"Votes thumbs down"? More like "expresses s fear and trepidation". No thumbs up or down until it's over.

How anyone could think that a faculty retreat is a good idea after attending a faculty meeting is beyond me.

The problem is that faculty get a lot of practice in delivering lectures, and they unconsciously slip into that mode. Sometimes, too, there's an assumption that expertise in one area is transferable to other areas. I agree with you: faculty retreats *might* work *if* a *lot* of thought is put into defining the *goals* of the retreat and how to create *actual* confrontation of ideas and exchanges of views that lead to the accomplishment of those goals. But in practice, few in control of the retreat have that particular expertise.

During my academic day my experience of faculty retreats ran the gamut from the second or third rung of Hell to the ninth. Most were dreadfully boring with little being accomplished and most of the participants snoozing. However, I did attend one retreat that was not like that. This retreat was entitled "How we are failing our female students." This was in the early 90s when the silly Gilligan pseudo-research on how woman's different way of knowing was not being met by institutions of higher learning. The goal of the retreat organizers was to somehow change everyone's teaching style to make it more woman centric. I got dragged to the retreat because I have published papers on gender wage differentials. Before the retreat a colleague and I asked the organizer if we could look at student grades. She thought that was a good idea (she later regretted it) and lobbied the administration to allow us to have them. What we found was that in EVERY major women's grades were higher (the largest difference was interestingly in Economics where the differential was over half a grade point). I also looked at the awards list of the Business school and found that eventhough female students were only 1/3 of the business they won over 70% of the awards the previous year. My colleague, who more politic than me, said we should present these results as a cause for 'celebration' on how well we are doing with the coeds. That did not work. Instead many of the participants became irate. Saying that our research showed nothing and telling us about all the terrible things that happenned to them (on average two decades earlier) when they were students. For the rest of the retreat no one would talk to us or even sit at our table when having meals (it was a two day retreat and we presented first). I guess I did not realize the purpose of the event was therapeutic not educational.

Larry,

It seems like to me that you were the victim of PC gone bonkers. The real reason women get better grades is that they're better cheaters. Cheating doesn't work in the marketplace, however, hence the wage differential.

My weblog of today has words of comfort for those who must suffer through boring faculty meetings. See the last paragraph of

http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/03.10.08a.htm

Hah! Academic retreats are mere walks in the park. Ok you were bored. I know, I used to sit through your classes.

I have been to law firm retreats. Imagine a pack of hungry wolves arguing about who gets the loin chops from that deer over there. Boredom is easier to handle than terror.