What is Collegiality?

[Vkw10]

This includes things like helping freshmen move into dorms, making phone calls to prospective students, staffing tables at local events to recruit students, having faculty staff tables for events on campus, etc.   

Perhaps I'm unclear: we're already well down the road to ruin when junior faculty are being told that being collegial means picking up all the extra tasks in an effort to eke another year out of a place that likely will be closing.

The problem is not whether that's collegial or not; the problem is we're already so far down that road that junior faculty should be getting out for their own good.  Period.

It's possible that the administrators pushing these extra tasks on faculty are making clumsy attempts to get faculty more involved in recruitment and retention. They've heard that students like interaction with faculty, so they're pushing faculty to interact. Our upper level admin has been exhorting chairs to push for more student interaction. One misguided VP cited just these types of activity as "wonderful opportunities to build relationships with students!" We're not circling the drain, just dealing with upper level admin who joined the get-faculty-involved-with-students-outside-class bandwagon at their latest conference.

In my opinion, it's better use of faculty time to encourage them to interact with prospective and current students as nurturing teachers. Giving engaging guest lectures, teaching master classes, judging science fairs, or otherwise being involved in high school activities as a nurturing teacher from the university may help with recruitment. Interacting with students as a nurturing and caring teacher by participating in co-curricular activities may help with retention. Being seen at campus events, with a smile and maybe a few positive non-academic words to students, may help with retention. Helping with dorm move in and staffing tables at generic meet-and-greet events does not suggest a nurturing teacher, which is what's needed for recruitment and retention.

Trying to shame reluctant faculty into recruitment and retention activities by accusing them of being uncollegial is a poor tactic. It results in resentful faculty who are unlikely to project the delighted-to-meet-you attitude needed for successful r&r activities. Explaining why helping with recruitment and retention is in the faculty's best interest and suggesting a range of ways to help without pressuring people is much more likely to succeed than trying to shame faculty into roles where they're uncomfortable and resentful.

Stepping off my soapbox now.

[polly_mer]

Trying to shame reluctant faculty into recruitment and retention activities by accusing them of being uncollegial is a poor tactic. It results in resentful faculty who are unlikely to project the delighted-to-meet-you attitude needed for successful r&r activities. Explaining why helping with recruitment and retention is in the faculty's best interest and suggesting a range of ways to help without pressuring people is much more likely to succeed than trying to shame faculty into roles where they're uncomfortable and resentful.

Yes, I agree.  The fact, though, that the tool being used is shame instead of pointing out realities and offering a broad range of activities that appeal to many faculty members indicates a failure somewhere.  You may be at an institution that isn't obviously circling the drain in the next five years, but there is something amiss if the administration is going to a new push to manual labor with moving in instead of a renewed emphasis on the other activities.

[kaysixteen]

It does sound like an amorphous impossible to verify or quantify metric that would give adminiscritters an excuse to can someone, more or less like being a quote unquote team player?

[polly_mer]

It does sound like an amorphous impossible to verify or quantify metric that would give adminiscritters an excuse to can someone, more or less like being a quote unquote team player?

Bing, bing, bing!  Yes, that's exactly how some places abuse the term. 

Of course, nothing prevents abuses of the other three areas for progress for tenure as well.  I still laugh every time I encounter the idea that "no one" has ever been denied tenure for lack of service because I personally know multiple cases.  I've known people who had a tough time getting tenure even when handily meeting the bar for all three categories as people comb through the record for ways to dismiss evidence and then bring back a ruling of "insufficient" in whatever category they can manage.