Swamp Draining

I used to work for a fellow who's favorite aphorism was, "When you are up to your ass in alligators it's hard to remember your job is to drain the swamp." As the requests for my time back at my home institution increase, I have been thinking a lot about the difficulty in accomplishing research at the PUI and MCU institutions. One of the major challenges is the constant din of demands to spend your time on other needs.

At a some point each of us reaches the limit of the number of things we can do at once. For some people, like me, the problem is that if there is too much to do they tend to serve the needs of others before their own. Thus their research programs suffer. This explains why so many people advise that to succeed in research you must be selfish.

The problem I see in selfish faculty is that in institutions with limited resources collaboration is key to being able to succeed and in maintaining a collegial work environment. Many institutions transitioning to a more research active status end up with major rifts between the senior faculty who are committed to a COMMUNITY of scholars and a junior faculty who are looking to be members of a community of SCHOLARS. Departments tear themselves apart over these generational rifts which are often solved only by time, with retirement. But in many cases the "new" department becomes a dog-eat-dog environment filled with faculty who put their research programs first and students second. As the department advisor I have spoken to a number of transfer students who left newly more research active departments in favor of one where they feel the faculty "care more about the students than their research".

Being a moderate in most things, I am in favor of a COMMUNITY of SCHOLARS that incorporates the best of both extremes. To achieve such alchemy requires a commitment on the part of the institution. An institution that truly supports a culture of scholarship as an integral component of the education of students must demonstrate this by pulling some of the alligators from the swamp. This is the duty of good Department Chairs and Deans. Alligator wrangling should be one of the required skills asked of Dean and Chair candidates.

T.S. Hall