40-hour Work Week as an Artist and Professor
I visited the Cranbrook Academy of Art over the weekend. It’s a uniqe and historic graduate school for art and design*. Strolling through the bucolic campus, enjoying the quaint studio spaces and devoted artists and designers, I was struck with something one of the artist in residence(their equivalent of professor or mentor) said. They encourage their students to spend 40 hours per week in their studios, to get ready for career as full time artists and designers.
I recently started teaching full time at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and between the international move and personal milestones, my days have been pretty hectic. I thought about what my 40-hours work week look like, and what I want it to be.
My contract with the university is for a full time, tenure track, research faculty. The university guides 3/7 of my time dedicated to teaching and students, 3/7 dedicated to my research, or creative practice, and 1/7 dedicated to service for the department and university. As a junior, pre-tenure faculty, I have a bit more freedom regarding the 1/7 service for the department. I’m just about to learn about the program-wide, and school-wide services these days. It’s not so overwhelming now, probably because I don’t understand the full scope and order of operations yet.
If I were to follow 3:3:1 ratio of my 40 hours/week, I have 17.14 hours for teaching, which includes 5 hours of in-person class time per week. Since I’m teaching 2 classes, I believe 17~20 hours is a fair assessment. When I teach 3 classes next year after the course release, the preparation and grading might take more time.
How about the time for my research, art and writing? I am not sure if I spend 17.14 hours on my research these days, since my day to day have been filled with moving logistics. I will earmark that amount of time for the future.
For service, I’m supposed to spend 5.7 hours. I think that’s about right amount of time I spend on service now. This too may change soon.
If I were to stay in my current position until retirement (hypothetically in 2049 — when I’m 68. The actual retiring age maybe much earlier as I will be eligible to retire at 60), I have about 6045 working days. Keeping the current ratio, I will have 20,725 hours for research until retirement.
20,725 hours don’t sound like a lot of time for creative research, art, writing and production. I need more time!
If I were to push for 40 hours of studio work, I would need to add 22.86 hours into my week in addition to 17.14 hours granted my the university. I will be working 62.86 hours per week in total.
This seems unlikely and unrealistic, considering my obligation and wishes to be with my family and the community. Yet, it’s an interesting thought experiment to see if I can actually be a full time professor, meet all the expectations of teaching and service, and dedicate 40 hours a week to creative research and practice.
Since returning to the U.S. academia after nearly 5 years in S.Korea and Europe doing multiple art and curatorial projects, I’m rethinking my practice, research, teaching and service these days. I feel optimistic. I have an opportunity to plan long term for the first time. Looking back the last 25 years, since I was an undergraduate art student at S.A.I.C, and my experiences in the art and education world over the past decade, I wonder what I can do in 25 years timeline.
More soon.
- The academy went through an international scandal last year regarding oppression of student activism. (source/ source)
- The academy recieved ‘historic gift’ of 30 Million a few years ago to diversify it’s students and faculties. (source)
- These two points are worth revisiting and investigating in depth in the future.
