Document Type

Paper

Publication Date

2022

Abstract/Description

Over the past 50 years, there has been little change in the way that most academic departments in universities across the United States conduct their day-to-day affairs. Based on the research of Hobbs and Anderson [1], which reported the results of surveying thirty-eight departments ranging from R1 universities to small private universities shows that, typically there are number of faculty who either volunteer for a task or are given a task that is associated with different aspects of department operations. These assignments are either based on faculty interest or expertise. Usually, if a task is assigned to a committee, some members of the committee would perform most of the work, and the rest either provide input or review the work product. There are number of issues associated with this model [1]. • Only a handful of faculty will participate in the day-to-day operation of (service for) the department. Sometimes this allows several faculty members to stay under the radar avoiding to be assigned to the department service. On the other hand, some faculty will become the “suckers” and get increasingly more service tasks assigned to them [2]. • Given the fact that some faculty may end up getting away with little or no service contribution, service is typically perceived as less important than teaching and scholarly activity, therefore this exacerbates the problem as more faculty may try to get out of any service responsibility. • There is very little cross-training for those who participate in service activities. For example, since assignments are based on the individual interest and expertise of the faculty, there is little opportunity for other faculty to learn about these service tasks. In this case, junior faculty get the opportunity to only learn about a service task, based on their initial assignments, but as they move through the ranks, they usually get assigned to the same type of tasks again and again.

Over the last three years, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) has been involved in a project funded by the NSF IUSE-RED (Revolutionizing Engineering Department) program, with the main objective of changing the individualistic culture of the department. We believe that reducing the individualistic culture of the department could potentially improve the productivity and the quality of the faculty in the areas of service, research, and teaching respectively. To accomplish this goal, we adopted agile techniques from software development, specifically Scrum, to provide a framework to follow for teamwork.

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