ANNUAL REPORT OF THE FACULTY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
This year, the Faculty Development Committee both completed the tasks traditionally assigned to this committee and began to consider questions about how to open up faculty development opportunities on campus in a way that will enhance the culture of scholarly activity in the long term. This report summarizes the status of both these sorts of activities.
I. TRADITIONAL FDC CONCERNS
This year, the committee managed the advertisement, consideration and awarding of our usual array of grants, including released-time grants for scholarly activity (awarded to Jeff Schweinfus in Chemistry and Colin Wells in English for 2006-2007) and summer grants for both scholarly/artistic activity and teaching/curricular development activity (a total of nine awards; see attached list of recipients).
We also recommended College applicants for the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) "FaCE" grants, and for National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipends. Four of the applicants we sent on to the ACM competition were granted awards (Beth Christensen of the Library, Eric Cole of Biology, Irve Dell of Art, and Chris Chiappari of Sociology/Anthropology), a particularly high success rate.
Competition for released-time grants was particularly intense this year, with numerous applicants putting forward fundable projects. This led the committee to hope in the long term for some means of assuring more opportunities for pre-tenure research time. Many of our young faculty are doing high-level, valuable research, and one goal of this committee (and other related institutions at the College) should be to determine creative ways in which to assure that these faculty get the time they need to complete significant research projects in anticipation of their tenure reviews.
There were 12 applications for summer funds this year, compared with 25 from last year. Although some of this year's proposals for summer funds were turned down, the committee felt that all proposals which met the FDC criteria well were able to be funded. Of particular note was a series of proposals from departments across the college (Mathematics/Statistics/Computer Science, Romance Languages, Art) seeking to enhance and better organize their offerings for both majors and general education students. It was clear that much thought and planning had gone into these proposals, and that a concern for ongoing curricular development is alive and well at St. Olaf.
The committee also sponsored two Mellby lectures this year (Steve Reece from Classics in Fall, 2005 and Gary Gissleman from Theater in Spring, 2006), and chose Mellby lecturers for next year (Rich DuRocher from English, and David Schodt from Economics).
The committee agreed that although we have become clearer about the criteria in choosing Mellby lecturers, these criteria are still in need of further fine-tuning. On the one hand, we seek someone in the tradition of Mellby himself, that is, a scholar-teacher with deep inter-disciplinary interests. On the other, there is a tradition of recognizing faculty at St. Olaf who have served the College well over the long-term The committee agreed that one item on our agenda for next year will be to clarify the criteria for the lectureship. We will also consider the role of the Mellby Lecture in encouraging faculty development at St. Olaf to assure that these funds are being used as well as they can be.
II. ENHANCING FACULTY DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES AT ST. OLAF
Although the committee believes that the traditional activities of the committee are valuable for encouraging ongoing scholarship and curricular development at St. Olaf, we also began to discuss a variety of possibilities for enhancing faculty development opportunities at the College in the long term.
Most broadly, we are seeking to initiate a process in which the College (or various highlighted segments thereof) considers a clearer long-term vision to assure the overall coherence and progress of programs at St. Olaf intended to support scholarly/artistic and teaching activities. The traditional range of responsibilities taken on by this committee has generally not approached the Faculty Manual mandate of the committee which asks us to give advice on FD policy issues in addition to managing the programmatic aspects of the committee already mentioned. As RPC is putting in motion a new committee structure beginning next year, it seemed a good time to reconsider the charge of this committee, and extent to which it can be clarified and improved.
Toward that end, we have done a variety of things this year. Most central was a meeting with Jeanne Narum to help all of us on the committee to think more broadly about possibilities and options in Faculty Development programs. Following this meeting, the committee met on our own to consider the question: "What do we want faculty development activities and culture at St. Olaf to look like in ten years?" This was a lively and valuable discussion which led to a variety of ideas for new programs and fine-tuning of old ones. Some thoughts we had (e.g., requiring would-be year-long sabbatical recipients to submit at least a certain number of applications for external funding) are more long-term goals, and ones which will ultimately require the cooperation and involvement of a variety of units across the College. Others though (for example, programs to provide better support for production of good applications for both internal and external funding, provided both before and after the adjudication of internally available funds), are things the committee can do both more immediately and on its own.
The Committee also initiated meetings with individual departments to begin discussions across the College about visions for faculty development. Although some of these meetings have taken place, scheduling and conducting them proved more difficult than was originally anticipated. It was agreed, however, that this was a valuable task, and that we would continue to work on having these meetings into the next academic year.
An issue that arose in our discussion about what we wanted faculty development opportunities to look like at St. Olaf in the future was a concern about the culture within which scholarly and teaching activity goes on at St. Olaf: it is our tendency to do our scholarly work in isolation from one another. We Minnesotans tend not to be a community which dwells on our accomplishments publicly! Some programs on campus (e.g., the Dean's sabbatical series luncheons) have already sought to break down this sense of working in isolation from each other, but the Committee felt that some more informal opportunities for discussion could still be valuable. Toward that end, we are proposing the introduction of occasional informal meetings in which faculty are encouraged to gather for coffee and snacks to discuss the state of their research. The idea is to provide a space within which it is "ok" to speak proudly about one's work and/or to moan about the challenges in completing it. (See below for more details on this new program.)
Concerns were raised, however, about how best to increase the responsibilities of the committee at the very same time that RPC is encouraging a streamlining and restructuring of this as well as other committees. Over time, the committee may seek to redistribute the workload for both traditional and new faculty development programs, depending sometimes on work-groups (consisting of other faculty members appointed by FDC) to complete various tasks at hand.
III. PLANS FOR NEXT YEAR
Given all the various activities and concerns noted above, the Committee (in addition to its usual responsibilities for adjudicating released-time and summer grants, and choosing Mellby lecturers) is planning the following agenda for next year:
1) Review the Mellby lecture program and revise criteria for it.
2) Initiate a series of programs intended to encourage and support research and artistic activity, including:
a) Research Roundtables (one in early Fall, and one in early Spring)
Funding has been secured with the Dean of the College to support these meetings the intent of which is both to provide a space within which to speak of the successes/challenges of one's research/artistic activity program, and to encourage the development of further lunch-groups and brain-storming sessions formed in accordance with particular research interests.
b) CILA luncheon.
This luncheon will highlight and celebrate the work completed by Released-Time Grant recipients from 2005-2006 (Kathy Tagtmeyer-Pak from Political Science and Mary Trull from English).
c) Grant writing workshops.
These workshops will provide more advice to would-be applicants for both released-time and summer grants, with an eye both to improving the quality of internal applications, and to encourage more applications for external funding for these projects. We will, furthermore, provide more advice to persons who do not receive either released-time or summer grants, again with an eye to improving the quality of internal applications and encouraging more external funding applications.
3) Initiate discussions with appropriate College entities about adding the expectation that year-long sabbatical applicants apply for external funding.
4) Think intentionally about the new RPC-guided committee structure, and how this will affect the work-load of the FDC.
5) Continue meetings with departments guided by the question: "What do we want faculty development activities and culture at St. Olaf to look like in ten years?"
Respectfully submitted,
Jeanine Grenberg (Chair), Humanities
LIST OF AWARDEES
Released-Time Grants
Jeff Schweinfus (Chemistry)
Colin Wells (English)
Summer Research Grants
Jim McKeel (Music)
Karil Kucera (Asian Studies/Art History)
Kim Kandle (Biology)
Jim Hanson (Religion)
Rika Ito (Japanese)
Teaching/Curricular Development Grants
Jim Farrell (History)
Maggie Broner/Leon Narvaez (Romance Languages)
Jill Dietz (Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science)
John Sauer/Irve Dell (Art)
FaCE Grant Awardees
Beth Christensen (Library)
Eric Cole (Biology)
Irve Dell (Art)
Chris Chiappari (Sociology/Anthropology)
NEH Summer Stipend Applicant
Judy Kutulas (History)
Mellby Lecturers for 2006-2007
Rich DuRocher (English)
David Schodt (Economics)
