Category talk:Academic staff by university or college

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Who created this category and when?[edit]

I don't recall creating this category, but I seem to be the first in its revision history? XOttawahitech (talk) 03:37, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comment on naming[edit]

Can we rename this category and its subcategories en masse to use a term more generic than the term "faculty" may imply?

There is a substantial amount of ambiguity and/or incongruity with the use of the term "faculty", so it should probably be replaced.

There is not much observable evidence to explain what was the true intent of the folks who created this category and its subcategories, so we should reach a new consensus on what the name should be, or a consensus on whether or not to try to enforce some sort of a new standard even. 15:29, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

As the proposer, I'm going to stray a bit from the brief nature of RFC intros and leave a bunch of collapsible boxes below that will try to summarize previous discussions; hopefully this does not prejudice the new discussion but rather help illustrate the complexity that we're dealing with here and the rationale for why this process is initiated.

Status quo intro by the proposer

I come here from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2021 February 8#Category:University_of_Zagreb_faculty, where we for the Nth time failed to reach a consensus on how to proceed. Multiple editors have suggested that I (ab)use the RFC system instead of CFD, so I'm doing that here.

I noticed this initially because the word faculty is ambiguous and doesn't just refer to a grouping of people in use across Europe, rather it refers to the organizations. During the previous discussions we literally had a case of people coming in from various different viewpoints and thinking the usage of the word in either context was a mistake.

The internal and external consistency of this category tree is very much dubious. Consistency with real-world usage is probably more important to the encyclopedia than any sort of internal consistency between e.g. American phrasing and e.g. Croatian phrasing, but this doesn't quite explain what I've observed in the subcategories.

I'd assume that this was just a lot of organic volunteer work where alumni were categorized separately from staff, but not a lot of effort was expended on the details of the staff.

Introduction to the term "faculty", as understood by the proposer

I tried, but was not able to verify the idea that the word "faculty" is clear. Especially with regard to including researchers and teaching assistants. Sources:

  • our existing article that aims to explain the term "faculty" academic personnel,
  • at wikt:faculty,
  • at any number of dictionary entries for "faculty" at dict.org,
  • at a number of dictionary entries found by google by searching "faculty meaning":
    • WordNet says "the body of teachers and administrators at a school",
    • Cambridge says "the people who teach in a department in a college",
    • Merriam-Webster.com says "the teaching and administrative staff and those members of the administration having academic rank in an educational institution",
    • Dictionary.com has several relevant definitions, "the entire teaching and administrative force of a university, college, or school" as well as "the teaching body, sometimes with the students, in any of these departments".
  • (thanks to user Czar:) American Association of University Professors survey says graduate students and postdocs are rarely accepted within "faculty" designation: American Association of University Professors (2015). "The Inclusion in Governance of Faculty Members Holding Contingent Appointments". Policy Documents and Reports. JHU Press. p. 201. ISBN 978-1-4214-1638-0.
Status quo in the subcategories, as understood by the proposer

Some examples in the category tree:

  • Category:Faculty by university or college says the main article for the category is "Academic personnel". It does not provide any clarification to the term, and is a subcategory of Category:Academics.
  • In the subcategories of that, there are actually several terms being used, mainly:
    • "faculty by university of college", which has a bunch of unclear meanings even in American dictionaries, see above for examples; our article about that is a disambiguation page and the academic personnel article isn't particularly well cited
    • "academics by university of college", which seems to likewise conflict with a bunch of those meanings (at the time of writing, our article says that "an academic is a person who works as a teacher or researcher at a university or other higher education institution" so we are immediately thrust into the issue of what about researchers, assistant teachers etc), and is likewise not particularly well cited
    • "<something>" by university (i.e. they often don't use the "or college" part), and some by tertiary institution, i.e. using inconsistent terminology again
    • "Faculty by <something>", a handful of them in the top-level category that seem to be American, but also Category:Faculty by law school in Canada‎ etc
    • direct categories of specific organizations that are sole such ones in their countries
  • There's also many more that use the same word but don't use the "or college" part
  • For example:
    • There's no academic staff category of the University of Cambridge - there is no "faculty" in Category:People associated with the University of Cambridge
    • The top level categories for the UK, Ireland, Malta, San Marino, Botswana, DR Congo, Central African Republic, Madagascar, New Zealand, Belize, Thailand, already don't follow the same format or don't even have a category
    • At deeper levels, one can also find a number of "Faculty of <something> faculty" categories, which was especially interesting to see in North American categories (I observed this in some Canadian ones)
    • There is no apparent consistency by continent:
      • The European ones that triggered all this
      • A converse case of Category:University of the West Indies academics‎ in the North American category
      • Sri Lanka and Thailand use "academics of [the] <something>", but India, Bangladesh and Myanmar use "<something> faculty"
  • There's a bunch of faculty categories where "Deans of <something>" or "Presidents of <something>" or "Rectors of <something>" is a subcategory, implying the definitions of "faculty" that excluded the administrative staff were also often ignored
    • At the same time I found Category:PUCMM people where someone claimed a delineation between "alumni" (with an interesting caveat!), "faculty" and "staff", and there's a single article directly in there, a person whose lead section describes them as an "academic"
Reasonably uncontroversial replacement suggestions, as understood by the proposer

The reasonably uncontroversial suggestions to replace it so far have been, IIRC:

  • "staff" - rather generic
  • "academic staff" - reasonably generic, somewhat unclear on whether researchers, teaching assistants and/or various kinds of administrative staff should be included
  • "academics" - likewise, but may also have WP:ENGVAR issues as it may be the more British-centric option compared to "faculty" which seems to be more of a US-centric option
  • "people" - i.e. a merge back up into the parent category, thereby only keeping the alumni split off

Obviously any better suggestions would be welcome as well.

Discussion of some problematic alternate terms by the proposer
  • Trying to use the word "department" in relation to this issue would also be a problem, as many faculties (organization) are expressly not departments, and most in turn have departments within them. This would add another layer of confusion on top of everything. I should also mention that in Croatian usage, this would be doubly confusing because while the universities most often contain organizations called fakultet, many also contain another variety of constituent organizations called odjel, a word which is most often translated as department or section, and is distinctly different from faculties, and an odjel is typically headed by a pročelnik (head) rather than a dekan (dean) of a faculty.
  • Medical academia is also one of the reasons I would avoid the use of the term 'employee', because 'staff' seems to be a somewhat more generic term, applied to non-business organizations, it doesn't seem to imply a conventional employment contract situation, and that's what we don't want in case of academia, where there's a lot of nuance in staffing (sic) educational institutions. Any teaching hospital is going to have a lot of ambiguity in this regard.
  • A realistic issue with restricting "faculty" categories to a smaller subset of staff is that goodness knows how many categorization errors this actually causes in practice. Especially outside of the US where the word just isn't as commonly used in this context. Has anyone ever audited the thousands of articles that are categorized here to make sure that this definition matches? Or any definition, for that matter? I would assume it'd be more realistic to try to go with a more inclusive wording, i.e. something that cuts up "people of <university>" categories into broader subcategories rather than narrower. Once that is done, then we could work our way down, to more clearly delineate.

--Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:29, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • As you may imagine, I propose that we go with one of the reasonably uncontroversial options that I listed above, in that order. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:29, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • In my professional work, I often use "faculty member" when referring to the individuals who work as professors at colleges and universities; this avoids many of the issues discussed above, particularly the difference in how the word "faculty" is used in different contexts to refer to individuals or academic units ("departments" in many U.S. institutions). Would that - "Faculty members of <institution>" - work?
It seems unavoidable and even desirable to end up with a hierarchy with "People of <institution>" or something similarly broad being the highest level of categorization. Then under if can come "Faculty members of <institution>," "Researchers of <institution>," "Alumni of <institution>," and whatever other categories are necessary. In some instances, we'll want to create specific categories for different units at the institution (e.g., specific schools or colleges). (To be clear, setting this up sounds like a lot of work that would be very satisfying for the right kind of person but I'm not that person and I'm not volunteering to do it!) ElKevbo (talk) 15:51, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This would not make sense when the word faculty means the organization rather than the group of people. In other words, e.g. Croatian professors &co. are not "members" of their faculties, they're actually typically employees of their faculties, while their departments could potentially be described as "members" of their faculties. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 16:05, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To make this even more prosaic - you could technically describe Vladimir Paar as a member of the faculty of the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb. But why would anyone want to do that?! :) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 16:09, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We may end up with two separate conventions, one for institutions that use faculty to refer to individuals and one for institutions that use faculty to refer to groups. I'm not sure if there is a compromise that can capture both uses that does not have other significant problems. While this would be unsatisfactory to some Wikipedia editors (and readers), we must be prepared to acknowledge that the real world cannot always be neatly organized for our own purposes. ElKevbo (talk) 17:31, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly even that would be an improvement over the status quo; acknowledging that there may be an inherent inconsistency would be way better than what's been happening so far. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:43, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Academic personnel seems the most neutral term and reflects the name of the relevant Wikipedia article. "Faculty" and "academics" both mean different things in British and American English. This seems like an opportunity for MOS:COMMONALITY. Robminchin (talk) 17:03, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The concern I have with that and similar phrases is that it's broader than "faculty" or "professors" as it would likely encompass people without a formal faculty or professor appointment such as researchers and administrators and I don't think that is the intent of many editors who use these categories. I think of "academic personnel" as being a superset of the faculty/professor category. Am I incorrect in that thinking? ElKevbo (talk) 17:31, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I asked a colleague whose research topic is faculty in multiple countries, including the U.S. She uses instructional staff as her go-to phrase. I don't know if that would work but it's a good option to consider. It may be broader than the topic that is being discussed but I'm not sure if we've yet defined exactly where we are trying to draw lines. Are we only focused on people who have a formal, institution-approved title of "professor" or member of the faculty body? (I think we are.)
Reflecting on my own practices, we often use educators as our broadest category. That may be too broad, however, as we use that phrase explicitly to include not just professors but others who play a role in our students' education e.g., graduate students who mentor other students, student affairs staff who support students outside of formal classes. ElKevbo (talk) 18:04, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While technically true, I think any research staff who have achieved notability will almost certainly be research faculty. Administrators would only count as academic staff if they hold an academic appointment - in the UK this does include people like vice-chancellors, but I would expect to see them included on such a list as they are considered academics. My (more limited) experience of the US system is that at least some presidents certainly hold faculty appointments (such as Martha E. Pollack at Cornell, who the Cornell staff directory lists as faculty). Robminchin (talk) 21:27, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Academics seems to be sensible, as academic personnel comes across quite verbose. However, if this is WP:ENGVAR en-GB and too awkward for the American-English speakers, then academic personnel would make sense. Instructional staff and educators are both misleading, as some academics are purely researchers with limited or no educational responsibilities. Shadowssettle Need a word? 21:07, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Staff, as proposed. I haven't seen cause to be concerned that non-academic staff/faculty would be mixed in. Yes, this doesn't capture staff accepted into the gilded faculty but our categories do not need to be doing that level of work, perhaps with a few exceptions for particularly huge category lists. "Academics of X" would still leave ambiguity as to whether it's referring to people or the academic program of an institution. "Personnel" is superfluous where "staff" suffices. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 23:19, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For those who work in U.S. colleges and universities, "staff" explicitly refers to non-faculty employees e.g., "faculty and staff" is a phrase often used to refer to all of the employees. ElKevbo (talk) 12:34, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
ElKevbo do you have a reference for this? Did you observe this usage within the academic community or in general population? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:12, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't have a specific reference. I have a PhD in higher education and have worked in U.S. colleges and universities my entire adult life but I have not conducted research into this specific issue nor can I cite any specific documents. (Actually, I just checked my university ID and it says "Faculty/Staff" so there's an n of 1...) This is such a commonplace issue that I don't know if there is much or any research or documentation; it's just part of the culture (likely driven by the different privileges and social standing of tenured and tenure-track faculty as compared to non-faculty employees). ElKevbo (talk) 20:37, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, as you can see from the dictionaries I checked in one of the boxes above, it's not actually easy to verify what's commonplace exactly. Anyway, if the phrase is faculty/staff, how does that preclude one being referred to as one of the staff in general context? This being a general encyclopedia, we should cater to trying to navigate the generic reader, and if academic staff is a logical part of staff in general, it shouldn't be a big deal to organize categorization that way. Anyway, I wouldn't see a problem in having a more specialized faculty/academics/... category underneath the staff category if that will make things less awkward; as long as the whole scheme isn't half-random (which it seems to be right now). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:32, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand how that does anything than slightly change the question to "What do we label the subcategory of 'staff' that only includes faculty members?" (to use the U.S. phrase). We might just have to live with the fact that this is a legitimate WP:ENGVAR issue with some categories of the same basic groups using different labels because those are the labels that are used for them. ElKevbo (talk) 22:37, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably, there would be way less controversy in applying any new partial standard there, because the parts of the categorization nearer to the root would no longer be out of whack. If there's a "Foo University faculty" or a "Bar University professors" or a "Researchers at the Quux Institute" category somewhere at the outer rims of categorization, and those phrases are indeed reasonable for most readers, that's way less of a consistency problem than what we're talking about here at the world-wide, per-continent and per-country level. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:11, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Staff --Asmodea Oaktree (talk) 10:20, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Staff It should be the appropriate term to use.Sea Ane (talk) 19:42, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment/Question I posted this comment on a related thread at WP:CFD but I have the same question here. With the additional of "staff" which I think is over-inclusive - the gardeners, janitors, TA's, and residence hall personnel are all "staff". Putting that to the side: are people who teach at a University automatically both "faculty" and an "academic"? Is that true if they occupy a purely a teaching position - no research? Is that true if they are guest faculty (either temporary, on loan, sabbatical, nontenure-track, or an artist/industry person teaching a "masters" class)? Does their title matter: lecturer? don? professor? and lastly, are administrators "faculty" and/or "academic" if they never had that experience prior to their administration appointment? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 20:28, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can only answer from a U.S. perspective. "Academic" would be a very broad category that would likely include many people who don't teach or have a formal faculty title or appointment; it's not a title that is typically used in human resource systems. Within institutions, "faculty" often has a much more well-defined definition especially when it's used in a formal sense to refer to people with specific titles or human resource-approved appointments. In many instances, this is also tied to union representation which requires very clear definitions. In general, people can be hired into faculty positions with any balance of teaching, research, and service so it is entirely possible at some institutions for there to be some faculty members who don't teach at all and some who only focus on teaching. Temporary hires can also be faculty members e.g., visiting professors. And people who were not hired as faculty members can be given faculty titles as a kind of honorary or secondary position; whether they are considered "real" faculty varies by circumstance and institution. (For example, I was hired as an administrator at my current university but I also have a secondary faculty appointment; I generally do not consider myself a faculty member because my appointment is secondary and not the focus of my time and energy.)
Titles can vary quite a bit although the three main titles - assistant professor, associate professor, and professor - can be safely assumed to be universally part of the institution's faculty. Some administrators, particularly senior administrators (e.g., deans, provosts, presidents) are usually also hired into academic departments and given faculty titles, too; that is why you sometimes see administrators who step down from their administrative role "return to the faculty" as they almost always were also awarded tenure after they were hired.
Whether non-tenure track and temporary hires are considered "faculty" varies considerably, too. I think it's safe to assume in many cases that full-time non-tenure track people with titles similar to those of tenure-track/tenured faculty are likely part of that institution's faculty. In many cases, there are also other titles for non-tenure track people who are also considered faculty members. Where things get really fuzzy is when considering part-time hires; there is a lot of variation in whether they would be considered faculty members with much of that variation occurring within and across a particular institution, too.
I know that this is probably very confusing. It is. Within the academy, we frequently switch between "faculty as strictly defined by policies" and "faculty in a cultural sense" with all of the relevant clues lying in the context of the discussion. To provide another concrete example, this confusion is why several years ago we changed the title of our annual "Summer Faculty Institute" to the "Summer Institute on Teaching" as we wanted everyone on campus to know that they are welcome at the event even if they don't have a formal, HR-approved faculty title.
And this doesn't even get into the differences between (a) faculty, staff, and administrators or (b) differences between the U.S. and other countries! ElKevbo (talk) 21:17, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
One more brief comment: The number of people who could be included in a "staff" category does not concern me as WP:N will take care of that potential problem quite easily. My objection to "staff" as the highest level of categorization is simply that within U.S. colleges and universities "faculty" and "staff" are two disparate categories of employees. A handful of people have a foot in both worlds but for the most part the terms refer to two entirely different groups of people. ElKevbo (talk) 21:20, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The very fact that we're debating this extreme minutia here should already be sufficient proof that the current categorization setup is ridiculous. If the articles on staff and wikt:staff don't already explain to readers that e.g. "you can't use this word to refer to the academic staff", who exactly is supposed to know or care about this distinction within the context of Wikipedia categorization? Are we seriously expected to be bothered that someone might see the "Foo University faculty" category categorized underneath "Foo University staff" as opposed to directly under "Foo University people"? Is that going to be an actual problem? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:16, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Joy: I don't disagree but to my mind, we're trying to flesh out what would be a better solution. One that doesn't inappropriately categorize WP:BLPs and other is obviously to be preferred. But, until we have coherent distinctions (if any can be made) we will have difficulty. I have read many biographies on WP of university people, mostly in trying to add categories to new articles, and tried to put appropriate categories on those. Several fact patterns recur. The sources report someone has "taught" at a university. Is that faculty, an academic, or staff? The sources report that someone has "done research" at a university. Same question. Someone was a professor at UniA and spent a year at UniB. Is that person in anyway to be categorized in the UniB tree? Someone was a student for an advanced degree (a grad student) at a university and taught there while pursuing that degree. Student, faculty, academic, or staff? Someone was a grad student at a university and published papers with his/her professor while there. Student, faculty, academic, or staff? Someone was a well-known business executive who taught a few business classes from time to time at a university. Faculty, academic, or staff? Someone did "scholarship" at a "think tank" associated with a university? same question. Until we see how these fall out we cannot begin to categorize appropriately. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:05, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can't imagine this being fundamentally different than short-term employees or members of any other other organization. Apply WP:NONDEF, WP:OCMISC, WP:OCASSOC, WP:OCTRIVIA and be done with it?--Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:47, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry that the complexity of the real world inconveniences you. That doesn't change the reality that this a complex and confusing topic.
I don't see a problem with having "People of <institution>" as the highest level category. I strongly advise against creating categories with names to which the people you'd like to place into those categories would object. "Faculty of <institution" would work just fine for U.S. colleges and universities. If we're not sure if the person was widely considered to be a faculty member, leave them in the higher level "People of <institution>" category. If there are enough people in other groups - alumni, administrators, researchers, etc. - then we can create and populate those groups, too. ElKevbo (talk) 20:33, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
People is *already* the higher level category. The topic here is the existing faculty/academics categories being de facto imposed underneath those ones, as the only global method of categorization, and attempts to use anything else *that actually acknowledges the complexity of the real world* being derailed. I still don't see how categorization of categories will be objectionable to people, when people articles themselves will remain in the categories that are not objectionable. Do you really expect someone to see an American professor in "Faculty of Foo University", then click that link, then see that there's a "Staff of Foo University" link, then click that link, then see that there's a "People of Foo University" link, and then proceed to file some sort of a complaint how this ordering is improper because they have an internal meaning of the word "staff" that conflicts with the dictionary meaning of the word "staff"? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:06, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A reductio ad absurdum is not conducive to collegial discussion; stop it. No one except you has said anything about someone "proceed[ing] to file some sort of complaint." If you classify faculty at U.S. colleges and universities as staff - I can't stop you from doing so and you appear to be dead set on this despite an expert suggesting otherwise and you having done little or no apparent research on your own - then people who are knowledgeable will simply chalk this up as another error in this project run primarily by amateurs. It would be an unforced error that unnecessarily contributes to public perceptions that this project is riddled with inaccurate information. ElKevbo (talk) 03:35, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but I'm finding it hard to find sympathy for an argument that is not apparently based in verifiable facts, and instead seems to merely delay and obstruct constructive discussion here. We now have a wall of text in this RFC that serves very little apparent purpose, but will probably intimidate others who may want to contribute. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 16:14, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment, and a suggestion: Suggestion, first. Why not simply add a brief blurb to the top of the category page explaining what is meant by the word 'faculty'? Would that not solve all or most of the problems of confusion?
  • And, a comment..correct me if I am mistaken, but the specific cases involving confusion that were brought up had to do with: a university in Russia; and, how the word 'faculty' is used in Croatia. With all due respect, it is rather cavalier to complain about the way English wikipedia uses English terminology because certain words mean something else in some other non-English (1st language) speaking countries. There are too many countries that use english as a second language, each with their own unique quirks (as every language does) for all of them to be accomodated - that's basically requiring that we drastically simplify our own language (which is the only one we got!) so it will be easier for the rest of the world to use as a second language. providing extra clarifications in known areas of confusion is certainly reasonable, though. does including a brief explanatory note (e.g., "thr faculty are the academic personel of an educational institution") remedy the issue? Firejuggler86 (talk) 06:57, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are you volunteering to do so in case of all the hundreds of subcategories? It doesn't seem like a realistic solution. With regard to how much of an exception something is, please see the sheer amount of interwiki links at Faculty (division), it's highly unlikely that using the American term is logical here for readers - yes, for English readers who encounter e.g. one of many German Fakultät in real life and want to learn about it. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 16:14, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • At a global level the term "academics" or "staff" would be preferable rather than "faculty", to avoid confusion with faculty meaning a departement. For specific country categories like the US we may keep using "faculty" per WP:ENGVAR, if needed. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:46, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fayenatic london I noticed you removed the CFD tag. Can we get you or someone else to assess the consensus? Otherwise, I don't think we're making any progress here. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:52, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Having said that, I just realized we had another bit of disjointed discussion, cf. Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2021_March_22. This is a new level of mess. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 22:06, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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