Think Different?

Not long ago, I spent some time with a very diverse group of academics: professors and administrators from the sciences, engineering, humanities, and the social sciences. It can be interesting to experience academically diverse committees and workshops like this one. Even if the overall experience is boring (that is, the doing of the thing that we are tasked to do and have outcomes and deliverables for the stakeholders etc.), but I like the people (well, most of them) and I am fascinated by glimpses of how other departments and disciplines operate.

Anyway, at this particular event, a group of us were sitting around drinking hot or cold caffeine and discussing what our priorities are in our daily work life. We were not talking about work-life balance (with or without cats); we were talking about work-work balance. That is, when faced with several (many) competing work tasjs, all of which, in theory, need to be done now, which ones do we realistically do now and which ones do we do later?

This is what blew me away: when discussing two very specific examples that I will vaguely describe below, the physical scientists and engineers prioritized one thing and the humanities and social science faculty prioritized the other.

These particular examples involved whether we would deal first with a possible crisis involving undergraduate students or whether we would respond first to an urgent request from an unnamed upper-level administrator. The scientists and engineers opted to (hypothetically) wade into the student crisis and try to sort it out, but the others (hypothetically) opted to respond to the administrator first.

I hasten to point out that those who prioritized the administrative issue emphasized that they nevertheless were concerned about the students. We all agreed that both these issues were important and should be dealt with as soon as possible, we just disagreed about what should be done right now and what should be done immediately-after-right-now.

Why the difference, I wondered?

A couple of weeks after the incident, I told a colleague of mine -- a former upper-level administrator -- about it, and his explanation was that it was not so much cultural differences among disciplines (and definitely not degree of concern for students) but rather a function of the specific personalities of the administrators involved. That is, the humanities and social sciences faculty have long had very demanding and aggressive administrators, whereas the scientists and engineers have had more "flexible" administrators in our part of the university. We STEM people may therefore feel less pressure to give an immediate response to an administrator if we have another urgent situation to deal with at the same time.

I had never thought of it that way before, but it makes some sense. And, if my colleagues is right, it is a rather dramatic micro-illustration of the effect of administrative personalities on the operation of the units for which they are responsible. I suppose that can be good or bad, depending on the situation.

Pecking Order

While perusing some books and articles on academic administration, I tried to set myself a little challenge that would help me keep reading and not either fall into a boredom-induced stupor or fling the book/e-reader across the room because the author makes so many unjustified and insulting assumptions. And that challenge was to see how far in the book/article it took for me to find something, anything, that was interesting or useful to me.

For some of these books/articles, the challenge is never met and I wonder if this is more a reflection of my administrative inadequacies than the apparent boringness of the reading material, but in one book (by C.K. Gunsalus), I found one thing that perked me up for few moments, a few chapters into the book. And that was a statement that every member of the faculty and all of the "secretaries", as well as most of the grad students and other staff members in academic departments knows exactly what the "pecking order" of faculty is; that is, a hierarchy of sorts, based on I-don't-know-what, but indicated by various "intangible" things.

The intangible items that are listed are a bit bizarre and (along with the mention of "secretaries") made me check when the book was published: the Dean's sherry party? getting your own name on letterhead? etc. But let's ignore that and focus on the "pecking order" concept.

Without defining it or its basis any more than I already have(n't):

Do you think your department has a "pecking order" (and are you faculty, staff, or a student)? If so, what do you think the basis for it is? Research awesomeness? Personality? Other?

And what are the consequences? (salary, office/lab space, invitations to sherry parties)

Is this a bad thing, a neutral thing, a good thing?

I suspect that your comments will make for more interesting reading than any of these guides to academic administrating.