Getting Faculty Ownership

Today I'm responding to one of the comments that was posted. The question asked how to get faculty buy-in to strengths-based interventions or programs. There is no easy answer to this question--Provosts across the country would love to know how to get faculty buy-in on anything :)

Since I have been a faculty member for the past 25 years, let me simply share what gets my attention and leads to ownership for me. I think there are three basic principles at work here: (1) I pay attention to things that interest me or that solve a problem I have; (2) anything that saves me time and especially that results in me spending less time on tasks I don't enjoy and more time doing the things I love will get my attention; and (3) I want to see compelling evidence that what you are suggesting will actually work!

Faculty's first and foremost allegiance is to their discipline, usually. I wish it were otherwise--I wish our primary allegiance was to our students and their learning! And for some, that is the case. But for many of us all our training and educational preparation was focused squarely on our disicplinary expertise. Few of us were trained to teach--and even fewer were trained to advise students. We've had no courses in teaching/learning theory, no background in higher education. We know what we were taught--and we tend to teach the way we were taught. We typically were the brightest and best--abstract thinkers and researchers for whom critical thinking is an art form. So our tendency is to critique everything--that's what we do best. That can be a little intimidating to others! But once you know that it is what makes us excellent--that critical thinking is faculty operating out of their own collective strength--then you also know the way to our hearts :) In a word--"prove it!" If you can show me that what you are suggesting is solidly grounded in theory, has empirical evidence to support its effectiveness, and will help me accomplish goals that matter to me, you will have my buy-in. Now that's a social scientist speaking--Humanities profs may frame it a little differently in terms of the "evidence" they'd like to see. But all of us hunger for evidence that something will actually impact student learning. Anything that can help me reach my students and will result in higher levels of learning and academic performance has got my vote.

Many of us faculty are finding it harder each year to reach this generation of students. We've noticed a sea change just in the last four or five years, with students spending the majority of class time texting or IMing one another or checking e-mail and surfing the net. [Not in my classes, of course--but I hear that other faculty have trouble with this :) ] So anything that helps me engage my students will get my attention. And that's where the strengths approach holds enormous potential--but more about that next time!