Dear Faculty Relations: An untenured faculty member came up to me (I am a tenured, full professor in the department) with concerns about the shifting nature of the department culture, the unwritten rules for how decisions are to be made. They told me they had been quietly waiting for three years to access a parking spot near the building they work in and believed they were next in line for one. Instead, the nearby parking spot was assigned to a newly hired faculty member. They then asked me to advocate for them. How do I support my untenured colleague? And how do we navigate these unwritten rules? – Supportive Full Professor
Dear Supportive Full Professor: Everyone likes to feel that they are being treated with fairness, equity, and respect in their home departments. Sometimes an incident may occur and leave a bad or unresolved feeling among faculty, something that is difficult to define but exhibits the fact that there are many uncodified rules in departments that are considered to function in a particular way. When these uncodified rules don’t work in an expected manner, they may cause problems. Have the rules shifted in your department? If so, why? Do the rules apply fairly and equitably across faculty in your unit?
Support your untenured colleague by speaking with the Chair to express your own sense of how decisions have been made in the past and provide examples if possible. By talking with the Chair, you may be able to understand what may have shifted in the unwritten rules of department space allocations in recent years. Explore whether this decision took the uncodified rules of order for your department into account and whether the outcome is or could be reversible. Listen closely to find out if there were additional/exceptional reasons why this decision was made, whether department rules had been followed, and why the untenured—but patiently waiting—faculty’s desire for that particular space may have been ignored/forgotten/overridden. If this is the first time something like this has happened, make a written note in your records about the concerns and the resolution. Suppose this feels like a pattern of behavior involving this particular Chair. In that case, you might want to encourage your untenured colleague to engage the mediating skills of either the Ombuds Office or of Faculty Relations.
Do you feel that the rules of ordinary interaction do not apply to you in your unit? Do you think the rules are constantly changing and either purposefully or inadvertently favoring some faculty members over others? Is a lack of transparency afflicting social relations in your department? We can help. Contact Donna Goldstein, OFA Faculty Director.
Written by Donna Goldstein, PhD, Faculty Director, Office of Faculty Affairs; Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder, August 2021