Situation
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 He insists that other faculty members are also “out of date” but they use their research grants to hire assistants to do these tasks.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
- 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?
- 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?
Discussion
It is true that standards for professional skills vary from campus to campus or across research positions. The bottom line is that we have a professional obligation to maintain a degree of compe-tence in some arena of the discipline. It is unacceptable to “drop out” from the profession and still hold a professional position. However, some departments have moved to variable loads in assigning teaching, research and service responsibilities. Professor Anderson has a responsibility to discuss these issues with his Chair or Head, and construct an appropriate academic assignment. It is also unacceptable to create variable loads in departments and then assign faculty members like Professor Anderson to more teaching, if what he is competent to teach is at issue.
If Dr. Anderson has had access to a sabbatical leave, he has a responsibility to use this time in re-tooling his skills for the classroom or for research. He might look for opportunities within his specialty area to attend programs that will further his understanding of new methodological techniques. Dr. Anderson could attend didactic seminars at the national or regional professional meetings. A colleague or the Chair might assist Dr. Anderson in mapping out a development plan during that academic year that will gradually re-tool these skills. For example, the Chair might seek funds to send Professor Anderson to a summer training program. This Sociology department, or other departments on campus, might offer advanced seminars that would serve the same purpose.
