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Making Committee Service Count

Idea Lab Commiittee

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.

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News
Making Committee Service Count
By Peter Monaghan
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.
Serving on committees is "the sort of work we don’t associate with the star faculty member," says KerryAnn O’Meara, a professor of higher education at the U. of Maryland at College Park who is studying ways to make workloads more equitable.
Who’s Doing What, and Who’s Getting What?
By Peter Monaghan
A higher-education researcher explains what some colleges are doing to remedy inequities in faculty service.
Counsel
Ms. Mentor Muses About Academic Meetings
The academic-advice columnist has often cast her skeptical eye on the academic committee; here are some of her pointed observations.
The Review
Embracing Governance — and Efficiency
By David D. Perlmutter
Not all faculty committees are created equal. But there are ways to make bad ones better, and to reward the efforts of the good ones.
Andrew Furman has led the English department twice during his 20 years at Florida Atlantic U. It’s hard to distribute service evenly, he says, when you have faculty members who shirk it because they don’t think it will get them tenure.
News
Many Departments Continue to Struggle Over Service
By Peter Monaghan
Fretting about faculty service has a long history, yet change is slow in coming, says a veteran English-department chair.