are. I think most of us felt fairly sure that we’d have a job. We were certainly hearing that both JVP and HHU were projecting enormous growth in terms of numbers of students, and if that’s the case, well then, they’d need teachers. But many of us weren’t too keen on the idea of the ­corporate, profit-motivated thing coming onto campus.” Pam’s initial response to the news that JVP would be partnering with HHU was shock: “[We felt] outrage and hope that that HHU would be reasonable and realize that this was a really bad idea. If they wanted a matriculation bridge for international students from the ELI, we could have done it. We’d been trying to get things like TOEFL waivers and modified SAT requirements put into place for years, but the university wouldn’t listen to us. Why were they listening to this outside corporation and not to their own faculty?” What was clear to both faculty and administrators of the ELI was that such a partnership risked jeopardizing their CEA accreditation. From an emotional perspective, Pam felt betrayed by the university: “I had a deep feeling of disloyalty from the university, like I’d been betrayed in a way.” The timing of the announcement could not have been more ironic from Pam’s perspective. As she related: “I had just donated to the university’s First Year College Fund at HHU that same week this all happened. [laughs] I mean, it wasn’t a lot, maybe $50 or $100. You know, I’m first generation in my family with a Bachelor’s degree, so I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s a great organization. I’ll give them some money.’ I think I had just gotten my full-time faculty line a few months earlier, so I thought I would sort of give back; but… [laughs] literally within days of when we heard that the Provost was entering into this deal, I was like, ‘Can I call them and get my money back?’ [laughs] And, I never did stop the check, but what I did do was I joined the union.”

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Pam was not the only faculty or staff member to make the decision to join the union, in part because ELI faculty at HHU are not included in the university governance systems: “You know, at the ELI, we didn’t then (and still don’t, for that matter)…have any sort of connection to the governance of the university – we can’t sit on Faculty Senate. And I think that some of us thought that we needed to have someone on our side, especially those who were involved with administration, you know; they seemed to be the ones most at risk. So the union was involved very early on.” Pam related that there was some push back from the university for involving the unions: “We received a bit of flak for it – we, the ELI. One of the ELI administrators contacted the union, and then the union responded to the university Provost’s office immediately. Natalie was then contacted by a none-too-happy Provost, and he was, like, ‘You have a malcontent on your staff! What are you going to the union for? What are you doing?’ Which is interesting to me because it seemed like there was this very heavy layer of secrecy involved, and that a lot of the decisions being made at the university were not, I don’t know, open and transparent to the rest of the university community, including union members and the Faculty Senate. The whole thing was very top-down, and the reality is that this seemed already a done deal when we first learned of it.” While not heavily involved in the transition from ELI to JVP Center, Pam and other faculty were exposed to what she described as “anxiety-inducing” interviews by a JVP corporate representative who arrived on campus to shepherd us through the conversion. Pam recalled: “He interviewed all of us. It felt like the movie, Office Space, when they have that guy come in, and he interviews everybody about their jobs and decides who you need and who you don’t. You wanted to sound like you were important, but you didn’t want to sell yourself as too big, because you didn’t necessarily want more work, or worse, lose your job because you seemed too senior. You know, ‘I’m not redundant, but I’m not a threat to anyone either!’ So my understanding was that he was brought in to help with the transition, but from what we could see, none of us were really sure what his job was – maybe watching us, maybe helping us; but the help was not useful.” Pam is an English language teacher-administrator border-crosser. She teaches about 50% and coordinates auxiliary programs the other 50% of her time on the job. As she described her position: “I’m between the teachers’ and administrators’ worlds, but I try to keep as close to the academic side as possible.” Her responsibilities have changed several times in the last few years. Currently she typically teaches either 9 hours of non-credit classes or 6 hours of credit-bearing classes over the course of a 13–16 week semester. She also has coordinating duties for a couple of programs that the language center provides

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the university. As Pam told me: “I’m responsible for making sure that the courses in my area are scheduled and staffed with trained faculty, and that faculty have the resources they need, that they understand the course guides, and that the course guides are developed in such a way that they make sense for the class; but I have help from other administrators for some of the curriculum pieces.” Pam confessed to a desire to keep her job focused on the academic side of the JVP programs: “I don’t necessarily love what I’m doing now, but I’m happy that what I’m doing – the programs that I coordinate and the courses I teach and manage – I’m happy that they are really pretty separate from the JVP corporate side of things. I’m really more bound to the academic side. Yes, I coordinate the courses that JVP students must take as part of their progression to the university; but other than that, I get to stay fairly separate and buffered from JVP. I prefer it that way.” Although she has been approached to apply for higher level positions in the pathway programs, Pam is quick to make clear her disinterest: “I feel like I would have to work much more closely with JVP Agents and the Center Director, and, well, I’m not really interested in putting my professional name on the line to say that we’re necessarily preparing students adequately. I don’t know. I feel like the JVP Pathway admission standards are a little too low. Now, as the course coordinator for the academic language-support courses the Pathway students take, I think it’s a bit different because English is what we do. But I’m not particularly interested in dealing with academic departments on how students are performing in their Business or Engineering class without their having any preparation from us first.” According to Pam, this is especially true for the Graduate Pathway students as in their first semester, they are integrated directly into the mainstream creditbearing classes without having had cultural or linguistic support beforehand: “They are in that first Business – or whatever content class – their first week. They get off the plane, and in less than a week with just a couple days’ orientation, they’re sitting in a mainstream classroom with a university faculty member who may not know anything about teaching English language learners and working alongside mainstream HHU students. They haven’t had a single semester of EAP yet, and now they’re having to learn as they go. And like, they’re already turning papers in before they’ve even had the chance to learn about the plagiarism policies. It’s not an ideal situation for the Graduate Pathway students. For the undergraduate students I think it is a little bit better.” With a blast of explosive laughter, Pam made clear, “No, I like being on the academic, non-JVP side of things. Working as a Pathway Coordinator, or any other JVP or Pathway kind of job: that would be much more JVP than I’m willing to embrace right now.”

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Separating Layers of “Us” and “Them” The ELI had once been a collegial and autonomous program, but, according to Pam, the organizational restructuring that emerged following the corporate sector partnership has changed much of that: There is a lot more bureaucracy in the JVP Center. There are a lot more organizational layers of “us” and “them” between faculty and administrators now. Some of it, I guess, must be necessary as we get bigger and bigger. And it isn’t to say that things ran perfectly in the past. But, in the old ELI, if something went wrong, I could just go straight to the Assistant Director that was responsible for whatever area, and they could talk to the right person and take action. Now we have to kind of go up and around and down, you know, to the Center Director and to the Assistant Director. Now, you spend a lot of time trying to find out whose job it is to act as the go-between. In the past, faculty were involved in the whole IEP experience for the students. I feel that when you have faculty members involved in student activities, you have a better pulse on what students are [doing]. We used to know what went on outside of the classroom for students, and we could incorporate that field trip to Lake Erie into the curriculum. This now just goes directly to the students from JVP and bypasses the faculty altogether. Pam acknowledged that there are some positive aspects of being less involved in students’ non-academic concerns: “I suppose we teachers can now spend more time on other things, and we don’t need to worry about managing issues that aren’t directly related to what’s going on in our classrooms. But the problem is that JVP isn’t always managing things well on the corporate or systems side, and I think that most English language teachers understand that our curriculum isn’t just about nouns and verbs: it’s about preparing our students for all aspects of a higher-education experience.” Prior to the partnership, the ELI Director “was the director of everything, and she knew all things. She was a very good Director, and it still is upsetting that the university never saw that. Everything was much more cohesive and connected under her.” The former ELI Director at HHU was moved to a secondary position within the organization and a Center Director position was created and filled by a Provost appointment. As Pam recounted: Now we have a Center Director who is technically responsible for all things, but who is from a totally different discipline. She has never run an IEP, or worked in an IEP. She’s probably never stepped foot in an IEP

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before! Then to make matters worse, they bring in an Assistant Center Director who…is a really hard worker and a really nice person, but again, has never stepped foot in an IEP before being here! So they’re responsible for the business end of things, but in this JVP structure, that includes student support and admissions. Having one person who understands all of it is important, and we don’t have that. I doubt that either one of them will go to the NAFSA Convention, and that’s something that most IEP directors would go to. I don’t think it’s even on their radar. Pam described the new organizational structure as having been “chopped up into separate little departments and areas” where “one area does one thing and the other area does another thing,” making communication much more difficult than when there is one unified group with “some people responsible for some things and other people responsible for other things. I wouldn’t say that the old ELI was run by consensus, but it was much more of a cooperative and cohesive structure.” The physical separation between administrators and faculty has had a negative effect on relationships, according to Pam: “At the old ELI, we all shared the same building. Administrators were down the hall, and faculty shared offices in the same area. It felt much more connected. Moving buildings was really, really hard. It was kind of bad for everyone. Now the JVP administration and all of the Coordinators, including me, are in one building, and all of the teaching faculty are about a ten-minute walk away in another.” Pam shared her experience of feeling isolated and effectively shunned, early on: “If Coordinators or administrators would stop by the faculty space to say hi, you’d kind of get ignored…. I don’t think it was intentional; I don’t think it was malicious at all. It was just that they had their own environment, and you didn’t really have a place. Literally, I couldn’t plop my stuff down and just strike up conversation naturally; it was kind of, ‘Well, I’m here! Anybody want to talk to me? Nope? Okay. Nice seeing you!’ So we’re really trying to bridge the us-and-them gap by literally walking over and camping out in the faculty space to be more available and accessible.” This is not always easy, however, in the new structure: [T]he Coordinators are all really busy, and a lot of us have been teaching overloads because we’ve been short on teachers – which again, makes socializing and making connections with faculty less likely. I’m not going to go to pot luck lunch because that’s an hour I can’t work, you know. [laughs] And so I would say that regarding relationships between faculty and Coordinators, I’ve definitely felt that there is an us-and-them vibe. Look, I know that some of it was absolutely just a joke, but there were

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jokes that cut a little too close to the bone. You’d walk in, and they’d be like, “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. Shouldn’t you be over in the other building with them?” It’s like, I know that that’s supposed to be funny, but it’s not. I’m a teacher too, but I’m made to feel like I’ve chosen to play on the wrong team, and so now I have to pay for it. I’m not sure I’m seen as one of them anymore. I’m a traitor. Within the administrative building where Pam works, there is an additional level of “us” and “them”: “I think both the academic-administrative side of JVP and the corporate-administrative side of JVP also have had their own us-andthem struggles; but our us-and-them was different. Our line was drawn down the hallway where all the JVP staff is and where all the academics are. And for the faculty I think it was drawn in that ten-minute walking space between the building where the faculty cubicles are and the current JVP Center building where we were. Adding to that, we have the us-and-them’s of JVP corporate offices and the Provost’s office, and you’ve got a lot of dysfunctional relationships trying to operate educational programming.” At the time of my conversation with Pam, the university and the corporate partner were negotiating the construction of a new building which would accommodate all administrative and teaching faculty offices, as well as classroom space, and the possibility of student dormitories. Assuming this building would be constructed, “Then maybe we’ll all be one big JVP ‘us’ and the university at-large will be the new ‘them.’” Advancement Opportunities Because of where the JVP Center and English Language Programs sit within the university organization, English teaching faculty have limited opportunities for advancement in the university at large, yet prospects for professional advancement do exist within the unit itself. As Pam told me: “As far as I understand it to be, JVP Center or English Language Program faculty could never become tenure-track or move up to the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor because we’re not part of an academic department per se. The old ELI used to be in the Department of Foreign Languages in the College of Arts and Sciences, but the JVP Center is in the Academic Affairs Office of the Provost. According to my job description, and the job descriptions that have gone out recently, I am eligible to be an Instructor II and Instructor III after x number of years, but nothing beyond that is even on the table.” Pam related her uncertainty about her future position within the JVP structure: “Now I don’t know what happens if I become 100% administration with no teaching whatsoever. Would I still remain an Instructor? Would I still be

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considered faculty? I mean, there are some Coordinators that don’t teach who are on Instructor lines. There’d been talk about changing it so that not everybody is just under an Instructor line: you know, having actual Coordinator lines, but that hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t know if it ever will happen. Someone would have to take up that mantel.” Pam revealed that there may indeed be a perception of higher status tied to administrative titles, “partly because there are only so many full Instructor lines available, and about half of those Instructor lines are utilized for Coordinator positions. It’s about fifty-fifty now because we’ve hired a bunch more people on full Instructor lines. Frankly, I’m not sure if there is any resentment on the part of teaching faculty because of that, but, yeah, I think there is more status. If you take on an administrative title like Coordinator, you generally get moved into the offices in the main JVP building. We mostly all have windows: other people don’t. Right now, anyone who is a full-time teacher and does not have any administrative responsibility is in a cubical in Hines Hall.” From Pathway Admissions to Matriculation I asked Pam to share with me some of the admissions and progression structures currently in place in the HHU JVP Center. According to Pam, all of the admissions for the Pathway programs happen before students arrive at HHU: “They’ve taken the TOEFL or the IELTS or whatever, and they’ve submitted their high school or university grades, usually through the recruitment agents in China or wherever. But when they get here, we give them the same placement test we use for the Academic English Program. We rate it, and we see that they have to at least place into Level 4 of our Academic English program. And if they don’t, …the English teachers’ feeling is that they should be required to do at least a semester in Academic English before they move into the Pathway: they are not ready.” But while the language program faculty assess the new Pathway students upon arrival, they would have a difficult time prohibiting a low-scoring student from entering the Pathway: “The problem is that they’ve already been admitted by the university. They’ve already pre-paid their tuition. So they often get to enter the Pathway.” What is happening, according to Pam, is that English teaching faculty now meet with the low-testing students, and they advise them of their assessment of their scores. At that time, they ask the student to sign a waiver indicating that they understand that they have been advised to take a semester or two of Academic English before entering the Pathway program. As she made clear, this is only a recommendation: “Technically these students were admitted with the test scores and GPA that’s required. The placement assessment we give them when they arrive is just kind of a second thing. We can advise them,

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but we were…more or less told that we really can’t tell them what they can or can’t do. We can just advise them and suggest that they don’t go directly into the Pathway, and then ask them to sign off that they understand our recommendation. There’s been recognition that this has to change.” It is not unusual for there to be a mismatch between the assessment scores submitted as part of students’ application and their on-site assessments to confirm proficiency. Pam shares with me some past concerns: There was a student this semester that had a very “iffy” TOEFL score: it was a print-out. It wasn’t an officially sent score delivered directly from ETS. She placed really low on our placement test, and her agent happened to be in Michigan at the time – or it was a JVP Regional Director or something – and so, what I heard was, he advocated for her to get in with this unofficial TOEFL score. “Oh, of course that’s her real score!” Well, she has failed all of her classes, all of them – even University Experience, which is really hard to fail. But with her, we were told not to even have the we-don’t-think-you’re-ready conversation. Or maybe it was that we didn’t make her sign the acknowledgement form because she had this TOEFL score; and you know, the TOEFL score rules all. But this was a TOEFL score from China on a dubious photocopy? Most of us were not convinced that this was actually her English language ability. There is a separation between language programs and pathway programs in Pam’s context at HHU, and in terms of curriculum autonomy, Pam expressed relief that English language program faculty remain in control: “The General English Program curriculum and the two EAP courses for the Pathway Programs are new, but Academic English curriculum hasn’t really changed much. The course guides for the EAP courses for the Pathway Programs were quickly developed by the former ELI Director – now the Academic Director – Natalie, as well as the Assistant Director for Curriculum. I think they got finished practically the night before we kind of needed to get it into the university courses systems. And so, being put together kind of quickly, it’s not perfect. We have faculty who are developing and improving the courses. Everything had to happen really fast in order to get us up and running.” What had been the existing Academic English program has stayed much as it had been prior to the partnership, but because articulation between the language program and the pathway programs were created, changes in curriculum were necessary. Pam elaborated: “It’s the old ELI’s content-based curriculum, but we have had to put a few changes into the Level 4 curriculum and exit expectations since successful completion of Level 4 provides entrance

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into the Pathway without the TOEFL. Also, students who complete Level 5 are eligible for a TOEFL waiver from the university, which is huge.” A significant change made by the university was that applying students no longer need to submit SAT scores: “So they can now get a direct admit. That was never on the table when we were the ELI, and we pushed for that. Now, they still have to have whatever other graduate admissions requirements a particular department may have: GRE, GMAT, every department is different. And so…[the articulations between the language program and the pathway] has put a bit more pressure on the Level 4 and 5 curriculums. We’re pretty careful about level promotions these days.” HHU’s Academic English and General English programs were being prepared for CEA reaccreditation at the time of my visit with Pam. The English for Academic Purposes program delivers language support courses to Pathway Program students. Autonomy in curriculum rests with the English teaching faculty. As Pam told me: [C]urriculum has been merely tweaked, but not dramatically modified, because we’re going through CEA reaccreditation – which means that we don’t want to make big changes to our course guides. And it’s just the Academic English and the General English programs that are kind of what is up for accreditation. The English for Academic Purposes Program courses that Pathway students take [do] not really [count]. Like, we will never be able to say EAP is CEA-accredited. Pathways Program courses are not part of the CEA accreditation. They’d fall under the university’s North Central Association of Colleges and Schools accreditation with no CEA stamp of approval: it’s under the university umbrella. And so EAP is kind of in-between. It falls under NCA, but because HHU’s English Language Programs is managing it, we’re including it in the report for their information. It’s complicated and has to be intentionally specific and separate. In terms of exiting the Pathway programs and matriculating into the university programs, Pam suggested that there are additional problems and stated, “I’m fairly happy that I’m not at all involved.” She recounted some of her concerns: I have heard that there have been a few cases where students haven’t gotten the required GPA to continue, and our Center Director has kind of lobbied on their behalf to get them into their university programs. It has created problems for the Pathways Coordinators because now the first

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semester students aren’t taking it as seriously as they should because they feel like they’ll get a second chance. Everyone is telling them, “If you fail, you’re out.” But then they’ll say, “Well, so-and-so failed last semester, and he’s still here.” Making exceptions isn’t necessarily the best because now we have this culture that is expecting exceptions, and frankly, the students that exceptions were made for didn’t do well. So yes, we ESL teachers do kind of know what we’re talking about when we say somebody who places in Level 2 isn’t going to be able to perform in university classes. It’s what we do. And maybe if the Center Director had more experience with English language learners, she might have looked at that data with different eyes: perhaps. Unfortunately, I think there’s a lot of pressure from the top to get these students to matriculate. Still, I think the Center Director learned to adjust her approach to making these kinds of exceptions. I think. Branded as JVP One of Pam’s concerns is how other English teaching professionals might perceive her and her institution new for-profit model: “I went to the TESOL Convention last year, and I think that people who are in the field and who are administrators – program administrators, coordinators, and, you know, people who have sort of followed the JVP story of what’s happened to us and what was happening at other universities – these people feel like bad things have been done to us. [laughs] There’s a lot of empathy out there. A year prior I was actually encouraged by everyone I knew to just get out while I can.” Yet, as Pam made clear, not everyone in the field has such a negative attitude: People who are new to the field, however, seem very interested in the job opportunities, and I…volunteered to help the JVP table that was at TESOL because they offered to pay for my conference registration, my hotel, and my meals in exchange. But, I’ll tell you, I was really surprised at the number of people who had a very positive orientation to JVP because, you know, they were interviewing and hiring: because they were growing, because there were more centers. And I think that young professionals who are finishing their MA and are looking for jobs…see JVP as an opportunity. I also talked with some program coordinators at very small IEPs who wanted a little more clout at their universities who were interested in finding more information out about a partnership. So of course, I kind of explained how we were organized and what the benefits of that were – you know, having a faculty that was still part of the univer­ sity   and reported to the university, things like that. But I also tried to

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tactfully suggest that JVP wasn’t the only option for them, that they could potentially do this sort of thing on their own, but it was not really the place. [laughs] Following the establishment of the joint-partnership, English teaching faculty at HHU were provided with JVP-emblazoned polo shirts, and the existence of these shirts found their way into Pam’s and my conversation at regular intervals. It was clearly an aspect of the partnership that rubbed her the wrong way: This is the tiniest thing, but, when I was sitting at the JVP table at the convention, I was really surprised by the other university’s JVP people who were also sitting there. I know I’ve mentioned [that]…we have these regrettable polo shirts that have a big JVP HHU logo plastered over them, and I really don’t like them. I have them in my closet because there are days when we are asked to wear them. I never wear them otherwise, and I’m tempted to conveniently forget when asked. I just don’t like wearing them, so I don’t wear them. But I brought one with me to TESOL because I wasn’t sure that we’d not be asked to wear them. So I brought my professional work clothes and then threw that in my bag just in case. And there was no memo. We weren’t asked to wear them. We just wore conferencecomfy work clothes. But the faculty from the other universities, many of them – not all, but many of them – cheerfully wore their JVP polo shirts. So I’m sitting at the table and you’ve got one guy from whatever university in his JVP polo, but then there’s me in my conference garb, and somebody walks up and is like, “Oh, nice. They give you polo shirts at their JVP Center!” and I was like, “Huh? Really? Really? That’s what turns you on? That’s what you’re attracted to?” They don’t know anything about JVP. My god, they’re going to make you wear it! I wanted to shoot him with a T-shirt gun like the ones cheerleaders use at basketball games. “Here’s your JVP shirt!” Reflecting on Students Pam shared her reflections on both positive and negative impacts to students vis-à-vis the new corporate sector partnership. In terms of positive impacts, the possibility of avoiding further testing is a big plus for the students: “I told a student at the end of last semester that if she took Level 5 and completed Level 5 she could get a TOEFL waiver, and she was beside herself. She was fanning herself with shock – happy shock, and so that’s a good thing; that’s a good thing to come out of this partnership. Students now have the ability to enter the Pathway program even without the TOEFL, which is a good thing for

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students who are really ready, when they’ve completed Level 4; and a Level 5 completer can get direct admission without the TOEFL. That’s great for prepared students.” Status within the university was an additional benefit, according to Pam: “Our students absolutely have more status within the university. They have network IDs and have access to so much more on campus than ELI students had in the past. And so, from the perspective of students, there are some benefits.” On the negative side, Pam observed that, “on the other hand, they definitely pay more in tuition.” She made the further point that “[t]he quality of instruction is just as good as ever, but our policies are tightening a bit.” As she elaborated: When we used to have only one program at the ELI with fewer than 300 students, we were maybe more willing to make compromises. But with so many more students – Now, don’t hear this the wrong way, but we don’t really care. [laughs] If you miss the deadline to start the semester, well, sorry. Not to say that we don’t ever forgive anything, but I think in a smaller program, you get to know your students more, and their extenuating circumstances are taken into consideration more. Maybe having stricter policies is good for keeping students on their toes. You know, I was telling my students that they had to be back on x day. If you don’t, you’ll be dropped. Now, in all honesty, if one doesn’t come back – no big deal. [laughs] We’ve got way too many students as it is: my section is overloaded with students. It will be one less paper for me to grade, frankly. Pam said that she gets the sense that the Pathways students are not completely satisfied with their experience: “I had first semester graduate students this semester, and some of them had a really hard time with one of their accounting professors. I learned late in the semester that the professor was so bad, most of the mainstream HHU students had transferred out of that section during drop-add week. But because our students don’t really have that ability – they’re placed by us into whatever section they’re placed in – they didn’t have that option. They didn’t have the freedom to drop. The graduate students in marketing are really thrown in. They take an eight-week course the first eight weeks they’re here, and they have to get nothing lower than a ‘B.’ It is insane!” Positives, But… Pam seems to be a positive person by nature, and while aspects of the partnership have clearly exasperated her – in particular, the fact that the university decided to partner within an outside company to do what she felt could have

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been done in-house – Pam does try to see the good in what has been happening at HHU; but these forays are at times short-lived, as exemplified in the following reflection: There are positives. We are growing. We were able to hire ten Instructor lines with benefits. We have a pathway to university for our students. We have TOEFL and SAT waivers. Those are good things. I am really sad still that those things had to happen this way, because they were things that we’d been asking for and lobbying for, and the university wouldn’t hear us. And if they really wanted to increase international enrollment, there are other agencies you can go through that will recruit for you and not dictate what your programs are! And if you create a bridge program – which lots of universities do – and have either an in-house or outsourced recruiting arm, wow! That’s really attractive because then there’d be this bridge that we or a vendor could recruit for, and we wouldn’t have the situation we have now where HHU’s so concerned about paying back the debt that they’re going to take as many students as they can get, and they’re going to grow with unsupportable growth, and they don’t seem to care about what that means for faculty or for the quality of instruction for students: “We’re not capping the program!” Now, we think there may be like a hundred-fifty to two-hundred Gradu­ ate Pathway students in the fall for Business. Tell me how the College of Business is going to support that? They are going to risk destroying their own Business school. Pam further reflected on the effects of the growth in Pathway students at HHU on local students’ view of the university: “I don’t know, but if I were living in Ann Arbor, and I had a choice between Michigan State and HHU – and I went to HHU and my classes were 70% under-qualified non-native speakers, I don’t know that I would continue to pursue my degree here.” She also posed the question, “With that kind of growth, are they going to be able to find qualified faculty? And for the graduate programs, they’re going to need non-adjunct faculty with PhDs, right? Otherwise, won’t they risk their own accreditation? I could go on.” Pam is grateful that the English language programs now have dedicated classrooms: “That’s another positive; not having to fight with the university to get classroom space. The joint-venture rents classrooms for the JVP courses from HHU. They aren’t horrible, but have you seen them? They look nice, but put 18 or 20 people in one. They’re too small and the furniture’s wrong.” Pam was especially incensed about the audiovisual set-up:

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Why did they put up these huge 52 inch TVs? They generate a lot of heat. A projector that’s on the ceiling and far away – no heat…. I think when we all saw them for the first time we were like, “Oh, these are going to be great.” But then we actually started teaching in them, and you can tell a teacher didn’t set them up. The university allowed JVP to set them up how we wanted, but, as far as I know, teachers weren’t involved in the design. The Assistant Center Director, who has never taught before, and the furniture dealer planned the rooms and the furniture, and they didn’t even put in whiteboards. Ever taught Level 1 Grammar? You need a whiteboard. So they quickly bought whiteboards wherever they could get them, which means that they are kind of small and set up in weird locations. Why didn’t they involve us? In Pam’s words, “it isn’t all bad, and it isn’t all good. Partnering with an organization that is not focused on good English language teaching is, in my opinion, a mismatch. It is a mismatch to have these people running a language program. Yes, having people in administration who know the university’s inner workings is helpful. Our Center Director knows the ins and outs of HHU, and that is important: you need someone who has some of those skills to negotiate relationships between departments. But the fact that the Assistant Center Director also doesn’t know anything is really challenging and unfair to the pre-existing administration of the ELI – and it’s unfair to faculty.” Pam disclosed that she had for some time been planning to leave HHU: “I’m actually now thinking of staying, and that’s something I didn’t think I’d be doing a few years ago when this all started. On the practical side of things, I have a good job with benefits and good pay for my field. My adult daughter and I can live in a place where the cost of living is pretty low. We live in a great little college town that is very comfortable, and we have jobs that afford us the ability to rent a lake house for a week when we have time off, though I don’t have as much time off as I’d like.” The lack of time off is one of the tradeoffs Pam is living with in working for JVP. Working for JVP also makes her continually aware of the compromises she is making: “Frankly, I don’t particularly like the agency that I’m working for, but I feel like there are professional opportunities that could be developed here. On paper, it doesn’t make any sense to walk away, but am I satisfied? No, I’m not. But I feel like, if I were to pick up and go somewhere in the states, the likelihood of having to work adjunct again at an IEP for a while is very high. And I’m not really so interested in doing that. But I’m still really unsure. I feel better about the fact that I’m really not involved with the Pathway or JVP-corporate side of things. But this

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year has been really hard. I’m still really unsure – still a rollercoaster, still the rollercoaster.” Researcher Reflection: Pam Davis Having experienced first-hand the initial targeting, as well as the implementation of her university’s corporate sector partnership with a corporate education service provider, Pam illuminates the many painful struggles that she’s endured. She struggles still with the decision whether or not to stay with the organization. The opportunities for administrative leadership responsibilities are ones she appreciates might not have been afforded her to the degree that they have been in light of the corporate partnership and the great influx of students it has produced. Pam seems to have found a relatively comfortable domain in which to both teach and lead, and its narrowness of scope provides her some welcomed separation from the more corporate side of the newly structured organization. However, while she had had some administrative responsibilities prior to the partnership, in moving into this more formalized and recognized role of leadership, Pam has experienced some dysfunctional aspects of her shift to a new membership group in that English language teachers who were formerly her peers have, through thinly veiled humor, demonstrated some resentment toward her recently elevated status (Merton & Kitt, 1969). A sadness that remains with Pam is that much of the turmoil which she and the other faculty and administrators have endured could have been avoided had the university listened to them and allowed them to create their own academic matriculation bridge programs: “We could have done it…. Why were [university leaders] listening to this outside corporation and not to their own faculty?” Conclusion This chapter has provided experiential understandings of the challenges and opportunities of three “border-crossing” English-teaching professionals who have substantial administrative responsibilities in their respective universities’ language and matriculation pathway programs. Because of their “bordercrosser” status, they were focused on both administrative and instructional matters. All of them noted issues of faculty status, and one of them (Anne) seems especially troubled by the lack of collegiality between those teaching the English part of the pathway program and those teaching the academic courses. Two of these border-crossers deliberated on the big changes that are taking place around these corporate partnerships. While one of them (Ivan)

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seems to maintain an objective distance from his observation that the corporatization of instruction in these courses is inevitable and may be the “wave of the future” for academia, another (Pam) is personally troubled enough by this corporate culture that she is continually vacillating in her view of the programs she is involved with and contemplating whether or not to seek employment opportunities elsewhere.

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English Language Teaching Faculty Introduction Three individuals who elected to participate in my research self-identified as English teaching faculty, two of whom have annual full-time teaching contracts with university benefits, and one of whom is an “adjunct by choice.” In all cases, these individuals shared both pre- and post-partnership perspectives, having experienced the transition first hand. Frustrations and challenges were communicated, as are the numerous opportunities that presented themselves, along with a general feeling that things are not quite as bad as they had first imagined.

Sabine Reinsch

Sabine’s Background Sabine Reinsch is an adjunct-by-choice English language instructor in the General English and Academic English programs affiliated with the Education Syndicates Center at Helena Valley University in Montana. “My father is not a native speaker of English, so I’ve been around this all of my life.” In high school, Sabine had also been a volunteer helping students from South America learn English. After a retreated foray in the direction of a university degree in urban planning, Sabine decided that a teaching career might better suit her and her family’s lives, allowing for summers off with her children. Her rationale for choosing the specific teaching career she did was that she was “comfortable with it.” One of her first teaching jobs was at HVU teaching a course equivalent to first-year English for international students. Sabine also completed an MA in Applied Linguistics at HVU and then went straight into teaching at their English Language Institute. In the ELI, she primarily taught, but would occasionally be drawn in to take on administrative and curriculum-development responsibilities. Still, her “only career ambition really has been simply to teach: to do the best job that I can at teaching. I never really wanted to go on and get involved in administration, although I have at various times in my life. But, primarily, it’s just to be a good teacher; do it for as long as it feels good; and then get out.” Asked if she’s considered going back to school to pursue a Ph.D., Sabine responded in the affirmative,

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but then quickly clarified that every time it happens, she lies down until the feeling passes. Sabine’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership Through the veil of Sabine’s somewhat sardonic orientation, her narrative excerpts that follow illuminate the genuine challenges she and her colleagues faced during their university’s transition to an Education Syndicates partner institution. She does not, however, neglect to shine light on those unfounded fears and concerns which English language program staff and faculty had prior to the collaboration that ultimately did not materialize. As a research participant, Sabine – through her personal associations with faculty teaching in academic disciplines – provided rich data in terms of those challenges being felt by mainstream faculty vis-à-vis the academic quality of the recruited graduate students in the pathway programs and also, in addition to some of the challenges being faced by non-ESL, “home-grown” domestic students. Beyond the initial growing pains that she and others experienced as a result of the corporate sector partnership, Sabine is optimistic, having found her niche within the new organizational structure: “Overall I think it’s turned out better than anticipated: much better than anticipated. Better because we didn’t roll over and let the university President or Provost steamroll us.” Early Days of Change Sabine described the atmosphere at the ELI when she first started to teach. “It was pretty much ‘Here are your courses; show up on these days at these times; enjoy teaching,’ and that was it. But over the years – and especially with Meg’s coming into the Directorship of the ELI – she did, I think, a fantastic job of giving the faculty a lot of opportunities for input, not just in terms of asking us what kind of curriculum we wanted, but letting us experiment with different ways of operationalizing our ideas. It didn’t happen overnight, but we organized faculty committees; we tossed around ideas; we decided on a course of action; and then went with it. And so we were all very happy in terms of the degree of academic freedom.” When I asked her to recall how and when they first learned about the possibility of an Education Syndicates partnership, she exhaled an element of memory-evoked exasperation: “Oh, my goodness! There was a lot of uncertainty for quite a long time. Meg did the best job that she could about informing the faculty about what might happen. The truth is that she was also kept in the dark for a lot of the important decisions, which is really unconscionable in my opinion. But that is just what happened.” Unable to recall exactly when she first learned of the possible joint venture, she does remember that “after it all

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started, we got only bits and pieces of information, and we were trying to put it all together, operating with a little fact and a lot of rumor. You’d hear one thing from one source, but then a week later, we’d get another piece of information. And, as teachers, we’re all trying to analyze ‘How does this go together?’ Meg was doing the best she could under very difficult circumstances of letting us know what was going on and when, but probably the most important meeting was the all-faculty meeting that we had with Clarke – where he came and introduced himself and told us what was happening: it did not go well.” Sabine vividly depicted the atmosphere and events of that meeting: All the faculty were crammed into that little corner classroom in Thompson Hall near the bathrooms: forty faculty jammed in there with a couple of folks from the administrative-clerical side as well. Clarke comes in, and he basically introduces himself and tries to let us know there are no worries. And he gave us the history, his history of how he came to be the new Director. At the time, I believe, Clarke was the coordinator of University Experience for freshman, but he’s also tenured faculty in the College of Nursing. So essentially Clarke said that he was at a meeting with some top-level administrative HVU folks, and that there was this proposal on the table at HVU from a company called Education Syndicates Partnerships which would have them coming in and running the English language program on behalf of HVU. That may not be the exact quote, but that was certainly the meaning that he gave us: Education Syndicates would run the English language program. It did not go over with us very well, obviously. How Clarke ended up leading the program is an interesting part of the story: So then [Clarke] said that the reason he was the Director was because the Provost had asked at this meeting, “Is there anybody here who would like to take the lead on this and be the Director of this new initiative, this new partnership?” Clarke said the room was absolutely silent, and that he looked around, and he said to himself that this would be a good thing to do, and so he would step up and take the reins on this. Oh, so nice of him to do that: to save the day and impress the Provost at the same time. So then the Provost said, “Yes, thank-you so much, Clarke. You’re now head of this partnership!” More like a coronation. I’m not sure what his official title was at the time of our faculty meeting, but it was essentially clear then that he was now the Director of the English Language Institute at HVU. I honestly don’t know if there was ever any serious consideration

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made whether or not to keep Meg as the Director. Clearly she wasn’t invited to that early meeting with the Provost and high level administrators. I just know that the result was that she was no longer officially the Director of the English Language Institute. And from that moment forward, there was a tremendous amount of hostility towards Clarke…for a lot of different reasons. A concern that Sabine and others from the ELI had was that the new Director of the ELI was not someone from their world of English language teaching: “Here he was, this no-longer-teaching professor of Nursing now in charge of a first-year orientation course. What did he know about our profession? He’d never stepped foot in an IEP. I think most of us were thinking that we just could not imagine the Provost selecting one of us to come in and run a program or department in the College of Nursing. So we just thought, ‘What background does he have?’ It makes no sense.” Sabine continued her narrative, which provided details about the meeting interlaced with her own reflections: So at this meeting, Clarke told us what a wonderful company Education Syndicates was, and he gave us all sorts of descriptions of some of the benefits to the students and to us as faculty. When he started describing the Pathways program, I told him that my first teaching position here at HVU a good number of years ago was teaching a grammar and a composition course for non-native speakers, and that those courses had to be cut by the university because when HVU had its Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities accreditation, the NWCCU would not permit those courses as credit courses as they were deemed to be remedial due to the student population. So here was Clarke, coming in and giving this description of exactly the courses I taught. And so I asked whether NWCCU had changed their opinion about remedial type courses? “Can we teach this again?” And he had absolutely no clue of the history of what had been done at HVU in the past. It was obvious from the expression on his face it was the first time he had heard of this at all. And, obviously, that issue must have been resolved since we do now have Pathways courses that are essentially very similar to the courses that we had before. How that works with regional accreditation, I don’t know. Sabine described the meeting as a “dog and pony show,” as Clarke then made note of all the money that was going to come into the university as a result of the partnership, “and the fantastic building that was going to be built because

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of all this projected revenue.” One of the faculty members then asked whether, in light of all of the additional revenue Clarke anticipated coming in, they would be getting raises. According to Sabine, Clarke’s response was a rather hostile, “‘It’s too soon! It’s too soon to ask that question: maybe in five years or so, if the partnership becomes profitable.’ And then, bang. Closed that down. Next question. I don’t think there was a next question for a while.” A repeated refrain that I heard from teachers in various contexts is that the partnerships with the corporate education service providers were already “a done deal” by the time they had even heard of the possibility. Sabine’s narrative continued in this vein: “Even after the meeting, we really didn’t know what was going to happen – just that the partnership was being formed and that we would have more students coming into HVU. Clarke also tried to sell it as, ‘And, for those of you who are working part-time, you’ll now have an opportunity to work full-time.’” To which, once again, Sabine raised her hand and said, “‘Those of us who work part-time, choose to work part-time. And for those of us who are working full-time, they’re basically up to their eyeballs in so much work, they cannot take on any more work.’ And, again, this was all news to Clarke. He had no idea of the faculty; he didn’t know us, and he didn’t know our needs; he didn’t know how many classes we were teaching as full-time. He thought, well, since in Nursing, his full-time load was one or two classes each term, he thought our full-time load was also one or two class – not realizing that we were teaching four and sometimes five classes.” Sabine shared a different experience which followed several months after that initial faculty meeting. A large reception was planned on campus to welcome Education Syndicates Agents coming in from all over the world “to see the latest U.S. acquisition of Education Syndicates.” Meg asked the entire faculty if they would wear the “dreaded Education Syndicates shirts,” shirts provided to the teachers and staff with the Education Syndicates logo emblazoned across the chest. According to Sabine, “We resisted, but we put them on anyway, many of us trying to cover up the Education Syndicates logo, argh! So anyway, we are at this big reception for visiting agents and Education Syndicates corporate guys, and Meg – again to her credit – …kept optimistic, saying, ‘Look, this is coming; we can’t do anything about it; let’s try to make it the best that we can of it.’ Well, I at one point found myself in the vicinity of Mr. Education Syndicates himself, the corporate President of Education Syndicates, and I have to say I found him really boorish, and we overheard him making snide comments about everyone and everything – in full earshot of me and the other faculty sitting there with him. I couldn’t believe it.” It was during this early planning time that several of the faculty, Sabine included, got together with the idea of forming their own school: “I suppose

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that that idea is still floating out there, but it’s not quite as urgent as it seemed when we were really in flux and didn’t know what was going to happen to any of us. Ultimately, people moved into their own domains of teaching, and those of us who wanted distance from Education Syndicates found our way to the Academic and General English programs rather than Pathways. And there was an opportunity for me and others to apply for full-time Instructor lines, just as Clarke had alluded during that first meeting. But, you know, there are a lot of teachers who need benefits. I have benefits through my husband, so I was just happy to let somebody else apply and get those things. And just because I’m considered adjunct, I still participate actively on the development of curriculum – we’ve still got some work to do sharpening the General English curriculum and I’m happy to do that.” When Education Syndicates arrived with so many changes, there was a great deal of uncertainty; but, from Sabine’s perspective, things have settled down and, for her, are positive: “We really had to wonder how much heart we wanted to put into something that might not go anywhere. And so I knew that if I just stuck with teaching, I could do a much better job as a teacher, and I would hope that the students get something out of it obvi­ ously.   I’m relatively happy with how things have turned out for me in this picture.” Relationships and Hierarchy Sabine feels that the partnership has not helped the standing of English language teaching as either program or profession: “I definitely think that we’ve been marginalized, because I don’t think the university – and, in general, universities or administrators in universities – think of us as true professionals in the way that they would think of a Math professor or a Philosophy professor or Nursing professor for that matter. We’re always considered to be service providers, not giving education that leads to some kind of profession like Engineering, Business, or something to that extent. We’re looked at as the step-children in some ways. We’re necessary, because we come along with the package; but, all things being equal, perhaps the university would not want us around.” With the partnership came new structures within and among the English language programs, and these made possible new career options: There are those that see moving from strictly language teaching to more administrative duties as being a stepping stone to bigger and better – and as Education Syndicates likes to call them – “world-class” things. It really just depends on people’s personal aspirations. As the

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layers of administration have become clearer, with Coordinator and Assistant Directorship positions, some have sought out the titles and the higher salary and all that. And I think some are happy to move their workspace from the teacher’s workroom in the Business building to the Education Syndicates Center Building, and for them, perhaps, it’s viewed as more desirable. Eventually, we’re all supposed to move into one new Education Syndicates building, but for now, I think that most teachers are happy for the separation. They leave us alone. Still, what’s kept a civil war from brewing is the fact that many of the people who were hired as midlevel administrators came out of our teaching ranks, so we know these people very well. We know them well enough to understand why they applied for administrative positions: sometimes it’s financial, and in one case I can think of right now, it really is a stepping stone to something else that she’s going on to. And, fine, you know? If someone needs administrative experience to meet future goals, and this may be the only way someone is going to get it, more power to you, you know? But for me, just give me my dry erase marker and a room of motivated students, and I’m happy. United by Curriculum A positive outcome which emerged from the early days of transition and turmoil shared by Sabine is the fact that the faculty was strongly united by a desire to protect the curriculum: During this transition, we collectively dug in our heels, and we demanded that our curriculum not be changed, that there not be any sort of Education Syndicates conformity with the other Education Syndicates curriculum at their other university-based centers. No offence to any other Education Syndicates partner university, but we thought that our curriculum was light-years better than what they had. And remember, Education Syndicates really did not come in as English-teaching professionals; they came as investors-turned-entrepreneurs, with the aim of moving the university’s cash into their own pockets. But as far as autonomy in the classroom, it hasn’t changed. And again, Meg – we have Meg to thank for this, and the faculty did back her up – We all refused to have the academic side of what we do interfered with by Education Syndicates, period. We basically said we weren’t going to do it. And in fact, according to Sabine, “If anything, our teaching autonomy has gotten a little better, at least from my perspective. Right now, I’ve been teaching

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primarily in the General English program in order to get them off the ground, and I’m enjoying it tremendously – in part because I had a lot of opportunity to develop curriculum, and that’s always nice from a teaching standpoint. You can be given a class to teach, and that’s one thing; but when they ask you to help design one of the core classes or design an elective, that’s a golden opportunity. For that I’m very thankful. And even though I’m contracted as an adjunct, they gave me a course release to help develop curriculum, so I was compensated. It does take a lot of time, but, for me it’s a creative outlet, so I’m not complaining.” What I’ve Heard from the School of Business While Sabine does not teach courses for Pathway students, she has first-hand access – through personal friendships – to several people in the content disciplines who influence the implementation of policy. She prefaces our discussion by relating that she has to be “a little ambiguous” as the protection of her friends’ identities is of great concern to her, as it was then and is now to me as I relay her stories that follow. In particular, Sabine has “two friends who are relatively high-level within the College of Business and who have been very disappointed, to say the least.” As she elaborated: Primarily they feel the Education Syndicates Graduate Pathway students are not prepared in terms of their ability to speak English and to function competitively with students who were either direct-admit international students or domestic students in the program. And the basic idea is that that particular department would welcome any student from anywhere so long as they can pass the required entrance exams and have the appropriate scores in college to get into a graduate program. This person was basically saying, “We will not accept people into this program who do not meet the same minimal credentials as other students coming in from outside of Education Syndicates.” But the problem is that the promise being made to Education Syndicates students is that, if they exit the Pathway and have taken their two semesters of EAP support courses, and they’ve had their beginning-level content courses in Business – and as long as you’ve passed them all – then you can move right into a graduate College of Business program: no TOEFL; no GMAT. So, this person from School of Business is objecting because the students that he or she has had in the program so far – before they have been officially…admitted, right – they have not been prepared. They have not been prepared for graduate studies in Business.

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Another concern expressed by Sabine’s School of Business friends was related to faculty positions and who would pay for them: Because of the great number of students who are interested in the College of Business coming to the Pathways program, the biggest question has been, “Alright, so if the university is forcing us to take some of these unprepared students, is the university also going to fund additional faculty?” And you have to consider, in order for them to keep their accreditation, they have to maintain a certain ratio of adjuncts to full-time faculty. “I cannot put some outrageous number of students into one class, so if the university is willing to fund full-time professors on a line – and not out of our existing budget – well then, maybe we’ll talk about, you know, how we can get only the qualified Education Syndicates students in.” And I don’t think this person would object to having more faculty, so long as the money didn’t come out of their department – as long as the university was willing to give money to the College of Business to fund faculty lines in the department, this person thought most would be fine with that. But this person did not want the department to have to…give up precious resources to try to hire faculty to take care of these students who he felt were not qualified to be there in the first place. Sabine then shared a story she was privy to which involved domestic students in Pathway courses where the ELS Pathway students are taking credit-bearing disciplinary content courses along with their fully matriculated counterparts. This was a story which she felt “…is indicative of some of the issues that have been coming up recently in the mainstream Business classes.” As Sabine told me: Some of the courses require students to work in teams, in groups. So in one particular graduate class, there was a team with all Pathway students and one native-English-speaking American student. Oh, and as a sidebar, apparently because there are so many Pathways students in the lower level graduate Business classes, they also tend to dominate in the classrooms, and so this is also causing a little bit of tension with the domestic students. But anyway, the Pathway students and the one domestic student were assigned to a group, and their group work required that they go out to a worksite to meet with a business person and, sort of, interview them. Everything was scheduled ahead of time by the faculty member, but the student teams were to be prepared with and ask questions about this particular business that they were visiting. So the group arrives at the appointed time at this business person’s office, and none of the Education

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Syndicates students had a clue as to what they were supposed to do. Nobody came prepared with questions. They had absolutely no cultural understanding of what was supposed to happen. So the American student is there, and he’s the only one talking. He’s the only one who has come prepared with questions, and of course, is now the only one writing things down. So I understand through my channels that this student gets back to the professor, and I don’t think he formally filed a complaint with the university, but he did file a complaint personally with the professor saying that this was unfair: “I felt unprofessional. This has to be different next time.” In Sabine’s view, the Education Syndicates students are not the individuals who are unprepared; it’s the faculty: “I’m not aware of any pre-partnership or current support being given to [disciplinary] content faculty teaching Education Syndicates Pathway students. There should be something. I’m fairly certain that any faculty member teaching at HVU would have to have had the same, you know, the diversity training which all university professionals have to go through, but I’m not aware of anything the university or Education Syndicates is providing to them that helps them with the teaching of English language learners. I know some English language colleagues who teach the Pathway’s EAP courses expressed interest in doing something to make the transition a little bit smoother for the faculty teaching the regular credit courses, but if something actually came of that, I can’t say.” In Sabine’s view, the need for professional development of the content teaching faculty is going to become increasingly obvious as a main effect of the pathway programs: “They’re going to need help, especially as the programs grow; they’re going to be huge. Yes, the real impact of these pathway programs is going to be felt by the content faculty. It’s really going to impact faculty hiring for the rest of the university.” Positive Change Sabine is grateful to have found her place teaching in the General English Program, rather than in the Pathway programs. Regardless of her position, she does see some positive aspects to the partnership with Education Syndicates: “I think the university now knows who we are, which is great. And the university has had upper administration visit, and they’ve seen what we do, and I  think there had been a lot of misconception before about what we were doing. Maybe some are starting to see us as more than just service providers. They see that there’s a big faculty. We’re interesting folks by and large, we work well together, and we have a lot to offer, not just, ‘Here’s a noun, here’s a verb, put them together, and good luck with that!’ – which I think is what they

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thought we did. They know who we are, and they know that we provide a vital service for the students and for the university.” Another promised improvement is in terms of office space: “In terms of facilities, we have always had crap facilities, gotten second best of everything. But now…you’ve probably heard about the new building coming and seen the new Education Syndicates Center lounge; they completely renovated that part of the building for us. They also reconfigured a big part of the second floor of the College of Engineering for us, which is also very nice.” Yet the improved office space has not been all positive: “With the facilities, we have sort of a mixed bag. Even though our facilities are much nicer individually – administration and student services and teachers – because we are in two separate buildings, the communication – the ability to communicate – has gone way down. And so stuff happens in the Education Syndicates Center building that we don’t hear about. Likewise, stuff happens in the faculty space, and Education Syndicates Center residents don’t know about it as well. Maybe it’s just part of the nature of management vs. workers in a way. Sometimes they’re very good at communication, and sometimes they’re late at getting information to us, and the rumors have gotten to us before the actual announcement. It should improve once we’re all under one roof.” Another improvement is in the amount of teaching for the full-timers, though I note that the number of hours is still high by university teaching standards: “We’ve also had our teaching load reduced, so we’re teaching fewer hours. Full-time is 18 for Academic English, and it’s 16 for General English, so I think everyone has appreciated that.” With the partnership, upgrades to the computer lab came swiftly, and the offerings in terms of student activities have increased, which Sabine suggests  may be in part due to the much greater number of students. Student numbers have grown, and, Sabine said, the quality of student has been better than expected – other than perhaps those students directly entering into graduate Pathway programs: “You know, at first we were told that the students who would be coming were probably going to be mostly Chinese, mostly kids of privileged families, and mostly not too bright. But I’d say that the students I’m seeing are probably even a little bit better prepared than students who came to the ELI before Education Syndicates; but I can’t say that it isn’t just coincidence.” Certainly, one of the key positive aspects of the partnership, in addition to the programs’ rapid growth, has been the number of additional fulltime faculty lines with benefits. “And,” as Sabine related, “nobody lost their job as a result of the merger or partnership or whatever you want to call it.” There has been some frustration due to the amount of faculty and staff shuffling in and out of new positions, “and shuffling is still going on, especially with

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administration, It’s an ongoing process. Just like an earthquake, you know. It keeps shaking. The aftershocks keep coming. For most, however, I think that the shake-up has brought opportunity. What do they say about pain before gain?” The Donald Trump of Language Programs Sabine described a kind of identity crisis of sorts that she and others have gone through as a result of the new Pathway structure: “They initially took down our  ELI website and replaced it with the Education Syndicates ‘rah-rah’ website for the recruitment agents. There was a time when you could click on a link and, you know, here are my teachers, here’s the faculty. Here’s Sabine Reinsch, and she’s been teaching for X number of years, and she enjoys bowling, language research, or whatever. But all that came down – the pictures, the names, the credentials – all that came down right before Education Syndicates came in. I don’t know if they have plans to re-personalize it, but to be honest, I  doubt it. There’s just no web identity of the faculty. It’s all Education Syndicates.” With some annoyance in her voice, Sabine shared the lingering resentment which she and others have harbored against the corporate entity itself: One of the things I’ve noticed about Education Syndicates Corporate is that they come in and they try to represent everything that you see as their doing. They don’t give any credit to whatever existed before Education Syndicates came in and partnered with the university. It’s just, “This is our Center.” So when you see pictures of the Education Syndicates Center building on the Education Syndicates website, it looks almost like Education Syndicates created the whole thing from the ground up…. [T]hey have a tendency, …in my opinion, to present themselves as much bigger and grander than they really are. Education Syndicates wants to be the Donald Trump of language programs. I think that sums it up nicely. [laughs] Quality? Eh. And related to that, one thing that really bothers me about Education Syndicates – and, I think they’re backing off on this lately – is that they have a tendency in all their literature to describe themselves as “world-class.” “We have world-class teachers, world-class facilities.” To me, anybody who self-describes themselves as “world-class,” ain’t. [laughs] At professional conferences that Sabine attends, there had at first been a great deal of hostility when she or colleagues would acknowledge they were part of Education Syndicates at Helena Valley University. As a consequence:

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We would just kind of swallow that Education Syndicates modifier before we would say HVU. And colleagues from other universities would kind of look at us and say, “Oh, we’re so sorry that this is happening to you,” you know, “Hang in there, be tough, and we’ll hope that they’ll go away.” Initially, the response was – well, not quite pariah, because they knew that we did not seek this. This was being foisted upon us. I think they felt sorry for us but still wanted to keep their distance because they thought that we were taken over by a company that had really no good solid background in academic language training, and that we had basically become, you know, just like a drive-through McLanguage. You know, just drive through and pick up a scripted text book, pick up a class, and out you go with no real quality control. In the early days, that was kind of how we felt – McLanguaged. Yeah, the participial form. But I think we’ve worked hard, and we’re working hard to retain our character and our personnel and all the good work that we’ve accomplished so far. Yeah, professional colleagues typically just looked at us with empathy. One of Sabine’s hopes in taking part in my research was that it might help in getting the word out that they “hadn’t drunk the Kool-Aid entirely. Yes, this happened to us. Yes, I stayed; I didn’t quit. I think once our story gets out there – that we were taken over by a corporate entity but did not lose our academic credibility – we’ll be okay. We hung tough, and we basically said we will not lower our standards to meet the university’s partnership requirements. I think we’ll get some street cred for doing that.” I Don’t Feel McTeachered Overall Sabine believes that it has all turned out much better than she had ever anticipated – better because of not “roll[ing] over and let[ting] the university President and Provost steamroll us: we feel that we stood our ground on the academic side, and we won. Had that happened, I think there would have been a wholesale departure of faculty, administration, Meg, and the people who were in administration at the time as well. But because we dug in, we said, ‘We have standards, and we will not allow the university or Education Syndicates to change what we do in the classroom.’” Sabine said she is just now coming to grips with the whole Education Syndicates thing because the dust has finally settled. They all now understand where the English Language Program fits into the university’s mission a little bit better. They have a partnership with Education Syndicates, but they, as English-teaching professionals, are not Education Syndicates: “So in terms of being a professional, I don’t feel McTeachered, okay, if I can put it that way. I appreciate the increase in salary;

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we do still have our autonomy in terms of curriculum and talking to administration and suggesting changes. So I think, so far, so good. I don’t feel any less of a teacher. I don’t feel less of a professional as a result of the association with Education Syndicates, but it’s, so far – knock wood – so far, so good.” Researcher Reflection: Sabine Reinsch Sabine’s accounts of institutional secrecy, fearful uncertainty, and disconnections with faculty leading up to the partnership were recurring testimony among English language program faculty participants. Disallowing English program faculty involvement in or transparency of decision-making that impacts their livelihoods potentially intensified existing feelings of marginalization (Tougas & Beaton, 2002). Sabine’s reflections from her friend on the faculty in the College of Business bring to light not only the challenges and concerns of disciplinary faculty and administrators with regard to the international student matriculation pathway programs, but also the very real unease that academic professionals may have concerning “going on the record” about their workplace experiences. Sabine had kindly forwarded my research study recruitment e-mail to friends she had in the discipline of Business. And while they gave Sabine consent to share their stories as second-hand accounts, all declined participation. The irony of non-participation by status-holding academics in disciplines charged with the generation of new knowledge was not lost on me, especially in light of the common argument used to justify the marginalized status of English teaching professionals and academic librarians working in university communities – that they are not perceived as contributing to academic knowledge creation (Gillum, 2010). Through the many frustrations she experienced, Sabine’s outlook is nonetheless generally positive. And through focusing on teaching and keeping separate from the administrative and corporate aspects of the partnership, she is not feeling “McTeachered.” Her initial fears that the quality and academic integrity of the programs would be compromised or standardized to fit with the corporate partner’s model were not realized.

Ellie Parker

Ellie’s Background Ellie Parker, Senior Instructor and English language faculty member at Drexel Hill University (DHU) in Flagstaff, described herself as being reactive rather than ambitious in her career moves. After graduating with an undergraduate degree in German and earning a Post-Graduate Certificate of

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Education – which is the pedagogical certification required to teach in the U.K. public school system – Ellie had a brief stint as a high school teacher of German. “I hated it. I loathed it. I abhorred it. I vowed never to teach high school German again!” [laughs] Rethinking her career choice, she returned to university to begin a Master’s degree program in English Literature. Needing money, and “with great reluctance,” Ellie responded in the affirmative when asked to work as an English language teacher at the university she had been attending. “My God! I can do this!” Soon after, she left the Literature program and enrolled in English Language Teaching Certificate courses, now known as the Cambridge ESOL CELTA and DELTA courses and programs. Ellie has been teaching English language in both ESL and EFL contexts ever since. DHU and its original English Language Institute first became known to Ellie through her work on a Master of Arts course in Applied Linguistics at the university. Initially hired as adjunct faculty, and later contracted as a full-time Instructor with mentoring responsibilities for MA TESOL interns, Ellie concurrently began and is now near completion of a Ph.D. in Education at DHU. When news of DHU’s intention to partner with PassageMaker Partnerships initially made its way to the ELI administration and faculty, they thought it “was the end of the world; life won’t be the same. But if the CEA reinstitutes our accreditation, I think we teachers will come out smelling of roses.” Ellie’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership Ellie’s narratives are reflective of her experiences of having “lived through” the initial turmoil of the partnership and organizational changes to ultimately find herself working in a post-partnership context that has been “nothing but good for teachers.” In the narrative excerpts that follow, Ellie discusses positive outcomes in terms of preserving the programs’ curricular autonomy and intellectual property in addition to the challenges language program staff experienced – and, in some ways, continues to experience – due to physical separations and organizational shifting, contributing to “us-versus-them” mentalities. Issues concerning professional development for disciplinary content-teaching faculty are discussed, as well as Ellie’s perception of the partnership’s impact to students. Finding Out It had been considerable time since Ellie first learned of the proposed joint venture. She told me, “God, I don’t now remember the details of when we first found out about PassageMaker, but I do remember a lot of consternation, a lot of depression, a lot of tears, a lot of frustration, and a real lack of reliable information.” As has been the case in other universities, the existing English

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language program administration and staff were among the last to know of the imminent and top-down transformation: “The Director of the ELI was really caught off guard by the university, and there was a lot of sort of secrecy and reluctance to involve her or her administrative staff in the decision-making and negotiations at the university level.” And it was this same form of secrecy and reluctance to involve subordinates that Ellie feels was unintentionally replicated by the ELI Director toward her own faculty: “It was exactly what the administration of the ELI then ended up doing to the teachers; when she and her staff starting digging in to try to fight this, they didn’t inform or consult us – the teachers – and that then had the effect of making many of us feel as if our involvement wasn’t valued. And I think that that got better eventually, but there was a lot of turmoil for several months, a lot of unknowns.” Once things began to be settled, and the details began to become clearer, there was a point when, according to Ellie, Vanessa, the ELI Director, said to her teaching staff, “You know, I think this is going to be a bad thing for DHU but a good thing for the ELI.” As I sat with Ellie in a small conference room adjacent to the teaching staff’s cubical offices, she said, “I don’t know about the bad thing for DHU, but from my perspective it has been an excellent thing for the ELI and for the English language teaching faculty.” Never having had a decision-making role at DHU, Ellie was not directly involved in the lead-up to the transition from ELI to PassageMaker Center. According to Ellie, there would be periodic information sessions given by Vanessa, who was, in essence, demoted from ELI Director to the Academic Director under Alex, the new PassageMaker Center Director. But, in fact, according to Ellie, there was very little communication between the decision makers of PassageMaker or the university and the language teachers: Information just dripped down, you know. There was and continues to be no real process in place for dissemination of information. Stuff moves very fast, and there’s just not an ethos of communication from over there – and I know your audio recorder isn’t getting this, but I am waving my hand towards the admin building – to over here, in the space where we teachers are currently being stabled. And I am very much part of this group, of teaching professionals rather than being part of the administrative group housed at the admin building. So every now and then, there will be a conversation in a corridor, a lot of information is still transferred through conversations in corridors as it was in the early days when all of the rumors were flying pre-partnership. Certainly, up until, say, from this time last year, and maybe through to Christmas, it was an emotional rollercoaster for all of us. Vanessa got the brunt of it, but we teachers still

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shared the anxiety. You didn’t know anything. You were told that something was going to be the end of the world, and then you were told something else might happen, and then, maybe it’s not so bad after all. This time last year, there was total depression. Twelve months on, we’re in a much better position, but I’m not sure we needed to suffer through so much turmoil. A criticism that Ellie has for both the university and the corporate partner itself is that neither made an attempt to find out what the ELI was, what its people were doing, nor what was important to them. Instead they just brought their own people over: “There could have been more communication. If they could have looked at what we do and had more of a vision from our perspective as professionals, and how PassageMaker and the ELI were going to mesh, rather than say, ‘Okay, this is what is going to happen: make it work!’ For the first semester, maybe two semesters, PassageMaker sent this…guy over…[who] was supposed to ease the transition. How can I say this? He didn’t do anything to build any kind of bridges between us and PassageMaker, between what we do and what PassageMaker’s vision was. And PassageMaker was perceived by all of us as extremely, extremely predatory, and that might still be the case.” One of the positive aspects of the reorganization of the language program was that the newly appointed Center Director, Alex, who does not have an ESL or Applied Linguistics qualification, has stood very much as a buffer between PassageMaker and the language program faculty and staff: “Yes, he’s [from an unrelated content discipline]. No, he’s not an English language teacher. But he has been a fairly strong defender of who we are and what we do, and has said, ‘Hands off!’ to PassageMaker. ‘You’re not getting the curriculum.’ And from what I have heard, DHU’s chief financial officer was also, like, ‘Whoa! You’re not steamrolling us in that way.’ So I’m hearing that DHU has put up much more of a fight than anybody ever expected them to, and therefore, we’ve got a much better deal than other partner universities had. So yes, I think PassageMaker came swooping [down] with their black cape…and they were just going to just milk us dry. That is probably what their intention was, but, you know, the defense went up, and, for the teachers at least, it’s maybe not so bad.” Academic Autonomy Ellie gives credit to the new Center Director and the university Provost for keeping the corporate partner, PassageMaker, out of the picture in terms of the curriculum. For Ellie, her primary responsibility lies in the Academic English Programs which, in addition to their own five-level EAP curriculum,

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facilitates the delivery of a number of courses for pathway program students. Ellie is very happy with the design of their courses: “We have an excellent curriculum. We have an innovative curriculum; we have a dynamic curriculum. Nobody else can seem to keep up with our content-based curriculum, and it is constantly moving forward.” Ellie had heard that PassageMaker had toyed with the idea of creating a uniform curriculum so that students could transfer across all their programs, but eventually they had realized that it wasn’t possible: “Every institution handles PassageMaker differently. The way PassageMaker has been implemented in DHU and any other partner university in the U.S. is vastly different.” According to Ellie, now if a student wants to change from one PassageMaker Center in California to another PassageMaker Center in Texas, it will be treated as if the student was “coming in from a Kaplan or ELS or Berlitz. There is going to be no direct transfer because the curriculums are so different.” As Ellie understands the agreement, DHU has full control if its curriculum, and will not be sharing it with other PassageMaker Centers: “We are, academically, under DHU, not under PassageMaker in any way.” “Them” Is Not Vanessa; “Them” Is PassageMaker It was important for Ellie that I understand the separations which exist within the PassageMaker Center structure: “You have to understand that there are two fairly distinct sides to what’s now happening. There is the PassageMaker sort of corporate, student-services sort of side – where the Pathways reside, and then there’s the more academic English Language Programs side. And the ELP has its own programs, but yes, does provide and deliver several courses for the students in the Pathways. Most people don’t get it. The university community generally sees PassageMaker DHU as this privatized glob, and that includes the English language teachers as well.” Ellie bemoans the fact that many within the university view the language program faculty as now “working for a corporation” within a profit-orientated unit: I don’t think that people get that there is very clear division between the academic side of it and the administrative, marketing, student services, and admissions side of it. They see us all as being corporate PassageMaker, but I want to be clear with you that we’re not. For me personally, and for a lot of teachers, I know this is an important distinction. Because it’s not something I’m proud of. I don’t want people to see me as a corporate employee or a victim of the corporatization of education. I don’t want to be seen like that because, I’m not. I work for a university. I teach in an academic English program. PassageMaker DHU has got nothing to do with me fundamentally. Yes, they may be very much part of the

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decision-making processes, but I’m not responsible to them, do you know what I mean? I really do not feel that PassageMaker identity. Even the faculty from the Department of Foreign Languages – where the ELI used to reside – even they don’t get, and I’m very often their only source of information about what’s happening. And I think you are starting to see that I’m not necessarily a fount of accurate knowledge about how this partnership is set up, but I am adamant about how it’s set apart. There are two separate camps, and the Pathway programs themselves kind of have a leg the academic camp and one in the PassageMaker camp. In addition to the separation of responsibility and focus, an outcome of the partnership is a temporary separation of the English language teachers and the program administrators. As Ellie told me, “When the partnership was first implemented, there was no way that we could all be in the same building. We were far too many for old Clarke Hall, so it was decided that there’d be the administrators in what’s now known as the PassageMaker Center building and the teachers over here in the old School of Business building. Initially, I was moved into the PassageMaker Center, but I fought very strongly to be here with the teachers.” In Ellie’s view, the physical separation of administrators and teaching faculty has contributed to a lack of communication: “Unless one is physically over in the PassageMaker Center building and talking to the people involved in the Pathways or student services or whatever, then, apart from that, you hear nothing. There’s no real contact. As a group, most teachers have almost no contact with what’s happening in Pathways. I don’t know what classes are running; I don’t know who teaches them.” In addition, the English Language Program teachers were not set up properly in their new spaces: “When we moved into the new faculty space, which, you can see is a fairly open-concept space with cubicles and some shared workspaces, we struggled for a long time. The first day of the semester we had no photocopier, you know; stuff didn’t work; we had no phone. It was a struggle. It really was hard. Whereas the administrators in the PassageMaker Center, those people were virtually set up during the summer semester: building renovated, new furniture, computers and photocopiers up and working, telephones. When we came back for that first fall semester, it was absolute chaos for us. It really was. And, this teachers’ room was kind of seen as not a nice place to be.” However, things have improved:  “Now, over the course of the semester – and this continues, I think – this faculty space has been viewed as an excellent place to be. There’s a buzz with the teachers; there’s a lot of camaraderie; there’s a lot of social happenings here.”

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Ellie perceives a real separation between her faculty space and the corporate administrators’ space: There is a lot of crap happening over at the PassageMaker building; there’s a lot of dysfunction. And so it’s now seen that maybe this is a better place to be. I certainly feel that way. So there had become an “us-andthem” thing, and I was trying to not let that happen. I was trying to say to the teachers here, “‘Them’ is not Vanessa and the other academic people. ‘Them’ is PassageMaker.” But, unfortunately, now I hear Vanessa talking about the “them” being the teachers. You know what I mean? Honestly, in the past, the ELI itself was marginalized on campus by the broader university community. Now, I think the English Language Programs and PassageMaker DHU is less marginalized, but the teachers, now the teachers have become marginalized people within the institution, and I think that part of that is the physical separation. The teachers are almost seen as the “other” by a lot of people over there, over in the PassageMaker Center building. Absolutely. I think that the teachers are becoming “the other” to those who used to be our peers and coworkers. The difference in the two groups is mirrored in the physical associations of being located in the PassageMaker Center building: “If one has career ambitions, I think there are people here who very much see getting over there, over to the ELP admin in the PassageMaker building – getting some kind of contact with over there – as being the only way, or what’s necessary, for advancement. So getting your face over there in some kind of administrative role is the way. But that kind ambition is seen more with newer hires. I’ve seen that, certainly, many of them are interested in belonging to that ELP admin group in the PassageMaker building. And some are being approached to have work over there. I know that one person said no. A new hire from this semester was approached to be a Coordinator, and didn’t. But I think advancement is seen as moving from here to over there.” Ellie is grateful that the English language program is academically independent and under the university, not PassageMaker. “I feel it is important to me. I don’t have a PassageMaker identity. I don’t like – really, none of us really like – wearing PassageMaker logos on our shirts and on our badges. I don’t know who, how, or why, but I get the corporate-wide PassageMaker newsletter every week by email. [Snaps fingers] Delete. I don’t want to know, don’t want to hear about PassageMaker…London or PassageMaker Vermont. I don’t. I hate it. [Snaps fingers] Delete. I do not feel part of the PassageMaker family. I work for DHU.”

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In the first year of the partnership there was an attempt on the part of PassageMaker to use images of DHU PassageMaker teachers in their promotions and websites, “and that was one thing that we didn’t want at all – Did. Not. Want. There was one point where pictures were taken of teachers and  students and they then found themselves on the PassageMaker website, and on YouTube as well; and there was a lot of ‘No, no, no, no! You cannot use us in that way!’ We were very adamant about not having our pictures being used to promote PassageMaker. DHU and the English language program, yes, but not PassageMaker. One student came to me and said, ‘You know, I  found a video of me doing Karaoke on YouTube, and I don’t like it.’ So I brought that to PassageMaker’s attention, and it was removed, eventually. It’s getting better.” While many people on campus wrongly associate the English language teachers with PassageMaker, according to Ellie, most of the teachers do not in fact report to PassageMaker. Although the Center Director of PassageMaker is party to decisions about salaries and promotions, teaching technology, and computers, as Ellie wanted to make clear, “that’s not what I’m all about. That’s not where my loyalty, if you like, lies. The ultimate decision makers could be the university or it could be Alex. It wouldn’t make any difference to me. My loyalties lie with the students and with my peer teachers.” Professional Development for Disciplinary Content Faculty The idea of the English language teachers providing professional development for faculty who were teaching disciplinary content was raised, but quickly quashed, according to Ellie: “It never happened, you know, the idea of helping. I personally would have liked to have been involved in development and delivery of some sort of professional development to help academic content faculty tweak what they do to make their courses more accessible to non-native speakers. But, yeah, it was mooted in one of the meetings with the Pathway Coordinators. Still, from what I’m hearing, some of the content faculty could use a little guidance from us on working with international students. Some professional development is probably appropriate, and I think that we’ve got the people who could do a good job at providing it.” Ellie shared with me some of the stories about disciplinary content faculty that had been circulating among the English language teachers. These painted a quite negative picture of the content teaching faculty in terms of their negative attitudes towards the students. “But,” as Ellie surmised, “perhaps by the end of the semester, the faculty were seeing through their prejudice and seeing that, actually these kids were pretty smart and knew their stuff. So the professors learned a bit perhaps, and for the PassageMaker students the following semester, it was less

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traumatic. The faculty began to have different expectations and attitudes towards the PassageMaker students as time went on.” Student Impact Ellie shared her perspective in terms of the partnership’s impact to students. In addition to an increase in class size, there had been an increase in fees, “but other than that, there’s not been much impact to the students. There’s been some whining about the increase in the tuition because it went up from about $3,000 to $5,000 overnight. I shouldn’t say, whining; it’s a fair complaint. I think some students were grandfathered in at the old price for one semester, maybe two…. We heard the Saudi Arabian commission or consulate wouldn’t tolerate the increase in price.” Ellie went on to talk about the composition of the programs: “Saudis had been 50% of our population, but, in fact, we’ve been playing catch-up with teachers for two semesters in our recruiting up until the week before the semester started. We’re also getting a lot more Chinese students now. There is a real shift from being very Arabic; we are now becoming very Arabic and Asian. But I haven’t noticed a dramatic change in my classes; but then again, I’m not teaching Pathways EAP courses. Maybe there’s less diversity over there. I think that over time we’ll look back and say, my God, remember when we had all those Arabic students? …But so far it’s been a very gradual shift.” In addition to the branding of PassageMaker on the buildings and on instructors’ shirts and badges, Ellie suggested that the students also get branded as PassageMaker, and most seem to embrace it: “There are always tons of t-shirt give-aways that the students love. They actually had [PassageMaker] ice-removers for your car made! Like we need that in Arizona! And so there is that sense, you know, that if you wear a PassageMaker t-shirt, or you’re a PassageMaker student on campus, you are labeled – positively or negatively or whatever.” Positive for Teachers Ellie feels strongly that the language programs are stronger post-partnership, and this is a definite change in her view: “I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this, but we thought it was the end of the world, initially. But my feelings have changed. We are huge. The number of full-time benefit jobs is increasing all the time; people have a certain security of employment which was never there because student numbers would fluctuate. We have curricular freedom, you know. We’ve kept our DHU identities. We have the DHU health benefits package. We’re on the university radar. Yes they don’t quite understand what we do, and maybe most don’t quite see the distinctions between the English

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Language Program faculty and PassageMaker, but at least we’re now on the radar. Really, it has been an extremely positive thing – from my perspective – for the teachers. And we have so little to do with PassageMaker, so little.” In particular, the number of full-time benefit positions that have been created is “a good thing that happened, a thing that everybody thought would never happen, but did. I think it’s phenomenal, and I think that the Center Director, Alex, has a lot to do with that. We are now in a position with Alex being high-status in the university to argue for that directly to the Provost. And I think that, because PassageMaker is a European thing, and in Europe there really is no such thing as adjunct faculty, it makes absolute sense to a European company to hire full-time people with benefits. That’s a puzzling thing, right?” Ellie views this transformational experience critically through her perspective as a teacher and more generally an academic; yet in spite of the early frustrations, she feels very positive: “It has been nothing but good for teachers far as I can see. Yes, we’ve gone through a lot of frustration, and yes, there have been some idiotic things happening, like, when we first started here, we had classrooms of our own; and that was huge. But there was just a flat screen TV on the wall; there was no white board. Well, trying teaching low-level grammar without a whiteboard, you know? It is nonsensical stuff, because nobody asked the teachers about that kind of thing. My hope is that that kind of thing will get better with time, as the non-ESL-literate administration gets a better sense of what we do here, why we’re all here in the first place. Right now, and as they’re planning the new building…I wouldn’t trust them to come and actually ask people, ‘What do you want?’ as far as how the classrooms should actually be set up. But there is a growing awareness. I truly believe that they want to give us what we want, but they’ll give us what they think we want rather than ask us, ‘What exactly do you want?’ I’m hopeful they’ll get better at that sort of thing with time.” Researcher Reflection: Ellie Parker Ellie’s stories are interwoven with layers of “us” and “them.” At times these were reflective of frustrations born out of feelings of inequities and marginalization between English program faculty and administrators; the English language program professionals and the corporate partner; and the English program professionals and the host university’s high-level administrators (Leach & Vliek, 2008). Ironically, perhaps, the safety of an “us-and-them” dichotomous relationship is where Ellie seems to find peace: “I like the fact that the English Language Program is academically independent and under the university, not PassageMaker. I feel it is important to me. I don’t have

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a PassageMaker identity.” When she and I were parting ways following the interview, Ellie emphasized the importance of my understanding and reporting that she and the other teachers were not corporate pawns of PassageMaker Partnerships, that their identities were as academics within a university, not profit-oriented corporate employees or “victim[s] of the corporatization of education.” Ellie is optimistic about the positive impact the partnership has had for English language teaching professionals in terms of full-time employment opportunities and job security, but she expresses regret that it came at the cost of so much secrecy and frustration, and that neither the corporate partner nor the university made adequate attempts to find out who they were and what was important to them.

Kevin Andrews

Kevin’s Background Kevin Andrews is a full-time English language Instructor in Kalamazoo University’s (KU) AcademicPrep pathway and English language programs. While studying for a Master’s degree in English Literature, a professor had told Kevin, “‘I don’t usually tell students what they should major in, but I think that you should be a teacher.’ But, I thought, ‘No, no, no – I don’t want to do that!’” Still, while working on the degree, Kevin electively took a TESOL course during a summer session and found it suited him. “I ended up liking it. I really liked the people in it. I thought, ‘If these are the people in this profession, this is the profession and these are the kind of people I want to spend my working life with.’” He went straight into teaching out of graduate school, without any teaching experience or teaching practicum. Through submitting his resume at a TESOL Convention, Kevin interviewed for and was hired to teach in a university-based IEP in New Mexico. It was considered a full-time position but did not include benefits and required that his contract be renewed quarterly at the discretion of a person Kevin described as a “fickle and temperamental” program director. As an early career lesson, Kevin recounted the advice he had received from a colleague after having witnessed the strategic marginalization of a teacher who had garnered the disapproval of the program director: “I asked one guy who’d been there nine years – four quarters a year for 36 straight quarters – …‘How do you survive?’ He said, ‘I don’t go into the office. The more she thinks about you, the more things she can find wrong with you, and the less likely you are to keep your job.’ I managed to stay there almost five years. His comment kind of stuck with me, and maybe it did have a subconscious influence about how…to keep my job.”

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By nature, Kevin is an advocate for others, so his colleague’s recommended keep-your-head-down strategy has been difficult for him to sustain. Kevin’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership As one of the few English language teachers from the original ELI who remained following the university’s decision to partner with AcademicPrep Pathways, Kevin’s narratives reveal a pragmatist who accepts and enjoys the benefits of the partnership, but then tries to work from within to improve the now less academically focused system as he perceives it. He bore witness to the painful and unexpected transition of Kalamazoo’s ELI from a largely consensusdriven, collegial, and academically professional program to an organization which Kevin views as being managed top-down and profit-driven and which did little to elevate the programs’ or his own professional standing within the academy: they remain, in his words, “within but on the margins of academia.” While the pathway programs are rapidly growing at KU, Kevin has concerns that the programs will be unsustainable if administrators do not recognize and take actions to support the needs of faculty. Pre-partnership Reminiscences Before AcademicPrep partnered with Kalamazoo University to assume recruitment responsibilities for international students, administration of the English language program, and development of its matriculation pathway programs, the university had had a well-established and successful IEP. During what was described as a painful and poorly managed transition, nearly all of the existing administrators and full-time faculty left the university and sought employment elsewhere. With them they took years of professional and institutional experience. Kevin was one of the few full-time English-teaching faculty who chose to remain. Kevin reminisced about “the old ELI’s” well-established reputation for academic rigor in the English language teaching community and its professional and collegial atmosphere prior to the university’s decision to partner with AcademicPrep: “We all had very close relationships with one another. [Before the corporate sector partnership,] it was almost run by consensus – from the bottom up, run to serve the students; but it was always run by someone who was also an ESL instructor, not just an administrator.” Directorships and coordinator positions within the ELI were democratically determined through secret ballot selection, which Kevin suggested “was good, [but] the bad side of that is that those types of organizations can become cliquish.” Even as Kevin recounted the former ELI’s collegial atmosphere and academic professionalism as among its strengths, he acknowledged that

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“its weakness was, administratively, it was not very professional because it was all run by academics.” The prior ELI administrators had “kept honest books, and the directors worked hard to make sure it was all kept solvent, but it wasn’t with a tremendous business sense of ‘what are the [business] goals, and where do we go from here?’” The arrival of AcademicPrep, according to Kevin, brought “a focused business vision about what we do.” Many on campus had viewed Kalamazoo’s ELI as a pre-academic service center rather than an academic unit. Kevin accepts “the reality” that English language programs and faculty operate on the margins of academia: “Not just in the United States, but in other countries where I’ve worked too, we [English language teaching] faculty are kind of always on the fringe, on the margins of academia: within it, but not part of it.” Still, Kevin appreciates that in his role as a professional English language teacher he can enjoy the “depth of thinking, the depth of knowledge, the critique, and the creativity that goes with being at the heart of academia” while being able to avoid the politics that he perceives to be associated with the broader academy. As he stated proudly, “I am an academic professional.” Indeed, Kevin reflected that the former ELI was where he learned “what it truly is to be a TESOL professional. That’s where it all crystallized for me. This is what TESOL professionals do. So I had then, and I still do have, a tremendous admiration for those people who were running the ELI before AcademicPrep came onto the scene.” Transitioning to AcademicPrep Kevin described the transition from a pre-partnership consensus-driven ELI to the new AcademicPrep center as unexpected, swift, and painful, resulting in an unanticipated mass exodus of long-established English language program administrators and faculty. Kalamazoo’s ELI temporarily lost its accreditation with the CEA as a result of the partnership. Clearly, neither the university administrators nor, arguably, the corporate partner had foreseen how the financial and bureaucratic structure of the joint-venture model would negatively impact the ELI’s standing as an accredited English language program. As has been the case at other universities, those who were most knowledgeable about matters of IEP accreditation – the English language teaching professionals themselves – were not consulted beforehand, perhaps out of concern that they would not be supportive of the proposed partnership with AcademicPrep. The ELI’s administrators and faculty were not supportive, and “a lot of people left Kalamazoo after the partnership, a lot. Among the old guard who were here before,” Kevin added, “there are still, even now, some hurt feelings.” It is Kevin’s opinion that the university had pre-emptively attempted to engage in

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an illusion of participatory consensus-building. University administrators had met with people throughout the university to get feedback regarding the possibility of a corporate sector partnership with AcademicPrep, yet “there wasn’t a person that didn’t think that this was already a done deal. It felt entirely imposed from above. It was always everybody’s feeling that this was what the Provost wants and that this is what the Provost will get.” English program administrators and faculty felt betrayed by the Provost and university executives. Kevin expressed that there “was a lot of anger from a lot of people because there were some people who had been working in the ELI for 20 or 30 years – had given their hearts and souls and lives to the ELI – and it was all being ripped away from them and given to somebody else.” Kevin spoke up in early pre-partnership meetings to advocate on behalf of the ELI staff, faculty, and students. In addition to their own reservations about a feared loss of curricular and pedagogical control, they had concerns that the international students would be “ghettoized,” marginalized from the mainstream university population on campus. They were apprehensive that the for-profit nature of the partnership might lead to temptations “to compromise quality in order to lower costs for the sake of short-term gains.” Kevin feels he paid a price for his outspoken advocacy. The new AcademicPrep director, who had been in charge when the joint venture was initially being negotiated, rated Kevin on an annual performance review as what he described as “very poor collegial”: “I was being punished for being an advocate for the faculty during the transition, but I got that corrected. It was not fair. Everyone knew it was not fair.” In addition to the anxiety and turmoil associated with the departure of so many administrators and faculty, Kevin lamented the ELI’s loss of its CEA accreditation as a result of the corporate sector partnership with AcademicPrep: “There was no category for this type of program [within the CEA]. Kalamazoo’s ELI had had a programmatic accreditation from the CEA. Such accreditation requires that the language program administratively and academically reside within an institution of higher education which is itself accredited by agencies recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education.” According to Kevin, because of the shared governance and joint venture structure of the new pathway programs, their CEA accreditation had been withdrawn. “We had just gotten a full ten-year accreditation, and it was stripped. It was a huge disappointment for people. Even in the accreditation statement it said that this [had been] a model program. Then, all of a sudden, it’s taken away.” Success Requires Sustainability Being a self-described pragmatist, Kevin wants the partnership with AcademicPrep to succeed. But success for Kevin is not an achievement that

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can be captured or measured and frozen in time. According to Kevin, a successful language program must be sustainable. One of Kevin’s strongest criticisms of the AcademicPrep partnership is that its administrators lack the understanding of the human and financial resources required to write, adapt, and build solid curriculum and to develop and retain highly effective language teaching professionals. The rapid growth of the programs without adequate faculty support is overburdening English language teachers and leading to burnout. Even as Kevin begins to describe challenges, his optimism and pragmatism shine through. “I have to be pragmatic. I have to take the good and try to improve what’s not good. I want AcademicPrep to succeed because if AcademicPrep succeeds, we all succeed. We all will do better in our lives. In my life, I’ll have a job with benefits and a somewhat predictable retirement. These things are better.” Indeed, since the partnership with AcademicPrep and with the rapidly increased growth in the student population, there are many more full-time faculty positions which offer university benefits. Not everyone at the university wanted AcademicPrep to succeed, and it was not just the English language program administrators and faculty who were cautious about the university’s partnership with the for-profit corporate partner. As Kevin remarked, “[T]he joint venture’s relationship with other faculty at the university – …other colleges and school – they didn’t see this business entity coming onto campus as all positive.” And, according to Kevin, both the university and AcademicPrep have had to spend considerable time on internal public relations. “AcademicPrep wants good PR for the partnership.” In addition, the director of AcademicPrep seems to be aware of external public relations opportunities, including what he perceived as opportunities offered by my own research. Along with Kalamazoo’s entire English language program faculty, Kevin learned about and was encouraged by the program director to participate in the research inquiry that is the foundation of this book. As  Kevin told me: “I was surprised that it was actually encouraged. I think it  speaks to his integrity that he is willing to have us speak honestly about what’s going on. They’re not trying to hide anything; they’re not trying to prevent us from divulging company secrets or anything. I think he wants it to succeed: so do I.” Kevin views AcademicPrep’s strength as residing in its marketing, “but they are very weak at maintaining the program. There is nothing else I would want to get across to you more than that. They know how to get people here and into the program, but they’re not educators. They don’t understand what it takes to build solid curriculum and the financial and human resources investment that goes into building a solid curriculum.” The rapid growth of the program has

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increased the teaching load for English language teachers from 15 to 18 hours. “In English and foreign language departments, non-tenured full-time faculty teach twelve. EAP is very labor-intensive. It’s a lot more than giving lectures. We were already working a 45-hour week; now we’re working a 50-to-60-hour week. I don’t know of a person who doesn’t work nights and weekends. The faculty will burn out.” Kevin feels strongly that AcademicPrep’s most significant weakness is their lack of understanding of the importance of supporting the faculty and their work on curriculum: “I don’t think they understand that it will cost them I the long run. If they’re not willing to pay for it now in terms of release time for curriculum development or decreased teacher load, they’re going to pay for it later on in terms of quality.” He suggested that teachers are overburdened, and there is not sufficient time for class preparation nor for providing quality feedback to students. Kevin fears that students will experience a lower quality of instruction, which will then translate to poor faculty evaluation for the English language teachers: “But in truth, it’s not because the instructor isn’t very good; it’s because he or she doesn’t have time to be good! So not only do students suffer, but the instruction suffers – not because they’re bad, but because they’re overworked.” As another type of effect, the partnership has initiated a cultural shift from an academic to a more corporate environment. Some faculty have expressed feeling a heighted expectation to be available at their desks when not teaching for an eight-to-five workday; but Kevin does not accept such a model: “Maybe some people feel that way, but if I’ve got stuff to grade, and if I don’t teach in the morning, I’ll stay at home because that’s where I can get it done.” Prior to the partnership, faculty had shared offices, two or three instructors to a room. They have since been moved into a setting where large rooms have been transformed into cubicles with fabric-covered room dividers. “They say it was for space utilization and informal collaboration, but collaboration was never a problem before.” Kevin still laments the loss of the office he once shared with a colleague. Readiness of Students and Disciplinary Content Faculty The issue of student readiness is one that emerges throughout Kevin’s narratives: are the international students recruited by AcademicPrep for the pathway programs really ready to be engaging with academic content in credit-bearing courses? But readiness is also a concern for Kevin with respect to the mainstream faculty teaching disciplinary content courses to the AcademicPrep students. Through interactions with his students as well as his personal observations of mainstream faculty in their lecture halls, Kevin

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became convinced that it was not only students who were ill-prepared for the matriculation pathway experience. Kevin believes that the students recruited by AcademicPrep are not prepared for the pathway program. In his opinion, he suggests that “10% of them are really ready for these pathway programs. Ten percent are ready, and all they need is some polishing up. It’s just that there are so many that have been recruited because of this desire to get students here to pay tuition, even if they’re not really ready. They’re not ready to read the amount of materials required. They can’t read fast enough. They can’t write well enough. They don’t have those skills.” When pathway students arrive, they are reassessed to confirm or determine their language proficiency level, but by then, suggests Kevin, it is too late: “they have already been accepted into the pathway based on their GPA and TOEFL or IELTS or whatever. They’ve pre-paid their tuition for the pathway program for a whole year upfront. They’ve signed the contract.” Those students who do not perform well on the arrival assessments are advised to wait a semester or two, focusing only on EAP courses before actually entering the pathway program and taking mainstream courses, but “rarely do they listen. They were accepted for the pathway, and they don’t want to do anything that will slow down the process of earning their degree.” For much of the curriculum, the AcademicPrep pathway programs at Kevin’s university follow what those familiar with English language program design refer to as “course pairing.” He used the example of a first-year Health course to clarify. “It’s the first university course. They sit in a big lecture hall with 300 other students, and take notes, and then take the exams. It’s good for our students because they’re participating in a real American university course, using the same syllabus, lectures, and exams as the mainstream students.” On alternate days, Kevin explains, “we teach an EAP course that bridges the Health course. The day after, we go through the [mainstream course’s] lecture materials, go through the textbook materials, lab assignments…. [We] help them develop reading strategies and exam writing skills….” Kevin described both the bridge course and the mainstream university disciplinary content course as credit-bearing, though the bridge course is recorded as “pass/fail” and the mainstream course is “letter graded,” impacting pathway students’ GPAs. Kevin views students’ mainstream classroom experience as one of the greatest strengths of the AcademicPrep pathway programs. “Students are being commingled with mainstream students and have mainstream university professors. One of our fears was that the students would get ghettoized from the campus community, but there really has been an effort to get them interacting with the American or domestic students. It used to be one-third, but I think we

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want to raise it to one-half: one-half domestic students and one-half AcademicPrep international students.” To Kevin’s knowledge, there was no professional development related to language learning or cultural diversity for disciplinary content faculty prior to the introduction of ESL students into their course sections. Kevin described mainstream faculty as giving no accommodations for ESL students in the classes he has observed. As a general point, he commented: “We [the English language teaching faculty] sit in and hear those lectures, too, and we see the content faculty struggling with how to relate to the international students. They don’t always get it right.” He further suggested that mainstream faculty are not prepared to deal with the level and sophistication of plagiarism from the international students: “By the end of the term, the instructor was finding that the AcademicPrep students – some of whom hadn’t been to class in weeks – were getting 90’s on the exams! What was happening was that there was this network of AcademicPrep students taking screen shots of the exam and instantly sending it around to their friends – collaboration taken to levels that Americans have no clue about because Americans are so individually oriented.” On the face of things, it appears that international pathway students are finding success in their mainstream disciplinary content courses – in fact, more success than their non-pathway, English speaking counterparts. Kevin shared his opinion over “a widely touted press release about the matriculated undergraduate pathway students’ GPA achievement – those students in the AcademicPrep pathway program being higher than both the mainstream sophomores and the direct-admit international student sophomores. I’m not sure how accurate that really is. I would speculate that the university professors are not aware of how much collaboration is going on, and that’s why those scores are higher. And I would say that if they [the university] are really honest, they shouldn’t take pride in those scores.” Researcher Reflection: Kevin Andrews Kevin was extremely generous with both his time and thoughtfully measured forthrightness. He is an advocate by nature, and although he suffered what he felt was unfair punishment by a former administrator for speaking out and advocating on behalf of faculty and students during the turbulent transition to the partnership, Kevin remains an academic dedicated to nurturing the ideal of a collegial and consensus-driven environment, which one could argue is reflective of traditional university governance models such as academic faculty senates. To that end, Kevin’s aim is to advance into a mentoring leadership position within the organization – but not, he would interject, for reasons of

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status or ambition. Rather, he feels that obtaining a position of influence where he can best be of service to his students, his peer faculty colleagues, and to the organization. Kevin expressed that Kalamazoo’s ELI was where he first learned what it truly meant to be a TESOL professional. For me, during our conversations and for the months that followed as I listened to our recorded conversations, my own understandings of what it means to be a TESOL professional were considerably expanded. When I came to the, perhaps, well-worn interview question asking if there was anything about his experiences with the transition that I had not yet given him opportunity to address, Kevin brought up again his concern that the sustainability for an educational organization was crucial, and he felt that the narrow focus of rapid growth of the programs put their reputation for program quality in jeopardy. In order for the new programs to be credible and sustainable, Kevin strongly felt that leadership needed to make strategic investments in curriculum and instruction: those human resources who develop and maintain curriculum. Conclusion This chapter provided the perspectives of three English language teaching faculty currently working in universities with in-force matriculation pathway programs being run concurrently with Academic English Programs. Having each worked in their universities’ IEPs prior to and during the transitions from autonomous IEPs to corporate joint-venture programming, all three teachers experienced and reflected upon the difficult early days of uncertainty, transition, and efforts to maintain curricular quality in their respective programs. In all cases, however, they identified that while some frustrations remain, there have been positive outcomes for teachers as a result of the new pathway programming taking place on their campuses. While not always positive in nature, there is more university community visibility of the English language programs and faculty; there have been gains in terms of the number of full-time instructor and administrative lines, both offering university benefits packages; there has been rapid growth of the programs in terms of student admissions, which predictably assures renewal of annual teaching contracts; and the university and language program faculty have retained, in all three teachers’ contexts, full curricular and pedagogical autonomy. Chapter 8 shares the stories of two disciplinary faculty members teaching credit-bearing courses to ESL pathway students.

chapter 8

Faculty in Academic Disciplines Introduction Of all of the administrator and faculty “types” I attempted to recruit for my research inquiry, disciplinary content-teaching faculty were the most difficult to identify and recruit. The stories of two disciplinary content teaching faculty members are presented in this chapter: one a full-time Speech Communications faculty member who teaches credit-bearing “Speech Com” courses for pathway program students as well as course sections for matriculated university students, and the second, an adjunct Business faculty member who is contracted to teach segregated introductory Business courses to pathway program students. Neither of these faculty members has a terminal degree within his respective discipline.

Christopher Walker

Christopher’s Background Christopher Walker is a full-time faculty member in South Portage University’s (SPU) College of Arts and Letters in Portage, Maine. While working on a Master’s degree in Communications Studies and Rhetoric, he was first initiated into the field of teaching through public speaking and gender communication courses as a graduate teaching assistant. Christopher spent nearly 10  years of his early career in academia, running writing centers on various university campuses, hiring and training tutors, and working individually with a number of international students, many of whom were English language learners. For a brief period of time, he and his partner worked in Asia for a preuniversity preparation program that shared similarities with the JVP Pathway program at SPU. “But, it was strictly a non-credit preparation program: very small, but JVP-like with a Business-school focus. These were students who were hoping to study in England, Canada, or the United States, and they simply needed to qualify: to get in. The school needed help shepherding them through the process.” Christopher found out about SPU’s Speech Communications Department from a former colleague who was teaching there. He submitted his curriculum vita, hoping to be welcomed into the adjunct instructor pool, but his experience with international students caught

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the eye of the department chair, who suggested that he seemed to have the set of skills they were interested in for covering the first-year Speech Communications classes for JVP students. Despite Christopher’s not having secured a Ph.D. in the discipline, the job would be a full-time faculty position with benefits within the university’s College of Arts and Letters but teaching almost entirely JVP Pathway program students. Christopher’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership I met with Christopher on the SPU campus, not far from the JVP Center. Through his stories, I learned about his early days being mentored by a colleague in his department and how his experience being mentored led him to “play forward” this role for other content teaching faculty. He shared with me his concerns about the lack of equivalence between the segregated mainstream course sections and those being taught to the JVP students and also his challenges in dealing with a high volume of plagiarism by the JVP students due, he feels, to the high-stakes nature of the program. In his narratives, Christopher also emphasized his having embraced both his disciplinary identity and his newfound identity as one who supports the needs of English language learners, and shared his great admiration for his English language teaching colleagues. Christopher also discussed the varied perceptions others on campus have of the JVP partnership, its pathway program, and its faculty. While he feels himself to be a competent and conscientious teacher, Christopher is unsure whether the JVP students are in fact making appropriate gains in disciplinary content knowledge. Being Mentored and Mentoring Others When Christopher first arrived at SPU, hired to teach undergraduate JVP course section, he was fortunate to be mentored by an experienced Communication Department faculty member who had been teaching the Speech Communications course for JVP for about a year. His mentor, Bonnie, had previously taught the course for domestic or direct-entry international students at the 100 (first-year) and 200 (second-year) levels, but she had been asked to adapt those materials significantly for the JVP students enrolled in the Pathway programs. Christopher recounted that Bonnie was quite helpful, and they ended up exchanging a lot of materials and practices: “She kind of gave me all of her materials, and I gave her my ideas based on my experience with the class and with international students.” They met almost weekly Christopher’s first semester, and as he told me, “It helped to have someone show me the ropes.” Christopher does not have a lot of contact with other disciplinary content faculty teaching in the Pathway programs, though a newer

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anthropology faculty member was recently hired who now has a desk near him in the offices of the JVP and English teaching faculty: “I still have my office in my department, but I was adamant about having JVP give me a desk and computer where all the JVP teachers were for student accessibility to me. I think it’s important.” With the arrival of the anthropology faculty member, Christopher has taken upon himself to be a mentor for her, as no formal system is in place for orienting faculty teaching disciplinary content. “And I do see her doing things, you know, and thinking, ‘That was me a few months ago,’ having meeting after meeting with the same students, repeating the same assignment instructions in twenty different ways until they get it. I know why she’s doing what she’s doing – for the same reasons I did it. You kind of have to immerse yourself in working with these students and then learn from it. Then you can make changes to course policies and course content.” Christopher recounted his first term when he made himself available no matter what question or what kind of issue or concern his JVP students wanted to talk about or work on, “and they came. Oh, they came over and over and over again, largely about things that they should have been reading in the book. I’ve made it clear now that I have these limited hours – we can make some appointments, but I don’t advertise my availability a whole lot. I encourage students to use the Learning Center because I cannot serve as an individual tutor for each assignment, and they understand that I have 92 other students. Maybe I’ll take a hit on my evaluations at the end of the term; I don’t know. In the beginning, though, I think it’s important for someone new to teaching English language learners to go ahead and experience that, to get immersed.” The Speech Communications courses Christopher teaches within the JVP Pathway programs are segregated sections only available to JVP students. He has had an occasion when a native speaker somehow managed to be registered for his course section. “I had one native speaker show up, and I thought he was interested in taking the class. And he and I visited, and I told him, ‘This is the pace the class will take. I’m still going to hold you to certain standards in terms of what I know you’re capable of as a native speaker, but it might seem slower in class when we’re talking,’ and things like that, ‘but, I’d love your leadership.’ But he opted not to stay.” Christopher shared with me his reflections on the kinds of appropriate accommodations he tries to make for his JVP students, and how these accommodations can impact the ability to reach student outcomes for the course: We have to make accommodations for international students. This course is…supposed to be equivalent to the course mainstream freshman are taking, but I would definitely say we’ve made accommodations. Are the

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course objectives the same for both? I can’t say I’ve done a direct comparison; the truth is I don’t feel they’re clearly articulated in the mainstream course syllabus, nor are they super-well-articulated in my JVP course syllabus, which I suppose is a tremendous weakness. It is one of the issues, I know. Honestly, I don’t exactly know what all of the objectives are for the course itself. I don’t. It’s kind of a loosely organized class…. The overarching syllabus could be more clear there in terms of the objectives, and once that’s done, the objectives definitely would have to then be simplified and trimmed down for the JVP student sections. We just cannot accomplish the exact same amount, and so defining what is equivalent is a real challenge, especially since these courses count toward college credits. Do Academic Honesty Rules Apply to Pathway Students? One of Christopher’s greatest challenges has been with academic dishonesty among the JVP ESL students: “Cheating is definitely an issue. Speech topics pass from one group of students to another. So they aren’t selecting a topic that they have any personal connection to, and they aren’t necessarily doing the research and the organizing themselves. Well, those are the fundamentals of the class.” Christopher shared “a shocking instance of plagiarism,” but he felt it important to preface his telling of the story with the fact that he has a clearly articulated course policy, articulated with “short and simple sentences,” which he talked about with students on the first day of class. He additionally included in the course a plagiarism and ethics lecture, discussing different type of plagiarism (global, patch-work, and incremental). As he wanted me to understand, “We define it. We give examples of it. Very clear.” After all this work to prevent plagiarism, Christopher was surprised when “a student [submitted] an outline out of the blue. I had had no idea what his topic was for a week, and then he just showed up to class with a four-page outline that was absolutely perfect in terms of its English, and almost perfect in terms of its APA citations at the end in the references section.” The outline which this student submitted was one that Christopher had seen before: it was the instructor’s example outline from a year ago. Christopher reported the incident to the Student Conduct Committee. From his perspective, “It felt egregious; [yet the student] flatly denied it and continued to say that it was his work, and…that…was shocking, it really was. And because this student was not, technically, an undergrad at this institution, I asked if the academic honesty rules apply. Do these international JVP students get some sort of transition period in which to come up to speed with the expectations of higher education in the States? And they said that no, they absolutely do not.

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[They said] that they’ve worked with, specifically, JVP students before, and that they have educational materials that can help them understand the standards; that this wasn’t necessarily a terrible thing to have happened to him because it might have been an early intervention, which is how I wanted it to be treated, and they seemed on board with that too.” But apparently because this was his second offense and he had already been through the university’s educational process, the student was afraid that once they heard it was him again, he would not be allowed to exit the Pathway and matriculate into SPU. As Christopher recalled, “…he was pretty upset. He quit coming to class. I had urged him to come back because SPU has a policy that, if you repeat a class, it’s the second-attempt grade that counts on your record.” Christopher said he made clear to the student that he could not present the plagiarized speech and that he would receive a grade of zero for that assignment: “That was my penalty for him, but not necessarily a zero for the class. So I urged him to stay, but he opted not to come to class again. My decision was made. It was a clearcut case. So I don’t know what happened to him. He just quit coming.” Christopher reflected, “With this population of students in particular, that’s a ball that you have to constantly keep your eye on. Yeah, it happens with mainstream or American students too, but for the students in the Pathway, the stakes are so high. It can be exhausting for everyone.” Intra- and Interdisciplinary Relationships In my own experience visiting universities with pathway programs, the SPU JVP Center’s faculty space is unique, in that it provides workspace for the disciplinary content teaching faculty within the office space also provided for its English language teaching faculty. This physical proximity to the English language teachers seems to have had an impact on Christopher’s perception of them as teaching professionals: “I think JVP has been able to assemble a very dedicated and qualified staff.” As he described their common space: “We’re all in cubicles, and there are probably 40 of us up on the second floor. As I told you, I sort of had to lobby to have some workspace in the JVP building: they were a little stingy at first, but I was persistent. It just doesn’t make sense to have office hours in my departmental office clear across campus; my JVP students would never come. For me, that would have been a deal breaker. If I’m going to be teaching JVP classes, and I can’t have space in the JVP building, that’s a deal breaker.” Beyond Christopher’s aim of servicing the needs of his students, this close  proximity has pedagogical benefits as well: “What’s great is that we can  hear and see everything that’s going on. You can learn a lot just based

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on what gets left behind by the JVP teachers in the photocopier. ‘Wow, they’re having students keep a study log in that class. They’re giving them studying strategies for academic success. That’s great. Somebody’s doing that, so I don’t have to.’ And I think my colleagues are doing a good job. I think they really care about the students, and they’re putting together intriguing lesson plans, and I think they are a good group.” I asked if there was any formal articulation in terms of curriculum between the disciplinary content teaching faculty and the English language teachers. Christopher replied that there was not but should be: There aren’t really any sort of formal interdisciplinary meetings going on between content instructors and the JVP faculty. I need to see their books, their syllabi. I really don’t understand [what they are doing]…. For example, there is a prerequisite that students take for my class, but I have no idea what book they’re using. I don’t even know what assignments they complete in that class. The real problem is that we haven’t had time, and that would be another reason to have an interdisciplinary group of three or four – the content teacher with the JVP teachers – who have release time to meet and talk about what is actually going on in the prerequisite to my class. Maybe some of the assignments in the JVP classes can be related to what they’re supposed to be doing in mine. If they’re writing a research paper for your class, maybe that paper could become a speech in mine. There’s just no time for these kinds of discussions, even though we’re all in the same space. In Christopher’s view, not all disciplinary content instructors make the kind of effort he does to interact with the JVP English teaching faculty. He made clear that such interaction would be valuable: “I would love to have time to coordinate something like that, and I think that my colleagues would be really open to it rather than only the informal conversations which JVP tries to facilitate among all faculty working the JVP Pathway students. There has been some after-hours socializing that goes on, sponsored by JVP, and that’s really been a pleasure. So there are a lot of informal conversations happening, but as far as formal exchanges between and among content faculty and JVP faculty when it comes to curriculum, it’s just not yet been formalized. I spend a lot of my time with JVP students and faculty, so I certainly want what I spend time doing to have meaning and to be successful.” With a foot in both the JVP and the English language teaching camp, Christopher contemplated his dual identity as a Master’s-degree-holding content-area expert and also a mediator of language and culture:

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I recently visited my former department chair to talk about my career [laughs], as it is, of sorts. And I wanted to know about my future security with the university, with the Speech Communications Department…. I’m full-time, but I only have a Master’s degree, and I mostly teach nontraditional students…. Is this where my future lies, or should I just focus on these JVP classes? And that’s when he said, “If you have a special set of skills, if you can do that kind of work, you’re best job security is probably there with JVP. It takes a special set of skills to teach public speaking to this group of students.” And if I can straddle these two worlds where I’m kind of satisfying the department’s equivalency standards and the standards of my field, and if I can somehow translate those so that they make sense for the JVP students, then I think everyone’s quite happy. I feel respected. I’m actually embracing the fact that I’m straddling two identities here. I do feel quite pulled by the students – the JVP students – even though at times, perhaps, the JVP program feels [to me] to be a bit too skill-focused and kept down to the bare bones as far as content. But at the same time, I do feel part of my department: I am a Speech Comm person. I am not an ESL teacher. It’s been kind of nice to be in this in-between world where if I do need to put on an academic hat, I can. But if I need to just focus on teaching and connecting with students, then I feel comfortable doing that too. Mixed Feelings on Campus The partnership between JVP and the university was not welcomed by all on the South Portage campus, and according to Christopher’s informants, not everyone is entirely pleased with the results in terms of the quality and diversity of recruited students: I think there are mixed feelings about the partnership on campus. You can see that our numbers are significant and growing in the Pathway programs, and I think the recruitment aspect was a huge hope for SPU. The numbers are there, but I’m starting to hear more lately that the university administration may not be incredibly pleased with the student recruitment – partly because of the lack of diversity of students being brought in. They seem to be pulling from certain pockets more so than others. Most of the JVP students I’ve had are Chinese or Middle Eastern – Mainland China, too, as opposed to Hong Kong or Taiwan. And the Middle Eastern students are mostly from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and overall, a lot of men. So if we look at the numbers, have we seen the gender diversity we had hoped for? I don’t know about that. And we

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certainly don’t see [diversity in the countries the students come from]; I’ve only had one student from South America, two students from Russia, and none from Eastern Europe. So I’ve taught now, what, eight JVP classes so far, and I have only had two students from Japan? Yeah, so the word on the street is that SPU is a little disappointed about the diversity of recruitment. In personal interactions with faculty on campus, Christopher can sometimes intuit what people “really think” about what he is doing: “When colleagues or other faculty hear that I’m teaching in the JVP Pathway, I never get the response, ‘Oh, that’s fantastic,’ you know? ‘That’s so great that you’re working with them; I would love to work with that population of students; I think that’s so fantastic what SPU is doing.’ I don’t get that reaction at all. I don’t. I think it’s rather mixed or guarded a bit. They’ll state obvious and noncommittal things like, ‘Well, we have a lot of students in that program, don’t we?’ Things like, ‘I hear that that’s really growing; you’ve got some good job security there,’ or they’ll say, ‘Well, that must be very challenging work.’ Sometimes I get the feeling that, once they know I work with JVP, everyone’s a bit guarded in what they say to me, like I’m going to report back to someone. It’s not that it’s negative, but it seldom feels positive.” Colleagues with whom Christopher works have also expressed concerns about the for-profit or “privatization” aspect of the partnership, as well as the challenges faced during the early days of the reorganization of the former English language program on campus. It was interesting to me that although Christopher came to work at the university long after the partnership with JVP had gone into effect, the historic mythology of the transition was still being retold to newcomers. As he was told: My colleague said the bringing in of JVP wasn’t handled well at all. My understanding of the back-story – and I didn’t know any of this when I was hired – was that the university actually had a very strong, what do you call it? It was like an English Language Institute. Home grown. And apparently it was very well respected and had some tremendous people from the field of ESL: good leadership, but…the university felt JVP could promise recruiting in a way that that institute couldn’t, but…the institute wasn’t really given much opportunity or resources to try. And, perhaps, the university felt it needed the numbers and the revenue. And so JVP was brought in without consulting the ELI faculty or staff, and so the ELI found itself, kind of overnight, obsolete – replaced. So from what I’ve heard, there were some pretty bad feelings there. A lot of those folks then

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just completely left the Portage, Maine, area and were not available for JVP to hire. They had to come up with close to 100% new staff: inexperienced teachers like me. [laughs] Christopher related his understanding “that, unless they’re doing contentbased classes, like myself, then all of these new ESL teachers are employees of JVP, not the university, as they had been before. They have their own HR and everything.” However, Christopher was wrong about this: the English language teachers working in the JVP Pathway program at SPU are employees of the university, but Christopher’s misstatements highlight the misinformation and misunderstandings that existed in this – and in many other – corporate sector pathway program contexts. According to Christopher, even some of the international students who are non-JVP, direct-entry international students appear to distance themselves from the JVP Pathway program. He suggests they might say, “I got into this university of my own accord. I didn’t go through this alternative doorway. I’m not part of that community.” Christopher has had a few of direct-entry students enrolled in his JVP sections in the past, “and you can really tell the difference in their ability and readiness. Their English is excellent. They’ve always been the best speakers in my class,” suggesting that the level of preparedness of the JVP-recruited students was less than it could or should be. Departmental Challenges with JVP There have been some challenges between Christopher’s academic department of Speech Communications and the JVP program. Most of the challenges have been in terms of scheduling and getting advance information about how many JVP sections are going to be needed so that the department can schedule faculty ahead of time. In his view, “That’s a real issue for the department: getting timely communication and responses back from JVP. Last spring there was a terrible wrench that had to be addressed urgently. Because of increased student numbers, JVP unilaterally decided that, instead of having the usual caps on enrollment – all classes, not just mine – the caps would just match each room’s fire-code maximum. So suddenly, I walked into…a Public Speaking section [and] I had 23, 24 students, when, according to the agreement between Speech Communication and JVP, each class must be capped at 18. And sidebar: it used to be lower – I think 16. So suddenly I’m looking at 23 or 24 students in two of my three sections. And I was also picking up a native-speaking class to round out my full-time load, and even my mainstream or native-speaking class, it’s capped at 20…. I got through the first week, and then by Friday,… I am concerned and I alerted people.” Christopher had designed the course around

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the idea that there would be 18 of each genre of speech. He did the math: “I would have had 460 speeches to grade in less than ten weeks. I’m going to have to lower the time limits. I’m going to have to give up instruction days. And so I explained the costs, and people in my department just went, ‘What the heck?! This needs to be dealt with immediately. This is not part of the agreement. Once again, JVP has kind of mucked things up.’” At this point, Christopher was asked by JVP to function in an advising capacity, one which he felt, perhaps, they themselves should have been doing. The JVP administration requested that Christopher get students from different sections of his classes to move, but none of them wanted to change classes: So the second week of classes, I’m putting pressure on them; I’m saying, “If you can move, you must move.” And so I’m being the heavy, and having to take up all this class time and all this email time, pressuring students who can move to move. JVP wanted me to kind of pre-identify this population, and then they would go and double check that these students were able to move – and then move them…. Look, these are my friends and colleagues at JVP, and I know that they had pressures of their own, and they themselves were kind of stuck in the middle between me and their supervisors; …we ended up cobbling together a fourth section the third week of classes, and I had to take an overload as a single parent in order to do it. These had already been my students for two whole weeks, so it’s not like I could say, “I’m sorry; catch you in the summer or fall.” They’re in Pathways, so there’s a limited amount of time that they have to fulfill this program, so I took the overload. And that fourth JVP class, that was a real tipping point. It really tipped the scales for me. In Christopher’s opinion, four JVP sections working with English language learners is too much, and his observations about this are ones which many English language teachers can relate to: “There is quite a bit of work outside of the classroom to adapt and tailor the information because, …even if I’m using the best textbook in my field, …it needs significant accommodation for these students; it’s a mainstream textbook. So there’s that time spent, and there’s also quite a bit of administrative time…. It may be just a simple misunderstanding that happens or new vocabulary or constructs that come up, but it’s going to happen four or five times [in] every class, really; and that extra time isn’t built into the course design. And of course, [there’s] grading and giving feedback to students who are still struggling with English.” Christopher mentioned “a proposal to limit the number of course sections for JVP teaching faculty, but I don’t know if it’s just for the content teachers or for the English language

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teachers as well, but I would really push that three would be considered a full time teaching load. That, or, that there be additional compensation or something because four courses is too much. If not, maybe they need to get realistic about the caps for these classes [and] have smaller sections. Of course, it all comes down to money.” I Don’t Know What Else to Do Christopher enjoys the level of autonomy that most faculty presume goes with the territory of teaching in higher education. But autonomy without appropriate support can lead to frustrations, as it has for Christopher to some extent. “For my first two semesters, I sort of kept with the materials that’d I’d inherited from Bonnie – sort of seeing how they were working; but I’ve since changed things quite a bit.” Christopher shared an example of learning and organizational strategy assignments that had been included in Bonnie’s syllabus that he later discovered were already being addressed in other JVP languagesupport courses. He wanted to have a different focus: “I wanted to spend more time focusing on the course content, not strategies. I also got rid of nearly all of the handouts that Bonnie had used. I decided I wanted them to live in the book. It’s all in the book. It’s all in the book.” If Christopher did provide students with a handout, he opted to provide them with authentic worksheets that the text author had designed. He decided to give the students small assignments on Blackboard so that he could assure that they were on track with course reading because “[t]hey need to be able to come to class ready to talk about it. It’s all in the book…. I have no freaking idea what they’re actually doing with the book! I really don’t understand their relationship with the book. I read my evaluations from last term, and several students said they really liked the book. ‘It was one of the most useful things from the class.’ And yet when I asked those students questions from the book, they couldn’t retrieve the information. I never thought they were reading the book.” Christopher went on to talk about the students’ performance on the final exam “which, you know, I did a very simplistic rendition of the final exam, so my final exam was almost half the length in terms of the number of questions that I would have for mainstream students. The multiple-choice options were, to me, so obvious; I didn’t do the kind of complex structuring of prompts and responses. I didn’t mix synonyms with vocabulary terms. They were antonyms, and you’ve just got to choose. If you know it, you know it: you’re not going to pick the antonym.” The JVP students did not do well on the exam, even though, according to Christopher, “everything was right out of the book.” Christopher’s frustration showed as he recounted the various approaches he has tried in order to reach his ESL students:

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I’ve tried giving them, for example, a summary handout of the chapter. I have PowerPoint slides that I’ve pared down from the author’s 36 or 48 slides-a-chapter to 12. I’d simplify the language a little bit. I’ve tried going through the slides the week before the class when they’re supposed to have done the readings, so that they understand that these are the highlights of what you’re about to read, so when they do read, they’ll read for examples. So then when I ask you in class, “What is a question of fact? Give me an example,” they can. It didn’t really work…. So then I’ve tried “Okay, just read these pages; these are the pages to focus on; read them twice.” And then we come to class and we work through the PowerPoint together. So okay, here we’ve got, here’s the definition of a question of fact, let’s come up with some examples. And, of course, it’s just the same two or three students providing the examples in every class. They’ve done the reading…. And then I’ll do a reading quiz afterward to make sure that the other students who may or maybe didn’t do the reading – or who read it, but didn’t have all the connections yet – I’ll do a quiz in class. And so 50% of them will get it, and 50% of them will bomb it! I don’t know what else to do! In spite of his frustrations, Christopher shared that he does not often reflect on whether or not he loves the work he does, but suggested that our conversation was forcing him to think about some of those things now. As he reflected: “Look, I have a job. I’m a parent. And I’m doing what I have to do…. I suppose I have a bad day like anybody else, but for the most part, I love what I’m doing. I wish I worked a little less; putting in 50 hours a week as a single parent is not what I really wanted, but the fact that I have some job security and that the outlook is good, I feel great about that. And I love Maine, love it! And I really like this university and this community, so it’s pretty hard to rain on my parade.” Researcher Reflection: Christopher Walker As an instructor teaching academic content without a terminal degree in his discipline, Christopher recognized that his past experience working in international contexts with tertiary students likely contributed to his ability to secure a full-time teaching position with South Portage University. He felt fortunate to have had the mutual mentorship of an instructor who had taught earlier sections of both the pathway course and its mainstream-equivalent. When Christopher was first hired – and indeed, at present – neither the university nor the JVP Center provide any formalized pedagogical support for faculty who are teaching disciplinary content and working with English language learners (Fulcher, 2009). Christopher detailed the steps he had taken in

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order to secure a physical workspace among the English language faculty in the JVP Center’s teacher office. For him, this was not only important in terms of giving his students access during office hours, but also in that it provided opportunities for him to learn from his English teaching colleagues. Christopher had a strong appreciation of the knowledge and ability of his academic counterparts and, as he stated, he’s “actually embracing the fact that [he’s] straddling two identities,” that of disciplinary content specialist and language support professional. Christopher’s stories reveal some of the challenges he, as disciplinary content faculty, has had when working with segregated classes of English language learners. He related some of the difficulties involving how they work with texts and how they understand and respond to issues of plagiarism. He commented on the fact that the pathway students require accommodations and “simplification or trimming down” of curricular expectations when aligning creditbearing pathway courses to their equivalent mainstream disciplinary content courses. Based on my 90-minute interview with him and the dedication towards his students and empathy he expressed for this population of learners navigating their high-stakes concerns, Christopher would seem to be the kind of teacher that English language teaching professionals might be willing to claim as one of their own. Still, he continues to experience frustration with the lack of formalized support as he cyclically adjusts his pedagogical strategies and lowers his expectations in order to attempt to meet the performance objectives for his credit-bearing courses.

Mike Duffy

Mike’s Background Mike Duffy’s background is that he has both a BS and MBA in Business and has spent over 20  years “suffering through the ups and downs” of working and earning a living in the high-tech industry. Mike knew relatively early on that teaching was something that would interest him, so nearly 15 years ago he got involved in the part-time teaching of mainstream Business graduate students in programs at Hillside Research University (HRU) in Seattle, Washington, as a means to supplementing his family’s income. About 4 years ago, Mike made the decision to commit to a career in higher education, and while his efforts to obtain a full-time faculty position have thus far been unsuccessful, he earns, for the most part, nearly all of his income through adjunct teaching. Although his students at Hillside Research are fully matriculated, Mike noted that between 50% and 70% of the students in the graduate Business programs are

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fully admitted international students for whom English is not their first language, providing him with practical experience mediating the needs of higher level English language learners. In addition to his teaching of matriculated students at Hillside Research, and specifically apropos to this study, Mike has taught Business courses in two universities with corporate sector partnership pathway programs: Education Syndicates Pathways at Candlewood College and AcademicPrep Pathways at Belle Glade University, both located in Seattle, Washington. Mike’s Reflections on the Corporate Sector Partnership When I arranged to meet with Mike at Seattle’s Belle Glade University (BGU) to talk about his experiences working as a teacher of Business in their matriculation pathway program, I had not realized that he had also previously worked in a second pathway program context at a different university. He additionally had a part-time teaching appointment at a third university where he worked solely with fully matriculated students. In the narrative excerpts that follow, Mike first described to me his initial and short-lived experience working under the Education Syndicates paradigm. His shift to his current work at Belle Glade under the AcademicPrep model of pathway course created its own challenges. He shared his general support for the objectives and aims of matriculation pathway programs, and also confessed his “don’t ask, don’t tell” stance as an adjunct instructor teaching pathway program students who longs for an appointment in the university’s “mainstream” School of Business academic department.

They Would Have Failed If They Had Been in the Mainstream Class Before we discussed Mike’s current position in BGU’s AcademicPrep Pathway program, he shared with me his first pathway experience of working for one of AcademicPrep’s corporate competitors: “My first experience – and, I didn’t enjoy it very much for many number of reasons – was with Education Syndicates Pathways. It’s the company that partnered with Candlewood College which itself had progressed from a two-year community college to a four-year college, a much less competitive academic institution than the universities where I teach now.” Mike had found this adjunct teaching position through a job listing on Craigslist. After a brief interview, they hired him to teach in what was the initial launch of the pathway program. As he recalled, “I think there were maybe twenty students in the whole thing at that time. So I took this job teaching a freshman-level ‘Intro to Management’ course for Education Syndicates.” The disciplinary content teachers whom Education

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Syndicates hired were asked to create their own syllabi for their courses, but the syllabi then had to be approved by the various departments’ full-time faculty at the college. It happened that the course Mike was asked to teach already had an approved syllabus, so he prepared to teach his fully segregated cohort of Education Syndicates students. Mike described the situation for those pathway students: Now, academically, these students are completely segregated from the mainstream students at Candlewood. They’re allowed to live in the Candlewood dorms, but all of their classes, all of their syllabi said “Education Syndicates” on them. All of their classes were presented by people, mostly adjuncts, from Education Syndicates. They knew that they were in an Education Syndicates program, not Candlewood University. When I did my PowerPoints – I had to have the little Education Syndicates logo on the bottom of each page, that sort of thing – branded. But here’s the thing: my understanding of Education Syndicates’ pathway model is that it’s a little different from AcademicPrep at Belle Glade University. With Education Syndicates, the credits the students get are the credits that get transferred in…. They get to take those credits forward with them. That’s a problem. They took a full semester’s load of courses through Education Syndicates, but then they all got credit at Candlewood. Okay, yes, the course syllabus was approved by the academic departments, and I covered all of the content in that syllabus. But the evaluative criteria, I mean, not that I had to modify it, because I didn’t; but it was just that it was not the same as I would have had for a, for another undergraduate Management course with matriculated students. I couldn’t have the same expectations for these students because these students didn’t have the language skills. For Mike, this presented an ethical dilemma. “It was relatively hard for me to sleep at night knowing that at the end of the semester, I was going to give these students ‘B’s and ‘C’s – and that they were going to take these ‘B’s and ‘C’s forward – and they weren’t going to be the same as if they had gotten a ‘B’ and a ‘C’ in a regular non-pathway class at Candlewood. Look, it’s not just that I think they were getting a letter grade bump. It wasn’t just a bump. These students would have failed. They would have failed if they had been in a mainstream class.” Beyond the ethical concerns Mike had about students earning credit for courses he believed were not equivalent to their “mainstream” university counterpart courses were his own feelings related to his relationship with

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Education Syndicates and what this implied for his emerging academic identity: I had been hired by Education Syndicates, not Candlewood College. I told you I was an adjunct, but it might be more accurate to say I was a parttime employee of Education Syndicates. I know that the Center Manager was a full-time employee who also taught, and he had an administrator. And I believe that there was another content instructor there, but I don’t know whether his status was full-time or not. You know, honestly, I don’t know what English language teaching went on with that group – with Education Syndicates. I didn’t get a sense that they had any language support for students, and I wasn’t immersed enough to know what they did. We content faculty didn’t have any support [in the way of] the hows and ways to teach these students. I suppose the Center Manager was there to support us, but support is a two-edged sword, right? There was such a focus on, you know, this is a business, and we’re managing, we’re managing this relationship with Candlewood College, and we need to be marketing ourselves in this relationship. Maybe I was getting support with the paperwork, but as far as the teaching, I was pretty much on my own. Mike was required to turn in lesson plans and progress reports, and he observed that there were a great many more reporting requirements than he had ever had with any other class he had taught in higher education: “There was lots and lots of reporting associated with it, which allowed them to, you know, make their case to Candlewood College, to evidence that the program was ‘succeeding’ – and I know your recorder can’t pick this up, but I’m making little quotation signs with my middle and index fingers: ‘succeeding.’ It was like part of our job was to sell the program to the university. I felt completely like an outsider on the Candlewood College campus. Not just the students, but the faculty – we were all segregated. I wasn’t faculty at the college, and… I didn’t really identify as an employee of Education Syndicates, either, even though it was their name on the top of my paychecks; I was something inbetween.” Mike taught only one semester for Education Syndicates and then returned to Craigslist to seek out other opportunities. I Think the Theory of the Pathway Program Is Great Currently Mike is teaching in AcademicPrep’s pathway program on the campus of BGU. As he described his decision to take the job, “It was strictly an opportunity to teach Business curriculum at Belle Glade. I had learned about it through a second-hand contact I’d made after I replied to a Craigslist posting.”

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Mike had also been teaching what he described as “mainstream” graduate Business students as an adjunct for Hillside Research for a good number of years, “but they wouldn’t even consider hiring me full-time without a terminal degree. Once my kids are out of college, maybe I’d like to go back for that. But in the meantime, I’m trying to earn a living teaching part-time, and I had wanted to get my foot in the door at Belle Glade University, so the AcademicPrep Pathway program would have to do.” Mike would very much like to teach in Belle Glade’s mainstream Business programs, but to his knowledge, none of the Business teachers in the pathway have been able to get classes teaching in the mainstream programs. In his case, he related: “I’ve been trying to make inroads, but it hasn’t worked out yet. Now, I didn’t really know much about the actual partnership Belle Glade had with AcademicPrep or how the process worked. And before I started teaching graduate content courses in the pathway, they had me teach an ‘English for Business’ class, which was technically part of the English Language Program at Belle Glade. At Belle Glade, the Pathway Program has a pretty clear link to the English Language Program, and there’s some cross-over of faculty between the two, but I think the pay is better teaching in the pathway if you can teach academic content.” The initial course Mike taught in the English program was a non-credit “English for Business” course. It had an ESL textbook and curriculum, and Mike confesses to “not…necessarily [being] qualified to teach ESL from a credentialing standpoint.” After that initial semester, Mike began teaching a disciplinary content course in the Pathway program. “While strictly speaking these courses are not mainstream, Belle Glade University credit-bearing courses, these path­ way   courses were designed to be similar to the graduate-level courses that exist in Belle Glade University program curriculums. Many of the courses had parallel or similar titles. My understanding is that the content courses in the pathway are credit-bearing courses which may, and I’ll emphasize, may ultimately be transferred into Belle Glade University through the admissions process and review of transcripts. There’s a FAQ section on the AcademicPrep website, and it’s pretty clear that students who complete the pathway only get a Certificate in undergraduate or postgraduate pathways education, but it also says that students will get an official transcript from Belle Glade University listing the courses taken and the grades received.” As Mike further reflected, he made clear that he is somewhat confused about what happens with the grades and course credits that pathway students receive: “Now, whether or not an academic program at Belle Glade University – or any other university for that matter – whether or not they’ll allow those course credits to be transferred into an undergraduate or graduate

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program, I can’t say. So as you can see, even after three years, I guess I’m still not totally clear on how this whole thing works! I’m focused on Business teaching. I really just focus on my teaching and try to provide the best experience I can for my students.” When I asked Mike to provide insight into the curriculum he teaches in this  pathway setting, he responded as follows: “I teach a course called ‘Diversity  in Business.’ Here I was given a course title, and I developed the curriculum. And these courses are only for international students in the graduate pathway programs. Now for any given semester, there are probably three or four teachers who teach different sections of Diversity in Business, each developing their own syllabus based on the course title and the catalog description. We each have total leverage on our syllabi, writing our own objectives, choosing what materials are going to be used, and deciding what kinds of assignments or assessments should be in place. And my syllabus, just from discussions, my syllabus tends to be very different than other people’s syllabus.” Mike shared that his strategy is generally to take a look at the syllabi of previous instructors of the course; and then, for the first semester, he might teach the course using the materials, activities, and assessments designed by someone who taught the course in the past. He soon realized that he needed to make adjustments in terms of his expectations for the students: “It’s a pretty quick learning curve as far as learning what you can expect, where your expectations need to be for assignments and student performance. It didn’t take me long to realize that if my expectation for a non-ESL graduate student is X, [then] the expectations that I should have for these students is, you know, X minus one, X minus two – that sort of thing. So it was a pretty quick learning curve.” Some of the people who had taught Mike’s courses before had been fulltime English language teaching faculty, who “in their minds, kind of ‘got stuck’ teaching these classes – and again, you can’t see my quotation marks, but they ‘got stuck’ teaching the courses. Some had pretty good knowledge of the curriculum area, but – and it’s actually really interesting – there were some people who had limited credentials and limited content knowledge, some graduate students or language teachers teaching content courses. I think that that is one of the things that I personally bring to the table – in any educational situation – is that I’m, you know, I’m a business person who now teaches. I’m not just teaching Business from the ivory tower. I’ve been in the field. I’m the exception.” Although Mike realized his advantage in the way of business experience, he recognized the value of the English-language specialists: “[T]he truth is I couldn’t even come close to the language faculty’s knowledge of English language learning. And I have to say, they helped me a

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lot. If zero percent is being thrown into the fire without any support system and 100% is that we’ll hold your hand and lead you gently into the room, then I would say that I was probably at about 60%. The resources were there for me, but like what we want our students to do, I had to seek it out for myself. It wasn’t  handed to me.” Mike did suggest that from the first day he was fairly confident working with English language learners, and he attributed this to the fact that he has always had a high population of international students in those contexts where he teaches fully matriculated students. As a result, “On balance I’d say that I felt pretty comfortable going into the situation for the first time.” In theory, Mike is very supportive of the idea of matriculation pathway programs for non-native English speaking international students. “The idea of a pathway is a good one from a business perspective since it allows the university to focus on its core competency of issuing educational degrees rather than delivering preparation courses. I feel it’s evolving. I feel like we, the facultyslash-administration is getting a better idea of what should be in the program and what the focus should be. I’ve seen positive growth. It feels like there are more students. I can’t say the academic quality of the students seems to be better, but the classroom demeanor of the students seems less, less foreign to them then it had been in the past.” Mike noted that between 70% and 90% of the students AcademicPrep recruits are from China, and that – in his opinion – the demeanor of the classroom in China “is vastly different than, from what my students have described to me, vastly different than the interactive nature of teaching in the United States. So, for the first year or two that I was here, the classroom demeanor was a really big problem for me.” He went on to relate what his Chinese students had told him about how people teach in their country: “In China, the classic classroom that my students described to me is a threehour session where their professor stands in front of the room and lectures at them. The students sit in the room and, you know, sleep, text, or chat with friends. The professors don’t particularly care. Then at the end of the semester, they have an exam. Pass the test: pass the course. What a student does – activities and assignments – during the course of the semester isn’t as significant as that final exam. So what that does is it creates this idea of the classroom as a kind of playroom – very difficult when I started.” However, Mike has seen positive change in this regard: “Now whether they’ve been better preparing the students in China about what to expect in U.S. class­ rooms, or if AcademicPrep is just getting better and is screening stu­dents   during recruitment, I can’t say. I know that they do have some sort of presentation in students’ native countries beforehand, and maybe

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that’s helping them get a feel for the more interactive nature of American classrooms.” From Mike’s perspective the Business curriculum is being seen as more important on university campuses. “At least I like to tell myself that [laughs] – for job security. In AcademicPrep, the Business curriculum is more important because a lot of these students are going to be Business students.” Mike does, however, say that he worries about the students getting “mainstreamed into regular graduate programs” at Belle Glade. He said he worries because he compares the pathway program curriculum to the degree programs’ curriculum he teaches at Hillside Research University as a part-time instructor, which he suggests is similar to the programs that most of the AcademicPrep Business students will go into at Belle Glade. “I worry about them succeeding because, you know, I think that we’re taking them from a really low level of English and propping them up if you will – and again – the gesture is – raising my hands, I’m propping them up, if you will, to the point that they maybe have some confidence, and that sort of thing, but then they’re going into this mainstream graduate program unprepared.” Mike recently inquired of faculty teaching in some of the academic programs at Belle Glade how AcademicPrep students do once they matriculate. “He told me, ‘Well most of them pass.’ And I said, ‘Wow, okay,’ because from my viewpoint of teaching in a similar graduate Business program at Hillside – I mean, I won’t say it surprises me, but it’s definitely a point of concern. You know, obviously, even with mainstream students, you have a continuum. If there are thirty students in a class, it’s true that ten of them are right there with you – or ahead of where you want them to be; and then there are another ten who are, maybe, there, or a little low; and then the last ten where you say, ‘Oh my god, how are these students going to get through?’ So that’s going to be true to some extent with both mainstream and pathway students.” Mike then made a comparison to direct-entry international students to drive home his point that the AcademicPrep students leave the program unprepared for academic success: “Let’s compare the exiting pathway students to the matriculated international students – those nonnative English speakers who met the university’s language requirements for admissions. And again, there are some in that category, too, who, you know, some struggle and some end up in the middle somewhere, but, How’s this: Those people who exited the AcademicPrep Pathway in the very highest level would be roughly equivalent to the bottom or maybe the middle of the international students who matriculated on their own, you know, compared to my mainstream students at Hillside Research University. Not good. They’re not ready.”

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I’m Kind of “Closeted” about Teaching in the Pathway Program Mike’s ultimate aim is to become a full-time instructor in a “mainstream” Business college or school, but his lack of a terminal degree is among his barriers. In addition, he debates with himself whether or not he is an academic: I’m not sure I really consider myself to be an academic. Right now, I consider myself a business person who has changed his profession. Well, maybe let me re-state that: I guess that I now consider myself to be…kind of an academic because I make most of my income in higher education. But when we use that word, the connotation of that word to me is someone who’s worked in academia for their entire career and has pursued, you know, they went through and have gotten all of their degrees and everything else. They’ve made their way through this world of academia, and that’s not me. I’m making a living. I think, maybe, getting a full-time faculty position – and I don’t know if that will ever happen – but then I might feel more like – but I don’t have the Ph.D., and full-time faculty positions are hard to find without that. I can’t even say that I’m a fulltime adjunct. I’m a part-time adjunct at two institutions: no benefits; no tuition assistance. Whether or not I see myself as an academic, I’m not sure that the academy sees me as one. I asked Mike if he was “out” as a pathway teacher to his Business colleagues at Hillside Research University where he teaches part-time to mainstream Business students. He responded: “I’m not. I’m kind of ‘closeted’ about teaching in the pathway program at Belle Glade. [laughs] ‘Where else do you teach, Mike?’ ‘I teach at Belle Glade University.’ ‘Oh, yeah? What do you teach there?’ ‘I teach Global Corporate Responsibility.’ That’s where I leave it. ‘I’m adjunct Business faculty at a bunch of places.’ Yeah. That’s where I leave it, for whatever the reasons. Faculty, we’re a bit of an egotistical bunch [laughs]. I mean, there is a bit of a feeling of, you know, I don’t know if it’s inferiority or what, right? Because I think that, probably, if I were an ESL person, I would be pounding my chest and telling people that I’m teaching in this program, right? But as a person who identifies himself as a Business professor, I mean, I’m teaching – what I’m doing is that I’m helping them with their English using Business curriculum.” For Mike, the intellectual challenge and stimulation associated with teaching a class at Hillside University with matriculated students is higher: “I feel like it’s a lot more of an intellectual exercise for everyone involved. So personally, I enjoy it more. And by the way, I consider myself very successful at both. I can adapt back and forth between working with matriculated students and working with pathway students. I don’t know

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that a lot of the people who I know from the Business faculty – say at Hillside Research University – whether they would be able to do that. I think, for some of them, it would just be beyond what they could do, to try to, you know, try to change their focus from pure Business content to teaching English language learners.” In a self-reflexive moment, Mike considered why it is he had not shared his pathway teaching experience with his academic counterparts: “I don’t know why I’m not more open, more ‘out’ with non-pathway Business faculty about my teaching in the pathway program. I think I do a good job for these kids. I wouldn’t say that I never disclose it. It’s more ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’” As he reflected further: “Maybe I’m afraid my association with the program makes me appear less academic to them, and, you know, ultimately I want a full-time job working in a mainstream Business program…. [long pause] Because, like I said, I have been trying to make inroads into the mainstream academic Business programs at Belle Glade, and it’s been very difficult. I don’t know whether or not the fact that I’m involved in the pathway program has anything to do with their not letting me teach in the mainstream programs. Maybe I’m afraid that if my colleagues at Hillside Research know….” Researcher Reflection: Mike Duffy Preferring to work with a corporate partner that leaves him to the academic  business of teaching Business, without an expectation that he be an advocate or branded corporate salesperson for the educational service provider, Mike personifies the archetypal professor. Mike provides the unique perspective of having experienced disciplinary content teaching within two different corporate partners’ matriculation pathway program paradigms: one where credits earned in the pathway are directly transferrable to the host university, and a second where pathway course credits could ostensibly be transferred into the host or another university. In the latter case, the pre-university certificate program courses appear on official university transcripts with course titles typical of those taught in the university’s programs for matriculated students. In both teaching contexts, Mike had significant concerns whether students were being adequately prepared to enter the mainstream courses or programs. Mike’s status as adjunct disciplinary content teaching faculty was a fascinating area of discussion, and it was clear throughout our conversations that he was already experiencing feelings of isolation related to his status as parttime adjunct faculty from a membership group that would allow him only conditional admission to their discipline (Leach & Vliek, 2008; Lerner, 2008). Like many English language teaching professionals in higher education, as a

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Business instructor, Mike does not have the degree deemed as terminal by the  academy at-large: the Ph.D. or discipline-specific doctorate. When the topic of the historical marginalization concerns of English language teaching faculty came up during the interview, Mike was caught off guard by the notion that he himself might be perceived by colleagues as less academic by association. Rather than being surprised by my question, Mike was perhaps more surprised by his own answer when I asked whether or not his mainstream Business colleagues at Hillside University had any knowledge that he was also teaching English language learners in Belle Glade University’s pathway program: “I’m kind of ‘closeted’ about teaching in the pathway program.” He had been trying unsuccessfully to get teaching assignments in Belle Glade’s mainstream Business programs, and had, consciously or subconsciously, already made the connection that instructors in the pathway programs are as segregated from the mainstream programs as the pathway students are from their domestic counterparts: better to live by “don’t ask, don’t tell” for now. It seemed that he feared disclosure to Hillside about his teaching of English language learners at Belle Glade might jeopardize his professional future (Merton & Kitt, 1969). Conclusion This chapter provided the perspectives of two faculty members currently facilitating credit-bearing disciplinary content courses at universities with matriculation pathway programs. While neither holds a terminal degree in their respective disciplines, one (Christopher) maintains a strong sense of himself as an academic Speech Communications professional, while the other (Mike) struggles to find his place within the community to which he aspires: a fulltime teaching position with matriculated students in the School of Business. Still, these faculty members share a great number of commonalities in their experiences working in their matriculation pathway programs. A shared attribute of both academic discipline faculty who elected to participate in the study was their expressed admiration for the work of English language professionals, though Mike seems to subconsciously privilege the educational charge given to those faculty teaching academic content. Both teach introductorylevel academic curriculum to pathway-only, segregated course sections, and both share concerns that learner outcomes expressed on official syllabi and actioned in their own teaching are not likely in alignment with their universities’ or their own expectations for course equivalency for credit-bearing coursework.

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Concluding Remarks to Part 2

The picture which emerges from the narratives of Part 2 with a range of people connected to corporate sector partnership programs is a mixed one regarding the matriculation pathway arrangements which many universities in the United States and other countries have entered into. While these partnership arrangements are increasing the number of international students on many university campuses and bringing in considerable amounts of tuition money from those students, their English language courses (and in some cases, disciplinary content courses) are typically set up to be taught by non-tenure-line faculty without higher level academic credentials or achievements such as a doctoral degree or scholarly publications. Thus, although they may offer a large number of yearly contracts with benefits, these programs may be contributing to a declining employment status of the teaching faculty – including those who teach English to speakers of other languages – at university level. Part 3 provides a comparative analysis of all participants in an attempt to draw attention to connections and divergences among the inquiry participants in relation to the research questions posed in the original inquiry as well as the inquiry’s unexpected revelations (Chapter 9). The final chapter examines the limitations and implications of the study and provides several examples of universities that worked with their IEPs to develop their own institution-developed alternatives to partnerships with corporate sector education service providers (Chapter 10).

part 3 Reflections: Looking Backward and Forward

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Introduction to Part 3

Reflection is the metaphorical theme of Part 3. It begins with a final reflective summary – a researcher’s concomitant analysis, if you will – which endeavors to illuminate some of the parallels, as well as dissimilarities, among the English language program administrators, the English language program border crossers and teachers, and the disciplinary faculty teaching academic content courses in corporate sector partnership pathway programs vis-à-vis the research questions originally posed (Chapter 9). Reflecting into the future, the final chapter of this book examines the scope, limitations, and implications of the inquiry and, as well, explores areas for future research. It further provides readers an opportunity to briefly explore various “homegrown” or institutiondeveloped alternatives to the corporate partnership models of EAP matriculation pathway programs (Chapter 10).

chapter 9

Review and Discussion of Findings Introduction The purpose of my narrative inquiry was to illuminate the experiences of a number of faculty members working in corporate sector partnership institutions with matriculation pathway programs: revealing, examining, and describing the ways in which they perceive the partnership paradigm has impacted their professional status, their curricular and instructional autonomy and decision-making, and their perceptions of impact to students and host universities. The discussion below reviews this inquiry’s guiding research questions and attempts to draw attention to similarities and variation among the inquiry participants.

Revisiting the Research Questions

One overarching question guided this inquiry:

Research Question 1 How do English language teaching and disciplinary faculty teaching aca­ demic content describe the impact of their institution’s corporate sector partnership?

The stories and experiences selected for restorying and inclusion within each participant’s personal anthology of experience were done with the intent of providing illumination to the questions that guided this inquiry. Thus, ­experiences highlighted in participant narratives focused on issues of professional and institutional status; of implementation and transitions from quasi-­independent ­language programs to hybridized university–corporate depart­mental units; of curricular and pedagogical autonomy for both Englishlanguage teaching and content teaching faculty; and of perceived impact to students and host universities.

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Research Question 2 Do faculty describe institutional status as being impacted by the corporate sector partnership, and if so how?

Marginalization of English Language Teachers and Programs All English-teaching faculty and administrator participants recognized and spoke to the historically marginalized status of both English language programs and English language teachers as academic professionals. Faculty members teaching academic disciplinary content, however, were less so aware (Jenks & Kennell, 2011). “This profession is a funny thing: working in universitybased English programs throughout the world has kept me on the margin – within, but on the margins of academia for my twenty years of working” (Kevin). Most English language teachers and border-crossing participants did not feel that their status as academic professionals had been elevated as a result of the corporate sector partnership or implementation of their institutions’ pathway programs. On their campuses they remained “step-children” (Ivan; Sabine), perhaps elevated to the state of recognition of their existence (Anne; Rick), but outwardly no more respected or valued by the leadership of their universities or the faculty teaching in the content disciplines. Indeed, Anne suggested that, at the time of our interview, “it’s definitely a one hundred percent negative perception of us, of our students, of our program, of what we do and who we are: ‘Oh, you work in the PassageMaker Center? Ugh!’ There’s all this negative connotation: very much so.” Yet, Sabine acknowledged that “maybe some are starting to see us as more than just service providers,” and Oliver suggested that the status of the language center has been significantly elevated as a result of the partnership (“As soon as the senior management of the university had invested in this joint-venture idea, [the language center] rocketed up the agenda”), but that the status of English language teaching faculty has perhaps been elevated to a lesser extent. Marginalized by Association Mike, the adjunct faculty member hired to teach Business content in pathway courses, was, during our interview, reflecting for the first time on the possibility that – beyond his frustrations of seemingly being viewed only as an adjunct (Feldman & Turnley, 2004) by the program’s host institution – his affiliation with what he now understood to be a marginalized class of faculty may be impacting how he is perceived by colleagues within his academic discipline. Sadly, this sense of identification by association was perhaps an additional justification for his maintaining a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with colleagues

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regarding his teaching assignments in the university’s pathway program. In contrast, Christopher seemed rather to be embracing dual membership in both his academic discipline and the adopted world of English language teaching. Academic Mobility of English Language Teachers The rapid student growth, along with the new administrative structures of some of the pathway programs visited for this inquiry, created additional levels of administration, and thus, opportunities for advancement (Merton & Kitt, 1969) for English language teachers who were inclined to take on the new positions (Anne; Ivan; Kevin; Oliver; Pam). My own status as a former English language teacher who is resistant to shed that identity – and who was able, by way of the research project on which this book is based, to pursue a Ph.D. – resulted in my questioning and restorying emphasis on academic rank and professional mobility within participants’ newly structured public–private entities. For the great majority of participants, their English language and pathway programs’ line of reporting within host universities’ academic structures restricts their potential for achieving academic rank within the university, even if they were to attain what universities traditionally consider as the terminal degree in a discipline, the doctorate or Ph.D. (Grant, 2007) – this, notwithstanding the point that a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics or TESOL is judged by both the CEA (2008) and TESOL (2007) as being the terminal degree for the discipline of English language teaching. Positioning these newly structured programs in the Offices of Academic Affairs or Offices of the Provost will likely make academic mobility as a faculty member impossible – other than in administrative ranks. This concern appears to have been more grounded in my own desire to see the profession of English language teaching elevated within academe, and less so revealed as a present concern of the English language teachers and bordercrossing participants who were interviewed for this study. Ivan, Kevin, and others recognized “how the system worked 20 years ago when [they] entered the profession” (Ivan). Certainly, several participants expressed interest in considering such a mobility cause as an issue they might take up in the future (Ivan; Terri), but the current rapid growth of their programs make these issues less pressing or critical at the moment. More Full-Time Faculty Lines Reflective of Elevation of Status For the most part, all of the English language teaching faculty participants view the significant achievement of increased numbers of full-time faculty lines with university benefits for themselves and their peers as a positive

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advancement in their standing (Merton & Kitt, 1969) and as an impact of the corporate sector partnership worth celebrating. Some appreciated new opportunities for advancement into leadership positions and administration (Anne; Ivan; Oliver; Pam), while others were happy to remain focused on their work with English language learners (Case, 1998) and leave the perceived “chaos” of administration to the corporate partner (Ellie; Sabine).

Research Question 3 How do faculty experience implementation of the corporate sector partnership?

A prompt aimed to provide opportunities to identify issues related to status as connected to the implementation of the new programs and administrative paradigm was to have English language teachers and administrator participants describe how and when they first learned of the partnership, and further, what their personal involvement was in decision-making activities and processes leading up to the implementation, including their responsibilities in developing new curriculum. As had been the case for participants involved in my exploratory study (Winkle, 2010a, 2010b), the early days of first learning of the prospect and then the reality of the intended partnership were, for all of the participants in the main study, laden with secrecy, dread, and fear of the unknown. In all cases, participants described the decision as being a top-down, Provost-driven process with no input from English language teachers or administrators. A common refrain was that the decision to partner with an outside corporate entity was “a done deal” by the time participants had even been made aware of the possibility (Mullooly, 2009) but that the university leadership had presented an illusion of inclusive consultation post-hoc (Kevin; Pam; Rick; Sabine; Terri). Kevin shared stories about the collaborative and almost consensus-driven nature of his ELI before the corporate partnership was implemented. In relistening, reconstructing, and rereading his narratives, I considered how the former ELI’s consensus-driven processes as described by Kevin appeared to mirror those of the idealized practice of universitygoverned faculty senates within the overall academy (Lerner, 2008) and how, as a result of the partnership, the program’s structures and procedures were becoming less democratically propelled – more mandated and compelled – and more corporate-like (Stromquist, 2007). For the content teaching disciplinary faculty interviewed for this inquiry, there were no first-hand pre-partnership experiential stories, as the pathway programs of their universities were already in place when they were hired.

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For Christopher, however, stories of the transition were being retold to him, interestingly, not by language program faculty, but by colleagues from his academic discipline. Likewise, several English language teachers and administrator participants also shared second-hand accounts from friends or colleagues within the academic disciplines who had been impacted by the creation of their institutions’ matriculation pathway programs. Concern was expressed due to the for-profit nature of the partnerships (Kevin; Pam; Sabine; Terri; and others; University and College Union, 2013) and additionally it seemed that, as within the English language programs, faculty within the academic departments felt that the pathway program implementations were imposed “from above,” that is, from the level of the provost and university president (Anne; Christopher; Sabine).

Research Question 4 Do faculty describe curricular and pedagogical autonomy as being impacted by the corporate sector partnership, and if so how?

Autonomy Is Preserved In terms of autonomy over the in-class curriculum and instruction for both English-language and content teaching faculty, it seems that autonomy over their curriculum and pedagogical decision-making has remained intact within all participants’ U.S. contexts. In several contexts, it appears that the corporate partner attempted to make tentative advances toward standardizing curriculum in such a way as to allow for transfers of students among its partner universities. But English language program faculty and administrators, and in some cases, academic deans or university provosts, held firm in their efforts to retain full control over academic standards in all university courses and programs. Concern for Pathway Admissions and Progressions Numerous participants expressed concerns over both admissions and exiting criteria for the pathway programs. The numbers of recruited students were generally reported as high, but many participants suggested that the quality and preparedness of the candidates were considered to be less so. This brought into question, by David and others, whether financially incentivized recruitment agents are serving the best interests of the program, or indeed, the university. Diversity of students, both by country of origin and gender, were also concerns raised by participants (Christopher; David; Ellie; Mike; Terri). Several of the faculty shared stories of students who had been admitted with an ostensibly appropriate transcript and IELTs or TOEFL score but, after being

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reassessed upon arrival, were found to have a level of language proficiency that was significantly below that which had been represented in the documents presented (Anne; David; Kevin; Pam; Terri). Oliver and Sabine, conversely, reported that the students recruited were generally better than expected in terms of both academic and linguistic performance. Rick shared that within the first few months of their transition, the corporate partner was trying to make exceptions to the admissions criteria, and both Terri and Pam reported similar exceptions being made in order to matriculate weak students into degree programs. Programs differed in their exiting requirements as pertains to language proficiency assessments, or indeed, SAT, GMAT, or other criteria that would be required of a domestic student entering the degree program without the pathway. What was similar in most contexts was that pathway students generally had misunderstood expectations – perhaps influenced by the corporate partners’ recruiting agents and marketing materials – that their admission to academic degree programs was assured once they had been admitted to the pathway program itself. In cases where completion of the program did translate into automatic matriculation, the admission of domestic students was at times jeopardized since the limited numbers of slots for new students were potentially being taken up by pathway-matriculating international students whose academic qualifications were often inferior to those of their domestic counterparts (David; Sabine). To Segregate or to Integrate Universities with corporate sector partnership matriculation pathway programs, regardless of educational service provider, appear from evidence provided by this group of English language professionals to be contractually and systemically unique. Certainly, many partnerships resulted in programs, processes, and policies that have similarities; but they are also divergent. This divergence is seen most often in the curriculum. One area of such divergent curricular decisions regards the question of when, or whether or not, pathway students at either the undergraduate or graduate level should be integrated into credit-bearing content courses with matriculated students or should be segregated into sheltered credit-bearing content courses containing only English language learners. Participants’ consensus was that integration is preferred but that in some cases it is occurring too quickly and without adequate preparation or pre-integration support. Too Much Autonomy? Is there such a thing as too much curricular or instructional autonomy? When entering into this inquiry, I had little concern over the preparedness of

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English language teachers and program administrators working with an international English language learner student population. Both groups are well-educated and highly skilled professionals. A concern that I had had, and one shared by many of the English language teachers and program administrator participants, is that the disciplinary content teaching faculty are, in many cases, not adequately prepared to meet the cultural and linguistic needs of the lower level English language learners in their classrooms. Universities and their corporate partners appear not to have provided adequate resources or professional development opportunities, particularly in the area of pedagogical strategies for teaching and assessing English language learners. However, both Christopher and Mike, the two disciplinary instructors interviewed for this inquiry, point out that specific resources and interdisciplinary support are not readily or formally made available in their work sites. Nevertheless, my assessment of these content instructors as gained from our conversations about their current and past pedagogical practice with English language learners is that they are doing their very best to serve this population of students. On a different point related to instructor autonomy, both Ivan and Oliver noted some tensions that have occurred with English language teaching faculty in terms of having less out-of-class autonomy and more accountability to supervisors for their non-teaching time during the eight-to-five workday. This was of particular concern to those faculty who were carried over from pre-partnership English language programs into pathway programs. Threat to Accreditation: IEPs and Academic Programs According to journalistic reporting (Epstein, 2010; Klecic, 2010) as well as the accounts of several English language teachers and program administrators interviewed for this study, a number of their IEPs encountered challenges with CEA accreditation following the universities’ restructuring of those programs under the governance of corporate sector partnerships – though all were optimistic that they would eventually be reinstated following subsequent reorganization and separation of EAP units from pathway program administration (Ellie; Kevin). With regard to the academic degree programs, and directly related to the question of whether there exists too much curricular autonomy for content teaching faculty, the question of course equivalency should be of particular unease to academic program directors and senior university administrators in terms of their regional and national accreditations. The question can and should be asked as to whether the institutionally approved curriculum for credit-bearing content courses taught in segregated or sheltered pathway

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sections of, for example, Introduction to Psychology, is equivalent in objectives and outcomes to what is happening in the “mainstream” cohort classes of matriculated students (David; Christopher; Mike). Other questions that should be of interest to university administrators are how these courses are reflected on university transcripts and whether qualified faculty members, in terms of the accrediting agencies’ criteria, are teaching these courses.

Research Question 5 How do faculty describe their beliefs concerning impact to students and host institutions as a result of the corporate sector partnership?

International Students The notion of an EAP matriculation pathway is a positive one for international students who wish to study in universities where English is the language of instruction, and this opportunity is one that nearly all participants recognized as being highly valued by their students. While students may not always recognize the behind-the-scenes administrative aspects of programmatic shifts (Dooey, 2010), faculty participants shared some insights into what they perceive may impact international students as a result of their institutions’ transition from traditional IEPs to entities offering matriculation pathway programs. The issue of increased tuition was noted by faculty as a factor that has also not gone unnoticed by the students (David; Ellie; Pam; Terri), and in many cases full tuition for the pathway program is paid up-front with no consideration of providing remediation for students who were unable to meet the pathway exit criteria. In addition, the credit-bearing aspect of some of the pathway programs heightens the stakes for already pressured international students. Whatever grades they receive, they will “own” their GPAs (David; Ivan), which may increase the likelihood of their “cutting academic corners” or cheating, especially by plagiarism, to get the grades they need to stay in the program (Christopher; Ivan; Kevin). Some participants noted that – in addition to the issue of segregated classes – students are not being fully integrated into university student life in terms of living or social activities (David; Pam), so that the university community may have negative perceptions of pathway students (Anne; Christopher; Sabine). Christopher recounts that direct-admission non-pathway international students may also have a negative perception of pathway students and so may distance themselves from students entering the university through what they perceive as remedial entry: “I got into this university of my own accord…. I’m not part of that community” (Christopher). Both Anne and Pam suggested that for graduate pathway students in particular,

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pathways students who are integrated into mainstream classes too soon – ”from day-one” – struggle with the expectations of course instructors who are ill-prepared or unwilling to make any accommodations for English language learners (Anne; Ellie; Rick). This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the pathway students at the early point will not yet have had any cultural or academic preparation work with the English language teaching faculty. Kevin, Pam, and Terri all stated that issues of the programs’ sustainability, due in part to rapid growth in enrollment that has resulted in the overburdening of English language programs and academic departments, may impact the quality of instruction for these students, and that teachers may unfairly get the blame. Oliver, on the other hand, shared statistical evidence that international students within his context’s pathway programs were outpacing the university’s “direct-admit” international and domestic students, a result which he attributes to the programming and support services received during their pathway experience. Sabine, too, suggested that faculty’s pre-partnership fears in terms of the quality of recruited students may have been unfounded. Domestic Students The unanticipated impacts of corporate sector partnership matriculation pathway programs on domestic students were revealed in several conversations with participants. Several participants recounted stories of domestic students’ complaints to faculty regarding having to work with international students (Anne; Sabine), taking on the bulk of the responsibilities for group work and encountering difficulties when coursework required teams to do internships (David) or field work (Sabine). Another potential impact cited for domestic students was that they may potentially be perceived, based on formal assessments and grades, as performing at a level below that of international pathway students (David; Oliver). As Christopher and Kevin speculate, data supporting such higher achievement by the pathway students could potentially be in question due to the high occurrence in this group of academic dishonesty that is being either intentionally or naively overlooked by some content faculty. Some faculty expressed concern because pathway students generally have guaranteed seats in credit-bearing content courses (Ivan) or specific academic degree programs, domestic students’ access to these courses or programs could be inhibited (David; Sabine; Terri). In a related point, some participants speculated that, due in part to the rapid growth and high influx of international students into degree programs such as Business and Engineering, domestic students or their families might react adversely to course sections composed of “70% under-qualified non-native speakers” (Pam), or those which were not being taught by appropriately credentialed faculty (David; Mike).

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Host Institutions David’s sharing of Bay City University’s strategies for creatively matriculating low-performing English language learner international students from its pathway programs in such a way so as not to negatively impact their standing in the U.S. News and World Report ranking of colleges was disturbing to me. While I personally have no experience working in the area of academic institutional research, I did spend a number of years as a manager of an accounting unit for a financial services company, and on the face of it, David’s story seems to me to suggest questionable ethics on the part of university administrators. However, looking at BCU’s “creative accounting” practices from their perspective, the university likely recognized the rapid influx of guaranteedadmission international students with lower-than-desired GPAs as a problem that needed a pragmatic solution. David’s story is not included here as an example which institutional leaders should follow in practice but rather as a cautionary tale of an institution that perhaps had not fully considered possible negative consequences before moving forward with their corporate sector partnership plan. Perceptions of impact to host universities in terms of loss of control to a corporate or quasi-corporate entity were also apparent through participants’ narratives. Highlighted were issues related to pathway recruitment and admissions handled by third-party or joint-venture entities, making faculty unfairly accountable for the quality of English language and academic achievement of students who potentially matriculate (David; Rick; Sabine; Terri). Some expressed disappointment at the lack of ethnic, linguistic, and gender diversity of the applicants recruited by the corporate partner (Christopher; David; Mike; Terri), and Terri observed that “most [of our students] are still word-of-mouth. It’s [the university] and the reputation of the old ELI that’s bringing in students at this point,” thereby calling further into question the value of the corporate partner as a recruitment intermediary. While this study does not attempt to explicate the profit and expense-sharing arrangements of these partnerships, participants clearly had a sense that the university was paying too much for too few worthwhile services (David; Sabine; Terri), and that the corporate partner seemed to be able to demonstrate little in the way of their understanding of academics generally, and English-language teaching specifically (Ellie; Pam; Sabine; Terri). Finally, as has been discussed earlier, participants expressed concerns about university and programmatic accreditation (Ellie; Kevin), as well as rapid and unsustainable growth of enrollments and programs (Kevin; Pam; Terri) which should also be of concern to institutional administrators.

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Unexpected Revelations

A couple of unexpected revelations became apparent during the course of the early interviews with participants, and as these revelations entered into the forefront of my thoughts, reflections, and in the writing of my field notes, new questions began to find their way into my interview proto­ col regarding (a) the potential need for professional development for discip­ linary content teaching faculty, as well as (b) the notion that universities and their existing IEPs could have created matriculation or bridging pathway programs themselves, without having to engage with an outside corporate partner. Need for Professional Development for Content Teaching Faculty As was articulated by a number of participants in their stories, content teaching faculty are struggling pedagogically with the teaching of English language learners in terms of delivery (Christopher; Mike; Rick), assessment (Rick), and cultural awareness (Anne; Ellie); and the English language teaching professionals were perhaps not being viewed as credible resources for providing professional development (Anne; Ellie; Kevin; Rick). Again, perhaps, we return to the issue of the academic standing or status of English language teachers in tertiary settings. As Anne pointed out, it may not be possible for the Englishteaching faculty to situate themselves with mainstream university faculty as pedagogical experts in working with English language learning international students due to their perceived lack of credentials: [T]his is a really delicate issue. The answer is no. Not yet: baby steps. I think, for some departments in particular, we have to be really sensitive to tenured faculty, their perceptions of themselves. So to come in and say to these professors, these tenured professors, “Well, we think you need training in this area,” and “These English language teaching faculty with only Master’s degrees, but, hey, a lot of practical experience and knowledge, are going to deliver that training” – that’s not going to go over really well, not with the climate right now. I’m not sure they see us as being on their level. (Anne) We Could Have Done This Ourselves A number of English language teachers and program administrators expressed disappointment that the university had gone to an outside vendor to do what the university community could have done for itself. As Terri pointed

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out, “The idea of a pathway for English language learners is an excellent idea. It’s a good idea, but it isn’t [the corporate partner’s] idea…. The most significant thing that [the corporate partner] brought to the table – something I don’t know how we at the ELI could have done – they brought leverage.” And, as seems to be the case with English language teachers not being seen as suitable for the development and delivery of professional development for tenured university academics, the IEPs and their perceived low-status faculty and administrators felt they were not being valued or heard by university leadership: If they wanted a matriculation bridge for international students from the ELI, we could have done it. We’d been trying to get things like the TOEFL waivers and modified SAT requirements put into place for years, but the university wouldn’t listen to us. Why were they listening to this outside corporation and not to their own faculty? (Pam) [The corporate partner] just had a ready-made framework, a very expensive ready-made framework; but we could have done this ourselves. I feel like the minute you open the door for a bridge program by eliminating the SAT and providing a way for students to get a TOEFL waiver, we could have delivered as many students as [the university] wanted. Before the partnership, the ELI was bringing in right around 300 without waivers, based on our reputation. If we had those waivers in place and removed the SAT requirement, we could have brought…in as many students as wanted. So you see how this was so frustrating for us. We’d been trying to overcome these university roadblocks for years, but nobody would listen to us. We’re bright people. We could have done this. (Terri) Remarkable in the case of Rick’s institution was the fact that the ELI already had matriculation agreements in the form of their bridge program, but “nobody else in the university seemed to know that. So, basically, see, we already had what PassageMaker was offering, but we didn’t have any recruitment. We just could have used help identifying students” (Rick). Conclusion This chapter has extended the findings presented in Part 2 through an analysis which drew connections and divergences among the inquiry participants with respect to the research questions posed at the outset, as well as unexpected

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revelations. Chapter 10 discusses limitations and implications of this work, final researcher reflections on this investigation, and, finally, the descriptions of five universities’ programs in the United States that developed their own context-specific institutional alternatives to the corporate-partnership matriculation pathway models.

chapter 10

Into the Future Introduction This final chapter reviews the scope and findings of this narrative inquiry in a way which aims to reveal the generative and reflective character of qualitative research and the temporal nature of narrative inquiry specifically, by presenting a past, present, and imagined future for the object of study. The phenomenon of corporate sector partnerships in higher education creating credit-bearing EAP matriculation pathway programs in the United States is still new and limited in scope, hence not well-described in the literature, presenting both limitations and opportunities for contributions to educational research. The chapter closes with five accounts of universities’ institutional alternatives to the corporate-partnership matriculation pathway models.

Scope of the Study

Planned Limitations Several limitations were planned into the narrative inquiry carried out in my Ph.D. dissertation research (Winkle, 2011a) prior to collecting participant stories. This study makes no formalistic knowledge claims to represent the phenomenon under investigation in any “objective” way. Rather, the claim which I, as narrative inquirer, present is solely that the personal anthologies of experience which are presented here are reflective of the study participants’ experiences in relation to the phenomenon and the research questions posed in this study. The aim is that through these experiential artifacts, readers will gain insights about the corporate sector partnership matriculation pathway programs and create for themselves “a new sense of meaning and significance with respect to the research topic” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 42). An additional limitation is the fact that participants do not include corporate-partner representatives or university administrators, such as university presidents or provosts. The investigation also does not include the perspectives of students enrolled in corporate sector partnership programs or those of domestic students attending universities where such programs exist. Exclusion of these groups of stakeholders limits in the diversity of perspectives on the pathway phenomenon in this particular study while suggesting further

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inquiries that might usefully be undertaken. Of course, all empirical inquiries must have borders or delimitations; and narrative inquiry is an extremely labor-intensive methodology of inquiry, so that the scope of the investigation needed to be feasible. Explorations into the experiences of other individuals impacted by the phenomenon of corporate sector partnerships creating in EAP matriculation pathway programs would be appropriate areas of inquiry for future research. Another kind of limitation of this study can be seen in my own starting perspective or bias as a former English language teacher in higher education settings with early experiences teaching English language in both universitybased IEPs and for-profit corporate settings. Thus, I, the researcher, may initially have approached research sites where corporate sector partnerships were in place with skepticism regarding a practice which I already perceived as corporatizing and commercializing higher education (Andrews, 2006; Dickeson & Figuli, 2007; Fink, 2008; Fulcher, 2009; Lerner, 2008). In fact, all research has a position or perspective from which it is conducted and reported, though this is not always obvious – much less declared explicitly. Likewise, all readers of research will, themselves, read from their own perspectives and positions of socio-historical orientation. I have taken pains throughout this book to present participants’ views as these were told to me while also making clear to the reader my positioning through reflexive narrative. Qualitative methods demand this transparency as a means to supporting claims of validity and trustworthiness (Merriam, 2009). Other Limitations Arising in the Course of the Research Additional limitations of the inquiry emerged through the course of the study and all of its iterative processes, negotiations, and re-negotiations. First, because the topics being discussed during the interviews and the stories participants shared dealt with issues surrounding their occupation and primary source of income, and because of the rarity of the corporate sector partnership pathway programs in U.S. contexts, issues of anonymity became a concern for some participants. As described in Chapter 4, participants often hedged or softened stories during the restorying process to protect their livelihoods, relationships, and identities. Indeed, a participant who had at one point considered withdrawing from the study directly suggested that the methodology was potentially a limitation of the study: I think your choice of using narrative [will] influence your results in a negative way. There really is no way for someone to be truly anonymous since the pool of people is so small to begin with, and the roles each of us

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play is so unique that even with removal of identifying information, it is still apparent who the person is. (Anonymous) Certainly, multiple layers of anonymizing strategies were employed (Merriam, 2009), and mitigating hedging, softening, and redacting occurred during the restorying and member-checking processes, examples of which have been described in Chapter 4. Still, because of the rarity of the phenomenon, as well as participants’ perceptions of the likelihood that their colleagues and supervisors might read what I had written, it was the content of the stories themselves that a few participants were concerned would reveal their true identities to readers to whom they are known, and so some experiences could not be shared publically. Thus, some relevant experiential story elements were removed from the original study on which this book is based (Winkle, 2011a). An additional limitation emerged during the recruitment phase of the original study. In recruiting participants, it was difficult to identify disciplinary faculty teaching academic content in pathway programs. Two content faculty voices are represented within in this inquiry. In both cases, these were individuals who neither hold terminal degrees within their respective disciplines nor are they on tenure lines within their institutions. Having the opportunity to hear the stories of any content teaching faculty who are tenured (or on a tenure track) or from the chairs of academic departments would likely have given some different perspectives. Insights into the experiences of content teaching faculty were additionally shared, however, through second-hand accounts by English language program administrators and English language teachers with collegial access, which contributed to this study. A final consideration or limitation which must be taken into account is the possibility that some participants may have intentionally elected to participate or share and reveal stories which served a personal agenda either in favor of or opposing these types of public-private partnerships. Any such personal agendas as might be represented in the participants’ stories can be viewed as an aspect of their experience connected with the corporate sector partnership programs within the context of their larger work and life experiences. Limitations Arising in the Writing of the Book As I have noted elsewhere, because this book includes substantial reporting of research, and as every researcher’s aim is to make best efforts to protect research participants’ privacy and identities, I was unable to include an explicit detailing of the various educational service providers’ partnership models (i.e., INTO University Partnerships, Kaplan Global Pathways, Navitas, and Study Group) because including such information might wrongfully facilitate

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readers’ connection of research participants to their respective work settings through the specificity of their narratives. Likewise, this book does not include any form of evaluative judgment or assessment in terms of program quality or partnership agreement equity for any of the partnerships within which the study participants worked. Clearly, just as educational service providers and their program offerings are not all the same, nor are the host universities which independently negotiate their institutions’ partnership agreements; each collaborative partnership is unique to its context. There are – without a doubt – substantial differences among the host universities and the corporate sector partnership models that were in place at the time of my interviews at each participant’s worksite, and these differences have led to different experiences on the part of the research participants. One cannot and should not presume that the benefits or challenges described by inquiry participants would be representative outcomes from all such corporate sector partner organizations, nor that such benefits or challenges are or would be attributable to a corporate vendor.

Implications and Recommendations

The study contributes to the limited scholarship in the area of outsourcing and instructional privatization in higher education generally, and Englishlanguage-teaching and EAP pathway program contexts more specifically. University leadership and policymakers may benefit from an illumination of the possible impacts to their faculty and institutions more broadly, as well as the possible implications to students enrolled in pathway programs. Yet it is important, as Clandinin and Connelly (2000) emphasize, to appreciate that “the narrative inquirer does not prescribe general applications and uses but rather creates texts that, when well done, offer readers a place to imagine their own uses and application” (p. 42). Likewise, as Polkinghorne (2007) offers: Not all narrative research includes an explicit interpretative section. The produced finding is held out as the stories themselves. The stories alone are revealing enough to provide insight into the variety of lived experiences among the participants. (pp. 482–483) I, as researcher, heard and experienced participants’ stories from within the socio-historical context of my own life as a former English language teacher, as well as within the context of an interactive preplanned interview being conducted by a doctoral candidate pursuing a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction.

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It is understood and expected that individual readers of this book will experience the selected excerpts from participants’ personal anthologies of experience from within their own socio-historical contexts and “storied lives” (Clandinin, 2006, p. 45) and therefore that each reader will be struck with her/ his own imagined uses, applications, and implications of the participants’ stories. In addition, I have provided my own reflections on each participant’s collection of stories in Part 2 as well as comparative reflections in Chapter 9 related to my research questions. Here I consider implications and recommendations as they pertain to a number of salient findings. These concern:

• Continued feelings of marginalization by English language teaching professionals; • Retention of curricular and pedagogical autonomy counter-balanced by

concerns that “too much” autonomy in credit-bearing academic-content pathway courses may result in non-equivalence between such courses and their mainstream counterparts, potentially putting accreditation of academic programs and institutions at risk; Observations that content teaching disciplinary faculty lack professional development support in meeting English language learners’ cultural and linguistic needs, yet the perceived lower status of English language professionals may inhibit this skilled resource from being fully utilized; Perceptions that English language learners recruited by the corporate partner and admitted to pathway programs are not prepared for credit-bearing academic work; and The repeated refrain that universities could have created matriculation pathway programs themselves without having to engage an outside corporate partner.

• • •

Marginalized English Language Teachers While many of the interviewed English language faculty and administrators expressed enthusiastic appreciation for the new full-time teaching lines which emerged as a result of their institution’s corporate sector partnerships, faculty from all categories of this inquiry recognized that the academic professionalism of English language teachers was not being acknowledged by their university administration or by the corporate partners. In many contexts described by participants, IEPs’ and pathway programs’ reporting lines are such that they do not allow for the potential of academic-rank mobility. Institutions which grant Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor lines to professionals with

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Master’s-level terminal degrees from disciplines such as Theater, Dance, Fine Art, or Creative Writing (Grant, 2007) should provide such equitable opportunities to English language teachers, and by locating their programs in academic divisions or units such as English, Foreign or World Languages, Linguistics, or Education, this may be more realistically accomplished. As alluded to by a number of participants, some institutions are moving in the direction of providing rank-and-promotion status to Master’s-degree-holding English language teaching professionals. The rapid growth of pathway program student populations is increasing the demand for highly qualified English language teachers, and academic institutions that do not provide academic mobility may find themselves competing for more experienced and capable faculty with those institutions that do. Rapid and uncontrolled growth of these programs may also result in the lowering of minimum standards for English language teachers hired for such contexts, thereby potentially exacerbating the de-professionalization of this type of work. The corporate environment described by some participants, including, in some cases, corporate branding, increased teaching hours, and a move toward 12-month contracts that mirror university staff appointments with expectations to be on-site for an eight-to-five workday with limited or no release time for scholarly pursuits, reinforces an erroneous view of English language teaching professionals as merely service providers rather than as academic professionals with the capacity to engage interdisciplinarily with academic colleagues and contribute to the knowledge base and understandings of second-language acquisition, pedagogy, and curriculum. Certainly, not all English language teaching participants from this inquiry expressed a desire to become “more academic” or professorial. Indeed, several specifically rejected this identity (Merton & Kitt, 1969). Regardless, all professionals engaged in academic activities that sustain the mission and goals of the university need to be respected and supported through opportunities for professional development, research remits for those who express the desire for such activities, and financial reimbursement when pursuing advanced academic degrees and attending and participating in discipline-specific professional conferences. Curricular and Pedagogical Autonomy All participants of this inquiry indicated that curricular and pedagogical autonomy and decision-making was not impacted adversely by the corporate sector partnership; and in the context of the English language programs’ curriculum, this is arguably a positive outcome. However, several participants described mismatches between the curricular objectives and performance

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expectations in pathway-only sections of credit-bearing content courses and those of their “mainstream” university counterparts. This could raise significant accreditation issues for academic disciplines’ degree programs, as well as for universities overall in terms of regional accreditation. Regardless of one’s pedagogical philosophy with regard to the segregation or integration of English language learners into credit-bearing courses with matriculated students, it should be clear to readers that segregated course sections for English language learners of credit-bearing courses must either use the same syllabi or be appropriately aligned to mainstream course syllabi in terms of measurable outcomes and objectives. Traditional academic governance systems generally provide for a faculty-driven program review processes through undergraduate and graduate councils or curriculum committees. The curricula for pathway programs need to be vetted through these collaborative faculty systems and should not otherwise be circumvented. Universities that have their own inhouse accreditation specialists need to work with faculty to conduct explicit curriculum mapping or crosswalk-comparative matrices in order to demonstrate equivalence of credit-bearing pathway content courses which are potentially transferable into degree programs. In cases where English language learners are fully integrated into the mainstream student community for their credit-bearing disciplinary content courses, assurances must be made that the objectives, outcomes, and standards for the curriculum of these courses are not lowered to match the perceived abilities of enrolled English language learners, teaching to the supposed lowest common denominator. In short, universities and their faculties must retain complete control over the academic curriculum for all programs within the institution and not subordinate this responsibility to a corporate partner or privileged team of university administrators. Professional Development for Content Teaching Faculty Participants’ narratives suggested strongly that some content teaching faculty were not adequately prepared to address the cultural and, specifically, linguistic needs of English language learner international students (Fulcher, 2007, 2009). Their universities and the affiliated corporate partners seemed unwilling to utilize the professional, academic, and experiential knowledge of English language teachers by involving them in professional development for disciplinary instructors teaching in the pathway programs. This may be tied, as some participants suggested, to the perceived low status of the English language teaching. While not all institutions may be able to provide English language teachers with opportunities for academic mobility into tenured lines which potentially result in a professional collaboration of

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“equals,” efforts by the university administration to foster symbiotic relationships between faculty in academic disciplines and English language programs will ultimately benefit the institution and the students it serves. Just as many states now require K–12 teachers to have in-service hours or endorsements demonstrating preparation for working with English language learners, so too could professional development modules focused on the pedagogy of teaching and assessing English language learners be designed for higher education faculty teaching disciplinary content in pathway program contexts.

Recruited English Language Learners Not Prepared for Pathway Programs Nearly all participants shared stories which revealed that high numbers of international students recruited by the corporate partner were not prepared for credit-bearing academic work. Issues concerning identifying or developing appropriate pre-admission assessments with suitable cut-off scores, as well as developing, employing, and adhering to set policies regarding the remediation of students admitted who perform below standards, need to be cooperatively addressed by university administrators, disciplinary faculty, and English language program administrators and faculty. In a number of contexts where interview data were collected, these issues became apparent following the growing pains associated with a hasty implementation, and measured steps were being made to address matters of instructional quality over matters of quantity involving student numbers. In some cases, however, the promise of large amounts of pre-paid tuition appeared to override other educational priorities for both corporate and university administrators, exemplified through a reluctance to cap admissions to the pathway programs. Additional concerns were raised by several participants about domestic students and direct-admission international students being unfairly displaced from academic programs due to the guaranteed admission of pathway program completers whose academic performance may be inferior to that of the displaced students. In addition to the consideration that such displaced students might go elsewhere for their tertiary education, academic programs may risk damaging their programs’ reputation or disciplinary standing.

Universities Could Create Their Own Matriculation Pathways Both English language teachers and program administrators in this inquiry recognized that their universities could have developed matriculation pathway programs themselves. The primary obstacles were not external to

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the university: they were university admissions-related issues such as SAT or TOEFL waivers. Universities and colleges are staffed by intelligent and resourceful academic and administrative professionals. Institutions can consider whether they can make use of their in-house expertise to establish matriculation pathway programs for international students, rather than outsourcing these to a private service provider who links them to inter­ national  recruitment services. A portion of the profits that would have been shared with corporate partners could instead be directed toward the hiring of short-term contracted consultants or full-time university-employed human resources who can provide the needed skills, competencies, or experience. Universities could also consider entering into short-term partnerships with corporate entities to aid in the planning and implementation of their pathway programs, and thus retain their long-term future income for themselves, as well as their academic brand or identity as a non-profit-oriented institution and their control on instructional and admissions standards. Beyond the practical, financial, and quality-oriented rationales for universities to develop and administer their own matriculation pathway programs and student recruitment efforts for international students, there are ethical considerations related to the role of independence and faculty governance systems. Universities must firmly attend to the best interests of both their students and their institutions and avoid ceding programmatic admissions and curricular control to quasicorporate entities or to a few high-level academic administrators who have, perhaps, taken on the role of corporate managers (J.A. Jones, 2008), circumventing traditional, collaborative, faculty-driven program approval and review processes. Implications for Future Research Readers of this book will likely have already identified areas for future research that resonate with their own interests, orientations, or areas of advocacy. The following is a brief inventory of areas where this inquiry regarding EAP matriculation pathway programs could potentially be expanded:

• Explore the experiences and the logistical, ethical, and financial decisionmaking processes of high-level university administrators and stakeholders such as provosts, presidents, and academic deans in relation to their institutions’ decision to enter into a corporate sector partnership resulting in matriculation pathway programs; Comparatively examine the various corporate partnership models which include the development of matriculation pathway programs, perhaps through a multiple case study design;

•

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• Comparatively investigate the characteristics of pathway programs in their

first, second, third, and fourth years of operation, as a way to gain a crosssectional view of changes in those programs over time; Engage in intervention-guided research involving the development, implementation, and assessment of professional development for disciplinary content teaching faculty in the pedagogy of teaching English language learners in institutions which have pathway programs; Explore and describe the involvement of department chairs and tenured faculty from academic disciplines where matriculation pathways are or are about to be implemented; Examine the impact of rapid infusion of international English language learners into academic degree programs, such as on program completion or attrition rates and GPAs; Explore the ways in which domestic students are experiencing the infusion of international English language learners into mainstream course sections vis-à-vis their institutions’ efforts to internationalize their universities; Examine how international pathway students themselves are experiencing their integration into mainstream content courses with matriculated students; Examine the matriculation and progression processes of pathway students longitudinally in order to gain insights into the effectiveness of such programs; Explore issues of status through cross-case analysis of institutions where English language teaching professionals are provided academic rank and promotion opportunities; Investigate the life histories of English language teachers working in university-based language programs with and without any connection to outside corporate entities, whether recent or long-standing; Investigate the impacts of such corporate-university partnerships as those described in this investigation from the point of view of administrators in the companies involved.

• • • • • • • • •

No doubt readers will have identified abundant opportunities for further research exploring issues related to the various stakeholders involved in corporate sector partnerships that have resulted in EAP matriculation pathway programs. For me, issues and questions concerning the impact this phenomenon has had or will have on the professionalization or deprofessionalization of English-language teaching faculty are of most interest for future research.

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Final Researcher Reflections First they outsourced the university cafeteria, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a cafeteria worker (Glickman et al., 2007). Then they privatized the university bookstore, and I didn’t speak up because I didn’t work in the bookstore (Gupta et al., 2005). Then they outsourced the university library’s cataloging, but I didn’t speak up because I was not a librarian (Dhiman & Sharma, 2010). Now that they have come for the IEP (Winkle, 2010a, 2010b, 2011a), who will be next? The mathematics faculty? The information technology faculty? The Nursing faculty? Will anyone be left to speak up for them?1

I first began exploring issues related to the phenomenon of corporate sector partnerships setting up EAP matriculation pathway programs in universities following my attendance of Sheila Mullooly’s (2009) “Privatization of IEPs” session at the 2009 TESOL Convention. The shared experiences of alarm, distress, and uncertainty that I and other attendees of the session felt drew me to explore just what was happening to “my people,” the professional English language teachers. When engaging with English language teachers and program administrators during the exploratory study described in Chapter 3 (Winkle, 2010a, 2010b), I discovered that there was a great deal of fear of the unknown from those who found themselves in the middle of partnership negotiations. Like me, what these professionals had heard of this new phenomenon and of the wooing corporate partner was not positive, and at the time of the preliminary study, there were still many unanswered questions. Promises of job security and opportunity were being made, yet participants were questioning whether or not they wanted to be part of such a profitoriented venture. In the context of the current investigation, early frustrations and fears of the unknown permeate many of the English language program administrator and teacher narratives from the various institutional sites, and many of their stories often mirror those of participants in the exploratory study. And while Oliver was a strong advocate for the partnership model, even he suggested, “You know, at every university it is exactly the same; …it is an awful process to go through. It was horrible. It was a horrible process to go through; it really was.” For higher level English language program administrators, the costs were perhaps higher than for teaching professionals as they were often displaced or 1 The revised refrain to this book’s preamble is an homage to Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem, “First they came for the Communists,” circa 1946 (Marcuse, 2010).

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otherwise reduced in their authority and autonomy of leadership. But for Oliver and others (Anne; Ellie; Ivan; Sabine), the early days of turmoil resulted in positive outcomes for teachers once the dust of putting the pathway programs in place had finally settled; it seemed that most English language program administrators and faculty retained or had the opportunity to retain their jobs, and many English language teachers appreciated the increased number of full-time positions with university benefits and the opportunity for advancement into administrative positions for those who were so inclined. Ellie summarized well what she and others English language teaching professionals felt, and it is indicative of the views of many English language program professionals in the study: We thought it was the end of the world, initially, but my feelings have changed; we are huge. The number of full-time benefit jobs is increasing all the time; people have a certain security of employment which was never there before…. We have curricular freedom…; we’ve kept our [university] identities…; we have [the university] benefits package…. It has been nothing but good for teachers for as far as I can see…. It seems that at present, for English language teachers the benefits and opportunities may have outweighed the turmoil and pain of being targeted, working through the transition, and surviving the early months of implementation. Therefore, as an advocate for English language teachers, I consider that the outlook for these professionals is better than I had first imagined. Yet I continue to be concerned about the fact that all of the English-teaching positions are at the lower levels of academic employment, with no possibility of faculty rank or tenure and with at best only a marginal position in university affairs. English language teachers and program administrators are highly skilled professionals who have experience and success working with English language learners and international students. Yet most English language teachers and program administrators interviewed for this inquiry related stories of experiences which reflected and reinforced the existing marginalization of the profession (Jenks & Kennell, 2011; Leach & Vliek, 2008). Perhaps if or as matriculation pathway programs become more commonplace on university campuses in the United States, the contributions that English-language teaching professionals make toward their successful implementations will be collegially recognized and celebrated by their university communities. However, there is also the possibility that the rapid growth of these programs – both in terms of enrolled students and in terms of the tuition-based revenue entering the

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coffers of universities and their corporate partners – may exacerbate perceptions in the academy of English language teachers and programs as being more about commercial than academic activity (Fulcher, 2009). While not the focus of the study, this inquiry was broadly situated from a perspective that views partnerships between universities and private, forprofit educational services providers as being an extension of a general trend toward a corporatization of higher education through privatization and outsourcing (Andrews, 2006; Dickeson & Figuli, 2007; Fink, 2008; Fulcher, 2009; Lerner, 2008). My original concerns about this trend remain, even though similar concerns were not generally expressed by the current inquiry participants. English language teaching, in my view, is being further commodified through the corporate sector partnership arrangements that universities are making to recruit and matriculate international students with English language support. The questions posed in the final lines of the homage to Pastor Martin Niemöller’s “First They Came for the Communists,” persist for me. As Ivan, one of the administrator–English language teacher border-crossing participants thoughtfully queried: Look, if universities can do this for ESL, then why can’t they do it for math? …And the truth is this: why do we need a full professor to teach Math 101? I don’t know: it’s pretty simple stuff. It’s either right or it’s not. It’s a lot easier than teaching language, where, you know, there can be fifty answers to one question. Indeed, if instructional academic endeavors such as language teaching can be commodified, de-professionalized, and, in some contexts, outsourced in terms of governance, then which teaching units or departments on campus will be next? Who will be left to speak up for them? The concept of universities developing EAP matriculation pathway programs for high-performing English language learner international students is a good one. And there is a strong likelihood that the trend toward the creation of such programs will continue, as they are often viewed as being in harmony with universities’ missions and goals related to the internationalization of their campuses. However, that private, for-profit corporate entities need to be involved in the development and governance of matriculation pathway programs is something which I remain highly skeptical about, as it conflicts with my personal views of higher education as a public-interest activity rather than a profit center. As was asserted by a number of my inquiry participants, universities can develop and govern these programs for themselves, with far more control and less risk of negative consequences.

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For academic professionals from all disciplines, the emergence of matriculation pathway programs tied to an external corporate partner represents a significant change in the ways international students are recruited and matriculated into degree programs. For academic English-teaching professionals specifically, this current evolutionary period may provide an opportunity to make forward strides toward an academy-recognized professionalization of English language teaching and towards becoming an accepted discipline. Within the new pathway program paradigm, now more than ever before, English-teaching professionals are becoming more academically interdisciplinary, and hence more connected – though often more indirectly than directly – in their role on campus to their disciplinary colleagues and to the overall university curriculum. As instructional university faculty, what English language teachers do contributes directly to the continued and future success of their students: English language teachers are integral to the international students’ university curriculum and should be recognized as such.

Alternatives to Corporate Partnership Pathways

The notion of universities developing systems for providing conditional admissions, bridge, or pathway programs for international students for whom English is not their primary language is a good one, but universities and their IEPs have been developing matriculation bridge or pathway programs and creating opportunities for conditional university admissions for decades without the need to partner with an entity from the corporate sector (Jenks & Kennell, 2012). There is a strong likelihood that the trend toward the creation of alternative matriculation programs for international students who are English language learners will continue. Viewed as being harmonious with many universities’ missions and goals related to the internationalization of their campuses, such programs are attractive admission alternatives for international students whose English language proficiency is not high enough for direct admission. The question then becomes whether or not private, for-profit corporate entities need to be part of the equation. Is there a strong enough argument to be made for involving corporate entities in the development and governance of tertiary matriculation pathway programs? Those who view higher education as a public good rather than a profit center are naturally skeptical as to how enterprises whose main goal is to generate income cannot be in conflict with educational goals. In addition, members of and advocates for the English language teaching profession can argue that rather than promoting the professionalization of English language teaching, the

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corporatization of any aspect of the delivery of instruction or services to international students further exacerbates the de-professionalization of English language teaching. Of course, not all of the challenges which presented themselves to the faculty in the findings of my research inquiries are attributable directly to the fact that these faculty members’ programs are housed within a corporatepartner model of matriculation pathway program. Challenges relating to quality recruitment, admissions, plagiarism, equivalency for credit-bearing courses, and preparedness and professional development for disciplinary faculty teaching academic content would all likely be evident and require mediation in an in-house, university-developed and administered path­ way  program as well. Blame for the commodification of English language programs in tertiary settings cannot solely be laid at the feet of the corporate sector: many universities have viewed and continue to view their IEPs as profit-generating service centers. That being said, where the desire or need to create matriculation pathway programs for ESL international students in university settings exists, there are strong arguments for the collaborative development of such programs in-house, by university administrators, faculty, and non-teaching staff. In the same way that for-profit educational service providers’ matriculation pathway models have similarities in intent, aims, and organization, so too do “home-grown” or institution-developed alternative matriculation programs. To follow are brief descriptive examples of five universities in the United States which have collaboratively developed context-specific, institutional alternatives to corporate partnership models of matriculation pathways by creating provisional or conditional admissions programs, bridge programs, or their own credit-bearing matriculation pathway programs. As is more fully described in Chapter 4, these programs were identified through an email query I sent to the TESOL Program Administration Interest Section listserv. Through both synchronous and asynchronous conversations, I developed initial drafts of the program descriptions based on what the program director or associate director told me. The narratives were reviewed, amended, and validated by the directors/associate directors who elected to have their program descriptions included in this book. Unlike the narratives of the exploratory and main studies of this investigation, the descriptions given below are not anonymized in any way. Given that the descriptions are general and that the programs may change, links to the programs’ web pages have been provided, and readers are encouraged to explore each institution’s program websites to supplement these accounts of current program offerings.

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DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois – Randy Hardwick The English Language Academy (ELA) at DePaul University (http://ela.depaul. edu/) in Chicago is a five-level IEP in the midst of change, exploring creative opportunities through its “University Bridge Certificate” and developing conditional admissions policies. It is a member of AAIEP, and had its UCIEP site visit in February 2013. While they are not yet CEA members, they have fielded their application and are planning to begin the self-study training phase of the application in July 2013. The ELA currently does not resemble the pathway program models of many of the corporate educational services providers in terms of having a comparable matriculation pathway program that allows for credit-bearing coursework, but its Director, Randy Hardwick, suggests they are moving slowly in that direction. In the past, DePaul University had been approached by INTO University Partnerships for a corporate sector partnership, but they were rejected by the former Provost who, according to Randy, was generally opposed to agents. “He feels we should be able to create our own networks.” According to Randy, when DePaul University’s ELA originated in 1996, it was housed within DePaul University’s Continuing and Professional Education division. It “grew up in its own little nest as an income generator for the university.” It later was moved into the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and has since been shifted into its current organization within the university’s International Programs Divisions about 6 years ago. Randy describes the division as being “strictly services,” consisting of the university’s Study Abroad Program, the Office of International Students and Scholars, and International Admissions for undergraduate students, in addition to the ELA. The division is soon evolving to include Student Services and a more unified and comprehensive vision of services in line with the university’s comprehensive internationalization plan. Randy suggests that the university’s plans to internationalize was the likely motivation behind moving the ELA into the International Programs Division, though it might, in his opinion, more logically reside in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences under some versions of matriculation pathways currently being studied. The comprehensive internationalization plan, which directed all departments to find ways to prepare their students for the global world, is connected to the university’s Vision 2018 Strategic Plan. Aims related to student participation in study abroad and exchange programs, as well as a targeted increase in international student enrollment, were embedded in the plan; and according to the Provost, the ELA was to play an integral role in international recruitment. Randy met with the then Provost, both agreeing that the ELA needed to be a more significant player in the internationalization of the university. He was

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directed to identify ways to utilize the ELA as a strategic resource for the recruitment to DePaul University. Historically, only 10% or 11% of ELA students matriculated into DePaul. One of Randy’s challenges has been to connect the ELA, which had been an autonomous unit for so long, to the larger university community. While not a “pathway program” in the same vein as programs described earlier in this book, one of the “pathways” to matriculation currently in place for ELA students is the University Bridge Certificate. In practice, for most DePaul undergraduate and graduate programs that require an Internet-based TOEFL score of 80 (paper-based, 550) for admissions, completion of the fivelevel program at the ELA serves as a waiver, although there are variations among the academic programs as to the process. An international student applicant whose TOEFL score falls below the minimum is directed to the ELA for placement into one of their levels of study. Once they successfully complete Level 5 of the five-level program, they earn a certificate of completion and can matriculate, assuming all other university and program requirements have been met. In Randy’s opinion, student success as demonstrated by completion of the ELA programs has been a better predictor of students’ ability to succeed in tertiary settings than the TOEFL. Beyond the path to matriculation at DePaul, an additional benefit to obtaining the University Bridge Certificate is that it is transferrable to partner universities. So far, DePaul’s ELA has partnered with four area colleges (Augustana College, Columbia College, Robert Morris University, and University of Illinois at Springfield), developing articulation agreements that recognize the ELA’s University Bridge Certificate as evidence of obtaining a level of English language proficiency acceptable for matriculation at those institutions. Randy notes that there was no push-back from university administration concerning appearances that the university was competing with partner institutions for international student matriculation. Randy suggests that many of the undergraduate and graduate programs at DePaul are competitive in terms of admissions. Since a good number of their ELA students would likely not be accepted into the DePaul degree programs, the ELA facilitates students’ identifying other universities where they could be accepted. Additionally, some of the ELA students have interest in programs that are not available at DePaul (e.g., Engineering), and providing pathways to institutions that have those programs serves the ELA students well. Randy expressed that he would like to identify at least two more regional partner universities that would accept the ELA University Bridge Certificate. The ELA at DePaul is working toward conditional admissions for graduate student programs based on partial completion of the ELA University Bridge

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Certificate. What they have been discovering is that the language proficiencies needed for some academic graduate disciplines – for example, those in mathematics and some technical areas – is less demanding during the first than subsequent academic terms. Randy’s and his colleagues’ thinking is that such students may be able to perform well during their first year of graduate studies, so long as they are getting some concurrent language support from the ELA, perhaps coupled with an intensive English experience during the summer between the 2 years of a typical graduate program. The ELA administration is additionally working with faculty responsible for the first-year writing curriculum and those in undergraduate admissions in an attempt to find articulation between the final writing course in the ELA course sequence with that of the university first-year introductory courses, allowing for the possibility that credit might be afforded to those students who can demonstrate – either through portfolio or assessment – an appropriate level of achievement. They are also considering the possibility of having the creditbearing introductory writing course taken concurrently with the ELA-delivered writing counterpart. There is also consideration that some ELA coursework might be viewed as equivalent to electives in modern languages. As Randy notes, “We give credits to a native English speaking student studying Italian in a study abroad experience in Italy, and yet what the ELA students can accomplish in a second language is far beyond what the typical study abroad student can do in Italian.” The ELA at DePaul University is currently in a period of significant change. Randy stresses that programs must develop according to the needs of the university and the students it serves, and “one size does not fit all.” In sharing some of the lessons he has learned along the way, Randy believes it is important to raise awareness of the language program on campus – emphasizing the qualifications of its faculty and staff, and of their availability as a resource to their colleagues. He further underscores the importance of getting buy-in from language program faculty in order to successfully support the accountability measures required to facilitate successful programs and matriculation initiatives.

Rowan University at Camden, Camden, New Jersey – Jackie McCafferty The International Student Programs division at Rowan University at Camden (http://www.rowan.edu/camden/esl/internationalstudents.cfm), located in Camden, New Jersey, features a traditional five-level, pre-university Intensive English Language Program (IELP) and its pathway programs for inter­ national   students. They additionally have language programs available for

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U.S. permanent residents. In total, the programs typically have an enrollment of approximately 60 students each semester, 20 of whom are in the pathway programs. Rowan University has its main campus in Glassboro, New Jersey, but the IELP and pathway programs are only available on the Camden campus. According to Jackie McCafferty, Director of English Language Programs, the university originally began developing language programs in 1969 to service a growing population of immigrants in the Camden region, not international students. Immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Central America were dominant initially, but these groups were joined by a very strong influx of Vietnamese after the Vietnam War. While the original IELP had always accepted international students who found their way to their programs, there had never been an active effort to recruit international students in the past, in part because the Camden Campus does not have facilities to house students. A few years ago, there was recognition by the university administration that there needed to be a stronger emphasis on bringing international students to Rowan University. Unbeknownst to Jackie, a mid-level administrator of the university pursued a proposal from ELS Language Center, and when it was brought to the attention of the Provost, the Provost’s reaction was along the lines of “What’s going on here? We already have a language program on the Camden campus.” Jackie was asked to prepare a plan for meeting the needs of prospective international students and – based on her proposal – the Provost rejected the ELS Language Center bid. With the installment of a new International Center Director, the university has been making moves toward developing international partnerships for recruiting, “but it has been a long road with a lot of ups and downs.” Jackie suggests the problem may be that the internationalization of the campus is not viewed as a priority because it is not in the university’s Strategic Plan. Historically, Jackie was responsible for all recruitment for the language programs, but the university has now secured several agreements and partnerships in the pursuit of increasing their international student enrollment. The in-house Pathway Program for International Students is designed for incoming international students in their first year of university study only. Transfer students or graduate students who may need additional English language support may apply to take non-credit-bearing courses in the IELP. For Pathway admissions, students must apply to the admissions department of the university and meet all university academic requirements with the exception of the university’s language proficiency minimum. For the pathway, they must have language proficiency assessment scores of 65–78 on the Internetbased TESOL or 4.5–5.5 on the IELTS. The pathway students are then placed into Level 4 or 5 of the IELP: those students placing at Level 4 would spend two

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semesters in the pathway program, while Level 5 students would spend one semester taking pathway courses. Acceptable admissions materials, determined by each academic department, together with test scores which fall within these language proficiency assessment ranges, constitutes a conditional general admission to Rowan University and qualifies the students to take selective credit-bearing first-year academic classes while concurrently receiving English language support coursework through the IELP. Along with an official admissions letter, students are issued their I-20 form by the university. Jackie describes Rowan University as being a “tale of two campuses”: the main campus located in Glassboro, where campus housing is available, and the Camden campus 20  miles away. Those pathway students living on the main campus must take the shuttle bus to and from the Camden campus daily. While in Camden, pathway students have sheltered ESL instruction for two course blocks through the IELP in the mornings and take one or two academic credit-bearing, introductory courses commingled with fully matriculated students in the afternoon. Credit-bearing academic courses typically selected are among the following: Identity, Culture, and Democracy; Basic Algebra or Calculus; Introduction to Acting; Voice and Articulation (Theater). Courses are selected based on an appropriate level of content, availability, and likelihood that the course is appropriate for the majority of undergraduate degree programs’ requirements, especially those majors with few or no available elective credits. All students must take a minimum of 12 credits each semester (nine IELP credits plus one or two academic content courses). Exit from the pathway program requires the successful completion of all Level 5 IELP coursework, a minimum GPA of 2.5 while in the program, a passing evaluation of a student’s IELP Portfolio by the Writing Arts and IELP faculty, and an undisclosed “minimum exit score” on the Institutional TOEFL test. At this point, the exited pathway student becomes a fully admitted student to Rowan University. As noted earlier, Rowan University at Camden has a traditional IEP for those pre-university international ESL students who do not meet the required scores for admission to the pathway program. The IELP also is a resource for admitted alumni of the IELP and pathway programs, undergraduate students, and graduate students who need to continue to develop their language proficiency. Rowan University at Camden has a variety of additional programs available for U.S. permanent residents who have English language needs, including a Pathway Program for U.S. Permanent Residents that fundamentally mirrors the one for international students. Jackie describes having had very positive interactions with the mainstream faculty teaching academic content to the pathway students. It helped that she

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herself has been involved on faculty committees, including an International Education Committee, where she could identify potential allies across academic disciplines. In terms of specific academic content courses, in particular, she has found that the Introduction to Acting course has had a positive outcome in terms of producing more language production and confidence in the students. While all of the academic content courses that pathway students may take are “currently on the books,” Jackie is careful about where she places the pathway students, and typically reaches out to faculty teaching courses she believes are appropriate so that she can get her own sense of the faculty’s readiness to engage with and teach emergent English speakers, readers, and writers. “You have to find allies on campus; you have to have people who are committed to this. To do it right takes time: time and a lot of conversations, communication, and collaboration.” It also takes some leverage to develop such programs, and Jackie suggests making sure the internationalization of your university is explicitly stated in the university’s Strategic Plan would be a helpful first step. She believes the messages that “this is important” and “this is a university-wide effort” need to come from the highest levels of the university in order to make initiatives such as developing matriculation pathway programs for international students a priority. University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware – Scott Stevens University of Delaware’s English Language Institute (ELI) in Newark, Delaware (http://sites.udel.edu/eli/) was founded in 1979. It offers a dozen language programs, ranging from Intensive English, Business English, and teacher-preparation programs for English as Foreign Language, to the CAP Cohort Model program which is the primary focus of this descriptive narrative. The CAP Cohort Model is an extension of the ELI’s conditional admissions program which is available for all undergraduate majors and approximately 18 graduate programs. According to Scott Stevens, Director of the ELI, all admissions decisions are made based solely on the academic transcripts of the international student applicants: TOEFL or other language proficiency assessment scores are not required. Some academic programs, such as Engineering, may require SAT scores, and graduate programs have additional requirements, such as the GRE or GMAT, but these requisites are put on hold until such time as the student is preparing to exit the CAP Cohort Model program. Scott describes the cohort experience as being grounded in the areas of Self-Development, Academic Development, and Team Development, and student engagement in these areas is strongly emphasized throughout the CAP Cohort Model program. “A noble goal of universities has been the internationalization of the campuses,” says Scott, “but the irony is that international

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students often end up very isolated with little or no interaction with the university community at large, so this program is designed to address this head on.” A highlight of the program is its team-building retreats held on the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay, where students take part in a series of team challenges, camp fires, and opportunities for bonding with their peers, faculty, and mentors. Risk-taking is the central theme of the retreat. Upon arrival, accepted students are given a placement assessment by the ELI and put into one of seven levels of EAP (Basic and Levels 1–6). Those students placed in Levels 1–4 are considered to be in Phase I of the program, and they participate in what might be described as a traditional content-based IEP curriculum. Phase II begins once a student advances to Level 5. Some students will have been initially placed into Level 5 or Level 6 upon entry to the program. These Phase II students are then purposefully grouped into heterogeneous cohorts of six to eight students of mixed nationalities, segregated by undergraduate or graduate student status. Each cohort is then assigned both a faculty advisor and a mentor, who is typically a domestic, native English-speaking undergraduate or graduate student. The mentors have undergone training in working in cross-cultural settings and are familiar with the goals and outcomes of the program. Advisors meet minimum of 2 hours a week in a classroom setting with their cohorts, focusing on metacognitive and leadership skills. Cohorts engage in social recreation together and with their mentors, attending university cultural and sporting events, and participating in service learning projects. Throughout Phase II, the students continue taking the IEP Level 5 or 6 curriculum, in addition to the cohort-specific curriculum and activities. Scott notes that students must be engaged in the cohort phase of the program for a minimum of 6 months. Exiting the program is somewhat different for undergraduate and graduate students. In order for students to exit the undergraduate CAP Cohort Model program and fully matriculate into the university, they must earn a minimum grade of “B” in each of their Level 6 EAP courses (listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar) and score a 6.5 out of 7 on a final essay which is scored through a double-blind process of assessment. They must further be appraised as “excellent” or “satisfactory” in their effort score, which is measured throughout the curriculum using an in-house developed rubric. Undergraduate completers of the program will have three of their Level 6 EAP credits transferred to the university as a replacement for the required first-year Composition course. This is facilitated through an arrangement made with the university’s English Department. Those Level 6 undergraduates in the CAP Cohort Model program who are unable to meet the grade, essay, or effort-score exit requirements may be eligible to enter into Phase III of the CAP Cohort Model

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program, so long as they have successfully completed (with grade “B” or higher) at least one of their required language skills courses. Phase III is also known as the Bridge Program. In the Bridge Program – which Scott suggests generally includes 10% of the CAP Cohort Model program population – students repeat the EAP course or courses in which the minimum grade requirement was not met, but concurrently, they have opportunity to enroll in one or two introductory university academic courses. The administrators give them a narrow selection of classes from which to choose, and most are taught by faculty whom the ELI faculty work with on a regular basis. “We don’t want to overrun a given class with CAP students, so we would only send a handful, four at the most,” according to Scott. The mentor accompanies the student or students to the traditional class session, which is then followed by a recitation session where the enrolled CAP students compare notes with one another – along with the faculty mentor – and talk about study skills, areas of focus for upcoming tests or assignments, and the interpretations of the course readings. Typical courses that Bridge students might take for credit include courses offered in Mathematics, Communications, Women’s Studies, and Geography. Once students have met all of the exit requirements, they fully matriculate into the university, bringing with them any academic credits – in addition to the three EAP credits – they have earned. As noted earlier, only about 10% of CAP undergraduate students participate in this aspect of the program, as the other 90% would have fully matriculated after meeting the initial exit requirements. Graduate CAP Cohort Model program students have similar requirements in terms of exiting, but a passing grade of “B +” is required in all Level 6 EAP coursework; and before fully matriculating into the university’s graduate degree programs, they must satisfy any additional requirements that their program may require (e.g., GRE, GMAT, letters of recommendation, etc.). For graduate students, in contrast to undergraduate students, none of the EAP credits transfer to the university in order to partially fulfill degree requirements. However, the Phase III Bridge Program is available to graduate CAP students. An important point to note is that the completion of the either the undergraduate or graduate CAP Cohort Model program results in a complete TOEFL waiver for admission to the university. As Scott related, there was an explicit decision made early on that they did not want to “put students on ‘the rack’” in terms of being pulled in one direction meeting the academic requirements of the ELI curriculum – and being pulled in another direction – learning testtaking strategies for meeting a particular TOEFL score requirement – since, in Scott’s view, there is not a strong correlation between the standardized

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language proficiency assessments and the skills, proficiencies, and dispositions necessary to succeed in university. In fact, the ELI at the University of Delaware does not provide TOEFL preparation courses of any kind for its CAP students, although those who plan to study at other universities can take a TOEFL preparation course. Once students are enrolled in the CAP program, they are ineligible to meet language requirements for the university through the TOEFL or any other standardized language proficiency assessment: “They need to focus on why they are actually here in the first place,” says Scott. “The program is designed to replicate what they are going to encounter, and we believe in performance-based measurement rather than the Internet-based TOEFL.” Scott states that the programs have enjoyed support from all levels of the university. When he and his ELI colleagues first proposed the conditional admissions programs, the university President quickly responded with a resounding, “Let’s do this.” The ELI and university’s initiative was grounded in the university’s strategic plan, which specifically included aims of internationalizing the university. Scott says that increasing student numbers or tuition dollars were not the motivators, as the university historically draws a great number of qualified applicants, many of whom are from out of state and pay tuition fees which mirror those of international students. One of the challenges has been meeting the demands of the programs’ popularity. “We went from 25 students to 300 students in what felt like overnight!” They had to “get up to speed” very quickly, and Scott acknowledges that there were growing pains that any program might experience due to such rapid growth, requiring the development of a complex and well-organized operation. There are approximately 650 students currently in the ELI programs at the University of Delaware, about 180 of whom are enrolled in the CAP Cohort Model. Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Tobie Hoffman The English Language Center (ELC) at Drexel University (www.drexel.edu/ elc) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, resides in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences. Drexel University is run on a four quarter system (fall, winter, spring, summer). The ELC collaborates directly with Drexel University Admissions to administer two undergraduate conditional admissions programs in addition to its traditional pre-university, six-level Intensive English programs designed to support the needs of international ESL students. The center is CEA-accredited, is a member of AAIEP, and is a founding member of UCIEP. Tobie Hoffman, the Associate Director of University and Intensive Programs in the ELC, shared with me some of the details of the ELC’s programs designed in response to the university having been approached

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by an educational services provider for the purpose of developing a creditbearing matriculation pathway program for undergraduate international ESL students through a corporate sector partnership. Tobie told me that university administrators were approached by an outside for-profit education provider for this purpose. They immediately turned to the ELC and asked them to develop a proposal that would address or fulfill some of the promises being made by the courting company. Tobie and her colleagues felt that the university administration “wanted to support us – wanted to keep this in-house” and not partner with the outside company. The ELC administrators needed to quickly come up with a fully fleshed-out proposal that included admissions and exiting criteria, curricular plans for language support components and academic content courses, finance and budgeting plans, and solutions to any operational systems concerns. The program was implemented quickly due in part to the historical relationships with Drexel faculty, who could assist with the inclusion of credit-bearing academic courses that were already listed in the official university course catalog. In addition, since the design of the program was not creating a new degree or major, the program did not have to go before the university’s faculty senate for approval. What Tobie and her colleagues created is now known as the “Drexel International Gateway” for academically qualified applicants who seek conditional admission due to inadequate language proficiency. The International Gateway (hereafter “Gateway”) is a cohort model program of 9–11  months which allows students to take 9–17 Drexel University undergraduate credits in Math, Chemistry, and Humanities while concurrently taking language support and test preparation courses at the ELC. Throughout the program, students’ test scores are reviewed as to whether they meet established benchmarks that indicate progress. Completers who meet Drexel’s full admissions language requirement (a score of 550 for the paperbased TOEFL, a score of 79 for the Internet-based TOEFL, or an IELTS score of 6.5) by the end of the spring term can choose to go home or continue for a fourth term in the summer with ELC support, potentially obtaining an additional six to seven university credits. Those students who do not meet admissions requirements are required to keep taking classes in the summer. In order for completers to be fully admitted to the university degree programs, they must meet several criteria, including the university’s TOEFL or IELTS minimum. No university credits are earned through the ELC-delivered courses: only the existing academic content courses afford credits to Gateway students. The program follows a cohort model, in that it only admits students to the program in the first (fall) term, and all students in the program follow the same

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curriculum. According to Tobie, they had tried allowing new students to join the cohort in the second or third term, but this became administratively cumbersome. In the fall term, the cohort is engaged in 15 hours per week of traditional IEP curriculum focusing on academic listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Six hours per week is focused on test preparation. In the second or winter term, in addition to the 15 hours of IEP curriculum and 6  hours of test preparation, the cohort is enrolled in a 3- or 4-hour credit-bearing, undergraduate-level sheltered Mathematics courses taught by Drexel University faculty. In the spring term of the program, the weighting of the curriculum shifts from IEP curriculum to content curriculum (with language support): the cohort continues with an additional three to four credits of mathematics, a three-credit chemistry course, and a 3  hours “Skills for College Success” class, with additional tutoring as needed. Rather than traditional IEP curriculum to fill out the remaining 6 hours of study, the cohort has an ELCdelivered writing course specifically designed to support students’ work in the discipline of Science, “Gateway Writing Support for Chemistry,” utilizing the same course text that students are required to use in the academic counterpart. Completers of the program are not provided a waiver of language proficiency requirements in order to matriculate into the university. However, those who can achieve the university’s required language proficiency scores are provided the opportunity for one additional summer term in the Gateway program in preparation for full university matriculation in the fall. For those students who are qualified and opt to continue through the summer term, the academic curriculum includes four additional credits of Mathematics and three credits of Humanities, Communications, Critical Reasoning, or Philosophy, and a selected ELC course. Some students will have fulfilled the requirements and choose to stay for the summer term courses, while others who choose not to stay for the summer term still would be required to take the test. In order to qualify for the International Gateway program, international students must be high school graduates with no prior college or university record. Their transcripts are evaluated and must meet the GPA minimum for Drexel University majors. Language proficiency scores must be within the range of 53–73 (Internet-based TOEFL) or 5.0–5.5 (IELTS) to enroll in the Gateway program. In terms of recruitment, Drexel University has a network of agents around the world, according to Tobie. Students may apply directly to the Gateway program through the ELC. Students who apply directly to Drexel and who meet academic requirements but do not meet minimum language proficiency requirements are accepted instead to the Gateway program and

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referred to the ELC for program registration and information. Those students who do not meet the Gateway language requirements are made aware of the opportunities of the Intensive English Program. In addition to the International Gateway program, Drexel’s ELC also has what their website describes as “Bridge Programs,” but what Tobie acknowledges are referred to in-house as the “partnership agreements.” While Drexel University itself does not waive language proficiency admissions requirements to either completers of the Gateway or the traditional six-level intensive English programs, Drexel’s ELC has formed articulation agreements with various partner institutions that offer conditional admission for ELC students (Chestnut Hill College, Goldey-Beacom College, Rutgers University, and Wilson College). Students interested in this opportunity apply for conditional admissions to the participating institution, meeting all of the academic requirements with the exception of the English language assessment. Applicants then receive a letter of conditional admission from the institution requiring that they attend the Drexel ELC, obtaining their I-20 form from Drexel. Those students who successfully complete Level 6, retaining 75% or higher as overall average scores, will have the language proficiency requirement waived and can be officially accepted to the degree program at the partner institution. “This takes a lot of work,” Tobie emphasized, when I asked her for some words of wisdom that would serve university administrators considering such an endeavor. It has required a constant state of partnership with admissions, operations, and the faculties of both the ELC and Drexel University’s academic programs. In Tobie’s assessment, “The benefits of doing this in-house are that you get to build these relationships with people on campus. You get to show what you’re worth, and we are worth something! We are a great added value to the university.” Tobie stresses that one needs to be both flexible and firm, which she acknowledges is quite a dichotomy. Faculty need to be prepared for curricular change. In her view, “It takes a strong faculty, but good faculty want to be challenged.” As a result of this program, ELC faculty have gained expertise in transcript credential evaluation, program coordination, advising, curriculum development, cultural integration programming, test preparation, and research and statistical analysis. Tobie recalls a statement made by a past TESOL President, Jun Liu: “You can’t just be English teachers anymore. You have to be content teachers.” George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia – Nicole Sealey George Mason University’s Center for International Student Access (CISA) (http://cisa.gmu.edu/) on the campus of George Mason University (Mason) in

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Fairfax, Virginia, provides programs for both undergraduate and graduate international students who may not yet have met the language profici­ ency  requirements for matriculation. Nicole Sealey, founding Center Director for CISA, and one deeply involved in the process of developing the programs, shared with me some of the history of how the CISA and its programs came into being. The former Director of Graduate Admissions for the university’s Engineering school, Nicole is not shy to confess, “Yes, I am not a TESOL person.” However, in her former role in admissions, she witnessed first-hand the vetting of prospective international student applications which were summarily rejected due to low TOEFL scores, and she recognized that academically qualified students were slipping through the cracks. The university has had a successful and operationally self-sufficient eight-level, non-credit English Language Institute (ELI) since 1981, but there had never been a clear path for students between the ELI and the university. The ELI holds a CEA accreditation and has membership in both UCIEP and AAIEP. Historically it served approximately 200 students each year. As an “auxiliary enterprise” on campus, a percentage of its budget had always gone to support degree seeking students, according to Nicole. In addition to its ELI curriculum, it provided and still provides faculty workshops, outreach to matriculated ESL students, and summer bridge programs for mainly immigrant students whose SAT scores reflect a need for language support. Several years ago, university leadership was approached by INTO University Partnerships with a corporate sector proposal to facilitate the creation of matriculation pathway programs for both undergraduate and graduate students. “They gave the university the full sales-pitch about what they offered,” and according to Nicole, a team from the university was given a full “dog-andpony show,” taken abroad and across the country to visit some of INTO’s existing partnership institutions. In contrast to many of the stories I had heard from participants in my research, in the case of George Mason University, professionals from the ELI were apparently invited early on to be a part of the university conversations with INTO. In addition to university concerns about the 35-year length of the INTO proposal contract, and the fact that the head of the company was not himself an educator, those on the university committee charged with investigating the INTO proposal wondered whether such a partnership would mesh with the mission of the university. Are the students going to be successful once they finish these programs? How do we harness the experience so that more domestic students can benefit from interactions with international students? How will we maintain control as an institution? From a practical standpoint, they wondered, too, if a long-term partnership with a

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corporate entity was the best invest­ment   of time and money, and so they decided to explore the idea of doing it themselves. CISA is considered an academic unit and is housed within the Office of the Provost, and the ELI is considered an auxiliary support service program and is housed within the division of University Life, also reporting to the Provost. There are strong partnership ties, according to Nicole, between the university’s ELI and CISA, and this is exemplified explicitly through a joint Assistant Director position shared by both divisions. All of CISA’s programs are considered to be provisional admission programs, different from conditional admission. Students accepted into their programs have all of the privileges, benefits, and responsibilities of fully matriculated George Mason students. CISA has two flagship programs: ACCESS, for undergraduate students, and BRIDGE, for graduate students. The ACCESS program for international undergraduate students is a single academic year program beginning each fall semester for first-year students whose language proficiency assessment scores fall below the university’s minimum score of 88 on the Internet-based TOEFL. The program was rolled out in the fall of 2010 when CISA was first established, providing students English language and cultural support coursework while there were concurrently enrolled in credit-bearing general education distribution or elective courses. “If they finish successfully, they’ll walk out [of the program as] sophomores,” says Nicole. In addition to language support, ACCESS students may participate in all university activities and have access to mentoring programs, academic advising, tutoring, and counseling. Prospective students apply directly to the university for freshman undergraduate admission, selecting their choice of major at that time. The university Admissions Office reviews all application materials and determines whether or not students have met the criteria for ACCESS. While “a competitive SAT score is required for all freshmen applicants,” the SAT score may be waived for ACCESS students in consideration of an overall high school GPA equivalent of 3.50 or higher. The minimum language proficiency score requirement is and Internet-based TOEFL score of 68 or an IELTS score of 5.5. Once in ACCESS, students are considered provisionally admitted to their desired Bachelor’s degree program at George Mason University. Upon successful completion of the ACCESS program, students move directly into their degree program’s curriculum of studies. Students enrolled in the university’s traditional ELI may also transfer to the ACCESS program with an ACCUPLACER assessment (a series of computer-adapted assessments of college-level readiness in academic reading, writing, math, and computer skills) score of B1 on George Mason’s internal concordance table, which is an ELI-developed matrix that

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aligns language scores on ACCUPLACER, IELTS, TOEFL, Pearson Test of English, and Common European Framework of Reference (a proficiency level guide in wide use in some European countries). The curriculum for the program is a combination of sheltered instruction and course-pairing (Kasper, 1994) or adjunct models (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 1989) of instruction. All of the English language support courses are taught by ELI faculty for academic credit. Several of the program’s specially adapted credit-bearing academic content courses, such as Public Speaking, English Composition, American Cultures, and Introduction to Research Methods, are also taught by ELI faculty in sheltered, English-only sections. Because the ELI and its faculty are not organized under an academic unit within the university, in order for them to facilitate credit-bearing courses, the CISA “buys out” the ELI faculty, and they can then teach under the banner of CISA and are offered stipends for course development as necessary. The credit-bearing required Freshman Seminar course is facilitated by the CISA students’ academic advisor. Its curriculum is adapted from the curriculum of the traditional mainstream course, but has been enhanced to meet specific the needs of international students. Nicole describes the Freshman Seminar atmosphere as reminiscent of a “home room” experience, and the course has been infused with explicit opportunities for self-assessment, community engagement, service, and critical exploration of social justice issues and concerns. Other credit-bearing courses are taught following course-pairing or adjunct models of instruction. That is, students are dually enrolled in both the “mainstream” course – for example, World History, commingled with matriculated students, with disciplinary faculty teaching the academic content – and enrolled concurrently in a sheltered course taught by an ELI faculty member charged with mediating learners’ experience in the main­stream course section, utilizing the same academic textbook and materials. Instructors of the course-paired sections attend the mainstream class along with the ACCESS students. ACCESS also has several innovative mentoring and “peer-learner partnerships” that partner matriculated George Mason undergraduate students with ACCESS students for additional support and tutoring. For those international students interested in entering the university’s graduate programs, CISA’s BRIDGE program has two separate first-year experience tracks: the Degree Enhancement Track (DET) and the English Enrichment Track (EET), both of which offer provisional admissions to a specific graduate program and share selected core curriculum. The Degree Enhancement Track (DET) was designed for those graduate student applicants with 3-year Bachelor’s degrees whose academic credentials

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fall short of the admissions minimum in terms of the number of years of educational study (15 years: including primary, secondary, and accredited collegiate study). All of George Mason University’s other general admissions requirements must be met, including the language proficiency minimum score of 88 on the Internet-based TOEFL (with a minimum of 20 points in each section) or an IELTS score of 6.5. The program provides coursework that supplements the student’s undergraduate studies, but additionally provides opportunity to prepare culturally and linguistically for graduate-level coursework in and U.S. university setting. The cornerstones of the BRIDGE programs’ cultural and linguistic support are the Preparing for Graduate Study and Graduate Communication across the Disciplines courses. Both courses span two semesters. The Preparing for Graduate Study course, as Nicole describes it, appears reminiscent of the Freshman Seminar course designed for the undergraduates in ACCESS, but embeds opportunities to engage with graduate-level disciplinary content and themes. The Graduate Communications Across the Disciplines course is a year-long integrated skills course “that goes way beyond EAP,” according to Nicole, and has a strong focus on both the written and oral communication skills necessary for success in graduate-level programs, aiming to develop discipline-specific academic language understanding and application. For DET students, these support courses are taken concurrently with the general education elective academic credit-bearing coursework that would be required to supplement each student’s undergraduate credentials; the program is somewhat customizable in this regard. Additionally, students take one required graduate-level course from their graduate program’s curriculum. DET BRIDGE students take a total of 12 credits in each of two semesters. The English Enrichment Track (EET) shares some core curriculum with the DET BRIDGE, but its intent is clearly different. The EET is designed for students who meet all of the university’s academic criteria for admissions, but whose English language proficiency does not quite meet the minimum for direct admission. It provides students with both cultural and linguistic support through the Preparing for Graduate Study and Graduate Communication across the Disciplines courses as described above. But because these students’ academic credentials do not require enhancement through general education coursework, the EET students’ remaining credits are taken in the desired graduate degree program. Like the DET, the EET provides students with provisional admission to the graduate degree program and access to mentorship. The English language proficiency requirements, however, differ for admissions depending upon the academic unit or department in which the student wishes to enroll. For example, the university’s College of Science and College of Visual and Performing Arts (among others) require an Internet-based TOEFL score of

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80; an IELTS score of 6.0; a Pearson Test of Academic English score of 50; or an in-house ELI Proficiency Exam (ACCUPLACER) score of B1 + in order to qualify for admission to the EET BRIDGE. Those applicants who which to begin graduate studies in the College of Education and Human Development or the School of Public Policy would need to obtain an Internet-based TESOL of 87; IELTS 6.5; Pearson Test of Academic English 58; or Mason ELI Proficiency Exam (ACCUPLACER) score of B2 (http://cisa.gmu.edu/programs/bridge/). This program adds approximately 1 year or 16 credits to the beginning of a traditional 2-year Master’s-level program. Nicole is an enthusiastic advocate for the CISA programs and the George Mason University students they serve. She attributes the current success of the programs to the fact that there has been buy-in at all levels of the university for the CISA initiatives from the very start. Developing the articulation among the ELI, CISA, and University Admissions was necessary and took time. Nicole advocates for the inter-departmental profit-sharing model that is currently in place, observing, “You can’t run a quality program without resources, and one unit alone cannot sustain a university-wide initiative.” Faculty from the university have been supportive of the programs, and creditbearing courses in ACCESS have even been taught by the university’s Provost, Vice Provost, and Vice President for Global Strategies, demonstrating to the university community through their actions their own commitment to CISA and to the international students it serves. Nicole advises universities considering developing similar programs to begin with a clear and well-considered description of the goals for the program. As she suggests: “You have to have a clear understanding of what you are trying to accomplish. Know the students. Know their culture. Demographics will always shift, and so will the program.” Conclusion This chapter provided a discussion of the scope, limitations, and implications of the narrative inquiry which is the foundation of this book. Reflecting upon the five areas of the study’s most salient findings, I provided recommendations for readers’ consideration and reflection. The chapter closed with brief descriptions of five U.S. universities’ institution-developed alternatives to partnering with the corporate sector in order to develop matriculation pathways for international ESL students. A shared notion among most of the program administrators was the need for well publicized senior-level support for the programs’ development, as well as the recognition that the inclusion of goals related to

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internationalization must be explicitly detailed in the university’s strategic agenda or plan.

Concluding Remarks to Part 3

Part 3 provided readers with a summative and synthesized analysis of all faculty and administrator participants in my narrative inquiry doctoral thesis (Winkle, 2011a) which explored the experiences of academic professionals engaged in corporate sector partnership models of matriculation pathway programs for international ESL students in tertiary settings in the United States. Most salient among the thesis inquiry findings are the following: 1.

The persistence of English language teaching as a marginalized activity and profession; 2. The double-edged sword of curricular and pedagogical autonomy, providing faculty with academic freedom, yet potentially risking accre­ ditation of academic programs due to lack of equivalence between sheltered credit-bearing coursework and the “mainstream university” counterpart; 3. The need for pedagogical professional development for disciplinary faculty teaching academic content to international students in the areas of cultural and language learning and teaching; 4. The quality or readiness of the corporate-partner recruited international students for credit-bearing academic coursework; and 5. The often repeated contention that for-profit joint-venture partnerships with the corporate sector were an unnecessary component to a successful matriculation pathway program implementation in university settings: “We could have done this ourselves!” In addition to the synthesis of findings, Part 3 discussed implications and recommendations arising from the study, both in terms of the phenomena itself, but also in the areas of future research that might build upon this work and develop new understandings that can inform practice in higher education. Almost by their very definition, institutions of higher education are occupied by academically gifted and resourceful professionals with areas of expertise that one imagines would be required to develop and administer matriculation pathway programs in-house, such as those in the university’s College or School of Business, the existing English language program, the

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College of Arts and Sciences, and the Divisions of Student, Academic, and Financial Affairs. The curricular and pedagogical governance systems of faculty senate, graduate and undergraduate councils, and the like, supported by Colleges or Schools of Education with knowledge and experience in curriculum design should be well prepared to provide expertise in needs assessment, curriculum development, and program evaluation and review. Given those resources, institutions should first consider and explore whether the knowledge and expertise to establish matriculation pathway programs for international students already exists within its community before engaging with a for-profit service provider. To that aim, the final pages of this concluding chapter provided a reflection into a number of possibilities for “homegrown,” institution-developed alternatives to the corporate partnership models in the way of a sampling of program descriptions from five U.S. universities that decided not only could we do this ourselves, but, indeed, we have. In so doing, these universities have shown support of their English language units and their faculty as they have also challenged the idea that outsourcing of central aspects of the management and education of their international students is necessary or desirable. They have therefore contributed to stemming the tide of outsourcing and corporatization in education while also helping to maintain the power of the university’s own faculty and administration and to keep the control of the university in their very capable hands.

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Author/Name Index Andrews, James G. 3–5, 8, 11, 13–15, 46, 235, 246 Baker, David 18 Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 47 Beaton, Ann M. 175 Bolger, Dorita F. 22 Brinton, Donna, M. 263 Busher, Hugh 18 Buttlar, Lois 7–8 Carkin, Susan 22 Case, Rod E. 5, 22–25, 224 Caudle, Dana M. 7–8 Cho, Jeasik 50 Christiansen, Lars 89 Christison, Mary Ann 22, 24 Clandinin, D. Jean xii, 45–47, 50, 53–54, 234, 237–238 Colin, Andrew 29 Connelly, F. Michael xii, 45–47, 50, 54, 234, 237 Cooper, Maxine 18 Creswell, John W. 48, 50, 53–54, 58 Cudmore, Geoffrey 11, 18 Dantas-Whitney, Maria 20 Dewey, John 47 Dhiman, Anil Kumar 3, 6–7, 244 Dickeson, Robert C. 5, 46, 235, 246 DiMaggio, Paul J. 18 Dimmitt, Nicholas 34 Dooey, Patricia 5, 26, 228 Epstein, Jennifer 26, 41, 227 Eskey, David E. 20, 22 Feldman, Daniel C. 222 Figuli, David J. 5, 46, 235, 246

Fink, Leon 3–5, 8–10, 14, 46, 235, 246 Flaitz, Jeffra 19 Frumkin, Peter 18 Fulcher, Glenn 4–5, 8, 9, 22, 26, 46, 205, 235, 240, 246 Galaskievicz, Joseph 18 Garcha, Rajinder 7–8 Gillum, Shalu 8, 89, 175 Glickman, Theodore S. 3–5, 7, 244 Grant, Daniel 23, 223, 239 Graves, Bill 5, 26 Gupta, Atul 3–4, 7–9, 12, 244 Hamilton, Neil W. 15 Hamrick, Jim 4, 19–20 Hardwick, Randy xiv, 60, 249–251 Harvey, Janet A. 18 Heaney, Joo–Gim 18 Hoekje, Barbara J. 19–20, 22, 24 Hoffman, Tobie xiv, 60, 257–260 Holm, Jennifer 3 How, Sow Kin 7 Humber, Janice 47

Klecic, Kerry  27, 227 Leach, Colin W. 58, 143, 184, 215, 245 Lerner, Gerda 4–5, 8, 9n, 9–10, 13–14, 16, 46, 215, 224, 235, 246 Levin, Dan 5, 26 Levine, Arthur 4, 8–11 Lewin, Tamar 5, 26, 28 Libby, Katherine A. 7–8 Ma, Wanhua 18 Marcuse, Harold 3n, 344n McCafferty, Jacqueline A. xiv, 60, 251–254 Merriam, Sharan B. 31, 46, 48, 50, 54, 59, 235–236 Merton, Robert K. 53, 58, 132, 143, 160, 216, 223–224, 239 Meyer, Katrina A. 4, 8–9, 11, 13–14, Mikouiza, Nathalie C. 3 Moen, Torill 47 Mohrman, Kathryn 18 Moser, Kate 5, 26 Moya, Wendy x Mullooly, Sheila xi–xii, 4–5, 26, 28, 224, 244 Murphy, M. Shaun 47

Jenks, Fredrick L. 5, 22, 24, 78, 115, 222, 245, 247 Jones, Bruce Anthony  9, 14 Jones, Juli A. 4, 9, 10, 13–14, 242

Neznanski, Matt 5, 26

Kanthi-Herath, S. Kanthi 3 Kasper, Loretta F.  263 Keating, Delvin 3 Kennell, Patrick 5, 22, 24, 115, 222, 245, 247 Kitt, Alice S. 53, 58, 132, 143, 160, 216, 223–224, 239

Pannait, Claudia  3 Patton, Michael Q. 46, 50 Pennington, Martha C. xii, xiv, 19–20, 22–24 Polkinghorne, Donald E. 54, 59, 237 Powell, Walter W.  18

Ollerenshaw, Jo Anne 48, 50, 53–54, 58 Orr, Anne Murray 47

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278 Redden, Elizabeth 4–5, 26–29 Reeves, Mary 4, 18, 21 Riggs, Donald E. 8 Rosiek, Jerry 47 Ross, Mitchell 18 Rowe, J. Alexandra  20 Savard, Stewart M.P. 6–7, 10, 12–13 Sealey, Nicole xiv, 60, 260–265 Sharma, Hemant 3, 6–7, 244 Smith, Erin T.  8

author/name index Smith-Palinkas, Barbara 19–20 Snow, Marguerite A. 263 Stanley, Karen 22–24 Stevens, Scott xiv, 60, 254–257 Stoller, Fredricka L. 22, 24 Stombler, Mindy 89 Stromquist, Nelly P.  18, 224 Thaxton, Lyn  89 Tortorella, Donna M. 19 Tougas, Francine 175 Trent, Allen  64 Turnley, William H.  222

Vliek, Michael L.W.  58, 143, 184, 215, 245 Vygotsky, Lev S. 47, 50 Weaver-Meyers, Pat 8 Weinstein, Nina 4 Wesche, Marjorie B. 263 White, Susan C. 3 Winkle, Carter A. x, xii, 30, 31, 47, 48n, 48, 54, 58–61, 66, 224, 234, 236, 244, 266 Wyss, Paul Alan 8 Yerian, Keli xi, 4–5, 26

Subject Index academic mobility 223, 239–240 academic rank (see also “academic status”) 24, 98, 120, 223, 238 academic status (see also “academic rank”) 23, 62 ACCESS (GMU) 260–265 accreditation challenges xi, 26–27, 27n, 30, 96, 115, 146, 187–188, 227, 238 English language program 21–22 institutional 113, 115 programmatic 113, 115, 170, 188, 227, 230, 238–240 regional 113, 165, 227 Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training (ACCET) 21 ACCUPLACER 262–263, 265 adjunct faculty (see also “contingent faculty”) 3–4, 8–10, 16, 20, 79, 83, 99, 128, 139, 144, 159, 162, 167, 169–170, 176, 184, 194–195, 206–210, 214–215, 222 adjunct models 263 admissions 77, 80, 82, 86, 92–93, 97–98, 103, 105–107, 109, 113, 115, 122, 150, 152–154, 193, 225–226, 230, 241–242 alternatives to corporate partner pathway models 247–267 American Association of Intensive English Programs (AAIEP) 22, 27, 249, 257, 261

American Association of University Professors (AAUP) 15 American Council on Continuing Education and Training (ACCET) 21 American Educational Research Association (AERA) xii anonymizing strategies   31n, 32, 51, 55–56, 58, 60–61, 122, 236, 248 autonomy (curricular and pedagogical) 5, 40, 44–46, 62, 121, 153–154, 168, 174–176, 178–179, 193, 204, 225–227, 238–240, 244–245, 266 Barry University xii, xiv Berlitz  ix, x, 12, 21–22, 41, 131, 179 BRIDGE (GMU) 262–265 bridge programs 86, 95, 158, 160, 232, 248, 256, 260–261, 263–264 CAP Cohort Model 254–257 CELTA (Certificate of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) 68n, 176 Center for International Student Access (CISA) 260–265 Chronicle of Higher Education, The 26 City University London 28 Colorado State University 28 Commission on English Language Program Accreditation (CEA) 21,

26, 27n, 31, 96, 121, 146, 154, 176, 187–188, 223, 227 commodification of English language teaching/teachers   9, 12–13, 18, 246, 248 of higher education 4, 246 conditional admissions  xiii, 76, 80, 86–87, 215, 247–260 content-based instruction (CBI)  153, 179, 255 content teaching faculty (see also “faculty in academic disciplines”) 128, 139–143, 171, 182, 194–216, 227, 231, 240 contingent faculty (see also “adjunct faculty”) x, 4, 8–10, 13–15, 20, 74 corporatization (see also “commodification”)  xi, 3, 5–6, 15–16, 25–30, 46, 161, 179, 185, 246–248 course pairing 191, 263 credentials (qualifications) for English language teaching 23, 110, 144, 231 Degree Enhancement Track (GMU) 263–264 DELTA 68, 68n2, 176 DePaul University 249–251 direct-admit international students 77, 169, 192, 229 domestic students (see also “mainstream students”) 76, 107–108, 113, 123, 129, 133–134, 140, 163, 169–171, 191–192, 226, 229, 241

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280 education as a public good 10–13, 247 EF International Language Centres 21 ELS Language Center x, 21–22, 29, 252 English Enrichment Track (GMU) 263–265 English for Academic Purposes (EAP) 4 exploratory study xii, 31–45, 244 faculty in academic disciplines 194–216 faculty senate 88, 129, 147, 224, 258, 267 Fisher College 29 future research 235, 242–243 Glasgow Caledonian University 28 hard services 6–7 IELTS 82, 92n, 92–93, 97, 152, 191, 225–226 Implications 237–247 Inlingua 21–22 Inside Higher Ed 26 institutional isomorphism 18 intensive English programs (IEPs)  3–4, 19–22 International Gateway 258–260 international student recruitment  18–19, 97n INTO University Partnerships xi–xii, 26, 28–29, 249, 261 James Madison University 29 joint-venture partnerships 26–28

subject index Kaplan Global Pathways xii, 26, 28 Kaplan Test Prep 28 Kaplan, Inc. 28 library services 7–8, 175 limitations of research study 234–237 mainstream students (see also “domestic students”) 140 Manchester Metropolitan University 28 marginalization by association 109–110, 216, 222–223 English language programs 18, 30, 45, 110, 115, 167, 245 English language teaching faculty 5, 8, 22–25, 45, 78, 175, 181, 238–239, 245 Marshal University 28 matriculation pathway (major players) 27–29 methodology  33n, 46–63, 235–236 NAFSA–Association of International Educators  4, 23, 150 narrative inquiry  46–59 Navitas xii, 26, 28–29 Navitas University Preparation and Pathways Programs 28–29 NEA Higher Education Research Center (NEA) 11 New York Stock Exchange 28 New York Times, The 26 Newcastle University 28

Northeastern University 28 NVivo 57–58 opportunities for advancement  30, 90, 151–152, 223–224, 245 Oregon State University (OSU) xi, 28 Oregonian, The 26 outsourcing in K–12 12–13 instructional outsourcing (see also “adjunct faculty”; “contingent faculty”) 4–5, 6n, 8 non-instructional outsourcing 3–6, 6n, 7–10 pathway programs (definition) 4–5 Pearson Test of English 263, 265 Personal Anthology of Experience (PAE) 54, 58, 221 Phi Delta Kappa Research Symposium xii Plagiarism 89, 106, 128, 148, 192, 195–197, 206, 228, 282 privatization (see also “outsourcing”) 5–6, 6n professional development  84, 89, 126–127, 138–139, 143, 171, 182–183, 192, 227, 231–232, 240–241 Queen’s University Belfast 28 research questions dissertation thesis inquiry 62 exploratory study 31 revisiting 221–232

281

subject index restorying 48, 53–57 Rowan University at Camden 251–254 RSA CTEFLA 68 sheltered instruction  226–227 Southeast Regional TESOL Conference xii St. George’s University of London 28 Study Group xii, 21, 29 Study Group University Pathway Programs 29 TESOL Annual Convention and Exhibition xi–xii, 60, 130, 155–156, 244 TESOL, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages xi, xin

The Washington Post 28 three-dimensional narrative inquiry space 47, 53–54 transcription conventions 33n U.S. News and World Report 114, 230 UEA London 28 University and College Intensive English Program (UCIEP) 19, 22 University and College Union 9, 11, 15–16 University Bridge Certificate 249–251 University of Delaware 254–257 University of East Anglia 28

University of Exeter 28 University of Manchester  xi, 28 University of Massachusetts 29 University of New Hampshire 29 University of South Florida (USF) 26, 28 University of Utah 28 University of Western Kentucky 29 validation 50, 52, 59–61, 248 waivers (TOEFL, SAT) 77, 95, 97, 146, 154, 156, 158, 232, 242, 256 WinkleAtBarryU YouTube channel  60