Good grief! Who’d have thought this would be so difficult?

With faculty, you show a degree in the area, you have a good idea the person can teach the material. Better still, the person has research, publications, and presentations that back up a claim of expertise…Snap! You have a qualified faculty member!

Okay, now you look at an–for example–accounting clerk. Degree required? Probably not, but would be nice. Experience required? Probably, but how much? Do you look at past personnel evaluations? Not me. So, do we “credential” an accounting clerk? Nope. We don’t. At least not for this review. We chose to “credential” directors and above - and people whose jobs require some kind of special certification. Whew!

Uh, so what about the person who is a programmer or analyst or technical support staffer? Degree? Maybe? Experience? Yes. Where do you draw the line?

We’ve moved toward using the documents (transcripts, certificates, etc.) when they are appropriate, but we also include some discussion on a lot of the folks - mostly to show that we actually looked at these folks enough to realize we like their work and believe they’re doing a good job.

Just to give you a really personal example…look at my record. Assistant Provost. Hmmm. No PhD. Problem? Not if the job doesn’t require it. The experience? Not a problem. I’ve been there, done that, so many times, I earned the title Generalist (and fire-fighter, mr. fixit, and hey, you!).

The bottom line: We just didn’t find anyone who wasn’t qualified to do the job s/he is doing. Could some of US improve our qualifications? Certainly. (But do you honestly think I’m going back to school at 55 to get a doctorate? Dream on.)

Okay, I admit it. I hate having to work with syllabi. Faculty members generally provide sufficient guidance to their students with whatever kind of syllabus is proffered. Even so, between SACS and the Academic Senate, we now face a set of relatively strict guidelines for what a syllabus should include. The tricky part is telling when a syllabus passes muster and when it doesn’t.

For now, we’re trying to ensure that every syllabus has AT LEAST student learning outcomes (or course objectives), some kind of calendar or sequence of topics, and a “grading policy,” something that tells students how the course will be graded, what kind of grade scale is in force, how much homework (vs. tests vs. papers) counts, etc. When folks are reviewing over a hundred a day (as they are now with the start of a term), some things will be misclassified. Based on that information, I proceeded to send an email to a number of faculty members about something being “not quite right” with the syllabi they had submitted.

Unfortunately, the information was not 100% accurate. As a result, I probably ticked off a few folks and confused others - but I did try to recall the emails - and those that had not been read already were apparently recalled.

My bottom line: We will (and that is the imperative form for 1st person plural) get our act together. We will take a breath before we send out emails. We will double-check our work.

I promise.

Richard