News, Views and Careers for All of Higher Education
Oct. 11, 2005
Earning tenure is cause for celebration — and a few universities honor that milestone in a way that combinesacademic values: They invite newly promoted professors to pick out a book to be added to the library.
The University of Wisconsin at Madison started such a program last year, at the suggestion of Peter D. Spear, the provost, who got the idea from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Spear said that the program both honors professors and “recognizes the importance of our libraries and the central role they play in the scholarship of the academy.”
Paula Kaufman, university librarian at Illinois, said that she started the program there based on a program at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, although Illinois has tried to expand the idea. At Illinois, each faculty member who is promoted is notified of the honor and asked to select a book and to write a short statement about why that book was selected. A bookplate honoring the faculty member goes in the book, and the statements are displayed with the books for a few weeks and then grouped together in a book honoring the newly tenured or promoted professors. The books for a year are unveiled at a reception.
“I’ve had many honorees say that this is the nicest or most memorable thing that’s happened to them at the university,” Kaufman said.
The list from the last academic year of Illinois honorees shows a range of motivations in book selection. Among the selections:
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In Urbana, Illinois, we liked this idea so much that we (parents/Uof I faculty) expanded it to the local high school, Urbana High, which had no valedictorian or salutatorian. Now the top five students in the graduating class are designated Urbana Scholars and choose books which our parent support group donates to the school library. A bookplate recognizes the academic achievements of each student. 2005 was our first year and choices ranged from Zadie Smith’s White Teeth to an anthology of Chinese poetry.
Carol Spindel, University of Illinois, at 8:43 am EDT on October 25, 2005
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hopping on the “Us, too!” wagon
Minnesota State University Moorhead, up here on the eastern edge of the northern Great Plains, has been honoring faculty in this way since 2002 and we have the web page to prove it:http://www.mnstate.edu/cmc/HonoringFaculty.htm
Sometimes, though, it’s been difficult trying to pry suggestions out of the faculty to be honored. The others, though, have been thrilled with the idea.
Larry Schwartz, Collection Management Librarian at Minnesota State University Moorhead, at 11:13 am EDT on October 11, 2005