September 13, 2001-Vol33n3: Letters

VOLUME 33, NUMBER 3

THURSDAY, September 13, 2001

Addressing the issue of departmental "laggards"

To the Editor:

About 30 years ago, when flight attendants were still stewardesses, the stewardess who collected my ticket stub saw Dr. John Boot, and asked whether I was a Dr. who looked after patients, a Dr. who looked after teeth or a Dr. who did "kind-of-nothing."

Our provost recently sent a notice to deans stating that faculty who did, well, kind-of-nothing, ought to earn their keep by teaching more. This is a terse rendering of a text that was terse to begin with.

I trust we support the notion that faculty ought to have a full plate. We are, after all, paid full time. And we acknowledge that there are colleagues who don't pull their weight: it is not a phantom issue.

But it is part of the cost of doing business. If, like accountants, we had to account for our time, we might reduce some slack among the under-performers, but we would lose the services of the over-performers who fiercely write, experiment, create, think and teach—far too fiercely to waste time keeping track of time. In a cost-benefit analysis, the benefits provided by over-performers handily exceed the costs of the under-performers.

Who, incidentally, are these laggards? It is not easy to distinguish between those who sit and think, and those who just sit. It is even more difficult to distinguish between those who sit and think clever thoughts, and those who sit and think stupid thoughts. Chess players, whether they are smart enough to win or stupid enough to lose, both sit and think.

We, the chairs, are in the best position to try to identify the flimsies; indeed, when writing the annual reports, it is hard not to identify them. But what cure do we have that is better than the disease? Surely not time-clocking, which would destroy the university as we know it. Surely not counting research, which would worsen the substitution of quantity for quality and, in any event, can too readily be manipulated.

Nor will the simple dictate to "just teach more" fly, what with the union and the appointment letters. It would spawn years of litigation. Nobody—not the faculty, not the administration, not the union, not the university—is served by lawsuits where, ultimately, whoever wins still loses.

Let me suggest two approaches. The first is premised on Woody Allen's dictum that 80 percent of the job is just showing up. The suggestion is to assign to colleagues who tend to be absent on non-teaching days without much to show for it two courses, one on a M-W-F schedule, the other on a T-Th schedule. If Woody is right, this would solve 80 percent of the problem.

As a variation on this theme, schedule the classes on M-W-F, but one mid-morning and one mid-afternoon.

The other approach would promote teaching on overload. This has been part of the scheme of things all along. Successful grant-getters and researchers can "buy out" teaching obligations, and those spending less time and effort on research can "buy in" teaching obligations.

In either scenario, it should be done at the departmental level, where the up-close-and-personal knowledge resides, and where one can, perhaps, distinguish between structural and temporal problems.

In closing, as an aside, just as there are under-productive faculty, there are under-productive administrators—who waste resources, make useless work for others, duplicate efforts in turf wars, double dip in the private sector, or who simply are bad decision-makers.

We have our fair (unfair?) share of those and they linger forever, being recycled from failure to failure, or from failure to sinecure, and even from failure to paid pasture, at appreciable salaries and oodles of overhead.

John Boot
Professor and Chair,
Department of Management Science and Systems

Investigation of aid for injured athletes urged

To the Editor:

In the Reporter of Sept. 6, members of the university community could read about the football game with Rutgers. Much of the article was detailed.

But The Buffalo News also included the following "real news," which the Reporter omitted: "Fifth-year tight end Marvin Brereton had surgery early Friday morning for a ruptured patella tendon in his left knee and is out for the season. If he elects, Brereton could apply to the NCAA for a sixth year of eligibility. Sophomore tight end Jason Smalarz and junior defensive end Jamie Guerra both suffered concussions. Smalarz is questionable for Bowling Green, while Guerra is day-to-day and could return to practice sometime next week, (head coach Jim) Hofher said."

I wish to skip over the question of extended eligibility to concentrate on the complex issue of the variety of costs for Division-I sports.

Are the costs of injured athletes' medical care absorbed by the university? Will a player who suffers an injury be able to continue on tuition waiver or some combination of financial waiver and athletic scholarship? Are these policies set by our university or by the NCAA? How many semesters of continuance do the players get? Do the costs come from state funds or from the UB Foundation? (In the distant past at another university, injured players were dropped from the aid programs, and for many financially disadvantaged players, the policies meant that they had to drop out of college. The athletes felt that they had been used and discarded.)

I think that some moderate investigative reporting could find out about this university's past, current and future policies. At the very least, future issues of the Reporter should include injuries to members of both teams.

Apparently the knowledge and attitude toward concussions is now undergoing change. In the distant past, coaches or assistant coaches used to counsel players to say, when asked "What day is it?" that "It is Saturday" because then the player could continue—severe injuries seldom happened on practice days.

I realize that many earnest adults are in favor of "The Run to Division I," but I question whether this decision actually is in the university's and the individual student's long-term best interest. It would be helpful for the university community to learn how many of our enrolled students actually work for 10 or more hours per week and, therefore, probably are working while others are "playing." Perhaps some effort to create a gentrification of the university requires the emphasis on sports.

In some future university, people may regard football the way many now regard boxing—as a semi-savage entertainment that actually exacts a heavy toll in human costs.

Vic Doyno
Department of English