30 January 2019: At the end of our C&I meeting on Monday, one committee member told me that she had recently had surgery and her follow-up appointment was the same day as our next meeting. "I tried for another date and even got on a waiting list, but..." She was almost sheepish in her explanation. My response, "First: how are you?" Next: "Don't give it another thought." I mean, what does it say about her dedication and (perhaps) her fear of judgment that she was being so careful? Would all of her colleagues act the same way? (Answer: no. And many skip for much less important reasons.) I have another colleague who was back at work today--in a lot of pain--after emergency dental surgery she had on Monday. These women just plug along. Their dedication is inspiring, but it also throws into stark relief the efforts (or lack thereof) of other folks.
Thinking about some of these issues is what drew me to the Lucy Larcom project that I presented at SSAWW in November--specifically those connected to 21st-c. concerns about faculty workload/burnout. So this piece from insiderhighered.com jumped out at me today. For the first time, I think, this is a piece that offers possible solutions. Flaherty writes, "For 18 months, researchers helped put in place four interventions against workload imbalances: increasing faculty awareness of implicit bias, making data on work activity transparent, sharing organizational practices to encourage equity and providing individual professional development to help faculty members align their time and priorities." And it worked: "the researchers found that the interventions made a positive difference on the faculty experience of workload fairness across demographic groups."
Previous posts about the subject here, here, and here.
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