CoAL Mine wrote:

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Can anyone give a real (not a cover-up story) legal and ethical way for one spouse to be a faculty member in the same department when his or her spouse is the chair of that same department? I understand you can say the faculty member spouse will be administratively under another chair, an assistant or associate dean, or the dean, but that is a transparent fiction to everyone, isn't it? This is a prime example of why there are usually laws against such behavior in state institutions.

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For any tenured or tenure-track faculty member, the short answer is "no," because tenure is inseparable from departmental appointment.  On the other hand, a non-tenure-track research faculty member might hold a legitimate appointment in a "center," function under supervision of a center director, dean or associate dean, and carry as part of the appointment a limited teaching assignment in a department chaired by his/her spouse. 

Student wrote:

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Didn't know it was illigal. We have that situation now in the English Dept.

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As I understand that situation, the chair in 2004-05 took the position because nobody else wanted it and both he & spouse were looking for other positions (both are leaving) so evaluations, etc. were not really an issue.

Isn't there a spouse as chair situation in the CoB?

"Yes and it'll get handled appropriately. If not COB is a small place that can get uncomfortable quickly. "

I am delighted Coby is an optimist. I thought they were extinct there. Since the CoB has not handled it "appropriately" in the past, and since the power to deflect, defend, and deny have always worked for those that be, I cannot share that optimism. Merely an observer's opinion; no effort is being made to offend or start a thread battle.

FIRE ALL SPOUSES AND CHILDREN - men rule, they should be the only one's taking down an income derived from the hard earned wages of Mississippi residents.

stephen judd wrote:

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Actually Invictus., this is one point of which you and I disagree.

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Then we can agree to disagree, which is usually the best of all possible worlds anyway!

But a couple of points to consider... What you raise as an issue, Stephen, revolves around trust. If other members of the department do not have a basic level of trust in the department chair (and if the chair's integrity is questioned by a significant number of department members), "We have a problem, Houston."

Does the department have absolutely no role in selecting chairs? (Wait, I know the answer: We're talking about the University of Southern Mississippi, that bastion of shared governance.)

<SLIGHT DIGRESSION>
[Although I know there are plenty of "nay-sayers" around who don't trust their chairs, that is not a good thing™ A chair doesn't have to be the best researcher in the department (and seldom is) or the best teacher in the department; the chair should be somebody that the vast majority of department members respect on a more-or-less personal level. Going back to Robert Campbell's seminar, the chair is in the "unstable" position, playing a balancing act between faculty & administration, that probably demands more than any other administrative position in a university. In my experience, a good chair -- and I worked under one of the best, period -- is both a mentor & team-builder within the faculty AND runs "interference" between the department faculty & the pointy-headed bosses in the "upper" echelons of administration.
</SLIGHT DIGRESSION>

Basically, though, the problem you raise -- doubts in others' minds about evaluations -- should be addressed by the policy: "In such cases, if approved by the Board, the next highest administrative officer must decide performance, welfare, assignment, compensation, tenure, promotion, or termination of employment of the subordinate employee."

If you consider a relatively small department in which spouses work, doing as you say could place a significant hardship on the department as well as being unfair to the couple vis-a-vis potential future advancement of either of them. What you suggest basically would (in my feeble mind at least) encourage couples who work in the same department to be slackers. Since neither could ever "advance," why worry about anything other than the minimum?

Oops. The mantra at USM is "a day's work for a day's pay," so I guess the minimum is already been encouraged, isn't it?

As a footnote, I've worked with couples who were highly productive & I've seen couples who were hired "out of convenience." As with everything else, this sort of situation really depends on the individual human beans involved, doesn't it?

Invictus wrote:

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stephen judd wrote: Actually Invictus., this is one point of which you and I disagree. Then we can agree to disagree, which is usually the best of all possible worlds anyway! But a couple of points to consider... What you raise as an issue, Stephen, revolves around trust. If other members of the department do not have a basic level of trust in the department chair (and if the chair's integrity is questioned by a significant number of department members), "We have a problem, Houston." Does the department have absolutely no role in selecting chairs? (Wait, I know the answer: We're talking about the University of Southern Mississippi, that bastion of shared governance.) <SLIGHT DIGRESSION> [Although I know there are plenty of "nay-sayers" around who don't trust their chairs, that is not a good thing™ A chair doesn't have to be the best researcher in the department (and seldom is) or the best teacher in the department; the chair should be somebody that the vast majority of department members respect on a more-or-less personal level. Going back to Robert Campbell's seminar, the chair is in the "unstable" position, playing a balancing act between faculty & administration, that probably demands more than any other administrative position in a university. In my experience, a good chair -- and I worked under one of the best, period -- is both a mentor & team-builder within the faculty AND runs "interference" between the department faculty & the pointy-headed bosses in the "upper" echelons of administration. </SLIGHT DIGRESSION> Basically, though, the problem you raise -- doubts in others' minds about evaluations -- should be addressed by the policy: "In such cases, if approved by the Board, the next highest administrative officer must decide performance, welfare, assignment, compensation, tenure, promotion, or termination of employment of the subordinate employee." If you consider a relatively small department in which spouses work, doing as you say could place a significant hardship on the department as well as being unfair to the couple vis-a-vis potential future advancement of either of them. What you suggest basically would (in my feeble mind at least) encourage couples who work in the same department to be slackers. Since neither could ever "advance," why worry about anything other than the minimum? Oops. The mantra at USM is "a day's work for a day's pay," so I guess the minimum is already been encouraged, isn't it? As a footnote, I've worked with couples who were highly productive & I've seen couples who were hired "out of convenience." As with everything else, this sort of situation really depends on the individual human beans involved, doesn't it?

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I agree with much of what you say, Invictus . . . 

On the other hand, I am less sanguine about the willingness of human beings to fix things once they have gone wrong -- especially when those things involve close blood or marriage relationships. People become very reluctant to speak their minds about one spouse in front of another. People become very suspicious, when a spouse on a faculty gets a raise and no one else does -- or gets the largest raise. The truth is that even though such a raise must be justified, the very presence of that dynamic creates tension and the potential for conflcit of interest which eventually, over time, is likely to translate into suspicion. I think nepotism rules are designed to take the choice out of the equation . . . and by the way, to take the personal out of the decision.

 

 

I agree with Stephen Judd. It is best that the question of fairness not come up.

This issue originally was connected with the English department, and since no one else from our department has answered, I am writing in to say that I've been in the department for ten years, and can't remember any violation of the ethical distance required of spouses.  We've had two-three couples in the department during my stint in Hattiesburg, and I've always been struck by how visibly and vocally they recused themselves in personnel issues or any other time that nepotism could be an issue.

There are two factors, it seems to me, that make potential nepotism a problem that won't go away.  (Three if you count Mississippi culture, but let's not go there.)  One is that women are now firmly established in academe, so that it's very possible for potential spouses to meet in graduate school and then need to find work near each other.  It may even be possible that folks in creative fields are more apt to find each other in graduate seminars talking about the meaning of life, but I don't have any statistics on that.

The other factor is that Hattiesburg is a long way from the next real university.  It's not as easy to insist that no one be married to anyone else in Hattiesburg as it is in Chicago, or New York, or San Francisco, or the other places who tend to set the standards.  Yes, I know that there are schools in Jackson, and Mobile, and New Orleans, but then the only hope is usually to adjunct.  As a result, a spouse is likely to apply for a likely job in some place like Hattiesburg, at the same time that the other spouse is on the market looking for something near that spouse.  As I say, I doubt that the trend will go away. 

Just my .02 or, in England, my 0.01092 GBP.

Cheers,

Jameela

Jameela Lares wrote:

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 . . folks in creative fields are more apt to find each other in graduate seminars talking about the meaning of life

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JL, some of my seminars are going to be severly oversubscribed if prospective students read your comment.

alter wrote:

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 I didn't grow up in the South but have lived here now for 40 years.  In defense of MS, the inability to easily see conflicts of interest is not a MS thing but a "Southern" thing.  I have some tongue scars from hearing some blatant conflict of interest not even recognized as such.  It's hard to deal with a problem you don't know is there.  I've just learned to take the good with the bad and take my paycheck and keep my mouth shut.

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I also grew up in the South, but I have just the opposite view. I acquired that opposite view when during the time I lived in the Northeast. I've never known a good ole boy who was willing to take the good with the bad, take his paycheck, and keep his mouth shut. And good ole girls are even less inclined to do that. Southerners are courageous and speak out.

I didn't know they worked at a public university.

I am amazed that with all the (justified) ranting and accusing of SFT about his daughter, the department chair, so many of you cannot see this concept is exactly the same thing only on a smaller scale. Wrong is wrong. It is not a matter of which individuals are involved. It is not a matter of potentially discriminating against a spouse. It is about the discrimination that will occur against all the other faculty members in the department. Later on, "Gee, you were right, that was a mistake" will not be enough.

I agree with Stephen on this one. The higher ed nepotism law is so vague in MS (and also at other schools in other states) as to be almost useless. I have seen a few situations in which one spouse is the titular boss of the other spouse in higher ed, and it is almost always very messy. In fact, a colleague in a public university in Ohio is facing a similar problem at this moment, in that the chair of her department is now engaged to a faculty member in the same department. The grad students and faculty are in an uproar (for reasons I won't go into), and the faculty is demoralized. Worse, the Dean was the mentor of the current chair, and therefore there is nothing the faculty can do to remedy the situation.

In the corporate world, if a boss dated or was engaged to someone in her or his department, this would almost always trigger a trip to HR. Academics seem okay with playing loosey goosey with rules and guidelines they would almost certainly endorse for other organizations (say a corporation or law firm).

This said, chair is a thankless job that has no glory associated with it. (How many awards are given out for best department chair in your discipline?) Given this, why is this situation all too common in academe? Let someone else push paper and avoid the headaches of potential ethical breaches.