Faculty meeting

“ In some of the larger institutions, faculties no longer choose their officers. Faculty meetings in some departments are unimportant affairs, and professors attend them as they perform other unimportant things, because they are on the list of duties. Certainly the meetings are characterized by pointless discussions, but this is due to the presiding officer, the president himself or his representative, who lets go his hold on the tiller and leaves the craft to wander at will. ”

“ The regular faculty meetings should be for real discussion and deliberation; and it should be distinctly understood that the deliberations are worth something and that the decisions are to become the actual policies of the university, to be really administered by the officials of the institution, within the limits of the university's resources. A large university policy made up of suggestions offered freely by members of the faculty and worked out by the faculty itself in its own corporate meetings will command the loyalty and support of the faculty in a new way ”

“ With study of the various interests combined within its organization; with the attendance on meetings of trustees, executive committee, and faculty, and discussion of important questions in each of these bodies— with the general oversight of great numbers of students in many departments and courses; with the constant necessity of keeping the legislature and the State informed as to the reasons of every movement, of meeting hostile forces pressing us on every side, of keeping in touch with our graduates throughout the country, there was much to be done. ”

“ What many college professors also desire is greater community of interest and of action with each other and with their official head. College presidents are wont to boast of the infrequency of the faculty meetings in their own institutions and they seem to believe that one measure of their official success is their ability to dispense wholly or in part with such meetings. ”

“ Every member of the faculty should be a member of some official faculty committee, each thus being engaged in helping to work out the official policies of the institution. On the latter days of this week of meetings there should be regular meetings of the full faculty, every man present or accounted for, at which the constructive program of the university year shall be thoroughly considered. ”

“ Otherwise, such members will either dry up into mere scholastic bean-pods in which their knowledge will rattle around, or else they will become disgusted with the bare formalities of the university and resign to go into work that offers larger opportunities for the use of real intelligence.
Complaint is often heard that faculty meetings are lifeless and dry. The reason is that the committee work of the average faculty is monopolized by a few members who take the attitude of dictators of policies, which the many are expected to follow ”

“ Faculties should elect their own officers. No change in the curriculum or assignments, no subdivision of chairs or creation of new ones should be made except upon recommendation of a committee for each faculty, consisting of trustees appointed by the board and of professors elected by the faculty concerned. ”

“ Sometimes, on occasion, a certain restraint on the part of the Faculty becomes inevitable, and the establishment of a Committee on Student Affairs, originally a committee on "non-athletic" relations, created some fifteen years ago, has resulted. ”

“ The government is in all essentials democratic. The rules are made and executed by the whole body of students; but all legislation of the students is subject to approval by the college authorities, and if any question arises as to whether or not a subject is within the jurisdiction of the association, it is referred to a joint committee of seven, made up of a standing committee of three appointed by the faculty, a standing committee of three appointed by the association, and the president of the college. ”

“ The office of college president, as it now exists, should be abolished; each faculty in a university or the single faculty in a college should choose its own executive head, who should be simply primus inter pares and should be the mouthpiece of his faculty in conference with other faculties or with the trustees. In a university, the several executives would be a council to determine matters affecting the policy of the institution as a whole. ”

“ It is questionable also whether the faculty should have too much to say about its own membership. In our college, the president, when an appointment is to be made, confers freely and with entire candor with the professors whose work is most like that which is to be done by the new incumbent, and some decision is generally arrived at by a sort of mutual understanding arising without formal rules. ”

“ In the generality of our institutions, the appointing power is vested in a board of trustees, who have no controlling body placed over them. In almost all, however, we find from the Journal of the Convention—that the faculty are consulted—"that" according to Dr. Bates, "experience had proved the wisdom of consulting the faculty on any contemplated appointment of a professor; and that, in fact, though not professedly, yet in effect, professors are appointed by the instructers or faculty,—and thus by securing their good will towards the new incumbent, amity was enforced." ”

“ It is then a well-known fact that our universities are governed by boards of trustees or regents, with complete legal authority over the measures proposed by the faculty, over the status of the professors individually and collectively, and always indirectly, usually directly, over educational policies, over the larger complex issues that determine the spirit and the conditions of university advance, and naturally over the ways and means contributory to the realization of all this. In many institutions no act of the faculty is valid unless confirmed or reviewed by the board. ”

“ The respect of the student is any thing but increased towards the board that conceives, or the executive which attempts to fulfil such regulations. By the enactments lying before us, of almost all the well regulated institutions of this country, we find, that the board of professors are requested by the trustees to suggest to them such laws as experience may indicate; this is wise; the faculty are unquestionably the best judges, and no non-resident can possibly have the necessary experience. ”

“ The Secretary of Education, with the advice of the Board of Advisors, shall develop alternative sources of faculty talent, particularly in the fields of science and technology, including faculty exchanges and referrals from other institutions of higher education, private sector retirees, Federal employees and retirees, and emeritus faculty members at other institutions of higher education. ”

“ Even if the college men felt that they could not devote their time to the management of an Interscholastic meeting—which I greatly doubt, for it would be to their interest to do so—there are three large schools in New Haven, members of the Connecticut I.S.A.A., which would certainly see that business committees were appointed, and competent men set to work for the successful carrying out of the enterprise. ”

“ A single meeting of such a committee before the Association separates would settle a basis of action and compress itself into a working sub-committee. The time for papers and discussions is past; they have done their work. What the schools and the head-masters want is authoritative guidance—the guidance not only of a blue-book, but of a living leadership, central, commanding, and accessible, to which they may look with confidence, and bow without loss of prestige. ”

“ This brief presentation of the organization and direction on the part of the meetings should be sufficient to point out: (1) that the general nature of the organization is a hierarchy of units; (2) that the direction of school activities comes from the higher to the lower, and is of a general and suggestive rather than specific and mandatory nature; (3) that the monthly meeting formed the real working unit, and that on its diligence probably depended the [176] welfare of the preparatives’ schools. ”

“ We come to the regular faculty of the university, the Professores Ordinarii. They enjoy the fullest privileges, are appointed for life, and receive beside the tuition-fees regular incomes. They may be elected to the Academic Senate and to the Rectorship, the Rector or Chancellor not being appointed for life, but changing yearly,—the various faculties being represented in turn. ”

“ In addition to dealing directly with students, individually and in groups, and even, if possible, with their families, as he grows in service he becomes, as faculty member and committeeman, a college legislator and administrator. In exercising these important functions he needs the equipment that would aid him to take the central point of view, a background of scholarly knowledge of what education in general and college education in particular are in their methods and in their social functions and purposes. ”

“ The presence, that is to say, of workmen would bring the Universities to face the realities of the day, raise their policy to something more important than that of compulsory Greek, and 124direct their teaching to other needs than those felt by the limited class, whose children become undergraduates or listeners to an “extension lecturer”. A committee of the University dons has been described as a meeting where each member is only a critic, where nothing simple or practical has a chance of adoption, and only a paradox gets attention. ”

“ The intruders demand the dispersion of the meeting and the termination of discussions. The result was that a deputation was sent to the Vice-Chancellor to bear him a remonstrance, "consistently with perfect obedience to University discipline." The deputation "believed that the Vice-Chancellor interfered, owing to the circumstance of having received a letter from one of the members, stating that the studies of himself and of his friends had been checked and their prospects blighted by attention to the Society." ”

“ The circle meets fortnightly, and on Friday evenings, so all the teachers can be present. Topics, from the required reading, are assigned in advance, and by lot. Then each member is responsible for his or her topic, but he is allowed to present it at the next meeting in the form of an essay, lecture, or recitation, or he may come prepared to be questioned upon it by the committee of instruction and the class generally. ”

“ For example, so irrelevant an issue as a case of student discipline sends an appeal to the board over the heads of president and faculty, with the not infrequent result that there is imposed on the faculty by direct command of the board tedious and humiliating reexaminations of a situation already properly disposed of by suitable committees. The formal statement that educational matters shall be in the hands of the faculty is for the most part evasive or ineffective. ”

“ The provision of lectures by prominent men and women in the Co-operative and kindred movements continued to be a feature of the work carried on by the committee each winter, while it was usually arranged that some prominent Co-operator should give an address at the quarterly meeting held under the auspices of the committee, such addresses being generally on matters of current interest.
The work of an educational committee is usually arduous and somewhat discouraging. ”

“ I have long been of the opinion that, in a right constituted College, there ought to be two professors for each class—one for the dunces, and another for those who have parts. The province of the former would not be the most agreeable, but perhaps it would require the greatest talents, and therefore ought to be accounted the post of honour. There is no part of my time more disagreeably spent than that which is spent in college meetings ”

“ The meeting is not only an exhibition of what has been accomplished; it is also a stimulus in further efforts. The scientific men who come together from all parts of the country to present and discuss the results of the year's work return to their institutions with more knowledge and renewed zeal. It would be worth the while for each of our thousand colleges—and the smaller and more remote they are the more worth the while—to pay the expenses of delegates to a meeting of this kind. ”

“ Our circle now is full half a hundred strong, and the meetings which are held at private residences every alternate Tuesday evening are truly enjoyable. The mode of conducting them is very much like that of other circles, and needs no detailed description. Beside the work laid out in The Chautauquan a committee is appointed four weeks prior to each meeting to provide a program of exercises, and as there is a good natured strife as to who shall excel in the attractiveness and excellence of the program furnished, the meetings never lack interest. ”

“ It is thus the meeting in frank and candid conference of knowledge and the desire to know, of higher and popular education as they should be, that must insure the peaceable working of democratic institutions through all the trials and strains that difficult and exciting problems may impose upon them. I am, of course, far from saying that knowledge can be obtained only through a collegiate course of instruction. ”

“ So it quickly came about that if nothing was announced for a given meeting little or nothing was offered, and the council was thus compelled to provide a stated program for each meeting, which contributed to cut out the last remnant of spontaneity in offering the many small things which go to make up the daily life of the teacher, investigator or reader, and which, fresh from his own life, are of greatest interest to his associates. ”