The Importance of Being AASE

I love Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. I mean who doesn’t love a fast talking piece that is entirely a play on words from beginning to end? It was an oasis in an otherwise uninspired year of high school English reading for me.[1] As one would guess, it is convoluted and hard to wrap your brain around. It all seems a bit unknowable-almost the same way the breadth and depth of academic support work can get lost in translation. We all know how exhausting it is to tell people what we do over and over.

I also think most people I have met in law school academia find it “interesting” that there is a national organization of academic support educators.[2] But as we move towards more status equity, having this resource will prove imperative. We need to find a way to get to a critical mass of tenured and tenure track positions (like Legal Writing faculty have done) in order to gain better equity footing across the board. This is where having a national organization is key. As a national organization, we can collect and share voluminous data about how ASP faculty (and non-faculty!) are treated, paid, supported, unsupported, and fit into the law school community. In short, we can, if we work together, make long overdue progress. Here are some things we can do to move the needle forward:

1. Amplify each other. Tell another AASE member’s Deans or other significant administrators about our colleagues. Did you like a presentation, article, book, helpful tip from them? Great. Send an email. I know a lot of people do this, but ASP folks, let it rain!

2. Use the AASE website as a place where we:
   1. Share resources;
   2. Post jobs;
   3. Post scholarship;
   4. Post teaching resources;
   5. And (copying entirely from the Legal Writing folks) accumulate resources to further this advocacy.[3]

3. We will be doing the AASE Survey again this year. Fill. It. Out. Data is everything in this fight. If we have better participation, we can use the data for salary and status benchmarking in a much more credible way. And then we need to disseminate the data widely-so that even the fancy schmancy consultants who do salary benchmarking can find it without much effort.[4]

4. Consider advocating for a place at the rankings table. I’ve written about this before and I stand by it: if we are an asset to our school then they are going to want to put a ring on it.[5]

5. Finally, consider advocating for a place at all the tables that have not had a seat for us before. We know what we do and how well we do it, but we need to shout about that from the rooftops. We need to showcase our brand. It is not something that comes easily for us, but we really need to be a bit more braggy about our accomplishments-because they are abundant, and people ought to know.

One great quote from The Importance of Being Earnest is, “[e]ven before I met you I was far from indifferent to you.” Let’s make this the new narrative about Academic Support.

(Liz Stillman)

 

[1] That kind of word choked, fast moving dialogue was something I loved about Gilmore Girls as well. 

[2] Although there are many specialized groups in law school academia that seem even more narrowly focused.

[3] Comme ça (as the French would say): https://www.lwionline.org/resources/status-related-advocacy

[4] Yes, I’m still a little salty about not having any salary benchmark when it was reviewed last year at my school despite having the AASE survey results in the freaking building.

[5] Apologies to Beyoncé.