We received an email from Linda Treviño, Distinguished Professor of Organizational Behavior and Ethics in the Smeal College of Business, that outlined a strong case for the Task Force to give faculty research concerns a high priority in the scheduling and managing of courses. We thought we would post the content of her email here to generate discussion around this issue.
Professor Treviño writes:
The biggest concern is that this task force take into account the needs of research faculty. U Park is a research campus. Research faculty are expected to, and do, spend a significant percentage of their time on research pursuits. The schedule needs to somehow take that into account. For example, a 3 day per week schedule makes it much harder to focus on research as it breaks up 3 days per week and many of us need focused blocks of time for writing and other research activities. It also makes it almost impossible to travel to conferences which are also important to many of us as we stay in touch with our research colleagues.
My second concern is that the 3 day per week schedule also is not suited to certain kinds of teaching. In Management, many of us use cases. As someone who has been through the MBA program, you know that the case alone can often take an hour to thoroughly discuss. Some courses are easy to chunk into smaller segments. But, the courses I teach don’t lend themselves to the shorter class time. So, the type of teaching method needs to be taken into account.
Having said all of that, I understand the space shortage issue. I’m willing to teach on Saturdays or evenings, if that would help. Why not a M-W, T-F, Th-Sat schedule?
Finally, I think it’s important that SOME space be left unscheduled and locally scheduled. I’ve had a horrible time finding a space for a speaker, for example, if I don’t schedule it months in advance.
We invite your comments here below and thank Professor Treviño for taking the time to write the Task Force.