Email from Beth Vanfossen to Beverly Leetch, 2002

^valuation of the Director of NCCTRW Subject: Evaluation of the Director of NCCTRW Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 16:16:13 -0400 From: "Vanfossen, Beth" <bvanfossen@towson.edu> To: <bleetch@towson.edu> Hi Beverly, I have been thinking a little about the evaluation process pertaining to Karen Dugger’s work as Director of NCCTRW. I was a little surprised to learn that her evaluation currently is made solely by the Women’s Studies Department, even though her employment duties are only 50 percent assigned to Women’s Studies. (I may have known this at one time, but it probably slipped my mind.) I am hoping that this arrangement does not result in there being an imbalance of pressure on the Director of NCCTRW to perform in Women’s Studies, resulting in overwork in that area and underwork in promoting curriculum transformation and other activities of the National Center. It seems that Karen already has inadvertently become very involved not only in the teaching of Women’s Studies courses, but also in many WMST governance activities, which are seriously undermining her ability to give 50 percent to NCCTRW activities. She agrees with me on this. In addition to teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in WMST, she is on the WMST Core Committee, director of the WMST undergraduate internship program, on the WMST Graduate Program Committee, advisor to majors, on the Curriculum Committee, library representative - and there may be more that I am not aware of. For the University, she is Co-Chair of the Welfare and Work Initiative, and is frequently invited to attend other campus committees and workgroups. She is a very valuable teacher and leader, and it is only natural that her abilities would be in demand by the WMST Department and others. I know from my work at ITROW how easy it is to slip into doing work in areas where there are many people seeking it, while the work in another domain that does not have a large, active constituency naturally becomes slighted. Karen has many really terrific ideas for curriculum transformation development using the web, international conferences, funding opportunities, collaboration with other TU centers and units, and on-campus workshops (among other ideas), but little time in which to develop these. I think it would be good for the campus and for progress in disseminating the scholarship on women to faculty and the broader public if she would have available a greater percentage of her time for working on what she was primarily hired to work on (NCCTRW). It occurs to me that she perhaps needs someone to be an advocate for her work as Director. An appropriate voice might be the Director of ITROW, who is likely to be well acquainted with her priorities, duties, and goals, and the competing pressures placed on her. The Director of ITROW also has a strong interest in seeing the NCCTRW maintain its excellent program of activities, since ITROW and NCCTRW are cooperative units, and the strength of one aids the strength of the other. One way this could be institutionalized would be for the Director of ITROW annually to send to the Dean a statement regarding the accomplishments of the NCCTRW, and the needs for support of her continued successful work. Perhaps the Director of NCCTRW could also send to the Dean her own statement of her priorities and accomplishments in this area, and statement of needs for support. When this should be done is a question, maybe at the same time that WMST is evaluating Dugger’s contributions to the WMST Department’s priorities. An added amount of paperwork, I know, but it might help to correct the imbalance of forces facing her for her work priorities. As I recall, originally we did not suggest this procedure because we did not want it to seem that the Director of ITROW is in any way the supervisor of the Director of NCCTRW, which she is not. I of 2 4/28/2002 1:28 PM .