This year I somehow I ended up on four (4) committees that review Other Faculty and their research ideas, accomplishments, and/or productivity. This seems excessive to me, but there are at least 2 explanations for this turn of events:
1. The usual reason for senior FSPs: There are so few female full professors in the physical sciences-engineering-math that we get called on quite a lot to serve on certain committees. Sometimes I just say no because I don't have the time (or interest), but sometimes I feel that it is important to say yes. This accounts for one of the committees this year.
2. There is a very nice, competent, hard-working, smart, and generally awesome staff person in charge of organizing some of these committees, and whenever she asks me to serve on a committee, I find that I can't say no. This accounts for 2 of the committees this year.
I have no explanation for the 4th committee, other than I felt that I should do it so that I had a voice in some things about which I would probably otherwise have complained.
I sort of followed my "conservation of
1. The usual reason for senior FSPs: There are so few female full professors in the physical sciences-engineering-math that we get called on quite a lot to serve on certain committees. Sometimes I just say no because I don't have the time (or interest), but sometimes I feel that it is important to say yes. This accounts for one of the committees this year.
2. There is a very nice, competent, hard-working, smart, and generally awesome staff person in charge of organizing some of these committees, and whenever she asks me to serve on a committee, I find that I can't say no. This accounts for 2 of the committees this year.
I have no explanation for the 4th committee, other than I felt that I should do it so that I had a voice in some things about which I would probably otherwise have complained.
I sort of followed my "conservation of
committee mass" rule of quitting a committee if I add a new committee. The only one I added without quitting another was the least time-consuming of the four.
In none of these cases, when asked to be on one of these committees (or when I agreed to be nominated for an elected position), did I think "OK, but I really don't want to be on that awful time-wasting committee". I was lucky in that, I guess. I felt that all these committees were in some way worthwhile.
I am pretty sure that I would have said nyet if asked to be a committee that I felt a great reluctance to join because I thought it would be even more boring than most committee assignments or because I didn't think it was a good use of my time. I suppose that is a selfish, but any guilt I might feel is completely assuaged by my awareness of how much time I devote to institutional service.
When asked to be on a committee, do your criteria for accepting vs. declining to be on the committee depend on your prediction of whether you would find the committee interesting and/or a good use of your time, or does your sense of duty and academic citizenship triumph over such selfish concerns?
In none of these cases, when asked to be on one of these committees (or when I agreed to be nominated for an elected position), did I think "OK, but I really don't want to be on that awful time-wasting committee". I was lucky in that, I guess. I felt that all these committees were in some way worthwhile.
I am pretty sure that I would have said nyet if asked to be a committee that I felt a great reluctance to join because I thought it would be even more boring than most committee assignments or because I didn't think it was a good use of my time. I suppose that is a selfish, but any guilt I might feel is completely assuaged by my awareness of how much time I devote to institutional service.
When asked to be on a committee, do your criteria for accepting vs. declining to be on the committee depend on your prediction of whether you would find the committee interesting and/or a good use of your time, or does your sense of duty and academic citizenship triumph over such selfish concerns?