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By Bob Dyer
Beacon Journal columnist
Published on Thursday, Mar 27, 2008
I'm writing this column at home.
Why? Because I can.
Why can I? Because my boss isn't the dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Akron.
Dean Ronald Levant apparently believes his people should be chained to their desks.
Philosophy professor Howard Ducharme Jr. says Levant yanked his department chairmanship because Ducharme wasn't punching in at 8 and punching out at 5.
Levant denies it. He told the Beacon Journal's Carol Biliczky that Ducharme's office hours were ''not the driver of (the) decision,'' but declined to identify the driver.
Autopilot, perhaps?
As it stands, the dean seems to have labeled Ducharme a slacker. Which is odd, given the fact that this 11-year chair works his tail off, is respected by his peers and has presided over a department in which student enrollment has nearly doubled during his tenure.
This ''slacker'' has developed and taught six new courses during the last four years, and has carried more than the standard course load in five of the last eight semesters.
You can't read through ''Dewey'' Ducharme's 14-page Chair Evaluation Review without realizing this fellow has been getting all kinds of things done, both on and off campus.
Should a department chair be accessible to students and fellow faculty? Absolutely. But you don't have to sit at your desk all day to be accessible.
Memo to the dean: Things have changed since Akron workers spent their days watching the clock on the factory wall.
This newspaper first used the term ''telecommuting'' back in 1985. Today, as much as a quarter of the U.S. work force regularly does its job from somewhere other than the office.
To be sure, some employees will take advantage of the freedom, sitting at home eating bonbons and watching Jerry Springer reruns. But it doesn't take long to figure out who's working and who isn't.
I certainly didn't have any trouble getting ahold of Ducharme. I sent him an e-mail at 4:57 p.m. Monday and got a response at 6:59 p.m. He continued to e-mail me until 9 o'clock that night. From home.
If I were running a college — or any other business — I wouldn't want somebody whose greatest claim to fame is logging 8.0 hours at his desk every day. Give me somebody who doesn't leave his job at the office. Somebody who checks his e-mail at home at night. Somebody who wakes up at 3 a.m. and scrawls things down.
I don't work at home regularly. I do it only when the weather is bad or when I know I need to spend most of the day writing, rather than researching or interviewing.
Without the ringing telephones and the office chatter, I'm much more efficient. I can write in four hours what would normally take me six or eight.
But I prefer to be in the office because I learn things from the chatter, and I learn things from the ringing phones, and I even learn things from the drive in. But that's personal taste. An employer who trusts his employees offers the option.
Ironically, Ducharme's speciality is ethics. He not only has introduced a host of interdisciplinary ethics classes, but serves on the ethics committees at Akron General Medical Center and Barberton Hospital.
''Use of bullying, intimidation and harassment is unethical when our children do it on the playground,'' Ducharme says. ''. . . Wouldn't it be wrong for adults to do it to adults?''
You don't need a Ph.D. to answer that one.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com.
I'm writing this column at home.
Get the full article here.
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