Since it’s been almost exactly five months since I posted anything on this site, I have obviously kept it open to the possibility of another offering. However, even my faithful readers may have given up on anything appearing here, unless, perhaps, they recalled that last post being characterized in its final sentence as denoting either “a hiatus of indefinite time or, sadly, a permanent end to my exploring ‘the boundaries’ . . .”. Clearly, I have decided to test the waters of that first option!

This long, and perhaps overly descriptive, topic arises from a similar discussion subject almost a year ago in my Mens’ Group—known as an MWW (Men’s Wisdom Works)—one of many sponsored by OLLI (the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNCA). One of the crucially important factors of the Mens’ Group meetings is that “what is said there, stays there!“  In other words, anyone can say anything they wish with the assurance that its confidentiality is honored by other members of the group. My decision to talk about the topic does not, I believe, violate that sacred principle, for the following reasons:

• First, the topic was sent out to the group prior to the meeting and what I share in this blog is based completely on notes I made, before the meeting, in response to the topic and its relevance to me, personally.
• Therefore, everything I say here is limited to the topic’s significance in my own life, with no reference at all to anything said by other members of the group, or by me, during the meeting!

More than enough about that, so back to the topic, which I will talk about with an awareness of some of the “prompts” that accompanied it:

1. What flaws stand out to me and what, if any, were their consequences?
2. How did I try address them?
3. As I have aged, have any of these flaws “hung around” and limited my capacity to do what I enjoy?

First, I must point out that my 44-year career in Higher Education was divided almost exactly in half between teaching and administration. All of my full-time teaching occurred at the institution that brought me to North Carolina in the first place, while my administrative career as a chief academic officer was divided virtually in half between there and another university where I never would have guessed that I’d spend ten post-retirement years!

That said, among my flaws, three stand out to me:

The first is Over-planning/Over-thinking, one which my dear wife is frequently happy to point out to me! I think this is a flaw which occurred far more in my teaching life than in my administrative duties. It occurred in my searching for more and more material on the topic for tomorrow’s class and planning how I would present that material in ways that would not ignore the reading assigned to the students but would provide them with more breadth and depth to the topic. The result was extensive planning for each class in my campus office and many a late night in my study at home and, in the first few years of my teaching, struggling to stay two days ahead of the class! And even when teaching the same class for the second or “umpteenth” time, it was always more reading and preparing in order to offer more to the students! The one place/time that this flaw appeared during my administrative career was when every year I prepared and delivered an address at the annual Faculty Workshop on a topic I believed to be currently important and likely to be a crucial issue for us, and all other institutions of higher education, in the near future. Over planning/over thinking dominated my brain and my time for days and, inevitably, necessitated an “all-nighter” the day/night before the workshop!

The second flaw that deserves mention was/is my tendency to avoid confrontation with another person. I don’t know where it came from, but something in my DNA did not like and tended to sidestep, whenever possible, confronting another individual about something inappropriate they had said, done, or planned to do. This was less a problem for me during my teaching career because students were, well, students and I was a teacher, responsible for one of their opportunities to learn. So if one of them said or did something inappropriate, was cruel or hurtful to another student, did something disruptive to the class—or simply sat there snoozing, sending texts with a cell phone (although they didn’t exist in the early part of my career), or reading something clearly not within the subject matter of the class—I would either “call him/her out” in front of the whole class, or require them to stay after class for a face-to-face disciplinary conversation. These days it is apparently common for such a confrontation with a student to causean angry parent to intimidate the teacher with strong words or even threats. Fortunately, in my career such parental intrusions were rare.

This “flaw” was, however, a completely different problem in my administrative career. I was responsible in several ways for the teachers and staff, who had been my colleagues and were still engaged in teaching and learning. Since they were actually doing what I devoutly believed was at the very heart of the institution, it was extremely difficult to think of them as “subordinates.” But I was, indeed, accountable for their well-being, for being equipped with books and equipment vital to their teaching, and for urging that they received salaries as competitive and deserving as possible when planning the institutional budget. But, at the same time, I was also expected to be aware of their behaviors inside and outside the classroom, their interactions with students, their teaching methods, and their fairness across the margins of their student’s learning.  It was important that these were all within the boundaries of the college’s rules and procedures, that they had appropriate interactions with their colleagues, and were committed to their faculty responsibilities. In a rare occasion when I had reasons to suspect that someone had “crossed a line” on one of these was expectations, I tended to bring the person in for a routine up-date, steer the conversation to the issue I needed to address, get the person to bring it up, ask how they thought it needed to be addressed, then agree or disagree and go forward with “gentle” confrontation, if possible.  I will, however, reference just two instances, which were described in another post some time ago, when an overt confrontation was clearly required and how I dealt with it.

One was when it became necessary to remove the Chair of an academic department after several instances of failing to meet the deadlines for completing evaluative reports crucial to the accreditation of the program offered by the department, as well as not dealing appropriately with certain behaviors and interactions of members of the departmental faculty. When I met with her/him, I reviewed a few good things (s)he had done, but also the troublesome issues noted above. I knew that health issues had caused missing some deadlines and, perhaps, not dealing with some faculty issues. But neither state or federal deadlines, nor the standards for faculty duties and behaviors in the Faculty Handbook, offer a “pass” on those duties due to health issues. Rather, the chair is expected to refer the issue(s) in question to a member of the faculty capable of completing it/them on time or, failing that, requesting the Academic VP’s assistance. To conclude this example, I first offered my appreciation for his/her service to the department and the institution, then suggested that being relieved of the duties of the Chair could make it possible to give appropriate attention to the health needs that had complicated those responsibilities, including the assistance, as necessary, from faculty colleagues. And that said, I offered a sincere welcome back to the full time faculty.

In the second post on the topic of flaws in my life, I will tender the second instance of a necessary confrontation during my administrative career and conclude these posts by describing some of my experiences with a third flaw in my life. I hope any readers I might have will stay with me.