Eric's recent post about workshop culture (hearkening back to Kim's earlier post on the topic) got me thinking about the related issue of faculty visiting culture. Our school has not had a terribly robust visiting culture – either visits in or visits out – in recent memory, and I understand historically did not have much of a visiting culture either. This does not seem to relate to any one dean's philosophy as the minimal visiting culture has endured over many deans.
I'm visiting out this semester – and looking forward to trading Cleveland winter for Florida's "winter"! And I'm interested in doing so for a number of reasons, including meeting new people, finding out how different schools operate, and what different student bodies are like. I would also really like to see more people visiting us either as podium fills or as look-see visitors or VAPs. We've had a number of "distinguished practitioner" type visitors over the years and these folks have all been great, but I would really like to have more academic/scholarly exchanges in the future.
So I'm interested in feedback on different schools' cultures when it comes to visits. In particular, I'm interested in how many inbound visits are ideal in an academic year and how often local faculty visit out. Are faculty encouraged to visit out or is it frowned upon? How welcoming are faculty to visitors from the outside? How integrated are visitors into the life of the school in general?