“We’ve told them over and over again that they don’t have to produce ten publications per year. Quality is what matters. If you’ve published one great article in addition to teaching, that’s fine. But people are always inclined to do more.” Those are the words of new rector Jan Smits in his farewell interview as dean of the Faculty of Law. They bring a smile to the faces of Boukje Compen, assistant professor at FHML, and Therese Grohnert, associate professor at SBE. They are members of the Maastricht Young Academy, are involved with teacher professionalisation and have interested supervisors who say things like: “Don’t do too much. Take care of yourself.” And, like the new rector: “You don’t have to produce so many publications.”
All very well, say the two, but when push comes to shove, the academic world outside their department doesn’t work quite like that. Compen: “Recently, an independent faculty committee, made up of people who don’t know me, spent some time scrutinising my cv to determine whether I was eligible for a promotion. They asked for documents, and then it turned out that the number of publications and the impact factor [how often an article is cited] were very important. Meanwhile, according to my contract, I spend most of my time on teaching (40 per cent) and docent professionalisation (40 per cent), and can only spend one day a week (20 per cent) on research.” She was promoted to UD1 last summer, the highest level, but was told “the numbers were somewhat disappointing” in terms of publications. The committee also said she was not visible enough in the media.
Hard facts
A familiar story, says Grohnert. “And not just at UM. When you submit a grant application to the NWO [national research fund], the traditional criteria are still very important. People try and remedy that by a ‘narrative cv’, in which you explain all the things you’ve done, but it takes time for a culture shift to happen. We talk about Recognition & Reward, about academic citizenship, we want researchers not to have to excel at all aspects and we want the many other roles to be acknowledged – supervising PhD candidates, teaching, management tasks, research, etc. But I think those cold hard facts give the assessors a feeling of control. After all, they were raised in that tradition.”
And because of those old criteria, they easily manage to hit the 40 (Compen) and 38 (Grohnert) hours listed in their contracts. The extra time is spent organising conferences, management tasks, Maastricht Young Academy, and a range of other things that they consider part of good academic citizenship. The latter is not an official part of their job profiles, but there is an unspoken expectation that researchers will contribute to it. “Nobody says that you have to, we do it to ourselves, but if you do it, you are rewarded tremendously: in promotion opportunities and research funding,” Grohnert says.
Overtime
What about their work-life balance? Surprisingly, that’s not too bad at all. A seven out of ten for Grohnert and an eight for Compen. They both conclude that if they’d been asked that three or four years ago, it would have been a failing grade. It has everything to do with experience, with getting used to a job – assistant and associate professor – which involves keeping many plates spinning and a lot of responsibilities.
The change from PhD student and postdoc to professorship is a big one, experience has shown them. “A PhD or postdoc track, which revolves mostly around research, doesn’t prepare you for academic life.” Once you become an assistant professor, the workload – from management tasks to PhD supervision – increases, says Compen, who now officially has one day left over for research (Grohnert has two). “You have no idea what it involves before you start.” Grohnert: “You’re thrown in at the deep end and left to figure it out on your own. As a PhD student, I had five meetings a week, now I have ten a day! At the same time, your inbox is flooded with sixty or seventy emails a day.” The relative freedom afforded a PhD student has also disappeared. Compen: “I was broadly able to set my own schedule. Now my diary is often filled well in advance, with all sorts, such as a lecturer professionalisation course that can’t be rearranged. That was a real setback, and in conjunction with all those emails about ongoing issues, it gave me a real feeling of urgency.”
‘I can stay, unless’
What made Grohnert’s first years as an assistant professor extra hard was the old rule that a faculty would only decide whether to offer a permanent contract after five years. “That feeling of ‘I can stay, unless’ was very stressful. Now I have a permanent job and I have a much clearer idea of where I stand in the department, that existential dread has gone.” Despite that, she is careful where she expends her energy – and she has to be, she has been suffering from long covid for four years now. “I was in a wheelchair, but now I can walk for 1.5 to 2 hours again. A huge improvement. I practised maintaining healthy boundaries for myself in hospital. I started by working eight hours a week and seeing which tasks were feasible. I never thought about changing jobs, I love this job and wouldn’t want to do anything else. I still work overtime, but it’s a lot less than my colleagues, who always supported me. I work from home and online a lot, take breaks, and developed a routine to actually stop working once the day is over.”
Compen, who – thanks to a change in the regulations – was offered a permanent job after a year, never takes breaks. She starts working the moment she gets on the train from Weert to Maastricht. She has recently started an exercise programme ‘strength training to music’, “as a distraction, I had trouble letting work go, I spent a lot of time on it outside office hours. That’s much better now.” Her pregnancy probably contributes to that greatly, as does her boyfriend regularly asking her when she wants to get back to work, ‘Do you have to do that now? Or would tomorrow be soon enough?’
A good example
When she travelled to a conference as a PhD student at Antwerp and Leuven, her colleagues would take out their laptops during every change and start working, says Compen. “I wouldn’t do that now, I don’t think that sets a good example.” Grohnert: “The benefit of experiencing the move to Recognition & Reward is that we know which system is better. We are setting a different example for our PhD students. If I notice someone isn’t feeling well, I send them home. I don’t like the culture of just carrying on even if you have a fever, or if your child has been at home sick for a few days. I don’t send emails at the weekend or in the evening either. If I sometimes work at the weekend, then that’s my choice. Nobody has to follow my example.”
Tip for the new rector
What is their tip for the new rector to really improve the work-life balance? “We have to consider collectively how best to expend our energy. Does everything have to be a meeting?” Grohnert wonders. “It’s nice that you want to involve everyone in everything, very democratic and also very important, but maybe not always necessary. Sometimes I’m in a meeting with 25 people and there are only two items on the agenda. You can still easily fill an hour and a half. Sometimes you have to be able to say: you sort it out, I trust you. I would champion a maximum number of hours spent in meetings per week. The remainder is for rest and time to think.”
Compen nods in agreement. “We should also make much better use of our staff’s strengths. Not everybody can be good at everything. The idea of R&R, that you can focus on particular tasks, has not yet landed. We still expect everyone to do everything. But not everybody is a good leader or a master teacher. There is a lot that can still be gained there.”
Riki Janssen
Additional writing by Wendy Degens