Friday, October 19, 2001

Faculty committee wants detailed vitae
By Piper Huddleston
Staff Reporter

Not all faculty members support a plan to include more information about teaching performance on faculty vitae, résumés with an academic focus, Gregg Franzwa, a member of the Faculty Senate’s Tenure, Promotion and Grievance committee, said Wednesday.

“Teaching is a major component of faculty effort and there needs to be some sort of measure of it included in the vita,” Franzwa said.

Erin Munger/PHOTO EDITOR Ian McVea teaches the photojournalism class Thursday. Faculty stand to be affected by two major proposals.

Franzwa, philosophy department chair, said every faculty member has a vita on file to aid in tenure decisions and performance evaluations. The vita includes a faculty member’s published articles and journals, scholarly and creative activities, university services and any other activities they have participated in during their professional academic career. There is no reflection of teaching performance included in the vita.

Andrew Fort, religion professor and Senate member, said he is not opposed to having teaching information available, but he does not think the vita is the appropriate place to have it.

“There are different ways and places to add information,” Fort said. “I am not against teaching information, I don’t think the vita is the place for it.”

Recommendations to include on vitae grades awarded for a course, detailed time spent with students and private hours devoted to each course were rejected by most Faculty Senate members at an Oct. 4 meeting.

However, most senate members supported including courses taught at TCU and new course preparations.

George Low, senate member and marketing professor, said he understood why faculty did not want average grade reports included in the vita.

“Adding grades to the vita could be misleading and difficult to judge because there are so many factors that could affect those results,” Low said.

Sharon Fairchild, senate member and French professor, said she thought asking an academia to track all hours spent on a course was inappropriate.

“Teaching is my life and it is what I do all day,” Fairchild said. “I didn’t understand how I was supposed to keep track of that time.”

Franzwa said by adding what courses are taught on the vita, the time faculty devotes to their classes will be evident because not all faculty members teach the same number of courses or have the same hours.

He also said student contact can be represented by the number of student-oriented activities faculty participate in such as Frog Camp, Freshman Orientation and advising instead of logging actual hours.

The committee’s final recommendations will be submitted to the Senate for vote Nov. 1. If the revisions are approved, they will be sent to Provost William Koehler and ultimately to Chancellor Michael Ferrari.

Piper Huddleston
k.p.huddleston@student.tcu.edu