Petition to the Presidency Mentor Group to reconsider its policies
- Target:
- Presidency Mentor Group
- Region:
- India
Petition to the Presidency Mentor Group to reconsider its policies that is leading to the departure of senior faculty members from the University.
Presidency University is undergoing a myriad of changes in its transition from a college to a university. A committee (Presidency Mentor Group or PMG) has been appointed, comprising of scholars and academicians of international repute, to make policies for the institute and to guide it through its initial journey from a College of universal repute to a research institute of excellence. Overall, the contribution of PMG have been outstanding and mostly in the right direction.
But there are certain measures adopted in the selection and screening of faculty members of the University, which have raised serious concerns among existing faculty and alumni alike. It is also leading to a disruptive large-scale exit of experienced faculty members from the University a significant number of who are GOOD, actively involved in teaching students the relevant subjects and guiding them through important career decisions. Based on publicly available information the preliminary policies are as follows:
1. To search out, interview and hire new members for each department, a sub-committee has been set up, again comprising of very eminent scholars. The list can be found at:
http://www.pmg.org.in/pdf/list_of_names_for_search_and_selection_committees.pdf
This committee has the dual responsibility of recruiting fresh members of academic staff, as well as the screening of the existing faculty members.
2. To the existing faculty members, two options have been given: (a) they can go through the screening process done by the selection committee and be given the chance to stay, if the committee so decides. Or, (b) if they do not want to get screened they are welcome to be placed elsewhere in Calcutta University.
3. If the senior faculty chose option (b), then they are going to be retained in PU till an adequate number of competent replacements can be functionally hired and the transfers will start only thereafter.
Our serious concerns about these approaches:
How it affects Presidency University: Lack of transparency and failure to focus on enthusiasm and ability to teach and correctly identify the motivated mentors, in the screening process has resulted in a large number of the existing faculty to opt out of screening. Therefore Presidency is losing a big fraction of its staff, a significant number of who have been actively involved in quality teaching and constructively shaping careers. The exit of the good teachers in particular is a great loss of the existing students; it is also a great loss for the new hires since they would have provided a role model for good teaching and student management.
The non inclusion of existing experienced teachers in the hiring and decision forming processes is making the selection committees and PMG lose sight of the fundamental requirements of each department. What is most required in a department in terms of both infrastructure and faculty appointment can be very accurately described by people within the department.
The above reasons are unfortunately leading to a situation where the University will left with a group of new teachers, exceptionally well qualified but quite unfamiliar with the respective departments and the overall requirements.
We do not doubt the good intentions of the PMG and sincerely value their efforts at improving the quality of education in Presidency. But we feel that it is important that the implications of these policy measures are brought to their attention. Enclosed is a petition to the PMG reflecting our concerns.
We request all the alumni of Presidency College to join our petition. We also request you to kindly forward this to all the ex-Presidencians you know, as we are trying to reach out to as many as we possibly can.
Letter to the Presidency Mentor Group:
As alumni of Presidency College, we greatly appreciate your efforts at making Presidency University a world-class educational institution. However, we wanted to share our concerns regarding certain aspects of your current focus in the recruitment and screening processes. Presidency College has been a seat of excellence in learning and teaching; in order for it to become an equally good seat of research, Presidency must compulsorily maintain its stature as a premiere under/post graduate training center. To achieve this excellence in both teaching and research, we believe that Presidency University needs the experience of good senior teachers in addition to the new ideas of fresh recruits.
We understand that a substantial number of senior faculty members have decided to opt out of the screening process. We thoroughly support the effort to hire new competent researchers for the University but we are concerned that such large-scale and sudden exodus of existing teachers may adversely affect this transition phase and hamper the post and undergraduate training. While new hires may have sufficient teaching experience, we feel that most would benefit from the invaluable mentorship of their more experienced colleagues. This may only be accomplished if the faculty hiring process is coupled with schemes to retain the good teachers. Keeping this goal in mind, we sincerely request your consideration of the following proposals:
1) Screening process with adequate focus on teaching expertise retain and get GOOD teachers:
We suggest that post- and under graduate training be made a core component of screening both existing teachers and new hires. So that all of the GOOD teachers from the existing pool are effectively retained, we suggest that criteria such as the following be taken into account: A) time spend by each faculty, teaching in class as well as helping students outside of class hours; B) background work and efforts put into teaching to develop a fundamentally strong understanding of the subject(s), that would help the students to succeed in both internal and competitive examinations, C) encouragement provided to students to ask questions and participate in discussions which would help in developing liking and excitement for the subject, D) in case of laboratory based courses for the science programs, willingness of mentors to guide the students through relevant theoretical background of every experiment conducted.
2) Adequate senior faculty representation on the faculty selection committees:
Each department in Presidency has its own strengths and challenges, and the teachers who have been associated with the respective departments for many years are acutely aware of these attributes. This familiarity would enable them to bring relevant and valuable insights to the faculty selection committees. Along with the existing selection committees, they can help identify candidates who can better adapt to the challenges of teaching in the respective departments.
3) Respectfully encourage emeritus teachers to continue their association with Presidency University:
We suggest that the teachers who are retired, be requested to maintain advisory positions as the emeritus tier, more so if they have contributed to the strengthening and/or advancement ofthe relevant department. Their knowledge and experience will provide continued intellectual support.
We wish to emphasize that we are very confident about the policies the PMG is making for the institution. We acknowledge that the effort put into hiring new mentors is undoubtedly bringing in highly skilled people with exceptional research skills into each department, and our suggestions are merely directed towards promoting a balance between research and teaching. A good interaction and overlap between the able teachers who get retained now and the new teachers who get hired will provide mentorship for the latter to acquire teaching skills from their predecessors. We believe this will produce a new generation of mentors exceptionally qualified in their own rights as researchers and with teaching skill sets tailored to the requirements of the departments, which will ultimately benefit the university.
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The Petition to the Presidency Mentor Group to reconsider its policies petition to Presidency Mentor Group was written by Sayandev Chatterjee and is in the category Education at GoPetition.