***Please note: This section has been superseded by a more recent policy. **
Collaborative, interdisciplinary study constitutes the heart of the Evergreen curriculum. An integral and indispensable component of such study is the faculty seminar in which faculty members meet to conduct their own seminar, and in which they discuss materials and ideas which either will be explored later in student seminars (as in a coordinated studies program) or which in some other manner will be brought to the teaching of participating faculty. In faculty seminars, the faculty draw upon their respective areas of expertise to share viewpoints and to offer criticism of the subject at hand. They are not discussions of teaching but represent an important scholarly activity and in part replace the "publish or perish" syndrome prevalent at other institutions.
In recognition of the central curricular role of collaborative, interdisciplinary study and the significance of faculty seminars for growth and development, faculty are expected to be regularly and consistently, if not continuously, involved in faculty seminars of the kind characterized above. Therefore, following the assignment of faculty to programs, individual or group contracts, or other duties, faculty who are not in programs and thereby already in teams, are expected to either align themselves with existing teams or to form their own teams among themselves for the purpose of faculty seminars. In either event, the members of the seminar are to negotiate the particular details of their collective work, including a list of the materials to be discussed, place them in a covenant, notify their deans of the arrangement and include a copy of the covenant in their portfolio, along with executive statements by the seminar members of one another’s performance in faculty seminar. However, it is not the intention of these expectations to inhibit individual scholarship. Therefore, an exception to the above arrangement will be possible upon submitting an alternative plan to the deans, together with appropriate evaluative procedures, and upon receiving written acknowledgement from a dean. The overriding concern will be that in the long run one’s scholarly activities will be consonant with Evergreen’s commitment to collaborative, interdisciplinary study.