dagblog - Comments for "Why Faculty Governance? (Teresa Sullivan and U.Va. Redux)"

Thanks for the comment, E_H.

Doctor Cleveland — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 02:55:04 +0000

In reply to This post is a very timely

Thanks for the comment, E_H. It's certainly true that there's pressure on faculty governance at many schools, and a more top-down managerial style is in vogue.

The more cunning administrators try to preserve the appearance of faculty governance while turning it into a rubber stamp, as one of your recent blog posts put it. But

That looks like a great success on administrators' vitas, with lots of their little bullet-point achievements. The proof of course is in the pudding, and since administrators only average five or so years in each job, they're long gone years before anyone notices the pudding is inedible.

This post is a very timely

Exhaust_Fumes — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 23:20:20 +0000

In reply to Why Faculty Governance? (Teresa Sullivan and U.Va. Redux)

This post is a very timely one for me, personally, though I know it's prompted by many other things. My university president is meeting with the faculty tomorrow, less than a week after I went to a couple meetings and became totally demoralized by faculty governance as it exists at my institution. I don't know how things got the way they are, but it seems pretty likely that there are administrators leading all the faculty committees and driving the agenda. Faculty governance only really works where there aren't outcomes expected from on high.

I can never tell how bad my institution is compared to others, of course...a few years back we were on one of those Chronicle "Best Places to Work" lists, with faculty governance and clarity of tenure process cited as particular virtues.

This post is a very timely

Exhaust_Fumes — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 23:16:18 +0000

In reply to Why Faculty Governance? (Teresa Sullivan and U.Va. Redux)

Nonsense. There are several

Verified Atheist — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 23:11:55 +0000

In reply to And yet Dragas kept her

Nonsense. There are several of us in C'ville with bad enough eyesight that we'd have to cross the street before we could figure out that it was her.

Well, I can't advise you what

Doctor Cleveland — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 22:47:27 +0000

In reply to And yet Dragas kept her

Well, I can't advise you what to do if that happens. You'll have to use your own judgment.

Although she got reappointed and re-elected, she won't be around five or six years from now. Terms for Rectors and for board members at UVa are pretty short.

And yet Dragas kept her

CVille Dem — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 21:53:51 +0000

In reply to Why Faculty Governance? (Teresa Sullivan and U.Va. Redux)

And yet Dragas kept her position after all. She spent big UVA bucks on an advertising firm to manage the crisis once it began. She kept her position -- she still has power, but her reputation is very stained. There are very few people here in C'Ville who would cross the street to help her if she fell on the sidewalk.

Thanks for your comment. I

Doctor Cleveland — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 20:56:01 +0000

In reply to This is well and eloquently

Thanks for your comment. I agree that there should not be an "automatic yielding of authority" to practitioners, or that the faculty should have sole or unchallenged authority. I think I took pains to make that clear. This is why I said that faculty should take the lead on the subjects they know best, not that they should decide. Shared governance works best when each party takes a leading role in its proper sphere but also listens to the other parties.

And both of the specific examples you give are classic examples of places where faculty governance does work. In the first-year writing example, programs do have to be reviewed by wider faculty governance bodies, and make sure that what they're teaching students fits with the wider faculty curriculum. If first-year writing isn't giving students the skills they need to write papers for other classes, it's typical for other faculty bodies to step in. But there again it is about knowing professional norms and knowing what's actually happening in the university's classrooms.

As for the Iranian donors: faculty governance exists especially to resist such inappropriate pressures by donors or other financial sponsors. In fact, our modern faculty governance system partly evolved to resist exactly these pressures. (Endowing a chair in the History department does not allow the donor to decide what history says.) And for donors to be involved with decisions about what gets taught, or decisions about who gets hired to teach, is a gross violation of appropriate faculty governance.

This is well and eloquently

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 20:29:40 +0000

In reply to Why Faculty Governance? (Teresa Sullivan and U.Va. Redux)

This is well and eloquently put, and for the most part I agree. However, I do not agree with the automatic yielding of authority over a field to its practitioners: there does need to be outside oversight. I have seen several schools where Iranian donors are funding Persian studies programs, sometimes to good effect, but sometimes to push given ideologies at the expense of scholarly rigor. Composition and rhetoric departments can become some immersed in their own theories of classroom equity that their definition of success in teaching writing veers wildly from the institution's, a point they are clearer on in their scholarship than in their appeals to the administration for more faculty lines. There can be ideological or cultural divides in history or foreign language departments based on language and region that are best moderated by outsiders. In other words, I do think it is essential to force experts in a field to justify themselves and their endeavors to people outside the field -- but equally, as your post proves, it is essential for those outside the field to listen to those within it.