As I wrote last year (See: Faculty Thoughts about Their Careers at Georgetown), our survey measuring satisfaction levels of being a faculty member at Georgetown formed the basis of the agenda of the provost’s office this year.
One of the central massages of the survey was that assistant and associate professors felt that the processes and expectations regarding tenure and promotion were too vague. The associates also reported that they felt a lack of effective mentoring as they progressed in the career following the tenure step. We felt these two issues might be related to one another.
While answers to simple survey questions can be used effectively to identify areas needing improvement, I’ve found that they rarely often crisp information about the causes of the problem. Without knowing the causes, we might start activities that don’t really address the problem or might even make matters worse.
In such cases, adding some thoughtful conversation and group deliberation is often a wise move. The provost’s office, under the leadership of Vice Provost Adriana Kugler, is beginning to address how we might create such deliberations and group dialogue.
In doing so, we have to be careful to acknowledge that activities that the provost’s office itself conducts may be part of the problem. We want to create an environment in which honest, frank reports of issues of mentoring and clarity of promotion processes might be raised without any fear that statements might be attributed to those proffering them.
We are engaging an outside group to conduct multiple focus groups of about 10 faculty members each, facilitated by a non-Georgetown moderator. The discussions will be structured about the possible sources of need for mentoring and clarity of promotion processes.
We want groups containing faculty that vary in their length of service at Georgetown, the nature of scholarship in their discipline, the unit of appointment, and other demographic features that may affect their experiences at Georgetown.
Good focus groups provide insight into the set of alternative viewpoints that exist and how they might inform a richer understanding of a given phenomenon. They are not good vehicles to measure what percentage of the faculty hold such views, but they should be useful in identifying solutions that best fit alternative concerns.
On the mentoring front, reports from faculty in different units suggest that there are some units with robust mentoring procedures for associate professors, but others lack such activities. We’re hopeful that some of the effective procedures in one unit can be transported to another.
I suspect that the focus groups will yield their outcomes this term and that we will seek faculty input on building better mentoring activities soon thereafter.
I hope those faculty who are asked to be focus group members are able to participate in the groups. I know that such participation will be a great service to building a better Georgetown.