My last entry on small private colleges’ need to find faculty members who can cover a wide range of courses was inspired by comments I heard at various sessions of the Council of Independent Colleges’ annual institute for chief academic officers. Another interesting, and somewhat related conversation occurred at the dinner meeting of the CAOs at Presbyterian colleges, which was sponsored by the Association of Presbyterian Colleges & Universities. The discussion, led by Robert Holyer, Provost at Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC, concerned recruiting and socializing new faculty members to meet the mission of member colleges in APCU.
APCU institutions have a wide range of missions and characters. A couple of the CAOs participating in the dinner came from institutions that continue to require faith statements from their faculty members, though these statements are quite different from those at more evangelical institutions. Others, like my own university, have a relationship with the church that is, if not vestigial, not too far from it. Nonetheless, all the APCU institutions come out of a history of service and mission that has shaped their current identities in ways that have some common threads.
Our discussion centered on the service ethos of Presbyterian higher education. Many denominational colleges have some history in the missionary work of their founders, and Presbyterian institutions are no exception. In terms of faculty hiring, then, the question becomes, How important is this historic role and mission in recruiting and socializing new faculty members?
Our discussion came to no clear conclusions, which is not surprising in a room of 15 CAOs from rather different institutions. However, I did find the conversation provocative and helpful. All the regional accreditors stress mission—partly but not wholly as articulated in a mission statement—as the root of an institution’s activities. Even in a room full of people who spend most of their time on mission-related activities, though, almost none of us could precisely quote our mission statements, though we could all summarize the main points.
I was compelled to think more about what our mission statement says, and how we use it in the public and private rhetoric of the university. I am wondering more about how we can incorporate the mission statement into our new-faculty orientation program. Our mission is supposed to be the root of our distinctiveness. How can that be if we don’t even all know what it is?
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2 Responses to Hiring for the Mission
maryahendrickson - November 16, 2009 at 9:18 pm
We do discuss this at our orientation. If you know what the mission statement means, I don’t think that it is necessary to have it memorized word for word. It is like requiring students to memorize dates of events in a history class. If students can write about the events in depth, the dates are not so important.
snwiedmann - November 17, 2009 at 7:13 am
I agree with Mary that having the mission statement memorized is not what matters. Knowing what it means does. Another thing that greatly matters is having promotion and tenure policies, learning outcomes, core curriculum, etc. that match the mission statement. If what your institution is actually doing does not mesh with what your institution claims to be about, you have a serious problem.