Posted today on Inside Higher Ed, is an interesting article entitled “Don’t Be Afraid of Committees.” It is written by Adam Kotsko (see his blog here), a doctoral student in philosophy at Chicago Theological Seminary. He surmises that, far from a waste of time, serving on various committees can become an integral part of the educational formation of aspiring academics, helping them to learn the nuts and bolts of academia. Personally, I can’t imagine being involved on committees while in my M.Div. and trying to make the grades and doing other things that are of the utmost importance to doctoral applications (not to mention M.Div. extras like my part-time pastoral internship this past year and a full-time internship with the non-profit Bread for the World this Summer — which I’m very excited about, by the way). Perhaps it is naive, but I do imagine letting my guard down a little bit once I’m a doctoral student, leaving open more time for learning experiences on committees and whatnot. I would be interested to know if search committees appreciate seeing committee work on the CV when hiring new doctoral grads. Here are a couple clips from the article:

My service on Academic Council also made me eligible to serve on the search committee for an open faculty position in New Testament. That same year, I began a two-year term as the seminary’s student liaison to the American Academy of Religion, which required submitting various reports and — of course — serving on a committee at the national meeting, which that year largely served as an opportunity for us to ask a high-ranking administrator in the academy questions about the organization and its future.

[ . . . ]

All of this was very valuable experience, and although it sounds like a lot of work, it really wasn’t. Much of the actual decision-making, for both the faculty and the board, took place in the closed executive sessions. Thus the responsibilities of students, and so also the expectations of outside preparation work, were limited: Our primary role was to allow student voices to be involved in the conversation. Even at the peak of my involvement, I was averaging under two hours a week, and most of the time it was considerably less. Since I was in my coursework stage, I was normally on campus anyway on the days when the committees met.