RESULTS OF FACULTY ADJACENCY SURVEY, MARCH 2003

The results of the online adjacency preference survey administered by David Brodigan, Director of Institutional Research, proved to be less clear-cut than hoped, but they still convey useful information. The response rate of 53 percent is reasonably robust, although some intra-departmental results--arguably the most interesting data generated by the survey--involve samples small enough to require interpretive caution.

In response to Q4, which asked faculty whether they preferred departmental office clusters or mixing of faculty without regard to discipline, 61 percent expressed a preference for clusters, 39 percent for mixing. When these results are sorted by the respondents' department, clear patterns emerge. Thus faculty in Economics, Philosophy, German/Russian, and Religion prefer a departmental cluster, whereas Anthropology/ Sociology, English, and Asian Studies prefer mixing. (The results for Classics, History, Political Science, and Romance Languages are either more or less evenly divided or involve too few responses to produce reliable inferences.)

Q2 and Q3 asked respondents to scale their current or preferred future professional involvements with eleven departments, including their own. The two questions did not produce markedly different results. (See attached tables, in Adobe Acrobat--pdf format, which cross-tabulate responses at the "Very Intense Exchanges" end of the preference scale.) Again, the results are bipolar. Several departments, including Anthropology/ Sociology, Asian Studies, English, German-Russian, Religion, and Romance Languages, clearly look forward to more intense professional contacts beyond their own departments. One department, Economics, shows minimal interest in intense cross-departmental exchanges. Remaining departments fall somewhere in between.

Conclusions. Most faculty affected by the Stetson-Sawyer project express a preference for the status quo as it currently applies to their departmental situation. Departments now organized in marked clusters--Economics, Philosophy, Religion, German-Russian--seek to maintain this pattern. (Contrary or ambiguous responses are found in History, Political Science, and Romance Languages.) Faculty used to disciplinary mixing with respect to the location of their offices value this interdisciplinary contact and wish to maintain it. (The exception here may be Classics, although with only two respondents no firm conclusions can be reached.) Our working conclusion is that all departments would welcome some degree of clustering, probably around sections of the building identified with their department. At the edges of this pattern there could be considerable mixing, however. One advantage of this pattern of clustering without fixed outer boundaries is that it allows for changes in department staffing levels through time, providing welcome flexibility in the assignment of offices as College staffing needs shift in the coming decades. We see no clear pattern suggesting that departments should be assigned to particular buildings along divisional lines.

Although the Stetson-Sawyer Building Committee now has a good sense of faculty sentiment on the question of office assignments, final decisions about the allocation of space will be made in consultation with the Provost and Dean of Faculty.

Michael F. Brown
19 March 2003