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Thriving in Academe
Issues To Consider

Creating a Meta-Professional Campus

How do I begin?
The faculty are at the heart of the academy and the meta-profession. Many academic administrators come from the ranks of the faculty and can share in an opening dialogue that asks the question, “What does it mean to be a faculty member at our institution?” Such a dialogue can be initiated by a faculty group (individuals or a senate), by the administration (a group of chairs or the provost), or preferably, by a joint call for campus discussion of important professional issues.

Who should participate?
All stakeholders should participate at some point in the dialogue, but the faculty should be consistently involved and should take the lead in promoting the dialogue and in initiating actions that lead to strengthening the meta-professional stance and in the development of effective programs. This approach is described in detail in a paper entitled “Leadership in faculty evaluation and development: some thoughts on why and how the meta-profession can control its own destiny,” available at www.cedanet.com/meta/meta_leader.pdf.

How long will it take?
This is not a process with a pre-determined end point. In fact, the dialogue should be continuous in order to involve new people and new ideas, and to address new challenges.

How, for example, is your institution reacting to new demands for accountability, or to pressure to use new technologies, or to competition from other institutions and for-profit educational organizations, or to new student populations with new expectations, or to the greater use of part-time faculty? All these issues have an impact on the ways in which higher education operates and they cannot be ignored. Ongoing, meta-professional dialogue can address these issues when they arise rather than in a “too little, too late” post hoc manner.

What can I hope to accomplish?
What is needed in higher education is a renaissance rather than a retrenchment. This renaissance has two components. First, higher education needs a “rebirth” in terms of values, image, status, and quality. Facing unprecedented challenges, higher education must initiate meaningful changes (those determined from within and proactive in promoting quality) rather than responses to demands from outside the academy (like calls for “national testing” that are determined by political expediency and rhetoric). A second emphasis of a renaissance is the recognition that college faculty are expected to be renaissance persons, possessing impressive arrays of skills and knowledge that enable them to be effective. These meta-profession skills should be supported, recognized, and rewarded.

The renaissance can be achieved only by faculty realizing that we belong to a common, complex, profession spanning the full spectrum of human knowledge and realizing as well that the university is not simply a collection of diverse disciplinary experts. Rather, the professoriate must define itself as a coherent, committed, collegial community dedicated to quality and to re-establishing its role as critical to the success not only of higher education, but of society.

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