Faculty Senate Chair Peter Nickerson, professor of pathology, has agreed to appoint faculty members to an ad hoc committee created by the Professional Staff Senate Executive Committee to explore the possibility of providing training for faculty and staff members who supervise employees, but may have little or no management or supervisory training.

Professional Staff Senate Chair Michael Stokes, director of the Office of Student Multicultural Affairs, presented the issue to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee at the body's Dec. 3 meeting, noting that 56 percent of professional staff reside on the "academic side" of the university. He added that that figure was 60 percent several years ago, but has declined due to budget reductions.

Patricia Engel, assistant to the chair of the Department of Geography and chair of the PSS' Quality of Work Life Committee, presented results of a survey of professional staff members conducted by the committee during the summer of 1996. She said there were 227 responses to the survey.

While the committee was charged with questioning professional staff on a variety of issues, it was specifically asked to look into "the possibility that perhaps supervisors weren't particularly qualified or supervising particularly well," Engel said.

Staff members were asked to evaluate their supervisors, as well as themselves, including their need for professional development and whether their supervisor supported their seeking professional development.

"There's a lot of unhappiness, a lot of uncertainty," Engel said, noting that staff members vented on "a lot of really big issues that we can't do anything about."

The survey found that overall, those responding believed that their supervisor needed some help in the areas of conflict resolution, project management, receiving criticism, developing leadership, time management and delegation skills.

Respondents felt they needed training in several areas, including giving criticism, receiving criticism, gaining respect, delegation skills and "results without ramification"-defined by Engel as cases where resolution to a problem was achieved "without both parties being unhappy, because you can come to a peaceful solution."

Results without ramification is a key problem that professional staff face, Stokes pointed out. Many staff members have told him that they would like to be involved in senate or other university activities, "but there's not support from their supervisor or in their unit to leave the office, leave the unit and put the time in to do their service component."

He said that while some supervisory training is conducted on campus, it is not done "on a university-wide basis." He proposed that the two governance bodies "collaborate" to try to develop a training program for supervisors.

"This clearly is one of the items professional staff responded to" in the survey, he said.

Nickerson said that the Faculty Senate would be willing to cooperate, but that since the issue did not fall under the purview of any existing senate committee, an ad hoc panel would have to be formed.

Stokes noted that the PSS already had formed such a committee, and invited Faculty Senate members to join the panel.