Collegiality

Last week, InsideHigherEd had an article titled “Annual Collegiality Reviews?” Several institutions have attempted to introduce the category into annual faculty performance reviews. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) strongly advises against this. But what exactly is collegiality? It can be a slippery concept, hard to define. “I know it when I see it” does not constitute an adequate definition.

According to Wikipedia, the root word for college is to be “selected together”. Thus, colleagues are “persons who have been selected to work together”. Presumably the enterprise requires working together rather than working alone. If our enterprise as faculty members is the education of students in some coherent systemic way, then we do need to work together. I’m not sure that’s what students experience, especially when course registration rolls around. Gymnastics are sometimes required to get things to fit; and one culprit is departments not talking to each other when scheduling their courses.

Collegiality seems to connote the idea of friendliness in working together. I’m in what I would deem a very collegial department. Many of my colleagues are also my friends. I have good working relationships, but the friendship extends beyond the work-related sphere. I count myself very blessed, as I have friends at other institutions in different departments with seemingly nasty backbiting egotistical colleagues. I don’t personally know these non-collegial faculty members so I can only imagine what it must be like to have to work with them; although I suspect that I wouldn’t encounter bad behavior should I happen to meet such a person. Often it takes some degree of familiarity to breed contempt.

I’d like to think that collegiality helps a department (or even college) thrive; perhaps it is necessary but not sufficient. Instead of administrators using it as an assessment, collegiality could and should be leveraged to fundamentally improve undergraduate education (the reason we’re there to work together). I’m skeptical with the way university administrations try to dictate policy to change culture. Maybe I’m naïve but it seems much more effective to build excellence through collegiality – it may take a little longer, seem a little more nebulous, but having experienced going through this process in my own department I can see the fruits of such an approach. I’m thankful to some of my older colleagues who worked hard at this, seemingly in the background, but with great results in less than a decade. Building a firm foundation (even if it’s unseen) means the house is unlikely to collapse even when buffeted by environmental changes and challenges.

I know some of my departmental colleagues very well; others not so well. Some I hang out with outside of work; others I don’t. Some I would call friends; others acquaintances – and certainly colleagues. But even if we aren’t personal friends, there seems to be a great deal of trust amongst my colleagues. Perhaps that’s one key element of the firm foundation: trust. There is a widening gap between different constituents of the university because of a lack of trust. Trust has to be built slowly but surely. It’s difficult to build or sustain with a rotating gallery of administrators or with top-down policy mandates. Building trust has taken a backseat to other initiatives and goals; things seemingly more visible that can be listed in a resume. I don’t know any shortcuts to building trust, but we need more of it. Mandating collegiality assessments indicates a sure lack of trust.