University of Virginia Library

Inducement For Faculty

(19) How, then, can incentive be arranged for members of
our present faculty to spend two or three years at Birdwood?
What will induce a man to pack up his family, sublet his house
in town for a while, and take occupancy of a Birdwood
furnished flat, town house or whatever? If furthermore, we
expect him, once there, to be available to students virtually all
day, day after day, what can we do to compensate him for
giving up his library study, his book-in-progress, some of his
weekends, his evenings in the back yard without a student
within miles? I suggest we begin with independence as at least
some inducement—independence, I might add, accompanied
by a modification of University retention and promotion
policy: adherence to an explicit declaration that the University
shall bother no one for his bibliography during the years that
he is giving of himself in other ways and presumably growing
intellectually while at Birdwood.

(20) Now it seems contradictory to say that a man may be
independent when surrounded by students who want claims
on his time and energy. What I am speaking of is intellectual
independence of a serious and valuable kind—the
independence that will enable a professor to decide for
himself, with full carte blanche, exactly what he will teach,
what courses he will offer, what topics he is willing to pursue
in seminars for the year or two or three he is in residence. To
free him, in effect, from the obligation to teach his
department's required courses, its introductory surveys, and its
needed courses to "round out" the offerings; to relieve him of
College and department committee obligations and paper
work. To let him say, in effect; to students:

Photo By Lovelace Cook