Re: Let’s Highlight Podiatry’s Positive Side

Just a quick note to refute the erroneous responses by two individuals who have never had full-time faculty appointments at podiatry colleges that are part of major universities. Not adjunct.

When a faculty member signs a university contract demanding 50 hours of your time per week of their time, there are usually stipulations attached. For example, monies generated outside the university belong to the university. Get a $1,000 honorarium, most, if not all of it goes to the university unless special arrangements are made, which cause problems amongst the other faculty. Invent some biomechanical device, the university gets up to 95 percent of the profit. It's called intellectual property and the work is done on university time, hence it belongs to the university.

Testify in court, that's university time unless you take vacation time and it is approved. Testifying may take up to three days. Explain no vacation time to the kids who want to go to Disney World. Same goes for a seminar; that’s vacation time.

Committee work. There is a meeting almost every day, especially if you are the chair of medicine and surgery. Every curriculum committee meeting expects your presence. You are the authority and you must come prepared, which takes time.

Other committee meetings, like surgical review, which means you review charts, rank and promotion, student discipline, student promotions, admissions committee, animal use committee, human use committee, institution review board, preparing lectures, delivering lectures, constructing exams, correcting exams, school clinic and clinical teaching, writing letters of recommendation for students as a chairman, interviewing prospective students, interviewing prospective faculty, faculty rank and promotions, ethics committee.

Residency selection, residency chair, residency lectures. Doing your own research and publishing if you expect an academic promotion and pay raise, outside community projects like local cancer society, Red Cross, local podiatry society, then any of the hospital committees. There may be a clinical practice plan in the spare 30 minutes, but the school takes 50 percent for overhead.

I commiserate with Drs. Lombardi and Kesselman, but you really have no idea what real faculty members have on their plates these days. Faculty members give more to the profession than you can ever imagine. Read the Hippocratic oath and see what it says about "the teachers" than take it to heart. The title "Professor" really means something, but it won't deposit at the bank. Podiatric faculty influence the next generation, and I hope more than the two of you are incensed.

Respectfully,
—Rod Tomczak, DPM, MD, EdD