May 10, 2000

Dear Colleagues:

I recently read the latest research by Alexander and Helen Astin of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Their study, Meaning and spirituality in the lives of college faculty: A study of values, authenticity, and stress, struck a chord with me as a college president…certainly as a career academic. As I read, it became clear to me that our faculty at BGSU were no different from the almost 200 faculty members at the four post-secondary institutions in California who made up the respondent sample. These individuals expressed their passion for research, and for teaching, but also spoke of their frustration at not being able to adequately attend to the multiple demands upon their time. The consistent message conveyed by those participating in the study was that much of the stress that they experienced in their personal and professional lives was the result of the voluminous and conflicting demands upon their time required by the academic environment.

Faculty at all four institutions included in the study reported that the seemingly conflicting demands of research, teaching and service were a constant source of stress. On college and university campuses today, the dialogue frequently returns to the persistent lack of congruence between our espoused values, that of the equal importance of research, teaching and service, and our actual practice of placing far more emphasis on research and, to a lesser extent, teaching, than we do on service. Stress within the professional lives of many faculty, therefore, has stemmed from the desire to conduct ground-breaking scholarly research within their respective fields, their commitment to teaching, their realization of the need to provide enrichment in the out of classroom experience of their students and their sense of duty to serve.

I am well aware that much of your stress as BGSU faculty members comes from the conflict between the need to create new knowledge within your disciplines and the need to apply new pedagogical techniques that we have come to discover are valuable tools in ensuring the success of our students, who are certainly at the core of our learning community. All of these demands infringe upon your family and personal lives providing yet another potential source of conflict and stress. Nationally, administrators and policy-makers seldom stop to consider the limitless demands on the time of college faculty, measuring your loads simply by the number of courses that you teach and the research obligations that you may have while disregarding the myriad of other commitments that make up your everyday lives. Seldom do we stop to consider that in addition to your regular teaching, research loads and service scholarship commitments, you have committee meetings to attend, consultations with students and colleagues, departmental meetings, academic advising, and informal gatherings to attend for students within your discipline. In addition to all of these responsibilities, you are invited to participate in and support campus wide activities such as New Student Orientation and Registration, GradSTEP, Dance Marathon, Senior Week, the All-Campus Picnic, and a variety of awards programs just to mention a few. Sadly, many of these time-consuming activities in which you engage, and that are so important to the success of the campus community, go unrecognized by department heads and other administrators.

In the process of contributing to the creation of a premier learning community at BGSU, you have given much of yourselves and. Accept my appreciation and thanks for your dedication to, and support for BGSU. Please also know that I am committed to improving the quality of life for BGSU faculty, as I realize the invaluable role you play in the holistic education and development of our students. As we look forward to a new academic year, we must actively search out new ways to achieve balance and foster an environment within which you can experience some level of congruence among the conflicting demands that confront you. I wish you a relaxing summer and I look forward to seeing you in August.


Sincerely, 

Sidney A. Ribeau 
President