<p>“My favorite head-scratcher is ‘ad coms’, as used on cc to describe an individual admissions officer. We really need to get rid of this.”</p>
<p>Interesting…Personally, when I use the term, Ad com (or adcom), I’m referring not to a single admissions officer, but to the entire (ad)missions (com)mittee, as the decision to admit or deny entry to an institution normally rests with the committee, and not just a single member. I guess I’ve always assumed others were using the word in the same manner.</p>
<p>Oh, dear. That’s the first time I’ve seen college professors likened to fish. </p>
<p>From the Harvard Task Force on Teaching and Career Development:</p>
<p>“Faculty take great pride in delivering compelling lectures and orchestrating seminars.” (p. 13). </p>
<p>The phrases “senior faculty” and “junior faculty” are sprinkled throughout the report, obviously referring to individual tenured or untenured professors, not the faculty as a collective body. When that is the case, then the singular is used.</p>
<p>"Collective nouns are words that imply more than one person but that are considered singular and take a singular verb, such as: group, team, committee, class, and family.</p>
<p>The team runs during practice.
The committee decides how to proceed.
The family has a long history.
My family has never been able to agree."</p>
<p>Reference: Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue</p>
<p>Marite, it works for me, when referring to a subset of the larger faculty ie: junior faculty, senior faculty, Law School faculty, etc. to use “is” or “does”. But, “faculty take great pride…” and “faculty do not object to questions” just don’t work for me! </p>
<p>Are you saying it’s contextual? Which usage are you saying is correct? “The faculty WAS present for the convocation.” ? The faculty WERE present for the convocation. ???</p>
<p>It may not work for you, but it certainly worked for the joint authors of the Task Force, all senior faculty at Harvard. They are comfortable with the use of the plural. And please note that I used the plural pronoun to refer to these authors, although faculty is a singular noun. </p>
<p>In the sentence I quoted, it is clear that “faculty” refers to individual faculty members since it is not expected that all 700 members of the faculty come out in force to deliver the same lectures or orchestrate the same seminars, but that they do so as individuals. Hence the use of the plural.</p>
<p>As to your specific question, I think “the faculty was present for the convocation” is correct, because it was there as a collective body.
“The faculty was represented at the bargaining table by…” but “Faculty were very scarce at the reception for incoming freshmen.” </p>
<p>After living in England for several years, I am used to formulations such as “Her Majesty’s Government are of the view that…”</p>
<p>What continues to irk me after four decades in this country is the use of the plural pronoun in conjunction with a singular noun as in “if your student is late, they will be marked as absent.” I’d rather do as the French (surprise!) and use the masculine to encompass both feminine and masculine referents. It’s not ideal but it’s at least grammatically correct. Of course, the French have expressions such as “Madame, le professeur…” a legacy of times when only men could be profs.</p>
<p>I would like to share what I’ve learned about the correct usage of ‘faculty’. I did a bit of research, the result of which has been enlightening and surprisingly simplistic. I emailed the writing center of a well-respected university and asked the question that has been asked here. Here is their reply:</p>
<p>[The plural of ‘faculty’ is ‘faculties.’ Let’s try exchanging ‘faculty’ with the word ‘group.’
“Our group is here…” is correct.
“The groups are here…” is correct.
Therefore, ‘is’ is the correct verb to use with ‘faculty’ and ‘are’ is the correct verb to use with 'faculties.}</p>
<p>Most LACs and universities encourage students, especially incoming freshmen to utilize the writing center on campus, so I thought I’d just ask the experts. No doubt there are ‘experts’ here who will disagree with what they’ve said!</p>
<p>Except that faculties, when they do not refer to our senses and skills, refer to separate bodies, e.g the faculties of arts and sciences, law, medicine, etc…, each of which is a collective body. But faculty, as in junior and senor faculty refers to individual profs. And so does a sentence "“our faculty offer compelling lectures.” The fact is that people have used faculty as a shorthand for our faculty members.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen the plural of faculty used to refer to several profs in the same department or single Faculty.</p>
<p>Here is an interesting example of the use of Faculty in both the singular and plural from the Wharton website. In some sentences, it is clear that faculty refers to individual profs, and the pronoun is therefore plural. In the next sentence, “the world’ largest” obviously refers to the faculty as a collective body and thus takes the singular. The third sentence awkwardly returns to individual profs who bring real world knowledge into the classrooms (similar to the Harvard faculty who offer compelling lectures) and thus once again, the pronoun referring to the faculty is plural.</p>
<p>Marite, you said that people have used faculty as a shorthand for faculty members. With all due respect to you (and I DO value this exchange)…just because “people” use it in that context, doesn’t necessarily mean those “people” are correct, no matter how educated they are OR where they work! They should either say ‘our faculty members offer compelling lectures’ or ‘our faculty offers compelling lectures’. I’m not sure their choice of pronouns is correct in this case–plural pronoun/singular noun. …Seems to me, they should’ve said, “What separates the Wharton faculty from all others is the depth of ITS experience with real-world problems.”</p>
<p>In every college and university I’ve ever been, administrators and profs have used the term faculty both in the plural and the singular. So every one who’s ever used the term faculty in the plural must be wrong. It does not bother me to be told so, but it won’t stop the faculty (plural) from speaking and writing as they (plural) always have done. Might as well try to turn back the tide. </p>
<p>People seem to be comfortable speaking of junior or senior faculty in the plural, knowing full well that these terms refer to individual junior or senior members of the faculty. Is there a difference? I, for one, can’t see it.</p>
<p>Here is an excerpt from a Princeton website:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It is clear that “interested faculty” here does not refer to the collective body of the Princeton faculty, but to individual members of the faculty. I’m sure I could go to every college website and find a similar usage. So all these profs and all the administrators are wrong? Hmmm… And they’re in charge of cultivating good writing skills in our kids?</p>
<p>I hate to break up this high brow discussion but I do want to know how did we get to “went to prom” and “went to THE Wal-mart”. Has anyone noticed that people who go to Wal-mart say THE Wal-mart. Maybe because there is more than one??
Seems to me it should be “went to the prom” and went to Wal-Mart" but to each his own.</p>
<p>Ebeeeee, apparently if those who teach at Harvard or Wharton or Pinceton or Yale said their DS/DD went to prom…it would become acceptable usage AND correct!! Did somebody say “high-brow”?</p>
<p>Regardless of who says it, I simply don’t think it’s grammatically correct to say, faculty ARE invited…</p>
<p>The websites I cited represent the usage of several thousand individual members of various faculties at these universities. If they’re all wrong, so be it.</p>
<p>I don’t think that HYPP faculty ever talked about Wal-Mart or proms–at least not in my hearing, and I’m acquainted with faculty (plural) from all four universities. In my neck of the woods, though (home to both Harvard and MIT), high schoolers, and presumably their parents, talk of going to THE Prom.</p>
<p>Say “graduated from X” not “graduated x.” You say just plain “graduated” and sounds like you didn’t.<br>
While I am at it, you receive an “invitation” not an “invite.” And don’t ask “where is John at?” Drop the “at.” And don’t say “He invited John and myself.” It’s only “myself” when you do it to “yourself.” Lastly, not ironclad “different from” is preferred to “different than.”
Follow all of the above and your perceived IQ (and social rank) will rise several notches.</p>
<p>I have noticed in the last few years, especially on CC, the use of “then” instead of “than” by high school/college-aged kids. When I first started noticing it, I thought it was just a typo, but I see it so frequently that I’m not sure. Has anyone else noticed this? “I’d rather go to State U then to graduate with lots of debt.”</p>