So it was my turn to take the department minutes in the final meeting of the year. This is the meeting where we "elect" folks to the various department committees for the next year. Writing it all out I came to an interesting observation.

We have 18 full-time faculty. On average that means three or four members are not present each year with sabbatical or some other form of leave, so in any given year there are 14 or 15 of us. We have five administrative positions: chair, assistant chair, graduate director, composition director, director of English education programs, and director of the professional writing program. Only the last has no release time ;). So that leaves around 10 faculty in any given year who are around and do not have an administrative role.

We have eleven committees! As our department is divided into three sections (literary studies, education, and professional writing), each section has its own curriculum, graduate, and assessment committees, which is fun for the THREE of us in professional writing. We also have a common personnel committee, with five participants, and an awards committee (for the awards we hand out).

I realized we could almost as efficiently reorganize the department to have a committee to oversee the work of each individual faculty member.

Does this make sense to anyone?