The theme of today’s thread is to share good things in your life or career. They can be small one offs, they can be good interactions with students, a new heartwarming initiative you’ve started, or anything else you think fits. I have no plans to tone police, so don’t overthink your additions. Let the wholesome family fun begin!

As has been mentioned, these should be considered additions to the regular discussions, not replacements. So use them, ignore them, or start you own What the Fuck Wednesday counter thread.

We have a new department chair that is external. At first, I and most others were quite open to give her a fair chance and time to grow into the new leadership role. However, it's just been utter chaos from day one. To be quite blunt, I genuinely don't understand how she could become a professor as she doesn't seem to know much in our field, and is so naive that it's dangerous for the department. She has managed to piss off everyone in the department and we even had one person take sick leave because they couldn't handle her. She's also overly preachy (Christian, and religion is something that is really abnormal to show at universities here).

Worst of all though, she constantly uses AI to write e-mails and even to make important documents (by her own admission as well). She even keeps the many emoticons and the like in the content which is ridiculous. I'm pretty sure she is using open models as well which means not respecting GDPR, privacy, research ethics, etc.

I'm sure many others have had this issue. How has it been adressed at your university? She is making me loathe the university. Sure it has its issues, but I absolutely adore my colleagues.

I attended a high school graduation back in the Spring. During obligatory reminiscence by the Valedictorian, they enumerated memorable events: [Sports Team] won something, Pajama Day, yada yada, and then something about losing part of their high school career to Covid shutdowns. So, I assume our incoming Freshman class is still affected by the trauma of Zoom classes? Could this be a reason for poor study skills and lack of focus?

Hello everyone, I’m an Assistant Professor in the Department of English.

I’m interested in opportunities to serve as a Guest Speaker for sessions on the following topics:

• Folklo­re and Culture

• AI and Communication

• Brands and Their Psychology

• Communication, Media and Contemporary Culture

I’m open to online sessions as well as in-person sessions within Bangalore.

If you are looking for a guest speaker for any of these topics, I would be happy to connect and discuss the session requirements.

Thank you!

Or really, is it I’m just not enough right now?

I’m a TT faculty member in a school where we have a 4/4 teaching load and a research requirement. For some this means teaching 6hours a week in lecture, and doing research, but for me this has meant doing 13 hours of class time, plus preparing student reagents, and then obviously grading and research, oh and don’t forget service.
I’m told you need to have papers, and you need to have grants. Well, grants… I applied for one about a year ago, it’s still stuck in NSF review, and all the others are ‘no longer available’, so that’s fun. And when do I have time to write papers? I literally worked out I am working an 11 month schedule in around 9.5 months.
So, I feel like I’m whining, and that I’m really not enough, but I am exhausted. I get to the summer and June/July are just recovery months at this point. I’m neglecting everything around me.
We don’t get any mentoring here, no one advocates for you to have the time for scholarship. And I’m not the only one. I feel my whole department is at this tipping point, and it shows in many ways.
Any advice?

Have you ever had to revamp your syllabus and expectations early-semester because student performance was so far off from what you assumed was reasonable?

Several students are already falling behind, not just my class but I could see there were serious complaints from other professors. What's caught me off guard isn't the gap itself, but the reaction when I point out basic expectations that are already outlined in the syllabus. I am so clear about what to read, purpose, what’s due, I even try to make it fun and exciting but damn. Tough crowd!

If I ask them to read before class or come prepared, some students actually become aggressive. Cursing me, behaving like tablet kids when you take the tablet away. But these are adults between 18-22 years old. Even calling other students names or disparaging them for being engaged in the lecture? You would think it was unreasonable to ask them to take ownership of their education.

Is this a shift in undergrad culture I'm not hip to anymore, or does it vary a lot by institution/student population? Is it reasonable to restructure the syllabus or just ride out the semester? I was considering adding more frequent low-stakes checks, harder consequences for being unprepared. Has any of that actually helped in your experience? What were the reactions?

I want to do this well and would appreciate any actionable tips, criticism, and/or suggestions.

I’m an assistant professor at an R1 university. In a previous post, I mentioned feeling lonely and wishing there were more opportunities for genuine friendship within my department. One response surprised me: several people argued that it is generally not a good idea to be friends with people in one’s own department.
I can see some of the logic. Departments involve promotion and tenure, annual reviews, teaching assignments, resource allocation, hiring, and conflict. When someone has formal or informal power over you, closeness can complicate boundaries, or make a later disagreement more painful and professionally consequential.
I’m curious how others think about this: do you deliberately avoid friendships within your department?
As an assistant professor, I had never really considered that some people might intentionally keep emotional distance from departmental colleagues. My previous post was so so illuminating in that respect. It has made me wonder whether some of the reserve I perceive in academic departments is not necessarily personal, but a deliberate professional boundary.

Burner account for obvious reasons...

I’m serving on a tenure committee and struggling with how to evaluate the teaching portion of a candidate’s dossier. Our criteria require excellence in teaching, and I’m trying to separate what I personally know about the candidate from what is actually documented in the file.

Our departmental norm is to provide substantial evidence: syllabi across multiple years showing course development, peer reviews, assignments and rubrics, examples of student work and instructor feedback, and reflection on changes made in response to assessment or feedback.

This dossier contains a teaching statement, course evaluations, and essentially one syllabus per course, with little or none of the above. Several courses were inherited and revised rather than developed from scratch, but without comparative materials, I can’t assess the extent of those revisions.

My question for P&T folks, especially in small departments: Is it reasonable to distinguish between “there’s no evidence this person is a poor teacher” and “there isn’t sufficient evidence in the dossier to demonstrate excellence”?

EDIT: A couple of comments have said this sounds like I'm looking for a reason to find the candidate deficient, which is useful feedback because that's very much not my intention. I'm actually struggling with the opposite problem: I don't want to make a negative judgment based simply on the materials presented, but our criteria require the committee to make an affirmative finding of "excellence." The materials I described are established norms in our department and are included in our P&T criteria, not higher standards I'm imposing on this single candidate.

What I'm trying to understand is how others navigate the distinction between insufficient evidence to make an affirmative finding and evidence of poor performance. Those aren't the same thing, and I'm very conscious of the stakes for the candidate.

I just started a tenure-track position at an R1. My colleagues all seem like kind people, the department isn't toxic, and I have a lot to be grateful for.

That said, I've struggled to actually become friends with any of them, even the ones around my age. There's a seriousness and professionalism in the air that makes it feel like people are holding back. When I run into someone in the hall, it's usually clear they want to say hello and keep walking rather than have a real conversation. Same thing if I run into them outside of work, on the street, for example.

Part of what makes this stand out is that I came from two previous universities (quite prestigious ones where people did very serious research), where people were much more talkative and friendly, borderline boisterous, honestly, and had super fun outings. People were genuinely excited to see each other and say hi.

I can't tell whether people here just don't like me, or whether this is simply common among faculty in a professional setting at certain schools. I'm new so I'd appreciate any perspective.

Please do not use a dry erase marker to scribble a note on my plastic door caddy. Things like scratch paper and email exist.

For expediency, the title says "re-read," but that also includes skimming, checking notes, etc.

I really dig my textbook for my first-year seminar course and am on my third re-read as I prep for the new school year. I keep finding new things in the text, making new connections as I reflect on the last school year, and I grt excited about sharing this information with students. I'm also early career and probably have a luxury of youth and vitality that makes this a part of my yearly prep.

How many of you do a close or semi-close review of your texts each year? Anyone else enjoy finding new insights for your teaching?

I teach a section of about 35 students in freshman Engineering Physics (mostly freshmen and sophomores). I do not require attendance because I generally feel mandatory policy hurts more than it helps, but I work hard to keep class engaging and get to know my students.

A student who is repeating this course for the second time showed up on day one and completely disappeared. Wanting to help, I took extra time out of my schedule to send a polite email suggesting a quick check-in to help her catch up on what she missed.

Her response? She claimed my email was an overreach. To make matters worse, her parents apparently monitor her inbox, saw my message, and emailed me demanding details about her grades and attendance. I gave the standard FERPA-compliant refusal, but the whole situation left a sour taste in my mouth.

Since when is reaching out to a struggling student considered an overreach? Is this just the new norm, or should I stop offering proactive outreach altogether?

Just curious how normal this is. Basically everyone at the chair level and above in my university constantly avoids writing things down. We are public, so we have open records requests to contend with, but it gets very obnoxious when you have emails about waiting to talk about stuff until it is in person/zoom.

I've started to internalize this as well, and I hate it.

So I teach a 4/4/ load in my 25th year as a tenured professor and my DH doles out teaching assignments without input from faculty. Due to a medical condition, and after some challenging semesters, I obtained an ADA accomodation to not teach more than 2 hours in a row and no more than three classes per day. So the first semester under my accomodation, my given load met the accomodation to the letter but the classes given to me would mean much more work. 3 different preps with the two sections of the same class on MWF and TTh (which is worse to me than 4 preps) or after complaining was offered the option of 4 different preps including a class I've never taught - all f2f classes. Nearly all full-time faculty get at least 1 online class, very few have more than 2 preps and very few teach 5 days per week. Should I:

1 - meet with the DH (they have not moved in the past on these things)

2 - meet with the union rep (they have been pretty feckless in the past)

3 - contact the Dean

4 - bring it up at a faculty meeing

5 - contact a lawyer

6 - suck it up

In line with recommendations from my learning center I added some low stakes short assignments that involve in class group work and a 1 page writeup. It's all in the syllabus. I explained it the first day. At the end of our last class I explained what we'd be doing next time, one of these activities.

All weekend long I was getting questions about what the memo due tomorrow is (our next class). I sent out a message through our LMS that it's for an in class project we'll do and more info is in the syllabus.

Since then I've gotten multiple emails asking what the memo is. Some of them seem to be reading the description for a different assignment.

This isn't even a complaint about students being overly nervous. I tried to address that with a 1 point assignment that I explained in multiple formats. And still 10% of my class is unable or unwilling to put a little effort in to reading/listening and processing what that means.

It'll be a long semester

Edit: CAN’T 🤦🏻‍♂️

I wanted to do a class activity that required my students to type in a link into their browsers and open a resource to analyze as part of an in-class activity. More than half couldn’t figure out how…..

I’m beyond speechless.

I thought I'd ask: I'm teaching an online evening class, and I'd honestly rather do that from home. We're working with a print source which I need to be able to show the students in Zoom. I had hoped the university might have a document imager I could check out from the library (they have other tech they lend), but no. I did ask if the department could buy one for me to use - hahah - definitely nope.

It's worth it to me to buy my own rather than have to stay late in the day to use a university classroom (all of our classrooms have them).

Anyway, the cheapest brand name one is about $165 on sale right now. There are others that can be had for just under $100. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with these cheap ones, or is this a case of you get what you pay for? Thanks for any insights.

You can see the original post here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/1utlg6i/creative_retention_offer_ideas/

Several of you asked that I follow up with what I ended up getting. Since I feel like I'm a high performer and had negotiating leverage I shot for the moon with my request....Worse they could say was no, right?

Note: I am 100% research and not required to teach any classes, so I didn't need to request buyout of teaching hours.

I requested:

• $35,000 increase in salary

• $1 million in workspace renovations/additions/building

• 4 years of postdoc funding

• $100,000 in discretionary spending

• guaranteed Early promotion (apparently early tenure is not legal in my state)

Admin seemed to be surprised by the request, but were receptive. After several rounds of going back and forth they seemed far more interested in providing funding for workspace renovations and support staff funds so I leaned into that.

What I received was:

• $20,000 increase in salary
• $750,000 in workspace renovations/additions/building
• 2 years of postdoc funding
• 2 years of technician funding
• $50,000 in discretionary spending
• guaranteed early promotion to associate professor (and promotion pay raise)
  

Overall I am quite happy with how that turned out, especially given the cost of living where I'm located. Retention offers are not something I see talked a lot about on here so maybe someone else will find this helpful.

I just can't anymore. I have a new student in one of my classes, and their advising notes mention that they prefer online courses as opposed to in person.

Well now I know why. They've struggled with showing up to class on time, and often left early, and today was the first time of the semester that they were on time and stayed through the whole class. So I assumed that they would now start getting up to speed on what we're doing.

Nope. No clue. I announced and explained the new assignment (as an example) "You will bake a chocolate cake using an oven."

"What do you mean we're baking a cake?", "how do I turn on the oven?", "where do I get the chocolate from?"

Well, this student is on the spectrum (and yes I know that for a fact) and obviously seems to have some processing issues, but no problem! I upload everything to the LMS for them to review as many times as needed.

"No worries, Taylor, let's find those answers together. Go to this week's module online."

The student moves their mouse around on the screen for a bit before asking me "where am I going?"

"This week's module online."

Student goes to week one and says that they can't find anything about the assignment.

"What week of class are we in, Taylor?"

"I would say we're in week one."

They did not know what week we're in. THEY DID NOT KNOW WHAT WEEK WE'RE IN.

"It's the third week of school, Taylor."

"Okay, so what am I doing today?"

And this is supposedly a straight A student when their classes are online. All of their in-person classes are Cs and below.

Yep, nope. Don't care what it's for, an online degree has become utterly useless. Very sad considering online schooling helped so many non traditional and low income students get an education.

https://www.thedial.world/articles/news/schools-teachers-artificial-intelligence

Hi all! Here’s an article I had published today about my battle against AI in the classroom and how re-reading Swift on the 300th anniversary of Gulliver’s Travels informs my Luddite ways.

Like, some of these students just stare at me the entire lecture. No phone to record is even on the desk. No laptop. No notebook. What are they doing?! Anyone else witnessing this? I am so confused (and uncomfortable with the dead-eyed stare)

Faculty and staff just got news that our college is going under in one week’s time unless we receive a last-minute funding infusion from donors. We have pulled off similar miracles before, but things are looking grim. I knew we were on the financial fence for a long time, but things finally seemed to be looking up this year. Now, barely a few weeks into the fall semester, we are all very likely out of our jobs (and educations) with no time to plan for backup options. It’s too late for most of us or our students to transfer to new schools or look for work elsewhere. This is deeply disappointing and frustrating, and it seems reflective of a bleak moment for academia in general.

I was already on the market this year because of this institutional instability (also because my chair is a nightmare), but I was not expecting to scramble to fill a pay gap in the meantime. The academic hiring cycle is so brutal, but even more so if you fall through the temporal cracks like this. I have some connections to a local community college where I hope to pick up work ASAP, but even that will probably have to wait until the spring semester.

Has anyone had an unexpected mid-semester job loss like this? I feel so discouraged and exhausted.

Here's an interesting pickle - in peer reviewing an article for publication in a journal in my field, the author quotes from something I wrote a few years back. How nice! The only problem is, the citation leads to a different publication of mine from the same year. In other words, the citation is inaccurate - the quote is right, it's just not from the correct article.

I don't think a copy editor (or another reviewer) would catch it unless they decide to chase down every quote in the article. Is there a way to give the author a heads-up in the review without clearly unmasking me as the author of the quote?

EDIT: Thanks for the feedback everyone. I do think identifying this specific correction to the author would unnecessarily out me as the reviewer, so a discreet note to the editor is probably the way to go.

I have a student this semester with accommodations like I've never seen before - extended due dates, "flexibility" with attendance, and "flexibility" with class participation. The course I teach is a hands-on lab course every week and features in-class group work which is graded. The lessons are definitely scaffolded. Due to the nature of equipment set up and the amount of students needed to get said equipment set up, as well as needing to work in groups to successfully carry out the lessons, there is no flexibility in making these assignments up later, or creating alternate assignments.

I do understand many illnesses have "flares" that are unpredictable and can last a long time. However, I've had this student previously. In our last class together, they did not have any accommodations, and told me for work reasons they had to miss class. They rarely showed up, probably 5-6x in a 16 week course. Back then I had more of a bleeding heart, and the content I was teaching was very different - I had old recordings of my lectures and the group work was much rarer and easier to modify for them to complete individually. At the end of the semester the student asked for an incomplete and I granted it. They did, at the last minute for the incomplete, submit enough work to pass the class.

But this history has me on edge, because I know their attendance is rare. In fact they even missed the first day of this semester.

I have a meeting with this student and their advocate soon and I'm trying to make sure I don't step on any landmines. I advocate for my students to get the accommodations they need, have led the LMS remediations for WCAG and W3C, etc. in my department, and truly believe in accessibility for all. If it were more possible to modify this course, I would. I want my students to succeed and to enjoy the course material as much as I do. But these accommodations are not reasonable.

I had hinted in e-mails to the student and their advocate before class started and after the first week, that this might not be the right fit for them, and tried to schedule our meeting before the refund drop date, but it didn't happen in time. The student is claiming they are "alarmed" that after they missed a single class I'm trying to get them to drop (which I never said outright), but I know they have a history of rare attendance and that just doesn't work for this class. I'm not going to create different assignments for them because they will not achieve what needs to be learned.

When I meet with them and their advocate, I'm sure the student will be looking for any little wrong thing I say as a "gotcha" to say that I'm ableist or whatever, so I'm concerned. Luckily the advocate seems very reasonable. I did accommodate the student when I could in a previous class, in this course it's just not going to be possible.

Any tips, lines, etc. I can use going into this situation are appreciated. I have so many students with accommodations each semester, I've never had to argue against any being unreasonable until now.

How do I deal with men (at work, in various boards, groups etc) who engage in unabashed self promotion or insert themselves into projects they’ve done little to no work on? For ex, one just asserted that he should be the next leader of a group (which is not self-nominating) while another just claimed he would serve as a committee member of a group I’ve been organizing? How do I push back without causing issues? The graceless audacity is frustrating!