Linear combination 01

The Linear Combination for Academic Faculty

I frequently add to our conversations involving the concept of a basis set, or a linear combination of basis functions, how we can apply this to just about any situation. As a faculty member, my job “wavefunction” includes teaching, scholarship/research, and service. To students, teaching is a clear job function; research in the sciences should also be a clear job function; service is less well defined, but most of you have involvement in running student organizations and this is not too different from a faculty member who serves on, for example, the “curriculum” or “personnel” committee. Mathematically;

It is interesting to use this job “wavefunction” to contrast the differences in individual’s roles within an academic community.

From the table it is clear that if we use this "basis set" to describe a faculty member's job function, that faculty come in many "flavors." I strongly believe that defining faculty in terms of this basis set would assist a personnel committee in determining if a faculty member has earned contract renewal, tenure, and/or promotion. Here is how it would work. A faculty member under review, will state the coefficients (or % of time) of the basis set and have these coefficients (%) confirmed within the department (by chair and dept members). The faculty member under review will then present evidence to support these coefficients (%). The faculty member under review can then expand on this conversation in two ways: 1) define in their own words each of the basic functions (teaching, research, service), and/or 2) expand the basis set (add more job functions) and then justify.

Key points:

1) How one changes time allocations (coefficients/%) from assistant professor to full professor is an interesting process and should be justified in the personnel review process.

Example: assistant professors should allocate significantly more time to teaching than service; full faculty should be expected to allocate more time to service or research than they did as an assistant professor.

2) Faculty naturally move towards one particular job function, although not all job functions are equally valued with the overall college environment.

Example: the chair of faculty senate might be viewed by many as a presigous position, but in reality, this means that that faculty member will be allocating significantly more time to service and less time to teaching or scholarship.

As a college student you make the choice about where to get your education; it should be clear from this conversation that the role a university faculty member will play in your education will be more centered on what research activities you choose to engage in and less on your classroom instruction. It should be noted that in the presence of a graduate program at nearly all universities, the time a faculty member allocates to research is subsequently divided between undergraduates, graduate, and other research staff (post-docs and technicians).