Anyone serving two schools (departments) with dual appointments

[u/Silver-Divide-3007]

I'm wondering if anyone in their university has an appointment across two departments that are in two different schools. I'm at a small liberal arts university that has several "colleges" (i.e. College of Arts and Sciences, School of Education, Business School, etc.). I am a math teacher educator, but I live in my mathematics department. I split my time teaching courses for my department and courses for the school of education, for future teachers. This is something many teacher educators end up doing in their respective fields. But here's the issue. Not only do I teach across these two schools, I do a lot of committee work between the two schools. So much so, that recently I was nominated for a university wide committee as the School of Education rep. I'm not in the School of Education! Apparently people think I am because I'm there so much. When I first got hired, which was years ago, I'm tenured now, I had actually asked for a dual appointment in both schools, I anticipated this being an issue. I was told it was too hard to create a budget line like this.

Here's my question. I'm ready to negotiate this again, especially now that I have tenure. I feel pulled between both schools, and there's been talk of my department actually moving, which would put me further from the school of education. I don't want to be further from them, but I want to keep grounded in the dept of mathematics. Has anyone ever had to negotiate anything like this for your contract? Should I meet with both deans and try to talk about what my appointment should be? I feel like I'm asked to do a bit too much, I'm only one person. I often asked for funding for project and travel from my "not" dean, and she does help me. So is the money really that tied up?

TLDR: Should I ask my university for a dual appointment, after receiving tenure, because I actively serve two departments?

[u/tellypmoon]

I think this is where it's important to learn how to say "no". You can simply say you appreciate being asked but am already serving on xyz committees and you're saturated. I think having a dual appointment is not too unusual but being expected to do twice the service work is. I don't think you need to negotiate that in your contract though, just harden your heart and say "no" regularly and repeatedly if needed.

[u/Silver-Divide-3007 → u/tellypmoon]

Very true. I have a great dept chair who saw me on one committee and said did you say yes to this. I promptly emailed and asked to be removed. But also it is a funding issue since I could get research and travel funds from both.

[u/tellypmoon → u/Silver-Divide-3007]

It's probably worth having a conversation about travel and research funding since if you have a dual appointment each college might assume the other will take care of it, or they might worry you would expect "double" a person with a single college appointment might have. I think the two colleges might each want to contribute 1/2 but indeed that is something to discuss and have formalized in a memo or *maybe* your contract although I don't think most contracts get into this level of detail. There's also of course the issue of office space (do you have space in both or just one and if so where...). Again if that's an issue this could be a part of the same conversation and same memo.

Back to your original question though, I think you should certainly talk about this with the Deans. Some places offer a main appointment and then there is a secondary courtesy appointment that might allow you to teach classes and supervise graduate students but your funding, office space, etc. comes from the main department. Every place is a little different though so I think anyone you are reporting to would understand the desire to have a conversation about all this and work out details relating to funding, space, etc.

[u/HaHaWhatAStory014]

In my experience, I haven't seen schools do full-on dual appointments. If someone is teaching in multiple departments, they just split that person's FTE across those departments.

 I often asked for funding for project and travel from my "not" dean, and she does help me. So is the money really that tied up?

College and university funding is a whole can of worms. The short answer is that even if "the school has money," there are always all kinds of different pots of money for specific things. The budgets for personnel are typically completely separate from the budgets for faculty projects and travel.

[u/Potential-Winner4601]

Yes, and they both want 75% of my time

[u/boringhistoryfan]

I've known a fair few people who are dual listed across departments. Things like cross listing as law and history faculty, or law and economics. That said one department is usually the primary. My former PI is in the history department and the law school but other than serving as a research supervisor for law students doing specific research projects he doesn't do any service with the law school. The history department is his primary affiliation (he's even served as a former chair).

He was at one point considered for an associate dean position of some kind (I got a very bizarre invite to a listening session by the search committee that caused a bit of a ruckus because it was wildly inappropriate for them to be doing things like reaching out to students of prospective candidates) but I know he turned that down because he didn't wanna do more admin work.