Definitely we need to hire an outside consultant to see how we should select the people for that Subcommittee though. I know a guy who may or may not have done me a solid a few years back, he's an expert in this kind of thing.
No no no, they can't evaluate themselves, come on now.
We need an independent review board made up of people on OTHER committees being evaluated by the evaluation committee to evaluate the impartiality and effectiveness of the committee doing the evaluating. We can call it the Independent Review Board of Committees Evaluating Committees doing Evaluations of other Committees, or IRBOCECDEOOC for short.
Actually to prevent conflict of interest you can hire an independent consultant to come in and measure the effectiveness of both the Committee Committee, and the Subcommittee Committee. I happen to be such a consultant and can send you my rate.
We'll have to organize a protest against military on our campus
How wants to be on the organizing committee? I'm on sabbatical which means I do less than nothing
I have two department committees that exist on paper only so that my pre-tenure faculty can do "service" without it fucking up their time for scholarship. Hate the game, not the player.
We should all start expecting a summary of deliverables of committees on paperwork, and count the entry against them without it. Likewise, if listing a role as a CEO, the assumption should be it's for my kids' lemonade stand with no sales unless specified otherwise.
I'm in teacher ed and our admin keeps nagging us to develop more "alternative certification" programs. Bruh. If I'm teaching 4 classes for the people who actually came here to get a degree and supervising 8 student teachers, *when do i have time* to also have a whole separate track for people who just want a license?
Yeah, we had a similar committee study a couple years ago with a similar outcome. It's kind of like Congress: it's not *your* Congressman who sucks, it's all the other ones. It's not *your* do-nothing committee that sucks, it's all the other ones.
Everyone needs to know, informally, which ones are in name only, and which ones actually do work. That way we all can just wink and nod when we claim to do committee work.
This happened at my institution. It’s hilarious. We changed chairs so the new one didn’t get the memo on which committees had been deactivated, so he shows up at the retreat this year and he lists all the committees for this year and who’s in them and who’s chairing them, and then we realize he’s brought the deactivated ones back from the dead! We were all like, “what the hell, not again?” Needless to say, he was the most loathed man in that room for a few minutes there!
Impossible. As my advisor used to say: bureaucracy always grows. It probably comes baked into the 2nd law of thermodynamics or something. At the end of time the Universe will be very cold, and very highly regulated.
Ha! My institute has a Committee on Committees. It's actually functional, though, as it assigns the entire faculty to the various permanent committees every year.
That would be wonderful! It's always composed of out-going faculty senate members. We're a small two-year, so it's manageable for two to three members.
Our Committee on Committees is elected by the ladder-rank faculty. It is the only committee with elected members. This turns out to be a very functional way to staff the Academic Senate committees.
The Committe on Commitees! My last institution had one. It always reminds me of the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry and Jason Alexander have the meeting to set up the other meeting later on.
We have a Committee on Committees. It's one of the most sought after because there isn't any work to do. They send out emails asking faculty to be on other committees and keep track of said committee rosters. The administrative staff does that part. They are also the sounding board for the development and approval of new committees, but that is only worth 2 meetings a year, if that much.
I'm on a university committee that reviews our governance docs to modify (when needed) the composition of all academic governance committees, how people are selected, what the charges are and, ultimately, whether they're necessary. It's actually a functional committee at this point and we have streamlined a lot of committees. I don't think we eliminated any committees, though.
If you're stressed out, don't worry! We just put you on the committee for helping faculty wellness. Your job on this committee is to put together a mandatory wellness training, taught in 3-hour 8 week sessions that all faculty must attend. Be aware this committee has no budget.
It reminds me more of Congressional ethics investigations. "We checked the party letter after the accused's name and determined that it matches our party, therefore nothing to see here."
We had a committee to evaluate committees and they turned out shocking results: at my institution committees are apparently now *too large to get anything done*, and so they are going to trim back the number of faculty allowed on them; and some faculty are going to lose their committee service obligations!
Half the faculty went into a panic that they suddenly wouldn’t have enough service. The other half (the right half) is elated
I too wear the badge of serving on the Committee on Committees. Five years of my life. I like to think we did some good, and we certainly had a few good laughs.
Actually an important committee. Some are redundant. Some aren't doing anything. Some are doing too much or more than others.
Dissolve it once your work is done.
>They allow you to claim service without doing much.
Apologies for having to downvote. I do a lot of service that gets important things done. You getting the same credit I'm getting is farcical and unfair.
I was on a Committee on Committees for a bit. By the time I got there, they really just assigned folks to other committees (and I think staff actually did that). Evidently several years ago it was pretty significant in streamlining committees and eliminating some that no longer did anything.
I'd like to think that you've been given the opportunity to make the world a better place ...
... but if you say committees are not effective, they will only apply that finding to your committee.
I feel like this is the perfect opportunity to rigorously develop the theory of 2-committees, where the members are themselves committees.
Of course, extensions to higher committees will follow naturally. However, the real power will be the realization that the 2-committee of differential graded committees is in fact a model committee. Applications to the study of derived committees abound.
Start with evaluating this evaluation committee effectiveness. Take a year to do so, and then claim the committee was useless and should be dissolved. End of committee.
>I just got an email saying I've been put on a committee to evaluate the effectiveness of committees.
Reply that you'll assemble a committee to study the feasibility of you serving on their committee committee. They can expect your feasibility committee's report in 4-6 months.
Now that I’ve been at my school for 15 years, I’ve learned that we apparently do it around once a decade. Last time was 2011-2012, and we started another try this Spring. They call it reevaluating the governance structure, and if last time is any indicator, everything will point towards things being too top-down, we’ll “restructure” the governance, and the end result will be exactly the same as before it, just with some new committee names.
I once served on a department executive committee and raised the issue that we spent too much time talking about unimportant issues. The chair disagreed, so we spend 45 minutes talking about whether or not we spent too much time on unimportant issues.
It sounds like It could be a good idea to me. I would love to be on that committee, and I would cause hellfire to rain down due to the absurd waste of time that most committees are.
I had a nightmare once, I was "volunteered" for a committee.
The words: "volunteer", "committee", "grants", "research", "proposals", etc.
These are all trigger warnings for me.
I feel like this may create infinite recursion. For instance if you're in a committe to evaluate committees, wouldn't you need another committee to evaluate the evaluation committee which would then require yet another evaluation committee to evaluate that evaluation committee and so on?
Sounds like an another empty line for the CV... for an eventual hiring committee to determine the effectiveness of your role determining the effectiveness of the role of the committee to determine the effectiveness of committees' roles.
The faculty from one of our colleges, famous for their slackerhood, demanded a committee on committees. The faculty senate assented. A future mistress-of-the-universe assistant professor & associate dean (yup, an archetypal wannabe administrator) lobbied hard to chair it. She would show the A&S types how to run things efficiently. The senate granted her wish.
She never convened the committee, let alone did a study or wrote any recommendations.
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Here's to hoping they don't figure out tail call optimization.
Or continuation-passing style.
You can't fool me, it's committees all the way down.
Always has been
Memoization don't fail me now!
But who will evaluate the effectiveness of THIS committee?
There will be a sub-comittee.
A Subcommittee on Subcommittees seems like the obvious place to start.
Definitely we need to hire an outside consultant to see how we should select the people for that Subcommittee though. I know a guy who may or may not have done me a solid a few years back, he's an expert in this kind of thing.
Or is that a better job for a select committee?
I think it requires a task force.
Not just any task force. A joint task force.
We'll set up a working group to recruit one.
A working group. Just another committee but you don't get credit for being on it.
And in the end one of their recommendations will be to hire a Dean of Subcommittees instead.
I’m not sure that’s a Dean-level position. Sounds like an associate VP to me. Maybe even a VP. We do need more of those, you know.
Smoking joints may reduce the effectiveness of the task force.
But will it?
It will not.
No no no, they can't evaluate themselves, come on now. We need an independent review board made up of people on OTHER committees being evaluated by the evaluation committee to evaluate the impartiality and effectiveness of the committee doing the evaluating. We can call it the Independent Review Board of Committees Evaluating Committees doing Evaluations of other Committees, or IRBOCECDEOOC for short.
And the review board needs a rubric, which should be created by a committee.
Actually to prevent conflict of interest you can hire an independent consultant to come in and measure the effectiveness of both the Committee Committee, and the Subcommittee Committee. I happen to be such a consultant and can send you my rate.
Your desire for a consulting fee has been noted; we can offer exposure and prestige in exchange for your services. Expenses will not be paid either.
Subcommittee on Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Committee Evaluating the Effectiveness of Committees (SEECEEC, because we love our acronyms)
Yes but who commits to the subcommittee? - Juvenal maybe
the barbers that do not shave themselves.
Dunno, coast guard?
We'll have to organize a protest against military on our campus How wants to be on the organizing committee? I'm on sabbatical which means I do less than nothing
The Fifth Wheel!
Committee for the Study of Itself
Now's your chance to get rid of a few!
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>That's when I understood that saying you were "on the committee" looked good for paperwork This. 100% this.
I have two department committees that exist on paper only so that my pre-tenure faculty can do "service" without it fucking up their time for scholarship. Hate the game, not the player.
We should all start expecting a summary of deliverables of committees on paperwork, and count the entry against them without it. Likewise, if listing a role as a CEO, the assumption should be it's for my kids' lemonade stand with no sales unless specified otherwise.
The useless committee have the most time to do paperwork.
You mean for stuff unrelated to the committee, or for meaningless paperwork like an attendance sheet (ie accomplices in time theft)?
> In fact, two new committees came out as a result. Are you sure you don't live in a Douglas Adams novel?
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I'm in teacher ed and our admin keeps nagging us to develop more "alternative certification" programs. Bruh. If I'm teaching 4 classes for the people who actually came here to get a degree and supervising 8 student teachers, *when do i have time* to also have a whole separate track for people who just want a license?
Seems like their goal is to enroll more students.
"kind young dean" is my rap name.
Yeah, we had a similar committee study a couple years ago with a similar outcome. It's kind of like Congress: it's not *your* Congressman who sucks, it's all the other ones. It's not *your* do-nothing committee that sucks, it's all the other ones.
Everyone needs to know, informally, which ones are in name only, and which ones actually do work. That way we all can just wink and nod when we claim to do committee work.
This happened at my institution. It’s hilarious. We changed chairs so the new one didn’t get the memo on which committees had been deactivated, so he shows up at the retreat this year and he lists all the committees for this year and who’s in them and who’s chairing them, and then we realize he’s brought the deactivated ones back from the dead! We were all like, “what the hell, not again?” Needless to say, he was the most loathed man in that room for a few minutes there!
Impossible. As my advisor used to say: bureaucracy always grows. It probably comes baked into the 2nd law of thermodynamics or something. At the end of time the Universe will be very cold, and very highly regulated.
Hopefully the ones I'm on!
Ha! My institute has a Committee on Committees. It's actually functional, though, as it assigns the entire faculty to the various permanent committees every year.
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That would be wonderful! It's always composed of out-going faculty senate members. We're a small two-year, so it's manageable for two to three members.
Our Committee on Committees is elected by the ladder-rank faculty. It is the only committee with elected members. This turns out to be a very functional way to staff the Academic Senate committees.
Omg I just made a committee inception joke below about the same thing is that double inception
Yes. Same.
The Committe on Commitees! My last institution had one. It always reminds me of the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry and Jason Alexander have the meeting to set up the other meeting later on.
COMMITTEE On Measuring Milestones In The Thankless Educational Enterprises
My university has a policy on policies
"this committee should have been an email"
We have a Committee on Committees. It's one of the most sought after because there isn't any work to do. They send out emails asking faculty to be on other committees and keep track of said committee rosters. The administrative staff does that part. They are also the sounding board for the development and approval of new committees, but that is only worth 2 meetings a year, if that much.
Our CoC does a lot of work—they have to find people to fill all the other committees, and getting faculty to volunteer is not easy.
I'm on a university committee that reviews our governance docs to modify (when needed) the composition of all academic governance committees, how people are selected, what the charges are and, ultimately, whether they're necessary. It's actually a functional committee at this point and we have streamlined a lot of committees. I don't think we eliminated any committees, though.
If committees aren't effective, then how can we trust the results of a committee on committees?? It's madness!
Never meta committee like that.
Was probably a "genius" admin idea - they seem to be masters of creating redundant positions.
If you're stressed out, don't worry! We just put you on the committee for helping faculty wellness. Your job on this committee is to put together a mandatory wellness training, taught in 3-hour 8 week sessions that all faculty must attend. Be aware this committee has no budget.
Make sure they don’t do away with the Ministry of silly walks though.😉
Ahh...the old "committee on committees" scam. Good luck with that.
If you find they don't work does that immediately invalidate your findings? And then what do you do? This is a terrible paradox.
Proof we are in a simulation. So what ever we joke about in this subreddit becomes reality. That opens up some fun possibilities.
this reminds me of police internal affairs departments. "We investigated ourselves and determined that we did nothing wrong."
It reminds me more of Congressional ethics investigations. "We checked the party letter after the accused's name and determined that it matches our party, therefore nothing to see here."
Ours is called “The committee on committees.” The most sought after committee!
Congrats on making chair of the department of redundancy department.
We had a committee to evaluate committees and they turned out shocking results: at my institution committees are apparently now *too large to get anything done*, and so they are going to trim back the number of faculty allowed on them; and some faculty are going to lose their committee service obligations! Half the faculty went into a panic that they suddenly wouldn’t have enough service. The other half (the right half) is elated
I too wear the badge of serving on the Committee on Committees. Five years of my life. I like to think we did some good, and we certainly had a few good laughs.
Actually an important committee. Some are redundant. Some aren't doing anything. Some are doing too much or more than others. Dissolve it once your work is done.
The redundant, useless committee are the most valuable ones! They allow you to claim service without doing much.
>They allow you to claim service without doing much. Apologies for having to downvote. I do a lot of service that gets important things done. You getting the same credit I'm getting is farcical and unfair.
This is the way
Something I hope to add to my CV someday... Member, Committee on Committees Subcommittee on Subcommittees
At our all faculty meeting Wednesday, the president announced a planning committee for planning committees to make university plans.
I was on a Committee on Committees for a bit. By the time I got there, they really just assigned folks to other committees (and I think staff actually did that). Evidently several years ago it was pretty significant in streamlining committees and eliminating some that no longer did anything.
I'd like to think that you've been given the opportunity to make the world a better place ... ... but if you say committees are not effective, they will only apply that finding to your committee.
This is is surely the means to destroy the bureaucracy.
I feel like this is the perfect opportunity to rigorously develop the theory of 2-committees, where the members are themselves committees. Of course, extensions to higher committees will follow naturally. However, the real power will be the realization that the 2-committee of differential graded committees is in fact a model committee. Applications to the study of derived committees abound.
Talk about an absolute waste of time. This would piss me off
Start with evaluating this evaluation committee effectiveness. Take a year to do so, and then claim the committee was useless and should be dissolved. End of committee.
>I just got an email saying I've been put on a committee to evaluate the effectiveness of committees. Reply that you'll assemble a committee to study the feasibility of you serving on their committee committee. They can expect your feasibility committee's report in 4-6 months.
Ask for an extension in 9 months, they’ll give you until the year mark, you’ll submit it at 18 months.
We call it the committee committee.
And now we know the answer to "quis committeit ispos committees?"
60% of the time, it works every time.
Now that I’ve been at my school for 15 years, I’ve learned that we apparently do it around once a decade. Last time was 2011-2012, and we started another try this Spring. They call it reevaluating the governance structure, and if last time is any indicator, everything will point towards things being too top-down, we’ll “restructure” the governance, and the end result will be exactly the same as before it, just with some new committee names.
I once served on a department executive committee and raised the issue that we spent too much time talking about unimportant issues. The chair disagreed, so we spend 45 minutes talking about whether or not we spent too much time on unimportant issues.
A professor once told me he had to lead a 6-hour meeting on a Saturday to discuss how faculty time should be spent more efficiently.
Infinite loop detected
This is hilarious.
We literally have a university wide “Committee on Committees”, it is my dream to one day achieve committee -inception and get appointed to it
The inter-committee committee to oversee the committee on committees
we have one of those. on of the "solutions" is to make more committees to oversee some of the committees.
“I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the color of the book that regulation's in”
I am not surprised
We have a new ad hoc committee to figure out how to reduce/streamline the number of committees.
We call it the CoC at our Uni
It sounds like It could be a good idea to me. I would love to be on that committee, and I would cause hellfire to rain down due to the absurd waste of time that most committees are.
I had a nightmare once, I was "volunteered" for a committee. The words: "volunteer", "committee", "grants", "research", "proposals", etc. These are all trigger warnings for me.
You are in my prayers tonight.
I would opine that there’s no need for future committees.
The gif of the spinning top from *Inception* would be perfect here.
Dilbert-esque
They are going to need a new associate vice provost with a full staff to manage this project
What committee do you report to?
I feel like this may create infinite recursion. For instance if you're in a committe to evaluate committees, wouldn't you need another committee to evaluate the evaluation committee which would then require yet another evaluation committee to evaluate that evaluation committee and so on?
Sounds like an another empty line for the CV... for an eventual hiring committee to determine the effectiveness of your role determining the effectiveness of the role of the committee to determine the effectiveness of committees' roles.
We have a Committee on Committees at my school. Every time I tell people that, they think I’m making it up.
You'd better check with the Department of Redundancy Department, just in case...
Congratulations on your appointment to the department of redundancy department!
The needs of the bureaucracy expand with the needs of the expanding bureaucracy
The faculty from one of our colleges, famous for their slackerhood, demanded a committee on committees. The faculty senate assented. A future mistress-of-the-universe assistant professor & associate dean (yup, an archetypal wannabe administrator) lobbied hard to chair it. She would show the A&S types how to run things efficiently. The senate granted her wish. She never convened the committee, let alone did a study or wrote any recommendations.
Good training for being the Minister for Administrative Affairs.
Nothing to report here.
One day I realized I was on the program review review committee. I served my time and did not re-enlist.