| My 1-year term as Chair of Academic Senate is winding to a close. Phew. My obligations in this term end in two days. At that time, the new elected Chair steps into the role. Now's a good time to reflect on what I've learned and how I've grown. (And how I've shriveled.). I also can share some things that I already knew but were reinforced by my adverse (and proverse) experiences, too.
Real quickly: what does the Senate Chair do at my institution? In short, I sat at the interface of the faculty and administration, and to some extent the staff and students. I spent a lot of times in meetings about how the university operates, when I was the only faculty member present. I had the power of setting the agenda of Academic Senate, which is how academic policies are created and revised on our campus. It was technically 60% of my workload, which means that it bought out 6 of the 8 courses that are the base teaching load for faculty. (No, that's not a typo.) But I did spend >>60% of my working hours on the gig. Now to the lessons: The squeaky door hinge gets the grease, but the squeaky wheel never gets taken to the shop. What's the difference between the door hinge and the wheel? The door hinge makes noise when you're opening and closing the door. It's easy to get the can of WD40 and lubricate the hinge. But the wheel, on the other hand, is squawking all the time. Yes, it's a fricking annoyance, and yes it means that there is something fundamentally wrong with your car and if you don't replace the brakes or the CV joint or lord knows what else very soon, it's going to be even more expensive and maybe break down on the road. But nobody has the day or two in their calendar to take the car to the shop. Nobody has the budget to do the pricey repair job when there are so many other bills to pay. Simple fixes can happen. But consistent big loud complaints about structural problems aren't going to get immediate attention. Leadership opportunities are available to everybody who wants to do the work. You are more powerful than you think you are. Everybody wants to make something better. Everybody wants to fix problems. But only a small fraction of people are actually going to take the time to so something about it. There are so many ways to make things better that don't require a huge budget, but it does take some strategy and collaboration. There are some people who apparently enjoy complaining. Admittedly, complaining is easier. The impact of your words is inversely proportional to the frequency of your words. If you don't speak up much, then when you do people are more likely to listen. If you speak up too often or too much, people tune you out. The people who speak up too much don't think they're speaking up too much, because they think they're right. They usually are right, but they are doing their concerns a disservice by being right about too many things. You can't fake being genuine. People will set expectations by your words, but will judge you by how your actions align with those words. It's okay to screw up. It's okay to say or do the wrong thing. But it's only okay if you are receptive to criticism and change course when you realize you did the wrong thing. This is a lesson that I learned from science twitter (RIP). I know a lot of people who are terrified of saying something publicly and getting torn apart by criticism and bad faith attacks. But after standing by and watching interactions for years, I saw that the only people who experienced reputational harm were hoisted by their own petard. I saw, time and again, people saying harmful things or doing it wrong in some other way. And nearly all of the time, these folks then chose to be receptive to criticism and they then made amends and starting doing things better. These people didn't experience reputational harm, they were simply seen as being human. The only people who really got the raw end of social media were the ones who doubled down after being wrong. Even in this era of a single message getting broadcast globally, the way these messages get spread isn't from the initial interaction, but from the response to the response. This isn't just true in social media, it's true in our own organizations, among our colleagues, and wherever we go. It's better to try, fail, learn, and improve than to not try at all. That's how growth happens. Cynicism and snark can be healthy outlets for frustration but don't let it become your brand. If you're going to be unconstructively critical of everything, then what good are you to others? I mean this sincerely and with my full heart. No matter how strong a person you are, you wind up assimilating some of the values of the people around you. This is one of the reasons that culture is so hard to change. The human brain is really weird. You keep hearing something often enough, you start to internalize it. Choose your company wisely. And if you're choosing to work in an environment that isn't aligned with your values, find a community that comports with your values to keep you whole. Administrators get too much hate from faculty. This role meant that I ended up working closely with Associate Deans, Deans, AVPs, VPs, etc. I'm mindful of the concern that I've turned to The Other Side because of the admin work associated with Senate Chair even if I still was faculty. I would say that sometimes the faculty chatter about admincritters is spot on. (In particular, some folks are overtly careerist and it's obvious they are there principally to climb a ladder of salary and reputation.) But I think more often it's way off the mark. One way I think it's way off is the concept of The Other Side. On my campus, most administrators actually have the same priorities as faculty. They're just dealing with very different kinds of tradeoffs. The really frustrating thing about administrators is the fact that they get paid so much more than faculty even though they're not working any harder. That said, the job they are doing is far less enjoyable. We chose to be faculty because we like research, we like our students and we get to do this work hands-on ourselves. Do administrators like being insulated from the fun parts of the university? No, and I do think that to keep someone in that job who is good, some additional pay might be required. The drawback though is that the bad ones really drag the system down, and they're making an absurdly high salary as they're doing it. Research is fun! I've had so many things drag me away from labwork, training students, writing manuscripts and grants, and such. It took me quite a while to get a swing of time management in this new situation. When I was able to find an entire day to get back to stuff, it was an absolute thrill. We are getting (under)paid to discover new things about the world. This is pretty cool. People have fragile egos. Not just some people. All of us are like this. Some people are fragile in some areas, some in others. Good people will support others by reinforcing the weak spots of others in their teams. It helps to be conscious of your own self. Being busy is normal, it means you're getting things done. But stop stop looking too busy. This is a problem of mine. There's a post forthcoming about this. The issue is when people around you think that you don't have time for them, you're doing a disservice. Too many of my students have been reluctant to ask for my time – even though they're my top priority! – because they think I don't have enough of it for them. That's entirely on me and I should do better. I also think this 'culture of busy' is an epidemic in academia that we need to address. Perfection is the enemy of completion. Some things need to be perfect or near-perfect. Most things don't fall into that category. When the success of others hinges on your work, then your desire to make things perfect instead of getting things completed is a form of harm. Schedule your emails for the morning. Yeah, yeah, I know that nobody needs to read email outside working hours, and yeah yeah I know it's fine if someone chooses to work late at night or on the weekend. But I also know that an environment where people are sending emails 24/7 isn't healthy and if we can do something very minor to tacitly change expectations, that's a good thing. Most people don't know how to run meetings. I'm a big believer in bringing people together in conversation to work on a problem or to complete a task. Most people in higher ed have never been trained how to use the time of others effectively. Do yourself a favor and learn how to run a meeting. Know why someone wants to talk on the phone. There are two reasons why this is a phone call and not an email. The first one is that they realize a conversation will be easier, faster, and result in a better understanding. The second one is that they don't want to leave a paper trail. (Should we stop calling it a paper trail now that it's all just electrons?) It's essential to know the difference. If you have any suspicion that it's the latter and you think there should be a paper trail, immediately follow up the phone call with an email summarizing the outcome of the call. And it's not a bad idea for the first one if having it in writing is helpful for you. If you expect a reply to an email, ask for one. Corollary: you don't need to reply to every email. Nothing more to be said about this one. Virtual meetings work well if you have a well-established team and if the group is not too big But if you have the chance to build in-person rapport (in a well-conducted meeting that doesn't waste one another's time), all the better. But it's a lot easier for people to check out of a meeting that's virtual. And why have a meeting if folks are checked out? It looks like ghost is telling me I'm about to hit 2k words, so I'll tie a bow on this and call it done. And sorry about the typos, which I assume are in here, but you know that thing about perfect being the enemy of the complete? I'd like to take this opportunity to thank subscribers, and also to apologize to the paying ones because I haven't help up my end of the deal in the past several weeks. Oh, you know how I said my term as chair ends in 2 days? Am I looking forward to my newfound liberties? Well, uh, the person in the newly elected term is me. Nobody to hand the gavel over to. Now that I've really figured this gig out, next year is going to be even better. Cheers! |
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