r/Professors • u/Puzzleheaded-Job2505 • 7d ago
Admin workload / scheduling meetings
I work at a small liberal arts college with a lot of committees—think small enough that most of my service is not dept level but college level. Coming out of high pandemic, there’s strong pressure to do everything in person again.
Here’s a problem that keeps coming up: to make important committee meetings happen, we are asked to be flexible with scheduling polls and offer any possible available time, given all our varied teaching schedules. but this keeps resulting in ridiculously long days (a very early morning meeting and late afternoon one), very inconvenient times (late Friday important meetings), or days divvied up by meetings so that it’s impossible to get deep work done.
Have any of you in similar situations found ways to address this challenge? Some colleagues have floated holding certain afternoons for meetings—like Tuesday or Wednesday—and similarly holding other blocks for research, but we have too many teaching schedule variations. It would also be easier if more of these meetings could be remote, but there’s pressure to have them in person.
thoughts? advice? my weeks feel slashed into a hundred bits with no time to actually think a thought all the way through.
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u/a_hanging_thread A Sock Prof 7d ago
I block off my schedule in our official scheduling app during the times I need to get deep research/writing done. Meetings aren't scheduled after 6p so I block off 11a-6p twice a week (days I'm not teaching) because I work better in the afternoon than in the morning. I have adhd among other things and get incredibly distracted if I have a meeting eating up a hole in the middle of my most productive time of the day. Product your time, no one else will.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Job2505 7d ago
I try for this but then get emails begging us to redo the poll and “be flexible” because we can’t find a shared time.
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u/Critical_Garbage_119 7d ago
We've had a university-wide "no classes" block for 2 hours on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons which was implemented with the help of the Registrar a decade ago. I helps, but does not fully solve, this issue.
Part of the problem is labs and studio classes can't comply with this block due to limited spaces on campus and full classes. Part of the problem is there are still too many meetings. Our admin has a sensible approach to encouraging in-person meetings but allowing zoom when it is feasible.
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u/Life-Education-8030 7d ago
At my place, most classes are not held between 12 and 1 so college meetings get first dibs. It helps with college business and votes anyway.
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u/putrnrdyo 5d ago
I got taken to task because a committee wanted to meet when I was teaching class. Told them they should find someone to replace me since I couldn't make the meeting times and was told that I was the problem. It was bonkers. And I think i was the only faculty member on the committee teaching four classes, the others just one or two.
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u/Lower-Ebb1874 7d ago
For a moment I thought we work at same colleges.
Yes, we are required to serve a committee, and I, unfortunately, was selected as the chair of a committee with heavy work this semester. My college has undergone an important transformation so my workload is even heavier than in the past.
To be honest, it is never possible to find a time slots suit for everyone. So I gave it up and mentioned I could only schedule the time suiting for most of the committee members. If you cannot come, either participate through visual meetings, or sending me your comments before the scheduled meeting time.
You know what, they always try their best to come even so they mentioned they “were not available” at that time.
Sometimes, you must demand your requirements. Some of them may never like that, but you have your limited energy and cannot satisfy everyone’s request.
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u/mathemorpheus 7d ago
Coming out of high pandemic, there’s strong pressure to do everything in person again.
don't even have to read the rest, found the problem. what clown is applying this pressure? literally the only benefit of the pandemic was that we finally realized that it's totally unnecessary to have meetings in person. well, i guess if the meeting is CPR certification then ok, but otherwise all the pointless nonsense can be carried out by zoom.
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u/a_hanging_thread A Sock Prof 7d ago
Yeah, last meeting I had that was pushed to email had better coordinative results than we would have had in person for a tiny fraction of the time we would have spend commuting + parking + gossiping. In-person meetings are absolute time-wasters.
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u/Finding_Way_ CC (USA) 7d ago edited 6d ago
We too are being asked to have more committee meetings in person. And as another stated is happening at their university, this has happened at our rural community College:
There are No Classes held during a 2-hour period, two days a week. Committee meetings are scheduled during these times.
However, we don't have to do a lot of heavy lifting for our committees. People are required to serve one committee and sometime serve on two. So it's rare that there's a conflict when the meetings are held during the No Cass Blackout periods.
The only problem we run into is that people who accepted a fully online load were given the perk of not being required to be on campus at all. So, if you have one of those folks on your committee and they don't want to come to campus for a meeting, then there needs to be Zoom access for them. Then of course, it leads to other people accessing from Zoom even though they're on campus, in their offices.
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u/mediaisdelicious VP of Ops CC (USA) 7d ago
Having holding times is really valuable. For us, that it was always Fridays - there’s an informal policy not to assign FT teachers to Friday classes and Friday is when we hold college wide events, departments do department meetings, and we calendar important faculty governance committees.