College of Education Education Policy, Organization and Leadership http://education.illinois.edu/epol/frp/tcain

Faculty Research Profiles: Timothy Reese Cain

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Assistant Professor

Education Policy, Organization and Leadership
359 Education Building
1310 S. 6th St. MC 708
Champaign, IL 61820USA
business217 300-2773
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Research Biography

My research examines a set of issues in the history of American higher education.  One strand focuses on the development of academic freedom and tenure policies in the decades leading up to World War II.  The work includes examinations of individual faculty experiences, internal and external threats, politically-motivated organizational responses, and broader movements that affected education writ large.  It was in this period, I argue, that the conditions of faculty work that dominated the rest of the 20th century—and the principles on which they were based—were established.  These very conditions and principles are the ones being challenged with the mass casualization of academic labor in the modern era.  The second strand of my work examines the history of faculty and graduate student unionization in the United States.  This work complicates the assumption that unionization in higher education is a product of the tumultuous 1960s.  In fact, it began at Howard University in 1918, briefly flourished in the 1930s, and then appeared in various forms in the middle part of the century.  These early unions were contested but were important outlets for faculty political activity and provided some faculty with influence into how their institutions functioned.  The debates over, organizing of, and resistance to the unions also reveal conflicting notions of professionalization and faculty work.  The third strand involves student issues, especially those around campus political speech and student experience in the interwar period.

Degrees

  • Ph.D., Education, University of Michigan, 2005
  • M.A., Higher Education and Student Affairs, The Ohio State University, 1999
  • B.A., History and Art History, Duke University, 1994

Key Professional Appointments

  • Assistant Professor, Education Policy, Organization and Leadership, University of Illinois, 2010--
  • Assistant Professor, Educational and Organizational Leadership, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006-2010
  • Visiting Assistant Professor, Educational and Organizational Leadership, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005-2006

Activities & Honors

  • Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, College of Education, 2011
  • 2010 Labor History Prize: Best article by a scholar within five years of doctorate completion, Labor History, 2011
  • List of Teachers Ranked Excellent by their Students, University of Illinois, 2011
  • Faculty Fellow, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, 2010-2011
  • List of Teachers Ranked Excellent by their Students, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010
  • Faculty Fellow, College of Education, 2009-2010
  • List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009
  • Associate Editor, History of Education Quarterly, 2008- present
  • Spencer Foundation Exemplary Dissertation Award, The Spencer Foundation, 2008
  • Arnold O. Beckman Research Award, Campus Research Board, 2008
  • List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008
  • Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007
  • Stanley E. and Ruth B. Dimond Best Dissertation Award, School of Education, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, 2006
  • Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education Best Dissertation Award, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, 2006
  • Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006
  • Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005
  • Albert Shanker Educational Research Fellowship, American Federation of Teachers, 2004-2005
  • Albert M. Greenfield Research Fellowship, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, 2003-2004

Grants

  • Principal Investigator, An Organizing Professoriate: Post-War Unionization in American Higher Education, The Spencer Foundation, 2012
  • Principal Investigator, The Howard University Locals: Race, Communism, and Faculty Unionization, Campus Research Board, 2008

Selected Publications

  • Cain, T. R. (Forthcoming 2012). Establishing academic freedom: Politics, principles, and the development of core values. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Cain, T. R. (Forthcoming 2012).  “Unionised faculty and the political left: Communism and the American Federation of Teachers on the eve of World War II.” History of Education.
  • Cain, T. R.  (Forthcoming 2012). “Only organized effort will find the way out": Faculty unionization at Howard University, 1918-1950.  Perspectives on the History of Higher Education, 29.
  • Cain, T. R. (2011). "Silence and cowardice" at the University of Michigan: World War I and the pursuit of un-American faculty. History of Education Quarterly 51(3): 297-329. More about this publication...
  • Cain, T. R. & Gump, S. E. (2011). John Ervin Kirkpatrick and the rulers of American colleges. AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom 2. More about this publication...

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