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[august_leo]

It is not unusual to have new faculty, including first year faculty, serve on 6 committees, if you include the following mandatory appearances: monthly faculty meetings, monthly subfield meetings (of the 25 faculty there are 8 in my subfield), monthly department meetings (including dean, faculty, staff, adjuncts), 2 other department level committees where we meet monthly and do a good deal of real work, and one college-wide committee.  I have actually done the above plus an additional department committee and two additional college-wide committees (one of which I was "elected" to when I left the room for a moment, and one of which only met for 14 hours over the year).  That year I was on 10 committees!  Ten!  As a tenure track faculty member trying to get some research out the door.  I thought I was just being a good departmental citizen, but now I think I was getting...well, you know.

Is this, 10 committees, normal?  Even close to normal? 

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Isn't it nice to be in the UK? I went to 2 faculty meetings (<1/mo, but longer, so 1/mo) no other service. I went to a general talk from the Dean, but it wasn't really a meeting or committee.

Any other threads make you so glad you work in the UK? Please post below.

[wegie]

Almost any of the ones about interview questions. Particularly those with people who think that there's nothing wrong about asking "are you going to get pregnant?" "what does your spouse do?" or "which church do you go to?" The current example's pretty good. http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,44411.0.html

[donstefano]

and don't forget about the short job interviews, and fast decisions about recruitment, rather than the 3-day campus visits.

[scotia]

Any of the threads about students disputing grades. The requirement for moderation of grades and verification by external examiners means I have only twice ever had to deal with serious grade disputes - in 10+ years - and in both cases we simply referred the disputed assignment/exam to the external. In both cases my grade was confirmed.

[expatinuk]

I love the fact that I don't have to deal with students asking for an extension for an assignment. I just point them to the 'Extinuating Circumstances' form and tell them to complete it.

And then I also don't sit on that Board....

[babbinacara]

I'm thankful for many things about working in the UK, but number of meetings isn't one of them (I was on 11 faculty/dept committees last year; a week didn't go by that didn't have 1-2 meetings in it).

I'm glad there's less hassle about "extra credit" requests and grading complaints from students.
I am truly thankful there is less insistence that lecture notes, syllabi and even apparently the answers to exams must be posted on Blackboard (not only is that creepy, I'm just not organized enough to do it well).
I will kiss the ring of the person who decided that tenure and promotion procedures should be firm but fair and far less harrowing than those in the US.

[wegie]

Also on the job front: no conference interviews! No having to go to some hyper-expensive hotel gazillions of miles away from home the day after Christmas, pay a fortune in registration fees and then have to have an interview in a hotel room. Ugh.

[expatinuk]

I'm thankful for many things about working in the UK, but number of meetings isn't one of them (I was on 11 faculty/dept committees last year; a week didn't go by that didn't have 1-2 meetings in it).

Yeah, I couldn't figure that one out either. I have meetings on top of meetings. Perhaps the OP doesn't have any award leadership roles. I've got some to spare if anyone wants to pick up a few!

I'm glad there's less hassle about "extra credit" requests and grading complaints from students.
I am truly thankful there is less insistence that lecture notes, syllabi and even apparently the answers to exams must be posted on Blackboard (not only is that creepy, I'm just not organized enough to do it well).
I will kiss the ring of the person who decided that tenure and promotion procedures should be firm but fair and far less harrowing than those in the US.

We're getting a lot of push to put things up on Blackboard. I don't do it because I've got all my stuff up on my own personal website. No way I'm going to put stuff up in a Uni controled environment!

[wegie]

No way I'm going to put stuff up in a Uni controled environment!

Ah. D'you have one of the contracts from more generous times that gives you control of all your materials?

One of the things I've always envied about academics in the US is the level of control they have over their IP and their curriculum materials, as all the contracts I've had here sign over copyright to the university of all course materials.

Hell, I can go to the website of a university where I had a job over a decade ago and still recognise a significant proportion of a couple of the course descriptions. One of the damn things is still about 85% my prose. Given that there have been two people in the post since then, a small part of me is flattered, but the rest of me just screams "write your own effing course descriptions!".

[august_leo]

OP here. No, I haven't been asked to be on a committee yet and only do 1 official act of service. The junior faculty in my department seem pretty good at avoiding service. I've been under the impression that the amount of service you do in the UK is proportionate to how long you have been in the department (whereas in the US they seem to dump it on the junior folks).

[science_expat]

My institution is like the OP's. Because the system is so top down, junior people are only on things like course committees and school boards which involve all academic staff.

But faculty committees, and especially university ones, are the province of fairy senior people. Hence, "service" in the UK is much less onerous at lower levels than in the US.

[august_leo]

I learned in the last few days that students cannot contest grades at my institution unless it's something really bad (e.g., sexism). But if I write "in my professional opinion this assignment is a 2.1" they can't complain. Wow. That totally wipes out like 25% of the in the classroom forum.

[babbinacara]

My institution is like the OP's. Because the system is so top down, junior people are only on things like course committees and school boards which involve all academic staff.

But faculty committees, and especially university ones, are the province of fairy senior people. Hence, "service" in the UK is much less onerous at lower levels than in the US.

Ooh, I do like the idea of being a Fairy Senior Person. Does that come with little wings?

The number of junior people on committees seems to vary wildly among institutions here. I was slung onto two major faculty committees in my second term. And things just piled up from there. But the actual work of the committees here seems to be loaded relatively fairly between senior and junior people, far more so than in the US.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

My (US) department has to undergo an outside review every 10-15 years; this is a pain.  How often is this done in your UK departments? - DvF

[expatinuk]

My (US) department has to undergo an outside review every 10-15 years; this is a pain.  How often is this done in your UK departments? - DvF

We have to revalidate every 5 years.