Faculty service (#1424)

Topics/tags: Overcommittment

The other day, I was at a meeting in which we talked about faculty service and how we might support our colleagues in doing service. From my perspective, service is a complicated topic with respect to faculty. When an institution discusses service (and, often, when it assesses it), service ends up being primarily service to the institution, which is often divided up into departmental service and institution-wide service. However, faculty service is broader than that. Most of us serve our broader intellectual community in some way beyond providing scholarly ideas: We might review papers, help plan conferences, serve on committees for graduate and undergraduate theses at other institutions, and more. We are also part of a physical community and can bring our expertise to that community. Particularly at a place like Grinnell, which is embedded in a small town, faculty service to the community can be especially important.

Since it’s the start of the semester, I thought I’d review what’s in my service portfolio for the year. Does anyone but me care about what I’m doing? Not really. My kids may worry about how much I do, but other than that, it’s not a topic of general interest. Still, as I’ve often said, I muse for myself, not necessarily for my (hypothetical) readers. My muse also told me to write this, and I do my best to follow her guidance. Perhaps it will be interesting to others in understanding what faculty do beyond teaching and scholarship.

There are many ways to end up in institution-wide service. You can be elected. You can be appointed by the Faculty Organization Committee (FOC), usually after you indicate preferences for particular positions. You can be appointed by someone else, such as the President, the Dean, or Executive Council. You can apply for some positions, such as the director of one of our centers. You can volunteer. I’m sure there are others.

This year, I have two primary institution-wide positions. I’m serving as Chair of General Science, which is not the same as the Science Division Chair, and as the science representative on the Tutorial and First-Year Success Committee. How did I end up in these positions? Well, I said that I was willing to be elected Chair of General Science, and the members of the General Science Committee elected me. No one really wants the position. FOC put me on the Tutorial and First-Year Success Committee after I indicated an interest in serving on that committee. I’ve forgotten what other committees I listed as would like to serve. Probably the Committee for the Support of Faculty Scholarship (CSFS) and the Instructional Support Committee (ISC). I was also a finalist for two major positions: Chair of the Faculty and Chair-Elect of the Faculty Organization Committee, but lost both elections. That’s probably for the best.

What does the Chair of General Science do? Traditionally, not much. The Chair approves major declarations for students who want a General Science major [1]. The Chair asks the members of the General Science Committee for their perspectives on questions, such as whether or not to accept a transfer course or a petition for an exemption to major requirements. I can’t think of much else. The Chair doesn’t have to schedule courses; the major has no courses of its own. The Chair doesn’t have to review faculty or run searches; all the faculty in General Science have a home department which handles such issues. General Science doesn’t even have a budget for the Chair to manage. I know this because I checked. So it’s a relatively low-stress and straightforward responsibility.

That is, unless the Chair is someone like me. Then they can make it harder. This year, I’d like the committee to consider whether we want to expand General Science to include the new and forthcoming science-affiliated majors: Environmental Studies and Statistics [2]. I’d also like us to more carefully explore the role of General Science at Grinnell, perhaps leading up to a self study and external review next year. We’ll see.

What does the Tutorial and First-Year Success Committee do? That’s also complicated. This is the first year that committee has existed. We had a Tutorial Committee for most of my time at Grinnell. Then, a few years ago, it morphed into the Tutorial and Academic Advising Committee. Last year, it was decided to spin off Academic Advising into its own Committee [3] and to wrap the First-Year Experience (or something like that) into Tutorial. What fun! When FOC talked to me about joining TFYS [4], they indicated that it might be doing a deep dive into the assessment of the FYE course. I know we assess FYE each year, so it could be interesting to see how this differs. The Tutorial Committee also helps with the management of Tutorial, although I’ve forgotten how. Right now, it looks like it’s a committee with bi-weekly one-hour meetings.

One could argue that I also have two voluntary all-campus service roles: I ’blog about the College and I serve as Campus Curmudgeon. Do these roles provide value? I don’t know. People tell me they do. I hear both directly and indirectly that people like to see someone speak their mind regularly, even if they don’t always agree with the perspectives.

On to the department! I don’t think we’ve settled on department responsibilities for this year, but I can estimate. Everyone in the department is part of a mentoring partnership, so I assume that I’ll be meeting monthly with a departmental colleague. I’ve traditionally handled departmental scholarships to the ACM/CMD-IT Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference; I suppose I’ve already done that for this year. I recall volunteering to help shepherd along our planned Alumni Council; I should get moving on that. I’m also the department rep for the Missouri-Iowa-Nebraska-Kansas Celebration of Women in Computing. I also agreed to be on the committee that will be developing our new non-majors course. Such fun!

My broader service to the discipline dwarfs my institutional service. I’m Program Co-Chair for SIGCSE Virtual 2026: The Second ACM Virtual Global Computing Education Conference. As Program Co-Chair, I work with my other Co-Chair and some helpers on assembling the program: Choosing types of submissions, running the submissions and review process, selecting submissions for presentation, scheduling everything, and more. I also meet regularly with our Steering Committee to look at bigger-picture (and smaller-picture) issues. I don’t keep careful track of time, but it’s literally hundreds of hours of work.

I’ve also been serving as Senior Panels and Special Sessions Chair for the 2027 SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education and as one of the Senior Program Committee members (SPC, Senior Reviewer), responsible for managing discussions and writing metareviews (summaries of reviews and discussions) for a set of papers. Because I’m a sucker for supporting SIGCSE TS, I also volunteered to do emergency metareviews. And, as a too-opinionated person and former Program Chair for SIGCSE TS, I regularly send unsolicited advice to the current Program Chairs.

Will I take on other reviewing responsibilities once Virtual 2026 wraps up? Probably. As I said, I’m a sucker for supporting SIGCSE. There’s also a chance that I’ll move on to the SIGCSE Virtual Steering Committee once my term as Program Co-Chair wraps up. Odds are good that I’ll get asked to do another NSF Review Panel.

All of the above is more than enough external service.

What about the Grinnell community? I’m doing much less than I used to. Back when the kids were in school, I ran chess club and MathCounts for many years. For about three years, I ran summer computing camps for the community. Those also served as a kind of research project. I volunteered regularly for the Friends of the Library (once Stewart, now Drake). My service these days mostly takes the form of writing checks.

And there you have it. Sam’s life of (professional) service. Or at least Sam’s current life of professional service. How does it stack up to past years? It’s almost certainly more disciplinary service than most years; chairing the program for a conference is a lot of work. It feels like less broad institutional service than has been my norm. That’s okay; two normal committee responsibilities seems appropriate. The department is big enough that we can spread out the service obligations more.

Still, I look forward to when SIGCSE Virtual is done and life gets calm(er).

[1] I’ll write more about the General Science major in a separate musing.

[2] Perhaps Data Science and Statistics.

[3] Agh! More committees!

[4] Probably not the best acronym.

Version 1.0 of 2026-08-18.