Dilbert once had a story arc about the horrible trinkets and tokens that corporate employers give out to recognize employee contributions. The most common ones are probably logo shirts that only come in XXS or XXXL or the infamous logo belt buckles that are designed to fit rodeo-clown belts. Higher education is not immune to such trinkets. When I was a student, I always thought that faculty members had first crack at all the really nice swag, things like sweatshirts and ball caps and the occasional coffee mug. Then I became a faculty member and started getting the ill-fitting T-shirts, belt buckles, and key fobs that fall apart after five minutes. On the other hand, I have landed some sweet logo pens over the years, along with one or two sweatshirts and some nice golf shirts.

Poor budget years, however, seem to do away with the good stuff and increase the junk. When budget cuts occur,...

Several articles in The Chronicle (including this piece in The Chronicle Review and my recent column) have discussed U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander's proposal in Newsweek that we increase opportunities for undergraduate degrees to be completed in three years. His proposal has been influential because of his past service as a former University of Tennessee president and as secretary of the U.S. Department of Education. In administrative circles, this discussion is ramping up considerably. Federal and state governments have a sense that it will provide a means of relief for budgets, and families believe that it may save both tuition dollars and lost income from a fourth year of non-employment.

As I ponder the movement, I am convinced that it may have a significant impact on personnel matters in academe if it finds much traction:

• Shift from nine-month to 12-month contracts: One primary way to...

When I became an academic administrator, one of my mentors encouraged me to always try to remember what it feels like to be a faculty member who grades hundreds of freshman-composition papers in a semester or who needs summers "off" to do even a minimal amount of scholarship or who gnashes clenched teeth at ineffective committee meetings.

I was pondering that conversation the other day and spent a little time assessing what I have and haven't remembered, especially about being an entry-level faculty member. I hope I can keep this warning in mind throughout my career so that I can better encourage faculty members through my role as dean.

What do you wish administrators could continue to remember about being faculty members?

I worked in private business for a few years before moving into academe. One of my mentors noted that most companies spend their time trying to eliminate inefficiency by lamenting a few drops of blood lost through paper cuts rather than looking at the great gaping holes in their arteries. They would cut back on toilet-paper purchases while ignoring problems in their business models that cost them piles of cash.

My observation has been that higher education does much of the same. When revenues are flush, we ignore areas of significant weakness, but when times are tight, we often end up trying to save nickels and dimes when we have much more severe problems that impact budgets.

When you look around your campus, do you see any obvious inefficiencies that are being ignored by and large?

In my last post, I referenced "Polymath Syndrome," the mindset that afflicts some faculty members who believe that they can teach pretty much any subject. I thought I would expand that term, though, to entire departments. 

Most institutions have a few departments that believe their research and interests are of a high level that they may teach courses in a wide variety of other disciplines besides merely their own. I heard one dean call them "kudzu" departments, because they constantly find ways to invade the curricula of other disciplines and in some cases strangle the teaching loads of those other departments. (Kudzu, for those who don't know, is a prolific vine in the American South that overtakes everything in its path, choking out all other plants). Such incursions can have lasting effects on campus morale and cooperation.

Which disciplines do you think are the worst about...

One of my freshman-composition students plopped noisily in a seat next to my desk. "I failed my art appreciation paper. I don't understand this. How can I fail an art paper?" I scanned the essay and asked him what grade I might have assigned the paper.

He looked over it for a bit: "I guess you would have failed it too. I see several misspellings and some incomplete sentences. But it's an art paper, not an English paper! It's not the same thing."

I smiled at his naïve comment, even as I disabused him of its false premise. I see teaching writing as foundational for other subjects, as I employ my professional training to eradicate weaknesses in student work. I build this foundation carefully through well-thought-out assignments and one-on-one conferences. Even students who enter the university with strong skills have poor habits that I can address. When they move onto their other subjects,...

I noted a recent Chronicle article that describes new pressures on specialized accreditors because of their budgetary impacts. It is a dilemma, because many, if not most, of these disciplinary alliances are at least somewhat objective markers of excellence. They apply the peer-review process, which is so crucial to academe, to academic programs themselves.

The wonderful thing about professional accreditors is that they provide disciplines with incredible leverage for budgets and personnel. Programs that enjoy specialized accreditation may, in fact, find themselves the target of jealousy and even some subterfuge from departments that do not have such an extra level of certification.

As a dean, I have often chuckled at the way that some of these other departments try to piggyback on the gravitas of the specialized accreditors. Any department chair or dean worth her salt will learn very...

One of the administrative listservs I read has been buzzing about liability insurance of late (also see a recent article in The Chronicle). Liability insurance is one of those things that makes most people's eyes glaze over until it suddenly becomes a very real need when there are threats of litigation.

Most folks assume that they are covered by their campus policies or that a professor or administrator's meager salaries and savings would make him/her an unattractive target of litigation. The reality is that neither of these may be true. At private institutions in particular, liability insurance may not cover many scenarios or offer very high dollar ceilings for claims. The latter is even more dangerous: Depending on state laws, the damage to one's fiscal holdings can be severe to the point of bankruptcy. What's sad is that personal and professional liability insurance is actually quite...

The topic of nepotism is a popular one in the Chronicle forums, and I've seen it discussed recently on some listservs I follow, possibly because the economy has more folks looking for joint appointments within family units. This got me thinking about another kind of familial favoritism that crops up at some smaller colleges: parent/child nepotism.

Sometimes faculty members have their own children enrolled in their classes. It's only natural for faculty children to gravitate to their parents' fields as majors. I know of several cases in which professors' children have been turbo-powered versions of their parents, incredibly talented and well-prepared for their courses. In these cases, there have been no questions about rigor in classes that were taught by a parent. Unfortunately, I have known of other cases in which a faculty child's grades in other courses were much lower than those...

A new faculty member sat in the faculty lunch room listening to two seasoned senior faculty members (both of whom enjoyed reputations as very entertaining lecturers) lamenting the good old days. They spoke fondly of the personality quirks of now retired professors, describing in humorous and wistful ways how the life of the university was weakened by the relentless conformity of our current stage of history.

"Ah," one finally sighed, leaning back in his chair, "the trouble with us all today is that we have no real characters teaching on this campus." The new faculty member could barely suppress his laughter at this conversation: One of the senior faculty members was wearing a kilt (he enjoyed playing the bagpipes at the end of the day on Fridays) and the other was wearing a bathrobe (having just completed a swim at the university pool). "No real characters, eh?," he thought.

Academic...