College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

University professor

Sociology's William Woodman selected for faculty honor.
Take a look at the criteria for faculty members to be selected as a university professor.

A faculty member must have outstanding performance in at least one of the three areas of teaching, research and professional service.

After looking at William Woodman's accomplishments in his 30-year career at Iowa State, he was probably a slam dunk for the award.

His research has focused on the study of large bureaucracies and the social impacts of technology, including interdisciplinary research and teaching in the areas of transportation, nuclear engineering and agricultural biotechnology.

A recipient of both internal and external teaching awards, Woodman has also taught 18 different Iowa State courses, including team teaching courses that reach far beyond the Department of Sociology.

One of the first advocates of the personal computer on campus, Woodman has long provided leadership in developing the Department of Sociology's computer laboratory facilities. His knowledge of computers has also translated into the classroom where he was the first in his department to use PowerPoint presentations and to employ digital video clips in classroom presentations.

"I think it (digital video clips) is potentially the wave of the future," he said. "Why describe something if you have a visual image of it?"

However Woodman won’t show a video clip if it interrupts the flow of his lecture. In his classroom, he will continue talking on a subject while showing digital images that reinforce the topic.

"This is a visual age," he said. "Most academics, and I include myself in this, are not particularly visually literate. We use computers and their technology as if computers are simply adding machines. We'll really change things when we start using computers in ways that do not simply jazz up the medieval lecture format."

That, Woodman says, means supplementing lectures. He believes that current students want to and can multi-task, effectively listening to his lecture and watching a video clip or looking at a web site that is nested in a PowerPoint presentation.

In addition to Woodman's classroom and research efforts, he has been an active member of the Faculty Senate. For the past 12 years he has held numerous leadership roles in the organization, including serving two terms as president.

"I guess my research background is why I enjoy institutional service so much," Woodman said. "As an officer in the Faculty Senate I get to see how a large organization such as Iowa State operates.

"It's cheap research being able to watch the University up close over an extended period of time. It's been absolutely priceless."

During his tenure as Faculty Senate president, Woodman took advantage of his background to implement changes in the organization’s structure, including establishing the offices of president-elect and past president.

Other accomplishments during Woodman's two years as Faculty Senate president include initiating meetings of Faculty Senate presidents of the three Regents institutions, establishing a new Faculty Senate council (Resource Planning and Allocation), videotaping meetings for broadcast on the local cable channel, securing release time for the Faculty Senate president and president-elect, and serving as president when the promotion and tenure document was rewritten and post-tenure review was adopted.

While his Faculty Senate service has provided Woodman with an up close and personal view of Iowa State's organizational behavior, he continues to study other complex organizations.

"Most people think of organizations as mountains," he said. "They're just there. But these organizations were created, are run and can be changed by people. Most people ask the wrong questions. There is a lot of wonderful research on this subject, particularly what makes an organization effective. A good many organizations don't have any idea how to be effective."

Woodman says that's because these organizations don't have a clear goal or an idea of how to achieve that goal.

"Every organization ought to decide what it has to do and measure how closely they can come to meeting that goal with the resources at their disposal. Many get so bound up in the process that they forget why they are doing anything at all. Finally, the last century enshrined the goal of efficiency as next to godliness in organizations, but many in the public are beginning to realize that efficiently providing bad service is not progress," Woodman said.