I suppose I know the answer, but let me ask anyway.
Colleagues who take Fridays or other weekdays "off" from teaching should soon be producing the professional growth that, we were told, justified the days off. What evidence do we have that "research days" have yielded the anticipated conference papers or published work?
Colleagues who flourished pedagogical reasons for teaching classes over 80-90 minutes had no reason not to show up on non-class days, so they will want to supply some other return to the students or the university from their absences. [I freely grant that the absence of certain colleagues from campus is reward enough in itself.] To refresh your recollection of cover stories, please see "U Stands for Unchained Maladies" 27 October 2007 in "Rump Parliament."
That is why defenders of fewer campus appearances had to rationalize their absences as "research days." I have no doubt that over extended weekends our colleagues were zipping to this library or engaged in that colloquium. So let's see some receipts.
A reviewed manuscript or a sizzling book review might go far toward answering those cynics who supposed that colleagues wanted to sleep in or pursue leisure activities.
If students ask why they cannot meet with their faculty often or at all, it would be pleasant to answer with evidence of the advances in human knowledge that more than make up for personal contact with our faculty. The same is true for colleagues who would prefer their committees not to meet on Thursdays at 8:00 a.m. to accommodate committee members who cannot make meetings on Fridays [ or Mondays ... or Wednesdays].
I see no point in looking at the productivity of recent hires. We have no "before" measures for them.
So let's take faculty who started before 2004. Certainly their CVs before 2004 and their CVs after 2004 should reveal startling increases in productivity by those who had one or more days free from classrooms that they could devote to professional growth. Each faculty member, relative to his or her own productivity before, should be expected to have profited from "research days." Faculty who have not secured days away from campus or hidden behind their office doors should, relative to their own productivity before the change, have exhibited far less growth on average than those who took advantage of "research days."
Is someone in Institutional Research on this matter, or should I undertake it as a hobby?
4 comments:
What about boosts in productivity from those who get named chairs? Any evidence that that is paying off? Or are named chairs more boondoggle than anything else, as I suspect?
The culture of evidence--here are links to the CV's of two current holders of endowed chairs:
http://www2.ups.edu/faculty/veseth/cv.htm
http://www2.ups.edu/faculty/ostrom/curriculum_vitae.htm
We must be careful, Ruth. Not every named chair or other honor at our fine university is undeserved.
The deserving make patronage for the undeserving doable. Every professor proclaimed "Distinguished" who is positively superior to the pack excuses one or more "Distinguished" professors who stand apart for their mediocrity in this or that component of professing.
In this blog, I have repeatedly cautioned that administrators and apologists are not stupid.
If some administrative lackey gets an honor, expect an otherwise indistinguishable colleague who has been less useful or less cooperative to suffer according to established standards. Then note the qualifications of the rewarded lackey and the unrewarded. Then expect some administrator or apologist to note that someone else got an honor richly deserved.
That's the way it works.
When I complained early on that colleagues were being punished for speaking out, an administrator raised my case to my face. "You're outspoken, but we gave you tenure." I got his point. They "gave" me tenure and thereby freed themselves to fire women who objected to misbehavior.
Sure, Bill, take it up as a hobby but ONLY if you also organize a betting pool. My money--and I could stand to make some--is on the long seminar, short week folk having the leanest of visible work product.
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