Committee Members

General Guidelines

• Try to match people with tasks based on skills, interests, and willingness
• Pay attention to the motivation and personal goals of the members

Assessing Interests and Skills

Ideally, you need a complementary mix of people who have (or are willing to learn) the following:

• Technical expertise (e.g., how does one evaluate an IRB proposal or an Organized Research Unit?)
• Task-management skills (planning, coordinating, etc.)
• Interpersonal skills (helping the members work together)

It is not often that you have complete discretion over selecting the members of the committee. You can however assess the skills and interests of the current committee members. There is no fool-proof method for getting this information but the following may be useful:

• Self-report - ask members what their skills and interests are

• Past accomplishments - what other projects, committees, or experiences have members been involved with that might be relevant?

Keeping Members Engaged

• Try to understand personal goals and agendas (e.g., tenure, promotion, learning, pressures from the home college, etc.) and adapt assignments to help those when possible

• Find ways to recognize contributions and celebrate individual and team successes (you can ask the members to decide how to do this). Some ideas:
  • Low cost ideas:
    • write letters for members (remember the dossier!)
    • ask for a letter of recognition from the chair, dean, vice-president, etc.
    • verbally acknowledge a great job in the meeting
    • send online thank you cards (Amazon.com has free ones as do other sites)
    • have outsiders (chair, dean, provost, vice-president or other involved administrator) express their thanks to the committee (in person is wonderful but email works great too)
    • designate some time in a meeting for self-congratulations
  • Ideas that require some funds:
  • Bring food
  • Bring coffee or other such beverages
  • Make small contributions to a social fund used for celebratory events
  • Tickets to a university event or local theater
  • Small gift certificates

 

• Try to make member contributions unique - the more dissimilar the contributions the more likely members will feel their work is necessary

• Try to make member contributions identifiable - make sure the assignments are visible and communicated to the rest of the team

• Have the committee set up procedures to help members work together and accomplish tasks.