>Greetings from Malaysia
>I have been following the discussion for the past several months and have
>learned a lot from the many viewpoints and ideas shared on the line. I
>need your help in terms of identifying literature and examples of faculty
>development activities and initiatives that are done in your
>organisations, either university/college settings and/or primary/secondary
>school systems.
This is my Mom's response to the Faculty Development question. I forwarded
it to her even though she's not yet a member of our group. I think her
response will be of general interest to the list. Thanks.
katheen
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From: AnnLucas
To: Lucas, Kathleen
Subject: Malaysia
Date: Saturday, May 04, 1996 1:48PM
Kathleen,
This is my response to the Malaysian individual about faculty development.
I mailed it to him, but don't know how to send it to all in the Learning
Organization group. Perhaps you would do this for me. Edit it as you
please.
Dear Dr. Ahmad,
There are three major approaches to faculty development in the U.S. One
is establishing a Faculty Development Office (sometimes called Center for
Teaching and Learning, or Instructional Development Office). Such office
focus primarily on improving teaching. During the start-up phase of such
an office, a faculty member, who is known to be a good teacher, receives
release time from teaching to set up the office, conduct workshops on
teaching, and work individually with faculty members who are poor teachers
or who will not receive tenure because their teaching is inadequate.
There are probably about 1000 such offices in this country. The director
often becomes a full-time person with one or several staff members. Often
the director develops a committee of faculty members and administrators
who advise him or her and encourages faculty members and administration to
support the work of the office. The main professional organization is
Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education.
Their President is Dr. Marilyn Leach, Center for Faculty Development,
University of Nebraska at Omaha, Allwine Hall 419, 60th & Dodge Sts.,
Omaha, NE 68182-0050, E-mail:LEACH@UNOMAHA.EDU. This is the most
supportive group of professionals I have ever encountered.
Sometimes money is generated from external sources. When I founded such
an office at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, NJ, I worked with a
start-up figure of about $350,000 generated from several industrial
organizations. However, the focus of my office was on downsizing,
retraining, leadership development for chairs and deans, team building in
each of our nine colleges, and conflict resolution when two of our
colleges were collapsed into one.
The second approach is when the Human Resource Manager (HRM) in a
university sponsors training and development activities for both the
academic and non-academic side of an institution. Perhaps HRM people can
tell you more directly what they are doing. This is an active and
exciting group.
The third approach is one that I strongly favor. It is to train academic
chairs to be leaders with strong skills in faculty development. My book
is devoted primarily to this topic. It is: Lucas, Ann F. (1994).
Strengthening Departmental Leadership: A Team Building Guide for Chairs in
Colleges and Universities. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. The book is also
intended for a faculty development office or HRM office to initiate an
in-service program for department chairs (who often feel very alone in the
trenches) by having them read a chapter, select from among the goals at
the end of each chapter, and report back to the group the following month
on their progress. This is a powerful intervention that has worked well
in many universities. I will mail you a copy of a chapter I have written
called "Increase Your Effectiveness in the Organization: Work with
Department Chairs," that is to be published in the POD (Professional and
Organizational Development) Handbook for New Practitioners).
I do not know of any research in terms of the kind of financial support
and return on investment, although I would think many individual offices
have done such work for their own institutions. Certainly all of them
prepare an annual report indicating the kind of work they have done and
the impact they have made.
Lest I give you much more than you have asked for, I'll stop. However,
feel free to contact me if you have further questions.
Ann Lucas
--KLucas@smtpmail.micro.honeywell.com (Lucas, Kathleen)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>