In reply to my last posting, an anonymous reader comments that faculty morale is continuing to slip and offers some possible reasons for the trend.
I agree that morale is very low, although I have not been very successful in convincing the administration or the BOR that the morale issue goes beyond a general malaise caused by the gloomy economic situation we find ourselves in or the unusually large number of initiatives faculty have been forced to take on in the last couple of years (you know what they are, so I won't list them here). The anonymous reader claims that faculty are disenfranchised. I think that I would put it a different way: Many faculty feel disenfranchised for various reasons.
I would like to ask readers: How widespread is this feeling of disenfranchisement? What are some of the reasons for it? What will it take for conditions to change?
I'm really interested in reading some responses . . . .
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2 comments:
Yes, I believe the disenfranchisement is felt by many across campus, but I know it is felt in my department and in my college. The problem is that it seems many decisions that effect faculty are not being directed by faculty. Some of these problems arise because of the MSU administration, others do so because of outside agencies. For example, although General Education had a faculty committee making decisions, they were limited by the administrations decision to conduct an audit before the faculty could engage the issue of general education. Also, agencies such as SACS, define for us what is expected by our general education rather than faculty determining what our general education should be and how it should perform. More recently, House Bill 160, if passed, will severely limit faculty control of many parts of the curriculum. Some of these causes of facutly disenfranchisement are difficult to engage, but on the whole faculty need to demand respect and the responsiblity of making decisions.
I think that the past 2-3 years have been overwhelming for many of us. The fact that there are so many "reviews" of multiple formats across campus--has taken over much of the time we as faculty have available. For the past 5 semesters I can truthfully say my job is NOT fun. Why? Because teaching, and being able to have time to think and prepare for the task of teaching is LAST, and I mean DEAD last on the list of things to do. After sitting in hours of meetings, writing pages and pages of reports, analyzing gigabytes of data, etc. THEN, and only then is there time to think about what I'll do in my class. All too often, it's 5 minutes before class, and I'm in a hurry to gather my materials together and get to the classroom. Beyond physically dragging myself there--I simply don't have the energy left to "work" at updating my materials, gathering new information to share, etc. For me, and I believe many faculty at MSU, the love of teaching, the classroom and interaction with students is the reason we chose to come to MSU. Lately, MSU has lost sight of just who and what is the most important. We're too busy gathering data to justify our existence, or validate the need for funding, or write a report to some oversight agency, to actually have time to do the real business of MSU: education.
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