How to Meet Faculty Members Halfway

The last thing many faculty members want to hear is an administrator saying, “I have an idea.” It may be a great idea, but professors know that it probably means more work for them. Bernadette M.E. Jungblut, the associate provost for accreditation, academic planning, and assessment at Central Washington University, has found a few simple ways that administrators can make a new initiative seem less onerous to faculty members. Ms. Jungblut has introduced student-success efforts at several institutions, and has led workshops on how administrators can secure faculty “buy-in” on new projects. Among her recommendations:

Bringing Faculty on Board

Building consensus requires finesse, strategy, and a little psychology.

Go to them. Don’t call a meeting that will force harried faculty members to schedule another obligation alongside classes, committee work, and other duties. “Ask them if you can meet with them in their office at a time that’s maximally convenient for them,” she says. “If that means you have to take five or 10 meetings instead of one meeting, that’s what you do. It’s amazing to me how appreciative faculty members are of that.”

Make things as easy as possible. Is there a new way to use familiar software to track a new metric? The more such shortcuts and accommodations minimize the trouble for professors, “the more willing they’ll be,” she says.

Follow through. Faculty members may be reluctant to embrace the next big thing because the last big thing went nowhere, or its successes weren’t shared. Ms. Jungblut says, “Faculty want to know, if I put the time in, are we tracking to see that they’re doing what we tell them to do, and is it making a difference?”

Bring something to the table. If you’re asking the faculty to do something extra, do something extra for them: a teaching schedule that will help with new duties, or even cash. “It is amazing to me how very small stipends can make a huge difference,” she says. “Two hundred bucks is half a plane ticket to a conference.”