Ms. Mentor (Emily Toth, a professor of English at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge) is a longtime contributor to The Chronicle and author of books on academic life. She has often commented on the phenomenon of the academic committee. She has observed, for example, that “of course, only research and publication truly count, but tributes to teaching and ‘service’ are part of professional manners.” (Ms. Mentor’s Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997)
In her Chronicle columns, she has given advice on how to deal with difficult colleagues, what to do if you’re not invited, and how to survive a deadly boring meeting.
Here are some of her musings:
A good meeting is for decision-making. It’s not for announcements or incessant frothing and ventilating. Ideally everyone leaves feeling that something’s been accomplished. People know what they need to do to make this a better department and a better world. The best meetings are short and pointed, like a good stick.
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Serving on faculty panels is often seen as a thankless task, but colleges can make it more rewarding by agreeing on goals and spreading the work fairly.
Large, untamed faculty meetings can bring out the beast in everyone. Nitpickers thrive (“Split infinitive on page 6"). Sycophants glow (“What an elegant synthesis by our brilliant chair”). Professor Van Winkle rambles about the good old days (“Students used to worship Aristotle”). The young are told how lucky they are (“We used Bunsen burners, and one day Professor Archimedes’ hair caught on fire. Haw haw haw!”).
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It is important to attend a meeting where your interests are involved. Meetings about salaries or hiring, for instance, are essential. Real Decisions are being made, instead of a ritual re-enactment of the famous slogan: “The fights in academia are so intense because the stakes are so small.”
Ms. Mentor urges you not to be seduced into thinking that if you’re not invited, you’re being insulted. This isn’t eighth grade, in which social losers are never invited to sit at the lunch table with the cool kids. (She also asks you to ponder how many future academics were cool kids in the past.)
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Some academics have perfected the art of “meeting sleeping,” seeming to be alert when they are not. Others doodle. And, Ms. Mentor regrets to report, there are some senior scholars who spend meeting time surfing for porn or cat videos.
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Research groups do need to share their progress, but other committees often meet out of habit, or because their participants are lonely. Getting together socially can be scary (“I have too much work, I couldn’t possibly find time for dinner”), so a weekly meeting can be a way of getting together without guilt. It isn’t fun, so it must be all right.
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Maybe once a semester, someone may say something clever, and that bon mot will be repeated for years afterward.
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Once you resolve to be alert, few faculty meetings are actually dull, because almost all have hidden agendas.
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Meetings are carnivals, episodes in ongoing soap operas, and skits peopled with — yes — some atrociously bad actors.
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Meetings can chew up your life, eviscerate the blocks of time you need for writing and thinking, and mentor you into oblivion.
They can be good if they’re focused, and the best ones can build community.
But good meetings are rare.
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Most nonacademic decisions can be handled by email — preferably by dictatorial decree. “We shall have new lighting on the first floor” needn’t be discussed by anyone.
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In a fit of mild optimism, Ms. Mentor admits that some things are best handled in face-to-face meetings. Teaching, for instance.
