What's In A Name?
Howdy. I encountered a little controversy today during a Faculty Development Day presentation when referring to "teaching faculty" and "librarians" in an exercise on perceptions. Where I was trying to go was that while "teaching faculty" and "librarians" have different roles (and maybe different perceptions of each other and info lit)in the educational team of an institution, these differences can used as a positive when collaborating on research/ library assignments etc.
One person took offense at my terms, essentially arguing that it was divisive. And no, it wasn't a librarian. In retrospect, I would have used the terms "classroom faculty" and "library faculty". But I would definitely do the exercise again as I do believe that we all bring a little something different to the educational table, and that can make for an exciting collaborative environment and educational opportunities for our students. Any thoughts on this?
One person took offense at my terms, essentially arguing that it was divisive. And no, it wasn't a librarian. In retrospect, I would have used the terms "classroom faculty" and "library faculty". But I would definitely do the exercise again as I do believe that we all bring a little something different to the educational table, and that can make for an exciting collaborative environment and educational opportunities for our students. Any thoughts on this?
posted by David at 4:39 PM
5 Comments:
I would have guessed that classroom faculty refer to themselves as teaching faculty...which brings to mind this story. When I had been working here only a couple months, I attended a campus faculty meeting. Another faculty member in attendence asked me about my department. I said I was from the library. She responded, "oh, you're not teaching faculty." Guess it depends on whom you ask.
Now why couldn't that faculty member have been in our presentation to back me up??
David, since I was your co-presenter on this, I would like to comment. We have faculty status, but I think we are perceived as "trainers" and not faculty who have command of an academic subject area. I think this is a good conversation between librarians and other faculty. I hope we have more opportunities to bring together the two groups. We have one teaching faculty member from the Humanities who actually calls us technicians! Now there's an automotive term for you.
Anyone need their oil changed???
Sherry - I didn't mean to take credit for the whole presentation. The incident just happened to occur when I was talking. You did a great job of helping to diffuse the situation. I think we should definitely do something like that session again. It went really well!
I'm obviously late in chiming in here, but, as someone who was in attendance, I wanted to comment. I still don't understand why anyone (especially not a librarian) would have objected to the terms you used. I suppose "classroom faculty" and "library faculty" are a bit more clear, but one would expect people attending a faculty development day event to be able to handle the subtleties. I think David and Sherry handled the situation extremely well - much better than I would have. Perhaps this topic could be the subject of more discussion at a future faculty dev. day.
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