Maybe it’s just my previous experience in Career Services coming through, but this all seems like it should be common sense. I don’t want to believe that educators educators would actually ask such questions or have that much trouble formulating a better question.

I’m not denying it. I’m just lamenting it… especially since students may learn these same habits from such educators.

Wow. Now I’m really wondering why us graduate students were asked by the faculty hiring committe to “Find out fun things about the candidates, e.g., do they have kids, are they married, do they have special needs, family in the area, what church do they go to, etc.”

Although, come to think about it, now I’m not so surprised how time-after-time women and minorities were never offered a job.

In response to sunshinemama, employers aren’t permitted to ask candidates about disabilities prior to offering employment, so I would strongly urge your daughter not to reveal her disabilities until after she has a position in hand. There are a number of people who benefit from straight talk and clear instructions, so I don’t know that she even needs to reveal that she has Asperger’s. I have a colleague who takes copious notes in meetings and asks for me to put requests in writing because “he remembers better that way.” We all want him to be successful, so we just go with it and don’t get into the potential reasons for his requests.

As a for a service dog, employers really aren’t in a position to decline legitimate needs like this. Again, I wouldn’t mention this until AFTER a job has been offered and perhaps even started. If the service dog is needed during the interview process, it is wise to notifify the search committee, especially if a member will be picking up the candidate and the dog from the airport.

Though obviously well-intentioned, this entry demonstrates an unwitting capitulation to the aggressive faculty disempowerment pursued by a growing number of institutions. Perhaps it’s merely an unintended co-optation, which is hard for all of us to avoid. My point is that space, meaning presence, remains extremely important not merely to faculty but to their students, which is more important, after all. Yes, collaboration is growing in both importance and acceptance, thankfully, but the sense of a faculty member as just that, a member, is diminished gravely by his or her lack of value to the institution, as demonstrated by the institution’s investment in that person. Students clearly understand hierarchy, and it affects their comprehension of the faculty member, her course, and ultimately the institution itself. That last may be the most significant and overlooked aspect; administrations aren’t notable for their long view. In their personal discussions, students evaluate faculty by their perceived permanence or value, as demonstrated by whether they have an office or are working out of their zip drive or briefcase, not to mention whether their sole presence exists in the cloud. I’ve had this evaluation shared by students both unintentionally and intentionally, as in offhand comments about other faculty. Digital access notwithstanding, students still seem to place some value on the notion that there’s a place where the they can go to find and address us in real time, even if only to leave a hardcopy note. If you, as faculty, aren’t present in some fairly permanent, visible sense, the administration reasons that your impact, your concerns, your voice in any sense, is as far off campus and outside the margins of the institution as that crowded study, coffee shop, or whatever found space defines your presence. And, irrespective of the presence, undeniable benefit, and impact of the digital world, we still are defined by our physical presence. Or absence.

I disagree with the author about the place of actual office. I almost always prefer to work in my office. I also meet my students there and hold small meetings with other colleagues. During the day, I often have multiple interactions with my graduate students. It is therefore impossible to work in any other place than in my office. I guess the author’s suggestion only applies to professors in humanities and alike and definitely not to science professors.

Experimentation and innovation are wonderful — if they are mutually agreed up by faculty and administrators.

   But, Fallacy of Composition applies to this dialogue.  What is preferable for a sub-component of faculty is not preferable for all.  Some who “cling” to their offices have very good reasons for doing so. 

The diversity of discipline, personality, and responsibility for teaching v. research v. service vary enormously across and within institutions  — and so do faculty needs for private offices.

Some, at institutions more focused on teaching, need more than an occasional seminar room to meet privately with students. Some faculty  need private office space to store the files of the dozens of students they have to advise. Faculty at teaching oriented colleges can’t get by with office hours only by appointment, but are expected to be available at set times — just in case a student comes by.   It helps to have a place to get work done in between student visits.  Private office space filled with hundreds of books in the disciplines one teaches and researches are handy for meetings with the numerous undergraduates supervised in independent studies. 

For the professors in a research university – some disciplines and fields of research within disciplines don’t involve collaborative research with one’s colleagues down the hall — but collaborative research with colleagues across the country or the globe.  A private office with your own computer, files, printer and telephone for private conversations is productivity enhancing.

Finally, in my academic career  I have noted numerous faculty parents who keep children in their offices during spring and summer breaks, snow days, when a child is sick, on holidays when public school is closed but the university is open, etc. Work-family balance  *is* an on-going  issue in  the professoriate.  Providing individual office space has costs — but let’s not phase them out until we  have weighed the benefits.  How many more faculty (male and female) would be staying home, canceling or rescheduling classes and meetings — if they had no private office where they could bring  their children  when needed?

I vote for offices.

I need my office!  Don’t take it away!
While I could be satisfied with a different type of office arrangement, perhaps an office space like I’ve seen at Google or Pixar (where would the money come from to build such spaces?), I do fully rely on my office on campus for work. I am one of those who really finds it difficult to work at home. And I know a large number of others who feel the same way.

As a contingent faculty member, I am one of the lucky few to have an office, albeit shared, where I have bookshelves and file drawer space, access to a computer and a telephone, and a place to go before and after class to prep or grade papers or meet with students or colleagues.  For those of us who teach regularly and long-term, it is wonderful to be able to leave books and papers there between semesters.  Some semesters, I have shared with as few as four others; one semester, we were nineteen, but there has always been lots of shelf space and sufficient file drawer space around the four desks and three computers for us to be comfortable.  Our fabulous administrative assistant and our department chair make sure to distribute contingent faculty among several available offices based at least in part on our schedules, so that we don’t tread on our colleague’s toes too much.  Some of us use the office more than others, but I’m pretty sure that we all value it and feel grateful that our department provides us that space.

Betsy Smith/Adjunct Professor of ESL/Cape Cod Community College.

Interesting. As a career adjunct, my office is whatever horizontal surface is at hand, often just my lap if all the tables are already taken. More than a few times, it’s been the driver’s seat and steering wheel of my freeway flyer-mobile, but not (yet) while driving!  :)

Are you kidding me? The author may not mind being part of that beehive, but it’s driving me absolutely bonkers. I work in a building built just three years ago, in which the faculty offices have modular walls. It is freakin’ NIGHTMARE. There is no quiet, no uninterrupted work time, no privacy. It is universally HATED. When faculty wish to have private phone conversations, they take their cell phones and go into a less populated hallway. When they want to actually work – they leave the office and go home or to a conference room. The lack of a quiet place to work is incredibly disruptive. 

Really, manoflamanch? You can generalize this easily? And 8 likes?! I am surprised that no one has spoken out at this outrageous posting.

How many cases of fraud vs. number of researchers are there by national origin?