Dear all,
Rosan Chows last suggestion hits an academic nerve:
>3 to support the former two suggestions, it is important to reward individuals
>and institutions for their efforts. instead of counting how many
>published papers or design commissions people generate, we can
>FORMALIZE 'COMMUNITY SERVICE' as part of the responsibilities of
>educators and educational instituations.
Counting publications is easy, but this disregards the following
academic activities:
- reviewing papers for publications.
- organizing seminars, workshops, conferences, colloquia.
- reviewing papers for these presentations.
- editing journals.
- board membership of journals.
- giving non-academic presentations.
- writing non-academic papers.
- advising students from other departments/faculties and potential students.
- experimenting (trying things of which the outcome is unknown. This
has the great danger that the outcome might not be publishable.)
- taking part in discussion lists/ moderating such lists / administering lists
- making sure that academic libraries buy the books and subscribe to
relevant journals.
- ideally, there should be some time to read (books, publications,
lists) and discuss these as well ...
Unfortunately, all these activities are not seen by administrators as
'core-activities', and have to be done in 'spare-time'. The academic
mill would quickly stop if the abovementioned activities would not be
done by motivated individuals with a view that looks further than the
next REA or the next annual report.
Has anyone got any research-pointers here? (Has anyone done an
activity analysis of 'academic practice'?)
Kind regards,
Karel.
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