Outside Teaching
An Ivy League school offers you a substantial sum of money to teach an advanced course. You will have an opportunity to interact with research colleagues, which will more than compensate for the small amount of time needed to teach this course in your area of expertise. And as a young faculty member, you can use the money. A no-brainer: teach the course!
But wait! The Villanova faculty handbook says “Generally speaking, Villanova faculty members may not teach courses at another institution during the period in which they are under contract to the University…” As it turns out, the administration allows you to teach this course in place of one of your present courses, but with the proviso that Villanova University receives the income; essentially, the other university buys you out of a course as if it were a grant. Meantime, several of your Villanova colleagues invest a day a week in consulting, bringing in large sums of money. They are granted a day off from Villanova duties and get to keep all their income. And the faculty handbook explicitly condones this. Is it fair that consultants can earn money that extraordinary teachers cannot?
This case recently came before the Academic Policy Committee, engendering lively debate. The University’s view seems to base itself on the unique role of teaching within the educational establishment. Our students come to Villanova to imbibe the intellectual stimulation of our outstanding faculty. Indeed, it is not totally wrong to say that the strength of Villanova depends directly on the strength of its scholar-teachers.
A consulting firm would not allow their premier consultants to moonlight for a rival, though they would allow them to work at Wawa; a football team would not allow a player to play a game for a rival football team, but could allow the player to be on a baseball team. Similarly, a faculty member teaching elsewhere robs from Villanova’s unique faculty offerings in a way that outside non-academic consulting does not. Villanova offers an exclusive blend of exceptional faculty that is not offered by anyone else, and this is a vital asset that we must protect.
But the issue of fairness is still not resolved. Should the faculty handbook be changed? How?
Robert Styer
Mid Career Support
Incoming faculty are often hired with reduced teaching loads, summer research stipends, fourth year sabbaticals, reduced service expectations, and other inducements for research. These support their efforts to publish, earn tenure and higher salaries, and maintain their teaching load reductions. This support by the university is laudable and desirable, and many new faculty have used it to good effect.
Should the university take a new look at what support might be beneficial for mid career faculty who, for various reasons, now seek to renew their research and writing? For example, some faculty may have spent a period of time concentrating on service. Others may have had to juggle the demands of child raising and/or care of aging parents along with their professional responsibilities. These and other reasons might have slowed the rate of publications of a faculty member.
Benefits to new faculty are offered on potential more than record. Should the idea of "record" be expanded to indicate future potential for those who now plan to reinvigorate their research?
Opinions