"The university should give faculty an umbilical cord they'd be unwilling to cut."
— Samuel Dudley, Assistant Professor of Cardiology

Lost and found
The views of recently departed and recently arrived faculty

Keeping company,
On spousal hiring

Why Faculty Come to Emory
By Daniel Teodorescu, Director of the Office of Reserach

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Academic Exchange (AE): When did you come to Emory?

Sharon Strocchia (SS): Fourteen years ago. I was part of the generation of faculty recruited in the 1980s with the promise of building a really first-rate research institution. And we’ve seemed to be on the verge of doing that a number of times, but there’s always been some change of administrative vision. The pendulum swung back precipitously toward teaching undergraduates, being in the classroom, fewer research leaves, under [former Emory College dean] Steve Sanderson. I feel like we’ve been chasing our tail for a long time and have not been part of the decision-making processes for the long-term vision of the university.

AE: What impact do you think the benefits reductions will have on faculty recruitment and retention?

SS: Quite serious ones for the next fifteen or twenty years. All institutions go through belt-tightening at one point or another. Clearly, the problem of rising medical costs is not unique to Emory. Some institutions under similar pressures use their resources to protect core competencies, like faculty and research staff. That’s the real measure of an institution. And in fact even if you use the corporate model and look at any number of corporations that have downsized, invariably they use their limited resources to protect what’s going to keep them alive. And we’re not doing that. That’s what I think is going to be one of the most destructive impacts of the benefits cuts. We are in danger of losing our most precious resource: our scholarly capital. The package as it stands now will probably have a more serious effect on senior faculty, particularly recruiting senior faculty. I can’t imagine trying to recruit somebody now in their late forties or early fifties, which is when people start having major track records with draw and immediate name recognition. They’re grant-getters. They can pull in graduate students right away. They’re effective in the classroom. They’re effective on committees. They don’t need to be groomed. They have a national audience. If we can’t attract those kinds of people and we’re losing those kinds of people, then we’re just starting from scratch all over again.

AE: How would you define the relation between retention and recruitment?

SS: All of these problems are very much interwoven. Some senior faculty have identified a problem in terms of program-building here. There have been a lot of “pop-up” programs—essentially the bailiwicks of one person. And they’re not sustainable. When that person’s gone, the program’s gone. There was no larger vision that created them. There was no sense of a weaving together of the resources, so that if one part were to be absent, the whole thing wouldn’t collapse. We need to figure out who’s here and how they want to work together: what one or two pieces do we really want to add to the mix to vault us into the top tier? A number of us could identify different sectors among college faculty where one or two key positions would galvanize a group into national recognition.

AE: How do you assess recruitment issues across departments amid the trend toward interdisciplinary work?

SS: It’s a recruitment bonus and a retention question mark. Having joint appointments or cross-listed appointments is a recruitment strategy that builds on that academic fact of interdisciplinary work. And it also allows the institution to cobble together monies that would not be available otherwise, so that programs
in particular profit from departmental hires. But in the long run, it’s not attractive unless it’s configured well, because the faculty member ends up serving two or three or four different masters. The appointments have to be set up in such a way that they don’t create obstacles to tenure and promotion.

AE: Since 1997, five history faculty have left and three more retired. What’s the impact on graduate education there?

SS: Generally negative. Since the temporary faculty who have been hired to fill those areas don’t teach graduate students, the Ph.D. program is getting short shrift. The faculty in my department do double and triple duty in fields outside of our expertise—doing more tutorials and independent readings. We’ve done well by our students in our commitment of time and energy, but the fact is that we lack the expertise in some instances. Right now I’m mentoring a student in early modern British history. I think I’m doing a pretty good job, but I’m not an expert in that field, and I don’t have the contacts in place to get her into certain jobs or archives. It’s a loss to the students that can only propel us downward in terms
of institutional advancement. All these things are interlocked.