In Creating the Future of Faculty Development (2006), Sorcinelli et al posit that faculty development has “entered a new age—the Age of the Network. Faculty, developers, and institutions alike are facing heightened expectations, and meeting these expectations will require a collaborative effort among all stakeholders in higher education” (pp. 4-5). New faculty developers need to recognize the importance of this observation as they go about building a center of teaching and learning (CTL). One area in which the Age of the Network comes up is with advisory boards.
Why Have An Advisory Board?
Does your CTL have an advisory board? If it does, you might start to think about why the board exists; if it doesn’t have one, you might consider adding one. If nothing else, advisory boards create a sense of ownership, of shared governance, and of a cross-stitching of campus constituents. Traditionally, advisory boards serve two purposes. They function as a two-way highway for CTLs—sometimes the information comes in and sometimes it goes out. Effective CTLs make use of both functions.
Advisory Boards Provide Input
When we began, we thought an advisory board was a necessity. While we knew we had to follow rule number one and do what our boss told us, we knew that we also had to address the needs of our constituents—faculty, departments, deans, and we would include our provost. In one sense it didn’t matter what national trends told us what CTLs were doing, what we had to do was to respond to the immediate and specific needs of our folks. If the University developed a Quality Enhancement Program centering on creative thinking, it was up to us to offer programming—workshops, professional learning communities, and informational sessions—in support. If the faculty senate were taking up a new policy, we could do research for them on the area using our graduate assistant. If the Chairs Association asked us to tackle an area (e.g., the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning), we did.
One different avenue of aid we established early was the book. If the University had a problem area, we wrote a book on it. Back a few years ago, for example, the University was trying to define the relationship between a professor’s traditional duties of scholarship and instruction. We ended up doing two collections through New Forums on the topic, It Works For Me as a Scholar Teacher and It Works For Me Becoming a Publishing Scholar/Researcher. Of course, technology has advanced since then; were we aiming at the same goal now, we might create an e-book, open our own You Tube channel, or develop an electronic repository for the materials.
Advisory Boards Provide Output
Advisory Boards also serve to disseminate information. In the beginning when we needed publicity, we had our board members deliver the information to their constituents. Again, over the years technology has changed many things. We now have our own website to advertise professional development opportunities, and we can even target various groups on campus (e.g., new faculty). We can use the University’s daily information e-system, and Rusty’s Social Media Committee has become quite proficient at tweeting key events before, during, and after. As we now speak regularly with the provost and president, we can usually persuade their offices to disperse any information.
The Future—To Board Or Not To Board?
At this point a good question might be: has technological progress replaced the need for advisory boards? Even if we believed the answer was yes, we would till argue for employing advisory boards because of the notion of shared governance, and that impression is one worth creating at first. Also, you have the option to convene Advisory Boards when you need to solve problems, for issues that warrant face-to-face communication. Down the road you may find less need to convene the advisory board as often, but keeping the board works for another important reason—expertise. Not everyone on your board has the same basic interests and backgrounds. For example, at a meeting this morning of a sub-advisory board, we discovered that one of the members was quite proficient at assessment and was very willing to help us draw up an instrument to evaluate our professional learning communities. Another member suddenly displayed a background in pedagogical software. We’ll bet at future meetings we continue to discover our members have other amazing knowledge and talent.
One final point. Having done the research on brainstorming, and having the experience of facilitating many campus committees, organizations, and work groups, we’re great believers in small groups—say, no larger than seven—accomplishing more. With seven members you have time for everyone’s input, and you will have all the input you need.
Author
Ph.D Hal Blythe writes literary criticism to mystery stories. In addition to the eleven books he’s published with New Forums, Hal has collaborated on four books on a variety of subjects, over 1000 pieces of fiction/nonfiction, and a host of television scripts and interactive mysteries performed by their repertory company. He is currently co-director of the Teaching and Learning Center for Eastern Kentucky University. Meet Hal Blythe.
