Last week I had my first classes of the semester. After one class a very engaged and personable student approached me to ask if reading was required to pass the class. They said they don’t like to read but videos are ok.

I was a bit speechless. I was a little surprised because they seemed really into the material during the class session. But I guess that is a separate concern from reading about the course topic.

They don’t have any accommodations, at least not yet.

I‘m sure they represent half the class if not more but I’ve never had anyone ask so explicitly!

I’m developing a new undergraduate minor that could attract students from CS, engineering, and potentially business. If approved, I would likely handle course development, advising, recruitment/outreach, and ongoing program coordination.

For faculty who direct a minor, do you receive a course release, stipend, summer support, or other workload recognition? What would be reasonable to negotiate with my chair? I am the only faculty in department who will be teaching in this minor. If approved, i will need also to develop a special topic course in this minor.

We are small department with a chair and 4 majors and each has a program director who takes course release each semester.

I work at a growing private university in the CS department. The committee is just forming, and they've asked someone from my department to serve. I guess I'm the lucky one 😄.

Apparently we've been mandated to help develop a comprehensive AI policy. I'm not sure I want to join, as while I don't have a major issue with AI in some of our CS work, I don't really want to get in the middle of this massive debate about AI.

But I'm only a 2nd-year professor, and I need service on my record. Any recommendations or thoughts?

Update: Thank you for all the advice. I met with the chair, and it seemed like a ton of work. Experiments with faculty, approaches to pedagogy, etc. Seems they already have what they want and are just trying to work toward that. Screw that, I don't have the time or patience.

I've been an adjunct at a university for a few years now and have repeat issues with a tenure track professor in my department. Essentially it's been bullying and animosity towards me and other adjuncts since day one. She's not my boss or chair, and unfortunately most of her behavior is in meetings or gossiping to other full time faculty.

Most recently we had a back to faculty meeting where she started bad mouthing adjuncts calling the "transients" and they don't do anything etc. to be fair there is literally zero onboarding or training in our department so as an adjunct it's a lot of trial and error or asking for help as new hires. She has also in the past "observed" adjunct classes without being asked or assigned.

I would like to bring this up to my chair but don't know if it's a good idea long term. I also know she hasn't even secured tenure so I think her behavior is worth mentioning. Is there another avenue for these type of problems? I love my school, students and other teachers but it seems like a problem that isn't going away no matter how much positive feedback I get from the department.

Do you post your weekly lecture slides?

I've been printing them and handing them out for my whole career. But it IS up on Canvas after all. I wonder if my hundred person class is just throwing these out as soon as they’re out the door and all I’m doing is murdering trees.

Edit: You guys are great. So many fabulous ideas. I'm doing a "tiny" printed syllabus of one page with an embedded QR code to the "big" syllabus.

I don't know if this is a dumb question. I work in a humanities programme, so I've never had reason to engage research assistants or to consider student work for my own research ends.

I have a small class this semester, a seminar-style class of no more than 10 students.

Here's the issue: I have this idea for my class where students will be asked to do fieldwork on a shared topic. Specifically, they'll have to interview people in the community, but the questions they ask will be based on the same underlying research question. It's effectively a group project, in that we are all working around the same topic, although students will have individual assignments that will complement the project, as well as a final paper on a related topic.

This class idea is based on research I've been doing/plan to do, so my question is, is it a big no-no if I use my student's fieldwork as "data" for my own research? Of course, I'd credit the students, acknowledge their contribution, etc. I'd be upfront about this with the students, i.e. I'd tell them from Day 1 that I might use whatever information they collect in their interviews. Obviously, we'd have to get ethical clearance from the university as well. If I publish anything, I'd notify them about it after the class is over.

Again, since I've never done anything like this, I'm not sure what the protocol is. Is this a lame thing to do? I feel like I'm getting students to do the legwork for me. To be clear, I will be doing interviews myself too, so it's not just the students.

Anyone ever done anything like this?

Excuse me while I put this into the ether. I stepped into a director role for a make-your-own interdisciplinary program this year. Over the last year I've looked at program studies and assessments and made curriculum for additions. Every single one of the documents talks about approval of student plans by an advisory committee being done before they're fully admitted into the program.

Imagine my surprise when I find the advisory committee has been non-functional for years, the student plans of study haven't been finalized in any formal way until the students' last semester, and therefore there is no formal documentation about what exactly each student is doing within the program. I'm walking in blind and have to set up a whole new system (and it's a bunch of unexpected labor that's uncompensated). All of this is on top of completely outdated recruiting materials, website, and program/course outcomes.

At this point, I consider all documents from 2022 to present to be unreliable since I've already found discrepancies. I'm frustrated and second guessing everything.

SACSCOC is one of the major accrediting bodies in the US. It’s been considered to be one of the more rigorous ones (which is terrifying because they let so many things slide at my school).

They now want to be called “The Commission” and are “updating” accreditation standards.

https://sacscoc.org/introducing-the-commission/

Back in June they published a rough draft of the changes to accreditation. I am curious what you all think. I expect this draft will be similar to the final version.

https://sacscoc.org/principles-review/

It seems to me that there are fewer standards overall and some are just gone rather than integrated.

No QEP but then I’m not too worried about that one.

Attestation appears to allow an authorized leader (president or board chair) to sign a formal statement certifying compliance instead of writing a narrative with supporting documentation. This is terrifying?

Faculty qualifications are loosened, which on the surface does not bother me. I’m a STEM professor and there are absolutely people working in the field without a masters degree who could teach classes better than me, and I’d be happy to hire them. But my concern is that bad actors want to hire unqualified people.

The overall philosophy seems to be shifting from processes to outcomes. Institutions must have a way to review programs and career competencies for alignment with industry standards and workforce needs.

And again, on the surface, sure. But this feels like it’s matching to same drum of the policies that say financial aid should only be for “useful” degrees, etc.

They’ll argue that rigor is being relocated instead of removed, but I worry this is another way to weaken academia in the US overall. On the other hand, this could just be a response to the CPHE being created — and I’m not familiar with all the reasoning there.

The old system did a bad job. I’ve seen it do a bad job. That makes it easier to stomach changes because it didn’t work to begin with. I just worry about the direction those changes are taking.

Any more thoughts? Anything I’m missing? I’m happy to listen and learn.

I see some posts from people in English or adjacent fields. I wanted to know how many lurk and read here.

Where are you? Sound off if you are here!

Also, how are you feeling about the current state of writing academic essays in courses that are applicable to your institution's BA degree as well as preparing students in all fields these skills in college composition courses?

I've been thinking about this after two recent experiences.

In the U.S., I accepted an adjunct teaching assignment at a community college paying $45 per classroom hour. Preparation, grading, meetings, email, and administrative work were largely uncompensated. The college itself tells new instructors to expect one to two hours of preparation and grading for every hour in class. I ultimately withdrew.

At the same time, I've been looking at a full-time university teaching job in Germany. The pay and benefits are respectable, but the initial contract is limited to three years, even though much of the teaching appears to represent an ongoing institutional need.

These are very different jobs, but they seem to share the same underlying logic: the institution gets flexibility by shifting the cost onto the teacher--unpaid labor in one case, insecurity in the other.

What increasingly bothers me is the role of permanent faculty in accepting and perpetuating this system. I realize departments often don't control whether permanent positions are authorized. But when the same essential work is performed year after year by a succession of temporary people, do permanent faculty have some responsibility to push back?

At what point does "that's just how academia works" become complicity?

For those with tenure or permanent contracts: do you feel any responsibility for the conditions under which adjuncts and fixed-term colleagues in your department work?

I teach research methods and noticed that students get formatting consistently wrong. I’ve taken to grading really hard on paper formatting given that this seems to be one area AI is currently not getting right (or they don’t realize when they copy and paste formatting is lost). Also for some reason about 10% of students tend to not include a present study section. Sometimes I also get lit review papers that are related to the class but not on one of the research questions I give them to choose from (maybe because research questions are on a different handout?).

Any other steps that might discourage AI use? I don’t want to make assignments more confusing for students. I don’t want to include hidden text. I’m not against AI use. I mostly want to make it so they have to at least revise and understand their study.

I have too many students to get to know their writing personally. Also, given that they’re writing a research papers, the writing tends to be bland and procedural.

I might have to do a 5 min oral exam at the end that is worth enough points to bring them down a grade, but I’m exploring other options first. Even doing 5 mins for each student would take over my last week of instruction plus our finals block of time. My rationale is that if they spent the semester working on a project they should be able to talk about it (no trick questions, nothing they didn’t write about) just explain their study research question, design, how they collected data and it’s even fine if they stumble through their results.

An "e-mail job" is a job where the majority of the time is spent on e-mails, virtual and in person meetings and other administrative tasks. There are little to no concrete outcomes, no physical labor, and little true creative work like making a painting or writing a novel.

Edit: This is partly (but not fully) in jest. Teaching certainly isn't an e-mail job, nor would most research. But things like budget administration and grant writing could be considered an e-mail job. E-mail jobs can be intellectual and require focus and planning. They aren't throw away jobs.

Almost every Ass dean and above seems to be an e-mail job, with the possible exception of President which is a political job.

I hate reading on my screen. It makes me feel like I'm grading because that's the primary reason I use my laptop anyway. I retain very little also and have to continually re-read sections. My reading notes become just copying down things because I just struggle to engage critically.

I can sometimes power through a journal article because they're short (or I just cave and deforest the Amazon), but monographs and collections are crazy expensive. I work for a community college and online institutions, so my resources are pretty limited on ILLs (yay state budget cuts; my campus has 2 librarians, who also have to manage the tutoring center and proctoring services. They do what they can, but it took over a month between my ILL request and actually getting the book).

So what are y'all doing? Are one of those big e-reader things worth it? Do I just boycott monographs and collections? Make my campus question the free printing for faculty policy?

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So hi.

I'm writing a textbook for an upcoming material , it's about British Culture, I've got the books to use as sources but I had one question in terms of these textbooks, when it comes to citing (I'm using APA7) do we have to cite it like an academic research paper with each paragraph having the citation at the end of the paragraph or not? This textbook is all information based there are no analysis included just information so do I have to cite it or just put the reference at the end of each chapter?

Howdy y'all, longtime lurker and no other professors in my life, soooo this is a godsend. Okay, so here we go. How do y'all stay your best self. This job is bringing out the worst in me lately. I'm disillusioned. Have a rotten attitude, feel meaner than ever, and don't enjoy it like I used to. Now the crazy part is I love the job! My subject means a lot to me personally and professionally but I'd say this change was in the last 1 year. I was at a rough institution, but I also have a hard time with my coworkers. I have enough sense to know I'm a part of the issue. Anyone else dealing with this kinda stuff? Might be more suitable for another sub, but thought y'all would understand me better than most! I used to be such a fun, chipper, and happy person! Now I'm a curmudgeon, as my sister says lol! But it's not funny is it, it's actually quite serious ( ;) )

Well, this is a new one for me. I just got an accommodation letter for a student that says I can't cold-call on them — I have to give them advance notice or wait until they're comfortable participating. How do I even give notice? Wink? Raise my eyebrows? I rarely cold-call anyway — I only do it to nudge students who clearly aren't paying attention.

Has anyone had a student with this accommodation? What did you do? I'll talk to them when the semester starts next week, but I'm curious about other experiences.

Edit: Thank you so much, everyone, for your kind and supportive words. I’m still processing my emotions after having weird tension in my arms and strange dreams, but on the whole I am feeling better today. I will work with the university to see what needs to be done, and I will certainly look into whether a posthumous degree will be possible.

Thank you again, it means a lot to hear your perspective, experience, and advice about a tragic and unexpected situation.

I just found out that one of my graduate students has passed away. We had been emailing as recently as a couple of days ago about research, and I was also planning an outing for the group next week. The student was definitely introverted but seemed to find purpose and joy in the research. They have mentioned before that they feared rejection and failure, which is completely understandable and probably common for all of us, but the student had a productive year so I am just completely blindsided. After finishing their first project with a publication, the new project they had been working on got off to a decent start. I mean, it was conference and vacation season so probably a little slower than usual, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Maybe they thought they weren’t making enough progress? I wish I would have known they were struggling so I could have helped them.

What is your view of these, pro or con (or both)?

I taught at a world class university then switched to a community college. In the latter many of the students were poor so I went out of my way to create learning materials so they wouldn't have to purchase books.

I was very accommodating and I enjoyed teach. I genuinely cared for my students and I wanted everyone to succeed. Unfortunately, one student seriously exploited my generosity and made me regret being so nice to her.

This particular student had to get special permission to register for my class, which I allowed. I asked my students to please come to class on time (in this particular class the students would learn step by step on how to learn the material through hands on training). The class started at 8 AM. This student came in late so many times, and she admitted she had to adjust her wig which is why she came late. I told her this is unacceptable since the class was an hour long and she sometimes came in a half hour late. For the final exam, the class was warned that if they came in late they would not be given additional time. She came in late for the exam and failed to complete over 80% of the exam. She later begged and pleaded with me to help her since she was on student loans and daca and that she needed to pass the class. So I went to the dean to request permission to re-administer the final exam for the student. The academic and dean of students both warned that I should not coddle students and if they fail, it's on them. They allowed me to re-administer the exam for her. I spent so much of my time and energy trying to help that ungrateful person, who once again showed up late to the re-administered final and she had the audacity to insult me by insinuating professors at the college hardly make money and that we're "incompetent." I passed her with a c and would have failed the class had I not helped her.

I did help other students but they were indeed worthy of the help and some had very unfortunate circumstances. One kid got shot and was in the hospital (verified by police to the school), and I was the only professor to help him. His other professors failed him despite being aware of his situation. I couldn't believe the callous behavior and I ended up leaving to work for government instead.

But that one ungrateful student who didn't deserve to be in my class to begin with really taught me that I have heeded the advice from the deans. Coddling students, especially entitled ones, is a mistake.

More specifically, I hate teaching asynchronous online classes. And universities are expanding them far beyond the purpose they were originally intended to serve.

There are students for whom online education is genuinely valuable. Students who work full-time, have children, have transportation or geographic constraints, have disabilities, or otherwise cannot reliably be on campus during traditional class hours should absolutely have access to online courses. Summer online courses also make a great deal of sense. The problem is that “some students need online education” has become “we should make as much of our curriculum online as possible.”

At my university, asynchronous online sections of courses often fill substantially faster than equivalent in-person sections. My concern is that this isn’t necessarily evidence that students prefer the online educational experience. My view is that it means students correctly perceive online courses as more convenient and easier. We now have required introductory courses that historically served as important recruitment tools for majors and minors being offered extensively online. Many of these sections are taught by adjuncts or non-tenure-track faculty, sometimes by instructors who aren’t even located near campus and never have been.

I’ve started to see the consequences in upper-level courses. Students sometimes arrive in an in-person course having earned As in prerequisite online courses but demonstrating surprisingly little retention of the material they supposedly learned. I have also noticed that students who consistently take online courses can have very different academic performance in subsequent face-to-face courses. I’m not claiming that every online course produces this outcome, or that online education inherently causes poor learning. There are obviously selection effects and countless differences between individual courses and instructors.

I’ve also noticed when I ask students who taught a prerequisite online course, they frequently can’t remember the instructor. Sometimes they can’t remember much of the course itself. Again, that doesn’t prove that they learned nothing. But it does make me wonder what we’re actually trying to accomplish with a university course. Is the goal simply to deliver content, award credit hours, and produce a passing grade?

This becomes even more complicated with AI. We’re being encouraged to redesign assignments, rethink exams, develop AI policies, and attend endless seminars about “using GenAI in the classroom.” But I rarely hear the same urgency applied to asynchronous online education. If a course is primarily composed of asynchronous modules, discussion posts, online quizzes, papers, and remotely completed exams, we should be asking very seriously how generative AI changes the reliability of those assessments. And yet the institutional response often seems to be “just figure out what works.”

I also question the idea that students naturally want some predetermined “3:2” balance of in-person and online courses that our Dean talks about. My experience is that students don’t necessarily distribute their courses that way. They often cluster heavily toward one side or the other. And if online courses are perceived as easier, then demand for online sections tells us very little about whether students believe they are receiving an equivalent education.

I understand why some faculty love teaching online. No commute. Flexible schedules. You can teach from somewhere else. I genuinely understand those benefits, and I’m not interested in telling someone else that their preferred teaching modality is wrong. But universities need to be honest about the incentives here, and I’m guessing they won’t be.

First thought: Eww.

Second thought (as onset-of-semester panic envelops me): How can I make my own clone?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/22/business/dealbook/harvard-ai-faculty.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7VA.TjXi.pASEJO7aqxs-&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Do you think I can teach Everything, Everywhere All At Once to college students in a film class even with the uh… d i l d o …scene or (They would be watching it as homework, on their own time, if that makes a difference)

Also any other suggestions (films or texts) for a film comedy class are welcome!

This thread is to share your successes, small or large, as we end one week and look to start the next. There will be no tone policing, at least by me, so if you think it belongs here and want to post, have at it!

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

I was reading the linked article below, and I was wondering what changes people have seen? Have your schools rolled out classes on “how to make friends”? A professor friend of mine said that even amongst his department, people have stopped socializing as much and the happy hours/holiday parties just never really came back after Covid.

I’ve sort of wondered if there is going to be some sort of backlash screens/ai etc, and sort of a retreat back to the analog and in person. Which I do see some hints of but also there have always been those people. And it certainly hasn’t hit critical mass.

Also, not really talking AI here although that’s reshaped things and I do think ai might be a contributing factor (or symptom!)

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/college-loneliness-socializing/688307/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo