All that has changed for the new generation of faculty members
While O'Connor is glad that some of the pressures have been removed from younger faculty members, she worries that incoming faculty will feel much less investment in the university community.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Margaret Anne O'Connor, July 1, 1987. Interview L-0031. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
MARGARET ANNE O'CONNOR:
Let me just remark on one other person here, Dell Johansen, of the
Department of Economics. I remember she retired early, in about 1977-78.
She was an Associate Professor in the School of Economics, and she
retired after she was passed over for promotion.
That was before we had our exit interviews that the Dean now holds with
departing faculty members, but she said that she wished she could talk
to the dean because she felt, as a woman, that--and this is someone who
wasn't a firebrand brought in--this is somebody
who'd been here since the 50's, and I think that
she felt, again, that her value to the University had not been
recognized, and I think that's an incredible oversight. That
is the University's failure, and the University is one that
is suffering.
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
I think that it's, in part, as you say, you're only
judged on those very narrow achievements within your major field.
It's a male definition of success and accomplishment.
MARGARET ANNE O'CONNOR:
But I'd like to point out that now that our younger and newer
women faculty members are not being asked to be on so many committees
and are not carrying the load, that they are meeting those standards
very easily. I think if that's what the University wants,
that's fine. I do sort of think, though, that the University
runs the risk of losing some of the best people, because one of the
things that serving on six committees does is make young faculty know
their colleagues all over the University, makes them feel very much a
part of the community, and makes a decision to leave to go to a
different institution a very different kind of decision. I would like to
suggest that a lot of the younger people, male and female, who are just
being judged on their teaching evaluations and the strength of their
publications might leave. In a way some of the other members of
the faculty who were brought in under a whole
different age had a different sense of reality.
- PAMELA DEAN:
-
Yes, I think you're right. I think the University is losing
some of these requirements but maintaining that emphasis.
MARGARET ANNE O'CONNOR:
Right.