A colleague popped into my office to say, "I feel as if I ought to be rushing to observe someone's teaching." I know the feeling: since September we've been serving on our college's tenure and promotion committee, meeting for two hours every Friday afternoon (with only a few breaks), but this week we won't be meeting because our work is DONE.
Or mostly done. We'll probably meet one more time to clean up a few details and do some prep work for next year's committee, but we are DONE reading portfolios, observing classes, discussing the merits of our colleagues' teaching, research, and service, and making sometimes difficult decisions about whom to recommend for tenure and promotion. With an unusually large group eligible this year, we all had to visit many classes during the fall semester--over 20 hours of observations per committee member, or close to 150 hours total.
We observed a lot of great teaching and now it's gratifying to see the Trustees affirm our work by granting tenure and promotion to some very worthy colleagues, but despite the rewards of serving on this committee, I have to admit that I'm delighted that our work is done. So many committees function ad nauseam without direction or focus, always nibbling away at issues without ever accomplishing much, so it's great to serve on a committee that can look back over a busy year and see tangible outcomes of all our hard work. Our work here is done. Time to move on.
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