Case 02. Maintaining Competence
Situation
Maintaining Competence
Dr. Keith Anderson was promoted to Associate Professor and tenured in
his department five years age. Since that time he has reduced his
research and publication rate considerably and rarely attends
professional meetings or reads professional journals. He recently
confided to another faculty member that his methodological skills lag
substantially behind the changes in his field and that he is unable to
find time to "catch up" with these developments. He insists that other
faculty members are also "out of date" but they use their research
grants to hire assistants to do these tasks. He believes that he will
never be promoted to Full Professor and says that he is willing "to pay
the price" so long as no one bothers him about maintaining a
publication record.
Questions
1. What are the obligations of Professor Anderson to
his own
professional
development? Does he have ethical
obligations to his
colleagues in
maintaining the
department's research, grant, training
and teaching
goals? Does this
vary from one campus to another?
2. Do faculty members have a responsibility to be
current in the
research
literature and
methodologies of their field? Is this an
ethical
responsibility
when we supervise thesis and dissertation
research?
Reflect on the above questions and form your
own answers before clicking the Discussion
key to review the commentary provided with this case.
Additional Information