Tiger Chair

As a typical professor of Science, I know little about effective management skills, except what I have been able to pick up along the way by experimenting on students and postdocs. Most of my faculty colleagues have had similar experiences (i.e., a lack thereof), including those who find themselves in charge of committees, departments, and so on. I should therefore have sympathy for these colleagues when they struggle to "manage" us faculty, surely a difficult task for anyone.

And I do have sympathy, to some extent. What I hate, though, is the Scold Approach of management used by some chairpersons of various academic groups. I have recently experienced two modes of the Scold Approach:

Mode 1: in which someone in charge of something scolds a group of people in advance of their having done anything wrong. That is, the scolding is proactive, based on the assumption that some or all of us are likely to screw up, do something annoying, or waste the chairperson's time. This assumption may well be based on experience, but is it effective? Does it in fact decrease the chances of people doing the things they are criticized in advance for hypothetically doing?

Mode 2: in which someone in charge of something scolds certain unnamed people (typically, just one or a few) in a larger group of people, most or all of whom are blameless of the incident provoking the scolding. Recently, while sitting in a group that was scolded for something rather strange, I then spent the next 5-10 minutes sifting through the possibilities to understand the reason for, and the targets of, this criticism. I concluded that one or two people who were at the meeting were being scolded for possibly not being at the meeting, although they were definitely there and had not missed any meetings for months. As far as I could tell, all of us at the meeting were vaguely warned that we should all be at the meeting because 1-2 people might not have attended even though they did.

Is the Scold Approach an approved management technique, widely known as an example of best practices for persons tasked with producing deliverables whose outcomes for stakeholders need to be assessed? (for example)

This approach doesn't work well on me, perhaps for the same reason that use of the terms stakeholders and deliverables in an academic context makes me queasy. That is, being proactively scolded does not inspire me to be a better person who follows the rules in a timely way.

In place of mode 1, I would instead prefer being made aware of the rules/guidelines/deadlines/policies and politely reminded of what is required, and in place of mode 2, well, I would just get rid of mode 2. If there is a specific issue that potentially affects a small number of people, why not just talk to those individuals and not bother the rest of the group unless it becomes relevant to do so?

Those would be my preferences, but perhaps my approach would lead to misbehavior and chaos. I haven't found that to be the case with my gentle, non-scolding approach to parenting, which may or may not be different in important ways from being in charge of an academic committee or unit.

Perhaps mode 1 does decrease problems and makes a committee or unit run more smoothly? And perhaps mode 2 is a good way of reminding the group about procedures and expectations? I am hoping that readers will chime in and say "No no no, those are terrible ways to lead a group of people. It is much better to be nice and efficient than to be scolding and random. The next time someone proactively scolds you like that, you should snarl at them and show your fangs."

But feel free to dash these hopes.

The Lengths We'll Go

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently had a little medical crisis and ended up in a hospital emergency room after teaching a class. By going to the ER after my class, my husband and I both missed a faculty meeting.

As I lay on an ER gurney hooked up to lots of machines and with an IV port in one arm and lots of people coming and going to ask me to quantify my pain level on a scale of 1 to 10 etc. etc., I wondered whether I would rather be at the faculty meeting or in the ER. I had to think about it, and not just because I wasn't entirely lucid.

During a lull in the activity, as the machines were quietly beeping and I was waiting for some test results, I asked my husband whether it was better to have a medical emergency of a serious-but-not-fatal sort or to go to a faculty meeting, and he had to think about it as well, and not just because I was the one lying on the gurney.

So here comes what may be my second strangest poll ever: If you knew in advance that you weren't going to die or be otherwise seriously impaired for a long time, would you rather spend a few hours in an ER being stabbed, medicated, and monitored, or would you rather spend the same amount of time in a faculty meeting? (the following are invalid answers: all of the above, I wish we could have faculty meetings in the emergency room, none of the above, hamsters).

ER or faculty meeting?
	ER
	faculty meeting
pollcode.com free polls

Listen

When I was a young professor, I had a brief but transformative experience that still affects my behavior in Faculty Meetings to this day.

I was in a department in which various faculty were having trouble behaving in a respectful way to each other. I got along reasonably well with everyone, perhaps because I had not been there for very long, but I may have been the only one who did.

Even so, I often felt that my opinion did not count as much as that of my senior colleagues. I was new to being a professor, however, and assumed that this was the fate of assistant professors.

Some of my colleagues eventually got to the point where they couldn't even say hello to each other in the hall, so we had a special faculty meeting to discuss ways to be nicer to each other. We talked about the importance of collegiality. We talked about being respectful of our differences of opinion, and we all agreed to try to be nicer to each other.

The department chair said that he strongly believed that each and every faculty member had something valuable to contribute and that he would like each of us to give our opinion on a certain important issue facing the department. We went around the table and each person gave their opinion.

When it was my turn, the chair and another senior faculty member got up and went to pour themselves some coffee. While doing so, they chatted with each other about something else. I wondered if I should wait for them to come back to the table, but another colleague said "Go on, finish what you're saying."

So I did, although the chair and the other colleague clearly had no idea what my opinion was and clearly did not care. They returned in time for the senior colleague sitting next to me to expound on the issue, and gave him their full attention.

Jerks.

What do I do now that I am a senior professor and have been to many many faculty meetings? Do I give each and every person my full attention? Well, no, I do not, but neither do I try to be overt about my attention-straying. I have worked long and hard at appearing to be listening even when I am not giving someone my full attention.

Perhaps this strays perilously close to behaving like my obnoxious former colleagues, but it is a sanity-saving method that I find necessary to employ from time to time in faculty meetings.

I was thinking about this recently during a meeting in which a colleague sitting next to me sighed loudly, shifted in his chair, and rolled his eyes whenever a certain other colleague spoke. I actually felt the same way he did, but I suppressed my sighs, stayed still in my chair, and restrained my eyes from rolling. I did not pay close attention to what the crazy-boring colleague was saying, but I was respectful.

There are certain faculty who, when they start to speak, can safely be tuned out with no danger of losing the overall thread of the discussion. I think that the department chair should develop a polite way to circumvent or shut down their rants. I wish that we as a faculty could find polite ways to make it clear that self-serving pointless rants are not an acceptable way to spend our collective time. I wish that these ranting people would move to a moon of Saturn.

Perhaps my polite passivity in the face of time-wasting speechifying is part of the problem of why faculty meetings are generally useless and annoying. Perhaps, but I do not want to be like my former colleagues who ignored me in a humiliating way in my professorial youth.

Advanced Retreat

Has anyone been to a good faculty retreat? Has anyone been to a constructive, useful retreat that accomplished something substantial that could not otherwise have been accomplished in one or more non-retreat faculty meetings?

Has anyone left a faculty retreat with warm collegial feelings and no regrets about spending all day or at least part of a weekend with department colleagues?

In the hopes that such things exist or that some people at least believe that such things exist, I searched online for information on how to have a good/effective faculty retreat.

Some of the advice I found makes sense and seems rather obvious, though apparently not to some of the people organizing the retreats in which I have participated. For example: A successful faculty retreat requires advanced planning and organization of the discussion topics and tasks to be accomplished. Yes, yes, yes.

Some of the advice involves retreat activities that would make me run away: Play bonding games! Bring a nerf ball! Watch a movie together! Chew bubblegum! No, no, no.

I suppose one school of thought is that the random behavior that characterizes shorter faculty meetings might eventually converge into constructive action in a longer faculty meeting held at a remote, peaceful location.

My school of thought -- what one might reasonably call the negative, doesn't-play-well-with-others, you-are-so-cranky-you-are-probably-part-of-the-problem school of thought -- is that faculty retreats are a few orders of magnitude more painful and time-wasting than regular faculty meetings, an effect that is magnified by being in a remote, peaceful location with certain colleagues.

What is it About Faculty Meetings?

There is something extremely annoying about faculty meetings, and I have never fully explored exactly what it is about them that I so dislike.

I do not loathe my colleagues (with very few exceptions). In fact, I like quite a lot of them, and I am quite fond of my department chair. It should not be an unpleasant experience to spend a few hours in a room with these people discussing topics of mutual concern, if not interest.

We have much to discuss that is of great importance to the department and its denizens. The chair has things of importance to tell us about the budget, new policies and procedures, issues he discussed with the Dean at their last meeting. Learning these things in a meeting is a good forum for asking questions and expressing concerns.

Nevertheless, I do loathe these meetings. Here are my top 5 reasons. I am sure that I could come up with 10 reasons, but I am typing this in an airport and the Transportation Security Administration has placed an arbitrary limit on the number of items that can be included in a blog list typed in an airport.

These are in no particular order.

1. Time. I don't have time for these meetings. No one has time for these meetings except the deadwood faculty. Of course we make time (if we are not traveling or otherwise involved in an activity scheduled for the same time as the meeting), but it is hard to lose time that could be spent on other essential activities.

2. Efficiency or lack thereof. Faculty meeting time is typically time that is not well spent. I know that meetings involving any collection of people with disparate views and personalities is unlikely to be efficient, but I wish there were a bloviating quota. Those exceeding this quota will be ejected, preferably forcibly, from the meeting.

3. The Men. Sitting around a conference table with my department colleagues is a vivid reminder of how few women faculty there are in my department. On rare occasions when issues involving underrepresented groups arise, some of the older faculty say that we have no problem with underrepresentation of women because so many of our students are female. Some of the younger faculty agree that we don't have a problem with underrepresentation of women because.. well, I don't know why. The definition of underrepresented is not so difficult to understand, and our department fits this definition. What this means is that they don't think underrepresentation is a problem that needs fixing.

4. The Sports Analogies. In most cases I can figure out from context what is meant, but it kind of annoys me that we are all expected to understand these expressions, which are used extraordinarily often.

5. The insanity factor. Some of my colleagues are really strange. I am really strange, too, so it is hypocritical to list this factor, but thus far my strangeness manifests itself rather quietly. For some of my colleagues, their insanity seems to require them to repeat themselves over and over at every faculty meeting for a decade or more. The effort required for me to keep from rolling my eyes at these repeat tirades is painful and may cause me permanent physical and emotional damage.

No, I don't think we should be more corporate and make faculty meetings efficient in that way. I am willing to put up with some amount of random behavior to preserve our ability to be free-spirited (tenured) professors. And I don't think we should abolish faculty meetings. We faculty would be outraged if the department chair started making decisions without consulting us, even if many of us have nothing useful to say.

Hence faculty meetings..

Because I am a look-for-the-silver-lining kind of person, especially when I am in an airport, I will force myself to list relevant items that make me feel better about having to attend regular faculty meetings:

- faculty retreats are far far more painful
- my spouse hates faculty meetings far far more than I do

It seems to be a short list.

Spaced Out on Beowulf

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while may be starting to get the impression that I do not entirely enjoy faculty meetings. I believe at one point I raised the possibility that they cause brain damage. Or maybe that was grading.

Even so, I try to be a good department citizen and attend faculty meetings unless I am traveling. My level of participation, however, fluctuates quite dramatically from meeting to meeting, depending on the topic and my caffeine intake.

In the most recent faculty meeting, I was doing pretty well in terms of paying attention, participating, not making eye contact with certain sympathetic colleagues when insane and trollish colleagues spoke, and so on. At some point, though, I must have mentally vacated the premises. I was not aware of this, however, until tonight.

Tonight at dinner my husband said "What did you think about that strange episode at the faculty meeting when Colleague X started talking about Beowulf?" [note to readers: I am in a Science department. We are of course all intellectuals and into multi-inter-transdisciplinary studies, but we do not typically discuss literature at faculty meetings.]

I laughed, assuming he was making a joke in a highly oblique way, as is his wont. I said something random in reply, like "Oh yeah, and that was great when Colleague Z started quoting from the Upanishads." [note to readers: I totally made that up. Colleague Z did not quote from the Upanishads, or anything.] My husband was silent for a moment, as is not typically his wont, and then he said "Um, no really.. didn't you think it was kind of strange? He went on and on about it."

I was stunned. How could I have missed a long rambling speech on Beowulf at a faculty meeting? I was there and I remember Colleague X starting to speak about something, but I don't remember anything he said.

Colleague X is a truly excellent example of deadwood, but I don't think that is why I tuned him out. In fact, I will take this opportunity to say that just because a colleague is deadwood, that doesn't mean that they can't be immensely likable. I am very fond of this particular colleague, who is a very kind and amiable person who should retire soon.

In any case, I apparently did space out completely. I don't remember what I was thinking about, but it may have been one of the following:

- Which among the applicants for graduate work in my research specialty should I accept to work with me?

- Why do so many grad applicants start their research statement with a quotation? Is there some Guide To Applications that suggests doing this? Why would a grad applicant for a Ph.D. in Science quote Bob Dylan in their application? (Why isn't anyone quoting Beowulf?)

- I have been doing the most major cleaning of my office in the past decade, and maybe the biggest cleaning ever. I am contemplating throwing out some notebooks and textbooks I have kept since college and graduate school. Should I throw them out after all these years? Why keep them? Why not keep them? If I throw them out, after not looking at them for decades, will I then regret it?

- How do I reply to a stressed out author whose manuscript I am editing and who is trying to get out of doing major revisions without which his manuscript is inadequate in important respects? Should I accept his manuscript just so he will stop sending me emails about his wife's ghastly gynecological problems? No, I can't and won't do that, but I do wish he would stop sending me those emails. I do not know him. I do not know his wife (though I know a lot about her innards).

Price Check: Faculty Meetings

Although faculty meetings can be hazardous to one's emotional well-being, they are nevertheless a seemingly necessary evil. Attendance is not mandatory, but it's best to go if you can. Sometimes, however, professional travel and other responsibilities conflict with faculty meetings, and it is not possible to attend. In these cases, you can typically give an opinion by email or leave a proxy vote if something of significance is being decided.

In some cases, it is possible to arrange your travel so that you don't miss a faculty meeting, but an itinerary that allows faculty meeting attendance might be more expensive than one that involves missing the meeting. A colleague and I were discussing this situation recently, and wondering what price we would put on attending a faculty meeting.

Assume that a meeting is not a momentous one at which a hiring or promotion decision is being made. Assume that one is a reasonably good department citizen and tries to attend faculty meetings if possible. Assume also that the various possible itineraries are basically the same other than their cost, but the cheaper one requires missing a meeting and the more expensive one allows attendance at a meeting. How much is a routine faculty meeting worth?

This is what we decided through the first round of intense discussion and bargaining at a local cafe: (the prices listed indicate the differential between the hypothetical itineraries)

$25: definitely pay the higher price and go to the meeting
$50: pay the higher price and go to the meeting
$100: think about it for a few minutes, but then pay the lower price and skip the meeting
> $100: don't even think about it, just pay the lower price and skip the meeting

So, it seems that my colleague and I would place the value of a routine faculty meeting somewhere between $50-100, though perhaps on the lower end of that range. I propose that routine faculty meetings are worth $57.25, but I would be willing to bargain.

WWYAD?

What Would Your Advisor Do? I went to a faculty meeting recently, knowing in advance that one of my colleagues was going to say, as he tends to do: "X says that.." or "X thinks that.." (X = his former advisor at a distant university). To him, X's opinions are profound and definitive and should guide discussions and planning in our department.

Before the meeting, a different colleague and I had discussed whether, on the occasion of hearing these magic words, we would say something like:

"Well, MY advisor thinks.." (even if we hadn't spoken to our former advisors in ages and were making it all up),

or possibly: "Hey, let's all go around the table and say what we think our former advisors would say about this topic!"

But that would be mean. In any case, we were thwarted because our advisor-worshiping colleague said, instead, "I talked to someone about this, and he or she told me ...". We all knew he was talking about his former advisor, but I guess he figured out that he'd better place a bit more distance between himself and The Great One.

Real Men & Diversity

Discussion at a faculty meeting:

Department Chair: Some of you may be interested in an upcoming visit to the university by a group from University A to share information about their program to increase the participation of women in science, engineering, and math. [hands around an informational memo, including the list of names of the visitors]

Young Male Colleague: Hey, I know X! [mentions name of one of the visitors]. What is HE doing going around talking about women's issues? He's a real scientist! And a guy!

Me: Men can be involved in helping solve the problem of the underrepresentation of women in science, engineering, and math.

Young Male Colleague: No, I mean, this guy isn't effeminate or anything. He's really a.. a.. a.. a guy!

Senior Female Colleague: Perhaps he is transgendered.

Young Male Colleague, missing the obvious sarcasm, and offended on behalf of the Real Guy: I can assure you that he is nothing of the sort.

Me: He must be a eunuch then.

[Chair steps in and changes the subject]


I wish I were making this up, but alas, I am not.

Optimist v. Pessimist

At a recent faculty meeting, as my attention drifted just a tiny bit at one point, I decided that the faculty evenly divides into optimists and pessimists, and that this classification scheme is nearly perfect -- far better than grouping the faculty by related research disciplines, age, gender, geographic origin etc. The only thing that keeps my classification scheme from being completely perfect is the existence of a colleague who will take a contrary stance just for the sake of being contrary (or for prolonging the enriching faculty meeting experience?).

In the specific context of faculty meetings and administrative issues, I am an optimist. The pessimists have a useful purpose, but mostly they are annoying, particularly in long meetings. I readily admit that optimists can be annoying as well, but at least we want to get things done instead of listing all the reasons why we shouldn't do anything except maybe sit in a conference room and talk for hours.

When my daughter was younger, we made up a game called optimist-pessimist. I would say something like "It's raining. There will probably be thunder and lightning and strong winds that will destroy flowers and scare the bunnies", or "It's raining. I bet there will be a rainbow, and birds will come out and splash in the puddles" and then she would say "optimist" or "pessimist". It was a stupid game, but it's amazing what entertains a 3 year old. Although we didn't delve into the wonderful world of department administration for examples, I bet she could have correctly guessed the label to statements such as "Let's not talk to people in that other department because they won't be interested in anything we are doing."

I don't always do well in debates with my pessimistic elders (the senior senior professors) because they like to frame the discussion in terms of their superior knowledge acquired over their many years in academia, whereas I, a junior senior professor, am naive. Perhaps there is a fine line between being optimistic and being naive, but mostly I think they are trying to undermine my arguments with contentless blather. I could do without that.

An entire department full of optimists might be a bit terrifying, though.

Score One for the Junior Full Professor

Today in a faculty meeting, we discussed a document concerning policies, criteria, and procedures for tenure and promotion. I pointed out that the document referred in several places to 'senior full professors'. I wondered aloud how long it took to become a senior full professor and why the document specified that only senior full professors should play a major role in the evaluation and mentoring process. When I said this, I was sitting next to a senior full professor who hasn't had an active research program since 1912 or so, and I like to think that the juxtaposition lent a bit of dramatic emphasis to my point. The associate and assistant professors in the room all supported the deletion of the word 'senior', and the deed was done. Just this little change now makes a few women faculty eligible for a position of responsibility in the department. Not a big deal in the scheme of things, but little victories are better than no victories.

In fact, the word 'full' was also deleted, as one of my colleagues pointed out that 'full' is not an official part of our title and that we are merely "Professors', unadorned by superfluous adjectives and unambiguously denoted by a capital P. I didn't feel as strongly about that part of the discussion.

More seriously, we are also discussing a proposal to put more teeth in our post-tenure review process.

[an aside: Does 'Score One' count as a sports analogy? Why do my thoughts so often turn to sports analogies after faculty meetings?..]

If Only I Had Facial Hair (other than eyebrows)

If I had real facial hair, I could have participated more in a departmental meeting today. Once the conversation turned to beards, I tuned out and started reading/editing a friend's proposal. I did have a momentary fantasy of what it would be like if one of these old bearded guys found himself vastly outnumbered by faculty women colleagues having a conversation about their personal (feminine) grooming philosophy and practices. I don't think they would be very interested (or comfortable), but I could be very wrong. It is unlikely that I will be able to run this fantasy experiment any time soon.

There's No I in Team If You're Batting A Thousand

Subtitle: Faculty Meeting Today!
Sports Analogy/Metaphor/Cliche Count: 3!
Number of Sports References I Understood: 1!

In addition to the loathsome sports references, there were 2 additional issues, both of them perennial, at today's meeting:

1.
At the past 2 meetings, I have made a point about Situation X, but the discussion went nowhere. At today's meeting, Professor Senior Colleague made the EXACT SAME POINT, and the Chair said "That is an EXCELLENT POINT. THANK YOU for bringing it up. What do YOU think we should do about it?" etc. I guess it's good that a real person finally made the point, instead of just me.

2. Over and over again, the senior faculty bring up the issue of the more junior faculty (including 'junior' full professors like me) being unwilling to make a commitment to spending several summer weeks in a teaching program that requires substantial travel. THEY have paid their dues, and they are perplexed that the rest of us aren't willing to take our "turn at bat" (that's the sports references I understood). I am tired of pointing out that I DO NOT HAVE A WIFE. With the other professional travel that I do in the summer, I would be away for 5-7 weeks each summer, and that is just not possible. Nor do I want to spend that much time away from my family. There are other options for instructors for this program, but these are short term options (postdocs, senior grad students, adjuncts). The senior guys keep making the point that these are inferior options because we need 'continuity'.

Well, maybe they should make the junior faculty promise not to have babies, and no one should be allowed to become ill or make any other commitments other than teaching this course every summer. The senior guys get all dramatic about how people like me are harming the undergrads by not doing our share of the summer teaching, as if our own children are abstract concepts they can't quite imagine. I have made the point that this is another example of Business As Usual in our department, but so far no one is actually listening.

Reinventing A Very Stupid Wheel

Someone should come up with a Geneva Conventions-type document for faculty. Somewhere in there should be a mention that faculty meetings, including *retreats* that last more than 6-7 hours, are cruel and illegal. There should, however, be a specified set of punishments reserved for people who enjoy these events so much that they make them last even longer by talking about non-essential things, like themselves.

With what little lucidity that remains to me until I recover from my ordeal, I will say that my considered opinion is that I just wasted a huge amount of time going to this thing. We talked AT LENGTH about the same old stuff, came to the same old conclusions that we need to talk more about these things, and nothing was accomplished.

And what is more, almost the first thing out of the meeting's discussion leader was an incorrect statement attributing one of my accomplishments to one of my senior (male) colleagues. It was very classic. I wish I'd been sitting there with a copy of "Beyond Bias and Barriers". I could have said "Um, excuse me, but what you just said is covered on page x in Chapter 3. Shall I read this to you?" and then everyone would gasp as they recognized their unintentional discriminatory behaviors and they would all vow to change and it would be amazing. As I said, I am not lucid right now.