Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 7, 1992 TAG: 9201070021
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Madelyn Rosenberg
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
TOUGH TIMES CHANGE WAY OF REWARDING
Frozen salaries for state workers is old news now - no raises last year, a bad prognosis for this year.And morale, if it hasn't plummeted already, is in danger of following the bathwater down the drain.
But there are people who do little things from time to time to boost morale - people who were doing it even before the economy took a downturn.
Take Virginia Tech President James McComas.
"If I see a floor that looks especially clean, or waxed, I drop a note to the janitors," he said recently, not meaning for it to show up in the newspaper.
Times like these require a little more creativity when it comes to positive reinforcement.
At Tech's Management System Laboratories, good deeds and good jobs are rewarded with eagle feathers.
"It was originally designed to say, `Thank you for doing a good job,' " Jim Hughes, a research associate and former executive assistant to the director of MSL, said of the 8-year-old tradition. It was not designed to replace money and never could.
Still, "It helps," he said.
"People nominate someone for doing something a little extra or doing their job well. We try it every month, and we have a meeting where we pull everyone together and read off the eagle feathers."
The "feathers" are put in walnut eagles, which sit on every desk. They hang around cubes or offices. It is a chance to recognize people who may otherwise not be recognized, Hughes said. There has been some re-evaluating of the feathers in the office of late - some staff members are concerned about the meaning behind each feather.
But in general, Hughes said, they are attached to the idea of keeping the eagle. And the plan is to continue.
"I know we'll still have it," Hughes said. "The people who work here appreciate the eagle feathers."
The feathers cannot take the place of more money, Hughes said, but they do maintain a sort of group cohesiveness, something that's important now as everyone takes on a bigger load.
"For what it's worth, it gives you that little intangible feeling you get when someone acknowledges when you do something well," he said.
"And given the economic problems we're facing, and given that the people at the university are taking the brunt of it. . . . Well, it won't take the place of money. But it may keep us a little happier," he said. "Warm fuzzies help every once in a while."
There will be another change in the eagle feather ceremony, perhaps another result of the economy.
"They won't be made of walnut anymore," Hughes said. "We'll probably move to a cheaper kind of wood and stain it. It's still a nice little momento."
Professors write stories, books, articles and essays to help prove their worth and earn tenure.
At Virginia Tech, George Graham helped write a definition.
Graham, a physical education professor, recently helped a committee of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education find the meaning of a "physically educated person."
But it goes beyond that.
The six-person committee spent five years studying suggestions from physical educators nationwide. In addition to defining a physically educated person as someone who is physically skilled, active, fit and knowledgeable about physical activities and their benefits, the committee developed "benchmarks" of physical education to help teachers develop their own teaching standards and evaluate students.
"For the first time ever in physical education, we now have a unified direction of what these programs should be doing for kids," Graham said.
In math, for instance, teachers have known that you learn addition in one grade, multiplication tables in another.
"Now we have that in physical education," Graham said.
In elementary schools, pupils should be learning how to throw, catch or kick. Later, they learn to integrate that into sports.
Graham said the committee also wants youngsters to understand why physical fitness is important, and more importantly, to enjoy it.
"In the past, physical education classes have turned a lot of kids off," he said. "Now they're going to turn them on. We're going to do away with the stuff of the past: 10 kids playing basketball and 20 waiting for a turn. We're trying to design programs now so the kids can really learn something."
In some places, he said, teachers already are doing this.
In others, "I'm afraid they're not."
Sometime soon, though, expect most schools to get with the program.
> Madelyn Rosenberg is this newspaper's higher-education reporter.