Too many committees

This year I was elected to the large college committee that deals with curriculum and other academic issues. This is a committee with a heavy workload, but it has largely been interesting. The makeup of the committee is diverse, but there are no true curmudgeons and there are no aggressively negative people.

I also recently joined a committee that is making revisions to a controversial program. As I mentioned in my last post, the chairperson of the committee seems to lack leadership ability. He gets defensive and is incapable of seeing obvious ways to advocate for the program. For example, if you have announced at the beginning of a feedback session that you will be doing a faculty survey on the program in the next few weeks, and then about 25 more people arrive at the session and one of them asks why you aren't doing a survey, I would think it would be a good idea to repeat the previous announcement about the survey. Or, I suppose, you could sit there and not say anything.

One of my colleagues from another STEM department is relatively senior, extremely reasonable and a good friend. He and I are on this program committee and have been trying to guide the chair to be more of an advocate for the program. This is very painful at times. So much so, I recently confessed to Friend Colleague that I had considered quitting the committee, but I didn't think it would be fair to him. Friend Colleague admitted he had thought of leaving too, but that he didn't because he didn't think it would be fair to me. We concluded that the next time we have reservations about joining a committee, we should check with one another before doing so.

The program committee recently finished revisions and sent them to the large college committee. The chair of the large college committee called me to ask if the chair of the program committee (who is not on the large college committee) should be asked to come to the large college committee meeting. I responded, "I really don't see how that would be helpful." He responded, "That's what I thought."

Task Force (noun): a temporary grouping under one leader for the purpose of accomplishing a definite objective

Dr. H., who is a tenured faculty member at a largish university, sends this along for your amusement:

During the council meeting today, we had to elect representatives for the Strategic Task Force, whose mission is to read and organize [some stuff related to] the President's Strategic Plan (it's all very Dilbert).

The Dean took notes on the election on a whiteboard at the front of the room. At the top of the board, the Dean wrote, "Task Farce".

No one corrected him.

Meetings

Nothing like spending the day in a series of college wide meetings! Today was a day chock full of:

1. breaking up into small groups
   
2. discussing things no one will agree on
   
3. reporting back to larger groups
   
4. repeating steps 1-3 n times
   

All the while with the growing realization that my UTI was not, in fact, cured by the week of antibiotics.

But actually, I am a glass half-full type of gal, so let me say there were three positive things about today:

1. The bathroom was right next to the afternoon meeting room and had an abundance of stalls.
   
2. I succeeding in arranging to have the committee empowered with forming other committees assign a mathematician to join me on the core curriculum revision committee
   
3. I'm now in possession of Cipro
   

Responsibility

So, it looks as though the committee charged with revising college core requirements has been appointed rather than elected.

Number of people on the committee: about 13

Number of science and math people: 1

Just say no

Classes start the week after next. So far, I've been asked/assigned to do the following:

• be on a search committee for another small (related) department
  
• replace a retired colleague on the technology committee
  
• stay on the committee that runs faculty programs and decides who gets internal research grants
  
• organize faculty brown bag discussions
  
• run for an elected task force charged with revising college degree requirements
  

So much for feeling rested from sabbatical.

Update

Two things I forgot about:

• advise a new student organization
  
• run a four week book discussion for honors students
  

And another request just today:

• Will I be on the (really really high level) administrative search committee?
  (answer: no)
  

Unfortunately, I have agreed to the rest.