The UT System’s Faculty
Survey at MD Anderson Matters: Agree, Neutral or Disagree?
By
Leonard Zwelling
Since I am no longer a faculty member, I did not get to
respond to the survey circulated by Dr. Greenberg. I have seen the results now
and all I can ask is how many more times will someone take the pulse of the
faculty and expect a different arrhythmia? Will it necessitate a flat line to
call the EMTs? (That’s Executive Men of (U) Texas)
Dr. Greenberg’s cover letter refers to “opportunities for
improvement.” I think those have been identified already and doing another
survey or meeting or retreat or conference doesn’t change a thing. His coming
to campus to discuss the results doesn’t change a thing. Only one thing needs to
change.
Review the results yourself, but in summary:
1578
faculty members were sent surveys and 966 responded (640 clinical and 326
non-clinical).
Question
1 was about the responsiveness of the leadership. Fewer than 30% of the
respondents found the leadership to be responsive.
Question
2 was about other aspects of the leadership’s meeting the needs of the faculty.
The same 30% or so thought that had shown positive results.
Question
3 was about additional aspects of the work environment including compensation,
quality of environment, opportunity for input and opportunities for
advancement. There was a marginally better response here, but only marginally
and most of that was due to the feeling of 65% of the faculty that they could
affect the quality of their own work.
Question
4 appeared to be more of the same, with pretty much the same result.
Question
5 was for clinical faculty only. The level of dissatisfaction was worse than
was exhibited in the results to the previous questions.
Question
6 was for research faculty only again with about a 30% satisfaction result.
I
am not sure I understand why Dr. Greenberg feels compelled to revisit the
campus. Here’s a bulletin Ray. It ain’t getting any better and it ain’t going
to until you do something.
So
Question 7 ought to be: What are you prepared to do Dr. Greenberg?
