Table 12

From WolfWikis

Response to Work Group Information

--Number of T/T faculty has been static for last five years. Now we're saying it needs to go up dramatically to accommodate 40,000 students.

--How did it stay constant?

--Nontenure-track faculty numbers went up.

Preparing the Next Generation of Leaders

--Key areas of leadership: question seems to be getting at issue of numbers of these positions in the future.

--What's needed is an academic way of sharing the information we've heard today, systematically, and let the people getting that information become the next leaders. The melding of those two functions, in the context of a vision of the university, needs to happen. We need to give them resources to realize a superordinate goal. Funding side is crucial. How to generate public dollars? And private dollars?

--Major leadership academy funded by external source that would help future leaders to respond to the future vision of the university.

--In one college, vice-deans play an important role in generating outside money.

--Generation of dept. heads will need to grow into role of seeking outside funding. Younger faculty--program coordinators--need to be part of that discussion.

--What form might such preparation take? An academy for future leaders--bring them into a setting and empower them to help the University to develop its mission, and while we do that they will contribute to the new vision of the University. That includes both skill development as well as vision.

--Selecting people who go into the pipeline: now, there are various ways this happens--appointments by deans, advertisements/interviews, etc. Sometimes faculty nominate each other.

--Dept. head often selects holders of other positions such as director of graduate students. What are their duties? To whom are they responsible? Some have divided loyalties (dept. vs. graduate school). Should be a universal definition of what the duties are. Also things like teaching load, income, etc., are not standardized. Such expectations might encourage people to seek such positions more eagerly.

--These leadership positions also need greater recognition. Sometimes even titles represent positions.

--How are people selected for administrative positions? Across campus, there is a system of dept. heads hired and accountable to deans. Needs a consistent system of department chairs that are elected by faculty, instead of heads. This could encourage a stream of faculty members moving through positions of leadership, with greater shared governance. There are more opportunities to find out who is good at that--general consensus that we should move in this direction.

--This could become a process of regular rotation, like Chapel Hill, which has a 3-year chair rotation. It would provide an incentive to younger faculty to be considered for election into these roles. If you have someone new coming in every four years, you need to have everything more policy-based and carefully structured, in a collective way, to substite for current ad hoc decisions made by heads.

--One difference is that departmental leadereship will always percolate from the inside. New faculty are not hired in as chairs, but new faculty then become part of the mix and end up taking leadership positions.

--Leadership emerges when you show people the processes of planning and aligning priorities.

--Different atmosphere when you play a stronger role in your own future and departmetal vision. Current model allows for faculty to disconnect.

--What about the time issue? Some organizations have a system where there is an incoming elected vice-chair who ascends into the chairmanship. Associate chairs could be elected to serve for two years with an existing chair, then take over as chair while another associate chair comes in. There are sometimes "immediate past chairs" who hold historical knowledge about the department and can serve as guides without having to put in a lot of work. But these functions could encourage greater involvement of faculty on a rotational basis.