At the university, I serve as an ombudsperson for tenure meetings. What is an ombudsperson, you ask?
Ombudspersons support effective communication, cooperation, equity, and civility in academic and work environments through coaching individuals, facilitating communication between persons and departments, mediation, providing information on university policy, and where needed, recommending appropriate institutional action or change.
But what I really do is listen to tenure meetings to insure policy is followed and the candidate is treated properly.
It is actually a great job, if you are a people watcher. You have no responsibility other than the obvious (and are supposed to say as little as possible), so you can just sit and observe - who speaks, how they make their points, the phraseology they use.
This week I heard a phrase that was so clever. A committee member was commenting on an opening paragraph to the self-assessment letter which read something like, "I have done such a great job that no one could think to deny me tenure." The candidate was advised to take a more modest approach so as not to "incite predatory instincts" of the higher ups. I thought it was a great line!
2 comments:
That is so funny! You made me laugh out loud! There are scary people out there. And it really sounds like a sucky job to me - but that is just me - good to know it has its perks!
There are definitely predatory instincts at the high school I work at. A friend of mine has taught for 15 years, but is just in the middle of her 3rd year for the HS, and will only get tenure after the year is over. She has had an administrator tell her that she is not as qualified as another new hire (not true, she had much better college grades from a much harder program, and all in straight math, vs math education). She has had the other new hire tell her that she is "good at teaching remedial classes" so should not be given higer level classes. She has had a guy, another new hire in the department, tell his kids not to go to her for help, because "she doesn't teach the hard concepts, she makes it too fun". And finally she has had an administrator move one of her students out of the class and into another teacher's class because his fellow administrator at another school would prefer to have his daughter with the other teacher. This despite the daughter's preference for the teacher she already signed up for. The girl found out about the switch and switched back, but my friend doesn't know how much to confront on this one. The parents don't want their daughter in the middle of things, and don't want to rock the boat. Suggestions? I think she is on someone's hit list, but can't see why.
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