Faculty – Page 4 – Reflections On Higher Education

Category Faculty

Minority Points of View

Seventh and final in the IMTE series A reflection on October 6, “I’m Mad, too, Eddie,” (IMTE) claimed that minority points of view are swept under the rug and labeled as intolerant.  Mayor Michael Bloomberg, speaking at Harvard’s commencement, was…

Bastions of Entitlement

My reflection on October 6, “I’m Mad, too, Eddie,” (IMTE) criticized the notion of entitlement – not the common political understanding that refers to programs that look after people in old age, like Social Security, or assist with health care…

Our Universities: Merit and Value

Universities that deny the relationship between merit and value undermine quality.  Without recognition of meritorious achievement results fall.  So desperate are organizations to be perceived as having value they replace excellence with its appearance, real performance with placebos, and the…

Our Universities: Trust is a Two-Way Street

Organizations that rely on the public trust must build trust from within to earn the reputation of trustworthiness.  Treatment of people creates an aura of trust or distrust.  It’s not arbitrary.  Human groups give and receive trust:  It is a…

Our Universities: Yes-Men and Corporate Citizenship

This is the first in a series of reflections on corporate culture.  By corporate  I mean collective or community culture.  I hope the reflections have application in settings where any group of individuals work together towards a common goal.  ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. Loyal…

Our Universities: Bureaucracy and Morality

Bureaucracies create and sustain a moral perspective. “If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won’t.” Hyman Rickover ___________________________________________________ Effective bureaucracies — vision directed guidelines and processes — are…

Our Universities: Hire Power

Courage is essential when hiring.  Self-confidence is required to say, “We need people who are more knowledgeable than we are.”  Impossible for a narcissist or a self-absorbed leader… and hiring in any other way dooms any organization to failure. “Never…

Our Universities: The Great, Gray Fountain

Eighth in the series, Follow the money Retirements trim budgets. Retirements without assessment of individual contribution to attaining mission may reduce operating costs. Important as that is in an environment of scarcity, budget trimming alone represents a wanting accomplishment if…

Our Universities: Outsourcing

I have seen Enterprise Rent-A-Car establishments on university campuses. Chartwells and other food providers are common sights at our institutions of higher learning. And, it has finally happened. Teaching is also being outsourced now.  Both Florida Atlantic University and Missouri…

Our Universities: Where is the Leadership?

Leonard Pitts, in an April Fool’s Day editorial – no pun, just the facts – suggested that educational institutions are focused on the wrong issues. In New York’s public schools, dinosaur, birthday, pepperoni, and dancing, all make the NYC Department…

Our Universities: Campuses and Systems

University systems are political organizations. Universities are academic organizations. The two coexist symbiotically only with determined leadership. In a speech opening the legislative session, House Speaker Dean Cannon said Florida’s public university system is “racing toward the middle,” a hodgepodge…

Our Universities: Whining versus Winning

The only result of whining is to push people with purpose from addressing real problems. The tendency to whining and complaining may be taken as the surest sign symptom of little souls and inferior intellects. Lord Jeffrey ___________________________________________________________________ Recently the…

Our University: Apprenticeship for Faculty

From any perspective performance should be central to the work of faculty.  Not performance judged by administration, but performance judged by peers. Nothing else ensures relevancy and quality of judgment. From the time of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum, academic…

Our University – Faculty Leadership

On our university campuses the complexities of political activity to create accountability in public resource allocations abound as performance based funding measures evolve.  If handled poorly, and without strong faculty leadership, these good intentions will be for naught, at best. …

Our University – 51/49 Percent

Faculty members should spend 51 percent of their time serving the state and students, and 49 percent of their time serving themselves in personal intellectual development. Faculty work is unique. Imagine any employment setting where leadership says split your time…

Faculty at Work

  Our university has an excellent architecture program.     Architecture students have ACT scores that are over two points higher than the university average.  We are oversubscribed and turn away applicants.  Bringing in more students than can be properly…

Our University – Tenure

Tenure has changed markedly since its inception as an academic concept. It is often confused with the idea of sinecure.  Tenure protects a faculty member from a board of trustees or, in public universities, an elected official who might not…

Faculty – Foundation for Excellence

Many important characteristics of a research university contribute quality at Southern, but none compete with faculty for first place. To be sure, without students there is no university. Our raison d’etre is students.  But after that we must concede the…

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