Saturday, March 5, 2011

Faculty Participation

Yesterday I taught, attended a faculty candidate seminar, participated in graduate recruiting (met with students, went to the lunch and dinner, attended the recruiting poster session), and said goodbye to my great postdoc. So... the point is that I did a lot, but it was mostly departmental "service" type stuff. In contrast, we've got some faculty members in my department that do NOTHING - and they make twice my salary.

I met with a graduate recruit who was sharp, mature, and quality. After my meeting, I escorted him to meet with one of these faculty members who does nothing. That faculty member wasn't there. He stood up the recruit. In fact, I can't think of a single time that this faculty member has showed up for anything. He has a reputation for standing up seminar speakers, so why in the world did we allow him to meet with recruits?

And he isn't the only one. We've got other members who don't participate in events, like recruiting. Graduate students won't sign up to work in your group if they've never met you, hello! These older non-participating faculty then complain that no one wants to work for them.

Back to the jilted recruit, I scrambled to find a warm faculty body who would talk to the recruit for a half hour. Having the problem solved, I just went back to my office and seethed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not worth sweating it, IMHO. In our department, these do-nothing seniors also own extremely overpriced homes that they bought for not much. Junior faculty can barely dream of owning a home, or have to mortgage their entire livelihood for the next 35 years to get one.

Luckily, most of these types of seniors in our department have now mostly retired (should I mention their obscene retirement packages?) and are at present traveling abroad extensively. Meanwhile, everybody else's (future) retirement package is being "renegotiated".

Don't sweat it. They belong to the most privileged generation in the history of humankind. Theirs was and will probably be the only such one.

Anonymous said...

yep, yep yep. I have to be careful -- I have been complaining WAY too much about this lately and am afraid it is going to get back to the people in question!