By MARTY LEVINE
Building better connections among faculty in this post-pandemic era, when freedom of expression is being challenged, was the focus of the closing capstone event for the Year of Discourse and Dialogue, on April 4.
When this “Year of” started — actually two years ago, noted Carissa Slotterback, Year of Discourse and Dialogue co-chair and dean of the School of Public and International Affairs — Pitt hadn’t experienced on-campus protests yet, nor the federal pressure on its mission and actions, “a phenomenon that is really dividing us as a community.”
“Cultivating connections,” as the day’s event was titled, is “work that can and should move forward” beyond the “Year of,” she said.
Introducing the topic were two people who had also facilitated earlier capstone events: Katie Dealy, former chief engagement officer for the U.S. surgeon general under President Joe Biden, and David Greene, former host of NPR’s Morning Edition and now of the Left, Right & Center podcast.
Dealy, describing a countrywide campus tour undertaken by the surgeon general’s office during the Biden years, said: “We started to feel a quietness on campus,” but at the same time “this hunger from students — they want to connect, but it just felt too scary.” Faculty were also telling them: “I don’t know if I have connections on campus I can trust or I can talk to.”
Greene pointed out that “it is actually really, really hard to be an active listener” — one of the main requirements for building community. As a journalist, when he wants to connect with an interviewee, he said, he is always busy thinking: “How can I be showing up when this person stops talking? How can I ask this next question in a sensitive and respectful way?” But such sensitivity also interferes with his ability to connect: “All the time I have been asking myself these questions,” is time when he has not been truly listening to the other person, Greene said.
Event moderator Paul T. Harper, associate dean for inclusion, engagement and international affairs for Pitt Business, reported that his office had held meetings with Pitt faculty for the purpose of “identifying both bridges and barriers” to community. The number one impediment identified by faculty was that the “political climate makes faculty more careful and hesitant” to speak. Right behind were too many faculty members failing to show for meetings and events, as well as time constraints on participation due to competing interests.
Among the positives, Harper said, were that “faculty are generally supportive of each other … and they enjoy the times they do come to campus.”
What factors contributed to these issues? Faculty here said that there was, too often, “no incentive to ever come to campus — we tooled up so successfully during COVID” that remote meetings were an easy out. Second, he said, was that “DEI is a taboo topic of conversation,” with a “fear of retaliation” for opinions on that subject or on other subjects — but at least “there was the implication that people wanted to talk about it,” Harper added. Also on the list was a heavy workload that has only increased over the last few years.
The positives, faculty members reported, were a strong faculty governance structure and a strong and diverse faculty makeup, as well as faculty acknowledging each other’s contributions to the mission.
In small groups, faculty participating in the event aimed to pinpoint other barriers they had observed, and to devise other ways to get around them.
Some of the barriers identified by these groups included:
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Faculty who are going to be affected by decisions not being invited to participate in the early stages of decision making.
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Some faculty who work primarily in research may not feel it is important to have inter-faculty relations.
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More faculty can be heard saying “they don’t feel comfortable in their own department because they are being evaluated by their peers, they are being evaluated by their administrators.”
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Faculty “get promoted and they get no thank yous.”
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“If you have a department full of people for whom freedom is the main point” of their choice to work as faculty, “structure might seem to be bullying …”
As Dealy noted to one small group, faculty and other employees during COVID wanted maximum autonomy but maximum interpersonal interactions when they got together in the office. “Those two things are in tension,” she said.
So perhaps even a Zoom meeting could include attendees answering fun questions or at least reporting on their own personal and professional highs and lows. “In COVID we lost the separate work and happy hour times with small teams,” Dealy said. “We never saw our colleagues as human beings.”
Possible new ways to encourage faculty connections devised by the groups included:
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Taking some meetings or events outside of the department, where “people feel freer” to talk.
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“Everybody in the office on a certain day has helped. That has happened accidentally in some of our offices. It didn’t come from above. They just wanted to be around each other.”
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“We started to do these anti-racism trainings. It changed my perspective — I have to take the time with especially the people I am working with. It really changed how I think about things.”
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Happy hours — or, barring that, at least food and music.
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In the workload documents instituted under the faculty’s collective bargaining agreement, getting points for participating in events — especially in service.
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Celebrate faculty achievements.
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Stop offering remote attendance at in-person events.
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Encourage remote meeting participants to offer their “news and blues,” their “appreciations and regrets.
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“Bringing people together to work on a specific problem or task they have a vested interest in.”
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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