Sorting Things Out

David Evans, “Redefining Faculty Roles,” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 14, 2009, available at http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Redefining-Faculty-Roles/8016/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en, is an interesting, brief lament about the life of the academic. Evans starts off by charting the increasing responsibilities for faculty over the past two decades, and then notes, “The problem is that the traditional triad of faculty obligations—teaching, scholarship, and service—have not altered at all (or, perhaps more accurately, have also become more intense) during the same time.” He concludes: “Calls for accountability and critiques of faculty life as a refuge for slackers are partly responsible for these trends, and anyone inside the academy knows that these discussions are often wildly misinformed. It's certainly clear, however, that faculty life has changed, and academics need to figure out how to be more positive participants in the conversation about how to ensure that faculty work is configured to support excellence in teaching and research.”