FAST Notes

The Potential Satisfactions of Faculty Life (1/1)

"Most faculty are satisfied with their jobs," Phil Wankat observes, in The Effective, Efficient Professor (Allyn & Bacon, 2002, 5).  The UCLA High Education Research Institute faculty survey (Almanac, 1998, 32) found that "overall job satisfaction" was noted as very satisfactory or satisfactory by 76% of the respondents.  86% marked the "autonomy and independence" characteristic of faculty life as the highest ranked aspect of their job. 

Wankat lists several reasons why people choose to become professors, including a love of their discipline, an interest in teaching, and an enjoyment of research.  He also describes the state of flow, or optimal experiences that occur in "situations in which attention can be freely invested to achieve a person's goals" (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 40). 

The conditions for flow are:

• A sense of control
• The ability to set realistic, feasible goals and subgoals
• Meaningful rules, such as in sports and games
• Feedback on progress toward achieving goals and subgoals
• Focused attention
• A balance between challenge and skills
• Increased challenge and skill to prevent boredom (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 74, 97, 180-184; 1997, 29-33)

"Both research and teaching can produce flow and enjoyment," Wankat writes (Duffy and Jones, 1995, 28-29). The Effective, Efficient Professor gives many tips for maximizing this state.

Professor Wankat will be on the UIUC campus on Wednesday, January 28, 2004, and will lead a seminar for engineering faculty in 233 Grainger Engineering Library from 12:00-1:30.  This seminar will address the issue that most professors would like to do a good job teaching, but they know that their promotion and tenure prospects likely depend more on research productivity than teaching.  The challenge is not only to teach well, but also to teach efficiently. Fortunately, most good teaching practices are both effective and efficient.  Methods for developing a good course and hints on lecturing, testing and improving rapport with students are presented.  Then we will explore alternatives to lecturing that under the appropriate circumstances can be both more efficient and more effective than lecturing.  Finally, a path for future development is suggested.

Please RSVP ASAP to Laura Hahn if you'd like to attend this seminar.  Lunch will be provided.

Professor Wankat’s well-known text, Teaching Engineering, co-authored with Frank Oreovicz, is available at: https://engineering.purdue.edu/ChE/News_and_Events/Publications/teaching_engineering

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