Department Culture

Proposed Departmental Considerations

• Lack of transparency and equity causes friction among faculty and affects their morale and department engagement.
• Decisions made by university and department leaders without an explanation of how and why.
• Decline in morale when decision-making processes do not consider faculty input.

• Areas for greater transparency include teaching buyout/loads, procedures and criteria for assigning teaching assistants, resource allocation, tenure and promotion expectations, budget, space allocations, and hiring process.
• Transparency increases faculty sense of belonging and work productivity, cohesion, morale, and engagement.
• Transparency decreases faculty stress levels, myths, and misconceptions.
• The limitations of transparency, such as confidential matters, e.g., personnel decisions and performance evaluations, should be acknowledged.

Opportunities to increase transparency:

• Demystify the promotion, tenure, and advancement processes through frequent and regular communication with faculty.
• Seek faculty input in decision-making processes.
• Communicate the rationale for decisions and outline challenges and relevant factors.
• Solicit input from affected faculty before change(s) are implemented to obtain buy-in and proactively address potential resistance and challenges.

Proposed Departmental Considerations

• Lack of consistency and clarity in communication.
• Lack of documentation of departmental practices and governance.
• Lack of specific details around promotion, tenure, advancement, and evaluation.
• Faculty work does not match position responsibilities.
• Inconsistency in promotion, tenure, and advancement expectations and/or practices between department, college, and university.

• Provide departmental guidelines on and expectations for position responsibilities in the promotion, tenure, and advancement process.
• Hold open discussions with faculty to promote understanding and address myths, misunderstandings, and varying perceptions about the meaning of scholarship and productivity.
• Offer constructive feedback, including faculty assessment of strengths and weaknesses in evaluations and throughout the promotion, tenure, and advancement process.
• Provide regular training/guidance to the promotion, tenure, and review committee on sources of bias, best discussion practices, and resources to follow Michigan Tech policies.

Proposed Departmental Considerations

• Unequal distribution of workloads.
• Heavier workloads hinder research productivity and promotion.
• Inequity that arises when faculty do not follow through on commitments, resulting in disproportional workload for others.

A. Workload Equity

• Workload equity, including faculty productivity, retention, satisfaction, sense of fairness, and sense of inclusion, is associated with positive outcomes for the department.
• Improve transparency in the workload distribution process (e.g., how courses are assigned) and interactions (e.g., who is asked).
• Be clear about workload as well as the varying amount of time and effort required.

• Disparate allocation of resources may be perceived as favoritism.

B. Resource Allocation Fairness

• Discuss how to ensure department procedures support faculty work and fair resource allocation.
• Use the ADVANCE Faculty Equity Query Tool (AFEQT) to examine data for your unit. Historic and current data can include student credit hour distributions, research space, start-up resources, years in rank, turnover, and many others.
• Develop criteria and guidelines for appointing student assistants (e.g., graduate, undergraduate, teaching, research) and communicate a standardized procedure to request support.
• Discuss ways to resolve unequal distribution of faculty assignments.
• Develop and communicate a standard departmental process for allocation and assignment of office and lab space.

• Not feeling valued for their work.
• Certain types of work being more valued than others.
• Outlined and stated position responsibilities only being valued by some departmental faculty.

C. Value Different Skill Sets and Strengths

• Value and appreciate the different strengths, skill sets, and academic expertise of faculty.
• View diversity in different departmental areas as a strong component of the unit's identity.
• Acknowledge publicly the value of the department's various missions (e.g., research, teaching, extension, DEIS, professional practice, etc.).

• Perceptions that the department chair supports some faculty, but not others.
• Hesitancy to attend social events and build camaraderie.
• Newly appointed faculty have little to no interaction with other departmental faculty.
• The department's use of space is distributed across multiple buildings, which hinders faculty interactions, collaboration, and the ability to communicate about each other's work.
• Unproductive interactions among departmental faculty cause worry and create a negative working environment.
• Faculty do not engage because they do not feel supported, included, and valued.

D. Create an Inclusive and Supportive Culture

Interactions with the Chair

• Ask faculty about needs in annual evaluation meetings. 
• Provide resources and support to help faculty in their work.
• Listen to faculty concerns and take actions to assist them.
• Show genuine interest in faculty work and accomplishments.
• Seek faculty input on major department decisions and ensure their voices are considered.
• Know about faculty activities and goals across their position responsibilities.
• Take action to support faculty work-life integration.
• Give faculty appropriate levels of autonomy and trust.
• Ensure fairness in decision-making processes and be open to input and feedback.
• Value faculty strengths, skills, and competencies.

 

Interactions with Colleagues

• Foster a communicative and collegial culture in which faculty know their peers are supportive.
• Host departmental activities that bring together faculty to allow them opportunities to learn what their colleagues are working on.
• Set expectations for support staff to be helpful and responsive. 
• Identify ways for faculty who are located in separate buildings to come together, collaborate, and network.

Faculty want the department chair to...

• Build a work environment in which everyone is included and has a sense of belonging.
• Focus on faculty strengths and provide constructive feedback rather than criticism.
• Provide support for promotion, tenure, and advancement (e.g., reducing teaching loads, service responsibilities, identifying new funding sources, encouraging flexible faculty programs).
• Create opportunities for faculty working in different program areas to converse and interact.

• Senior faculty and/or the department chair are inconsistent in their guidance to faculty.
• Faculty find it difficult to collaborate because they are not familiar with each other's strengths and scholarly activities.

E. Create a Collaborative Culture

Senior faculty and/or the department chair can...

• Connect potential collaborators with junior faculty members, as is done during the Early Career Management Committees (ECM) or Advanced Career Management (ACM).
• Invite faculty to collaborations and opportunities.
• Be available and accessible to faculty colleagues.
• Invite underrepresented faculty to network with you over coffee or a meal.
• Have regular gatherings (e.g., coffee, lunch) with pre-tenure faculty to listen and respond to their questions about promotion, tenure, and advancement.
• Build a database of successful grant proposals that is readily available to faculty to examine good models.
• Encourage faculty to attend workshop sessions regarding promotion, tenure, and advancement in order to learn about process and expectations.
• Provide a department-level orientation for new faculty.
• Create opportunities that will allow faculty to learn about their colleagues' scholarly activities (e.g., 5-minute talk for faculty to highlight activities and points of pride).
• Match faculty to mentors with similar interests, such as research interests and commitments.

• Underrepresented faculty feel the need to make an extra effort to be seen as an authority and given respect in the classroom.
• Faculty perceive gender bias to impact the hiring process as well as promotion, tenure, and advancement decisions.
• Teaching assignments appear to be unequally distributed between faculty who identify as men or women.

F. Recruit and Retain Faculty Who Identify Who Identify as Women or Persons of Color

• Validate the experiences of underrepresented faculty. Aim to understand the challenges they face and remove barriers to their work.
• Leverage one's privilege to ally and speak up for faculty colleagues and call out questionable behavior and decisions. See Michigan Tech's Advocates and Allies program to learn techniques and strategies.
• Ensure everyone is supported, included, and valued.
• Be sensitive to cultural differences.
• Actively address and provide avenues to discuss diversity, inclusion, and equity.
• Enhance awareness about diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as strategies to advance this work for all faculty.
• Increase the number of underrepresented faculty in the candidate pool.
• Increase awareness of, and take action to address implicit bias in faculty hiring, promotion, tenure, and advancement. 
• Increase awareness of, and take action to address insensitive comments that might make others uncomfortable.
• Increase awareness that underrepresented faculty might be asked to take on an uneven share of service.
• Improve retention for underrepresented faculty and provide dual career resources, where relevant.
• Assess equity in teaching assignments according to gender, race, etc.
• Educate others to respect, appreciate, and embrace diversity. Please use any resources on the ADVANCE page, or join A&A workshops.