Deadly Professors: A Faculty Development Mystery (review)

Thomas Jones’s second faculty development novel, Deadly Professors: A Faculty Development Mystery, is just that: a sophisticated faculty development guide neatly woven into the plot of a campy higher education murder mystery novel. As a work of fiction, Deadly Professors is a well-conceived parody of the mystery novel that takes place on the campus of a small, private, liberal arts campus in St. Paul, Minnesota.

At the core of the mystery are Jack Ramble, literature professor and department chair, and a group of his undergraduate students, who haphazardly (and I mean this in the best possible sense) fall into the study of African American mystery authors while taking Ramble’s honors literature class. As a result of their research and Ramble’s alternative approach to teaching the literature course, the students are able to unearth the key clue that leads to the mystery’s resolution.

Peppered throughout the novel are issues, concerns, and characters that should be familiar to anyone working in higher education: the bumbling administrator, debates over multiculturalism, the effect of digital technology on the modern classroom, the unsavory trustee, departmental infighting, funding issues, campaigns against the liberal arts, and generational gaps among faculty to name a few. All of these elements exist in the novel as a platform for what the book is actually about—faculty development.

Jones, whose expertise lies, in part, in faculty development, includes a chapter-by-chapter guide of discussion questions and faculty development activities that touch on all of the issues raised throughout the novel.

The deaths are as ghoulish and campy as anything you would find in a Vincent Price movie from the 1970s, and many of the characters in the novel follow suit: over-the-top stereotypes whose flat predictabilities serve as a foil to the more realistic and likeable characters—faculty and students, of course. Toward the end of the fiction portion of the text, readers of a certain age will no doubt summon up the dénouement of almost every Scooby Doo episode: “And I would have gotten away with it, too. . . ” In fact, one line from Deadly Professors reads, “If it weren’t for you two professors and those students in your class, we’d have never suspected more than what was in front of our noses” (p. 155). Add a Great Dane and a psychedelic van, and you are there.

Corn and campiness aside, Deadly Professors takes a light-hearted, fun, and fresh approach to what can be the bane of many professors’ careers: faculty development. While the book will be of great interest to faculty new to the profession, more seasoned professionals will also find value in the inclusive and novel means by which Jones approaches faculty development.

The workshop portion of the text approaches professional enrichment through the lens of active learning. Development becomes a group activity that requires thought and conversation regarding serious issues facing most in American higher education. Deadly Professors is not a “how to” guide for dealing with contemporary issues on campus, but more of a “how would you” guide, allowing faculty to respond locally to problems facing campuses nationally.