Department  

Question:  List what you believe are the three top issues you think are most important for faculty in your DEPARTMENT
Items in Ariel 12 pts font are actual responses
Format of responses: (Issue Rank [1…3]) <Response>
Edited responses are in […]

Departmental Governance

Policies and Bylaws

(3) Develop departmental bylaws

(3) Sabbatical policy

Planning and Leadership

(1) Should have goals each year for what can be done for faculty

(1) To renew our leadership and to work towards a more democratic model of internal governance

(1) Evaluation of the department chair

Shared Governance

(1) Improve shared governance

(1) Improve shared governance

Other

(2) Understanding (unfortunately) that the price of professional success (as a faculty member, as a program and as a department) will always be paid upfront

Department Excellence

(1) Advancement of Excellence in the Department

(1) Improving Department Ranking

(3) Continue a focus on excellence and growth while responding to continuing maintenance concerns

(3) Improve ranking of the department

Faculty

Faculty Recruitment

Attraction and Retention

(2) Attraction and retention of minority faculty

(2) Faculty Retention

(2) Speed of offers to new faculty and existing faculty getting outside offers

(3) Appreciate the current faculty so they wont leave

Increasing Quality of Hires

(1) Recruit better faculty

(1) Attracting good faculty

Increasing Tenure Track Faculty

(1) Add tenure track position

(1) Receiving monies to hire tenure track faculty instead of adjuncts (approx. XXX)

(1) Staffing: we need more tenure track positions

(3) Faculty lines

Increasing Quantity of Hires

To compensate for Retirement and Attrition

(1) Recruiting new faculty to address retirements

(1) The hiring of new faculty (we lost XX over the past few years)

(1) Rebuild the faculty. We currently have requests forward to replace seven faculty, most of them full professors, who have been lost to retirement or attrition over the past several years

(1) Recruiting new faculty to address retirements

General Need for Increase

(1) Faculty hiring (both quality and quantity)

(1) Faculty recruitment

(2) Additional faculty for teaching and research. This includes increasing tension between more teaching loads pressure for, simultaneously with more research grant funding pressure

(2) Hire more faculty

(2) Increase faculty size

(2) More faculty

(2) Hire more faculty

(3) New hires to support our Graduate Program

Faculty Support and Development

(2) Support our young tenure track faculty to succeed in tenure and promotion

(3) Appreciate the current faculty so they wont leave

(2) Spend more time on development of faculty and orientation of new clinical faculty

Salary and Benefits

Pay Fairness

(2) Pay equity between new hires and extant faculty

(3) Compensation for supervising doctoral students

Benefits

(2) Benefit packages

(2) Salary and benefits

Increasing Salaries

General Need for Increase

(1) Faculty Salaries

(1) Many colleagues have mentioned the salary survey

(1) Salaries

(1) Salary increase

(1) Salary raises

(2) Salary

To Compensate for Compression

(1) Salary Compression

(1) Salary compression around [XXX] for some

(2) Faculty salaries are an ongoing concern for members of the Department. Compression and inversion and erratic merit pools, faced with increasing cost of benefits means that faculty consistently lose ground in terms of salary increases

(3) Salary compression

(3) Salary compression

Intradepartmental Faculty Relationships

(1) [Discrimination against junior faculty in resource allocation, favoritism] 

(2) Counseling to encourage more collaboration and less paranoia

(2) To improve our current work environment, one that is now full of hostility and mistrust among colleagues

(3) Have [social] events [targeted at] different levels professors, senior researchers, postdocs ... people should know each other and what is going on in the department well

Tenure & Promotion

Clarifying Tenure Standards

(1) A clearer understanding of the promotion and tenure process in terms of what the expectations are in terms of research productivity, teaching and service within their own department and across the University

(2) Tenure standards

(3) Clarity in tenure and promotion guidelines

Fairness

(1) Double standard for salary and another double standard for promotion. Faculty hired from outside at the rank of Professor often have a less distinguished record than current faculty denied promotion. But the folks with more modest records get paid more

Teaching

Teaching Load

(1) Graduate level teaching loads based upon state funding levels by number of students, results in higher numbers for graduate students per class than desirable

(3) Reduce teaching load to [XX]

Teaching Quality and Focus

(2) A refocus in [teaching philosophy]

(2) The student/faculty ratio which is more than [XX: X]. [Improved T.A. budget lines]  [Improves support for online courses] [More proctors in Electronic Testing Center in AH]

New Offerings to Students

(3) Find ways to offer alternatives to typical degree paths that are constrained by coming to UH at certain times (especially during the day)

(3) Curriculum redesign

Other

(1) Growth within the department support of TAs

(2) Growing dependence on lecturers

Workload

(3) Clearly communicate the workload expected from individual faculty members so that possible inequalities in workload can be removed

Students

Undergraduate Enrollment

(1) Increase undergraduate enrollment

Increasing Student Quality

(1) Improve quality of students

(2) Get better students (graduate and undergraduate)

(2) Get better students (graduate and undergraduate)

(3) Attract more high quality students

(3) Attract more high quality students

(3) Improve ranking and quality of student body

(3) Increase in undergraduate student quality

Graduate Program

Starting Doctoral Program

(1) Ph.D program

(3) Getting a Ph.D. program

(3) We need to [prepare] for Ph.D. programs in [X] and [X]

Recruiting Graduate Students

(2) Increase doctoral enrollment

(3) Graduate student support and resources for recruiting graduate students. We have potential to admit more fine graduate students but no resources to recruit them

Facilities

More Space

(2) Space

(2) Space: we need more rehearsal space, a new recital hall, an organ performance space, etc.

(2) Instrument cores for high end equipment run by trained, helpful persons

(2) Acquiring control of our own classroom space, particularly the classrooms in our building

(3) Space to provide both individual offices for all faculty and specialized teaching lab spaces

Improvements

(3) Facilities improvements (especially science laboratory space)

(2) Renewal and upkeep of physical infrastructure and equipment

Library

Relationships with Faculty and Students

(1) Strengthening liaison relationships between librarians and teaching faculty

(1) To have stronger relationships with the faculty and departments on campus

(2) To reach more students and teach them what the libraries can offer them, so they can enrich their education

QEP Involvement

(1) Library involvement in QEP

To keep the libraries involved in the QEP

(2) Getting reference and instruction librarians fully involved in the QEP

Tier 1 Initiative

(2) Ensuring role of library in Tier 1 initiative (including “research clusters" model)

(2) Making sure support for the library is sufficient to provide the services and collections faculty would expect in a Tier 1 institution

Other

 (3) Health Sciences Center

Research

Research Support

Internal Support

(1) Research support (teaching release, publication support, travel support)

(1) Research support for faculty is an ongoing concern in the Department. Of especial concern is the need for more support to do archival and related research activities. The faculty are grateful for the Provosts infusion of funds for conference travel

(2) More research travel funds available, continued support for faculty research

(3) More research travel funds available, continued support for faculty research

External Support

(1) Identifying external funding sources for qualitative research

(3) Developing a more mature approach to securing external funding based on interdisciplinary, multi-investigator, multi-center research funding

Improving Infrastructure

(2) Improvement of the research infrastructure

(2) Improvement of the research infrastructure

Research Quality and Output

(2) The research push and mistaken view of what constitutes research

(2) Motivation of low productivity faculty to increase scholarly activity

(3) Improve research output

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