Comments on Hypothetically…

• Posted by The Masked Belles-lettrist , Associate Professor on August 7, 2008 at 5:45am EDT

• Here is an opportunity to bridge the communication gap spoken of yesterday. First, though, I would like to point out that if the money is for travel and faculty development, then faculty members should be the ones making the decisions regarding what proposals are most valuable to the college--not the dean. Faculty members should of course create the criteria, but they should also oversee its implementation.

  Here are some of the criteria that come to mind:
  1) Does the travel/FD development potentially benefit more than a single faculty member?
  2) Is the faculty member willing to hold one or more meetings following the travel/FD to share what was learned?
  3) Is this travel/FD something that is multi-disciplinary or cross-disciplinary?
  4) To what degree will the travel/FD further the institution's mission?

  Traps:
  1)Faculty will at best feel time was wasted if funding is cut retroactively; that is, once the total budget is approved, the money needs to be there no matter what.

  The Other Way Around:
  1)Here is an example of why that process would not work: in Georgia, faculty called for more development support. In response, among the seminars proposed by the Board of Regents was, "What Every Administrator Needs to Know." I think I made my point there.

  The Committee:
  The committee members should be faculty volunteers from each academic division, but the committee should not be too large. If there are too many volunteers, the number can be winnowed by elections.

• Posted by LAP on August 7, 2008 at 9:40am EDT

• I agree with many of the comments above, but would also like to add a few other suggestions.

  1) Keep the committee to no more than 8 members from diverse areas. Any more than that, and, well you know what happens!

  2) Require the committee to hold a couple of open forums (beginning, middle and end of the process) to receive feedback from the larger community. This ensures greater participation, but still keeps the final product in the committees hands.

  3) Provide an rough time line with a precise end date- but ensure that the committee has enough flexibility to alter it accordingly but increases the likelihood that the committee will stay on task.

  I hope that helps! Best of luck!

• Posted by Orwell on August 7, 2008 at 1:10pm EDT

• An interesting perspective in the first comment on the ideas, the dialectic actually, of individual excellence and socialist thinking.

  As for the issue itself, in my career I've found that having a few ideas prepared and then getting input on what is preferred among them, while staying open to the idea that some novel notion may appear, helps to keep the process under control.

  Am interesting economics approach to the issue would be to fund some proportion of the expense with school money, leaving the remainder to the individual. Nothing like having to share the burden to have people reveal their priorities.

• Posted by drdelo on August 7, 2008 at 4:20pm EDT

• The other comments posted reflect our practice in my department. While each faculty member has some designated funds for professional development, this amount usually doesn't quite cover attendance at one conference. We have an opportunity to apply for additional funds by completing an application, indicating how the funds will be used, how the funds relate to our research and/or teaching, and so on. A small committee then reviews the requests. One thing that might be helpful would be to have examples of successful proposals that could serve as an informal rubric. In addition, our committee makes an effort to spend half the money in fall and half in spring; in other words, they try to make the funds last the entire year. I agree that it's important to allow faculty to lead the committee. As a former administrator and now full-time faculty member, I have seen different sides of this issue. Certainly the dean can work with the faculty to share her/his goals, but then, I believe the administrator needs to lead by getting out of the way, if you will.