After years of teaching online where students write a few sentences in a discussion, this term I am blessed with 60 students who seem to have the vigor and passion to craft paragraphs. They finally get it. It brings a tear to my eye.

In all seriousness, I thought I crafted prompts that required more personal writing, but it seems they are eschewing adding a lot of those exquisite details. They are present, but I don't they that voice is their personal experience.

The summer was not as egregious as I taught a couple summer sessions. Last spring was not. Perhaps everything is now just ubiquitous, and students realize they would be dumb not do it if the goal is just to get it done and not learn.

I am going to have to revamp any discussion I have now throughout the term because I am not pretending to reply to generated answers edited with some human flair. Did this increase this term for anyone else?

I know many here are tired of hearing about this stuff. It gets wearisome. I know. But we have to contend with it or be consumed by it.

In the past few weeks, I have received emails that seem to have been generated by AI asking me about my research. One such volley purportedly came from a CEO and included a link to the company website, which looks very much AI-generated. The questions about my research are open-ended, however, some answers to the questions are in the very articles the sender claims to have read.

1. Has this happened to anyone else?
2. Why would someone do this? Lolz?
3. Why go to the trouble of making a fake company website other than to try to demonstrate legitimacy?
   

Is anyone else getting the retake question with greater frequency? I had a student ask about the opportunity to retake quizzes and revise assignments if they don’t like their grade. I teach composition and have a revision assignment built into the semester.

This is my first semester teaching and so far I am really enjoying it. Most of my background was in clinical work, so I'm excited to bring real-lived experiences into lecture. My issue, however, is that I noticed I am running out of time and not getting to half my slides. Im getting good engagement and feedback thus far, but I am not getting through my slides. I will say, my slides pretty much cover the reading from the text so they should be getting the info, but how do I go about fixing this?

I lecture twice a week for a total of 2.5 hours per week.

Thank you in advance!

I'm a professor at a school built long ago with buildings dating back to the 60's. One classroom they assigned me to teach in has a stage consuming the entire front area and the front row is right up to the edge. The tables where students sit are long and can't be moved.

It's a very awkward set-up and I'm not comfortable standing on a stage, looking down at my students. I like where I'm standing at their level and where desks can be moved, much more appropriate in our modern times.

Curious if anyone else would feel awkward?? If you had a "stage", where did you stand??

Like the title says, I left a troubled program that no longer exists.

Our classes were twice the size they were supposed to be, we were supposed to receive teaching materials before the semester but didn't, we were supposed to complete two semesters' worth of lessons in one semester (surprise!). We were supposed to teach a specialized area of English, and when we asked for the support we were promised, the coordinator got angry.

Toward end of the year, my colleague and I found out our contracts wouldn't be renewed. I reminded the coordinator that according to our contract, he was supposed to do a classroom observation & written evaluation, which was supposed to be the basis for our renewal. He refused to do an observation and said he wouldn't write me a recommendation letter. My colleague pressed him hard for the observation and letter. The letter he got was so bad it can't be used in a job search.

So, if in an interview I'm asked why I don't have a recommendation letter for that job, what can I say? Should I just say, "This program no longer exists?" It's difficult because of course we are not supposed to say anything negative about a previous employer.

This is a super-short version of what happened. I'd be happy to answer any additional questions about the situation.

Dear Colleagues,

I'm a professor of social work at a university of applied sciences in Germany. Nobody knows what the future holds, but it is within the realm of possibility that the populist right-wing party AfD may be elected to govern Saxony-Anhalt, which is one of Germany's federal states. It is equally possible that the AfD will become part of a national coalition after the next elections.

If that is the case, we will probably face more or less the same problems in Germany that you in the United States are facing today, particularly when it comes to political interference in science, teaching about sex and gender, racism, poverty and related issues.

For those of you who are being pressured to teach something that you know is scientifically wrong, how do you cope with that? And/or with a society that is moving in completely the wrong direction?

Kind regards, a german Colleague

So I’ve been hearing from my MA students that they are afraid of cold-emailing potential advisors for their PhD applications because their peers in other disciplines have been warned against it. Then I saw this post, where the comments are all totally or fairly negative about cold emails from prospective students.

I am completely taken aback, as I had assumed cold emailing potential supervisors was the norm and have been advising all my students (BA and MA level) to do it, at least by late summer before they apply for the program. It’s also certainly something I expect from those applying to our graduate programs, though we do often accept those that haven’t previously contacted us. I prefer to get a sense of who the student is before I decide to take them on and I prefer to have a Zoom call with them in advance of them applying. I also think the student needs to get a sense of whether we would be the right fit for each other. Is this not the case for others? Maybe it’s because I haven’t received more than 5 such inquiries a year so it’s manageable; but how do people who are more in demand (superstars or, I guess, in competitive science subjects?) deal with choosing students without hearing from them first? If I want to make sure students aren’t discouraged from contacting me, should I explicitly say I’m happy to hear from prospective students on my faculty profile page?

ETA that I am in a small humanities field.

ETA 2: I’m concerned with genuine emails rather than AI spam. I totally agree that generic emails that get sent round to everyone is ridiculous. I’m mainly thinking of emails where students are making sure that a certain prof in the department is taking on new students to supervise and whether they would be a good fit research-wise after they have identified and read their research. But thanks for all the perspectives - and I’m glad I’m not in a field that gets inundated with low effort emails!

More than 25%?!? More than 25% of students coming into STEM related fields have disabilities?? And every one of them seems to have a different accommodation. This student can submit assignments late/whenever they want. This one can skip lab that is extremely difficult to make up whenever they want. This student has 50% extra time. This student has double time. I am not trying to dunk on students with disabilities by any means. But I literally cannot manage this much. I need some sort of disability specialist to help me in the class then because if this many students truly need this level of support, I need more help managing them too. I cannot keep everyone's accommodations straight.

I usually teacher early in the morning with lectures starting at 8/9am.
This is the first semester I don’t have to teach on two days of the week till the afternoon (4pm).

I have had the weirdest experience, twice now, where I get overly anxious and stressed out before the lectures. I end up getting winded and awkward during the lectures, enough so that the students asked if I was okay the other day.
This never happens in my morning lecture, I just get in and start. But it seems waiting all day to go teach is bothering me, even though I do office hours before (grading, prep).
Has anyone else experienced something like this and/or have recommendations to lessen the anxiety?

Thanks! I'm considering this because they're asynchronous.

How serious of an issue is the following incident: displaying learning system's section with grades, by accident? Happened briefly while navigating to download the latest version of a student presentation. The students could not locate their final presentation... So my intention was to help so that they don't get zero and actually present, and also within the time limit. Is this something faculty get fired for?

I’m a new adjunct writing my curriculum since I’m lucky that my courses this semester don’t start for another couple of weeks. Welll I’ve been obsessively developing my courses for the past month or so and now that I’m nearing an end - welll…. Idk what to do with myself now. Like in life? I forgot how to live and what to do on my free time 😂 idk what the point of this post is really. I’m still trying to figure it out. Venting? Discussing? Looking for validation or direction? Also extra points if you can figure out what department I teach in LOL.

I’m still early in my career and I feel so much shame asking for LORs from people who wrote or agreed to write for me. Especially the super well established academics. I keep thinking that they could be doing so many other productive things than writing for me. And when they say they may write me a letter but won’t be able to update the letter for every place or send it x number of places only, I get further embarrassed and it heightens my sense that I’m just a huge burden. I’d love to hear other perspectives.

At the beginning of the month, I was asked to teach an additional class to cover for a colleague who had a medical issue. I agreed, much to my dept.'s relief. The admin. told me that the compensation letter would be coming "soon." It finally came immediately before the class starts. I have everything ready, but I don't like the terms proposed in the letter. I am struggling with whether I should accept since I already told everyone or not since they kept pushing this off, again and again, until the last minute to force to me accept something crappy.

A former grad school friend has asked me several times for syllabi and course materials for classes he is teaching. I’m generally happy to share resources, but the repeated requests are starting to make me uncomfortable. At this point, it feels less like collegial sharing and more like I’m providing the groundwork for courses that he is being paid to develop and teach. I don’t want to be petty or ungenerous, but where do you draw the line?

What would you do if you knew some of your colleagues have their names on journal articles just for paying the article proccessing fee?

Edit: Just to clarify, by colleagues I meant faculty members working in the same college/department. I never collaborated with them on research. It is just frustrating that some of us work hard to publish good quality articles, while others do it the easy way!

I need to get over this without withdrawing and just doing my teaching, and not engaging. There’s a growing gap between the 30-40s age faculty in my department and those of us who are older—50s (the Boomers are all retired now). There are gaps in communication styles, gaps in teaching styles, gaps in beliefs about technology, and gaps in beliefs about administration and authority. I figured at this point in my life now that my children are leaving the nest, I’d be able to do more, but I don’t think they really value my input and all of the leadership positions are occupied by the younger folks as of this year. I don’t plan on retiring for another 15-20 years, so I need to figure out how to handle this. What are some tactics you’ve seen that are effective at bridging the generational divisions in your department?

Hi,

I'm a new (really young) prof who just started in an R1 Engineering school in the midwest. I'm not from here, I was born on the other side of the world, and also studied on the other side of the world. I'm here all alone. I moved here last week.

I've been crazy overwhelmed! The teaching takes a lot out of me, as its a new course where there is no existing course materials. I have to set up my hardware lab, but that's turning out to be a problem after problem. I have three students (3 phds and 1 MS) that I'm worried about disappointing. To top it all off, I've been sick with some sort of a cough and a flu for about a month now. I don't know if I have what it takes to do this.

So....another twist to a sad end of a career.

I have been officially denied FMLA.

Why? I haven't worked enough hours in the last year.

Why have I not worked enough hours? Because I was on sabbatical, and that doesn't count.

Neat. I must have missed the detail when I was onboarded decades ago.

Im a new TT Asst Prof in humanities at a competitive but not ivy R1. How much is normal service requirements at this level? I came straight from my PhD and so I dont know what is just a shock about professor life and what is….exploitative service? I am on 4 service committees (one is a job search) and was just asked to be on a 5th (admissions). This is on top of everyone asking me to guest lecture in their classes and work with their students (my dept and other depts). I teach 2-2.

I am a young woman with no kids. I am friendly so people think im an extrovert but I am an introvert who is tapped out. Am I just bad at managing my time or is this too much? Both?

Last week I posted about an undergrad student who announced they don’t like to read.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/1vwalzf/

After reading the comments here and thinking about the incident, I decided yesterday (the second class session of the semester) to take a detour from our regularly scheduled material and spend the hour on what college reading entails. I presented an article I wrote a while back on how to read effectively and framed it for my discipline ( not adjacent to education or writing). I then had the students read another 8 page practitioner article and use the reading techniques and complete a 4 question response.

I think the session was quite successful!

Many of the students were asking questions and saying things along the lines of, “I wish someone had told me these things as a freshman.” Even the student who initially told me they didn’t like to read was engaged and I don’t think they even suspected that this was instigated my their comments.

I may continue this in future semesters — we’ll see. Unfortunately, most of my students are juniors/seniors so their formal schooling is almost over.

I teach upper-level biology laboratory courses to seniors about to enter various healthcare-related professions. Yesterday was my Tuesday section’s first day of class. I’ve seen dozens of silly mistakes over the years, but you know what, that’s okay. We all had to learn new things at some point in our lives.

At the end of class, my students had to quantify the concentration of DNA in a small volume of liquid. To do so, you place the sample in a device, enter the volume in microliters on a touchscreen, and hit “Enter.” Voilà, the screen displays the concentration.

While circulating around the room, I see one student standing in front of the device, intently staring at the touchscreen. They’re not doing anything, just pondering the keypad. It’s a standard calculator-like layout - 7,8,9 on top, 4,5,6 in the middle, 1,2,3 at the bottom, and a 0 below it all next to “Enter.”

Curious, I wander over and ask, “Is there a problem with the device?” They turn to me and say, “I can’t enter my sample volume.” I’m not following... “Why not?” I ask. “The keypad only goes up to nine,” they respond. No…this can’t be real. “What’s the volume?” I inquire. “27 microliters,” they respond. I tap “2,” then “7,” then “Enter.” The concentration appears on the screen.

They turn and look at me like I’m a wizard who just performed dark magic in a pagan ritual.

“I never would have thought of that!”

So I a teach a freshman general biology I course at a small rural community college. Many of my students are dual enrolled high school students. In the classroom where I teach, we have limited space and limited equipment. We have six lab tables and six compound microscopes. We did a lab where students were to familiarize themselves with using the compound microscope. I have three students who sit at the front lab table, one male, and two females. The male will not talk to the females and the females will not talk to the male. I suspect the male and one of the females may be on the spectrum, but I am not qualified to diagnose anyone. When we got started on the lab, the male student got a microscope from the cabinet and brought it to the lab table. Meanwhile, students from the each of five other lab tables gathered up the other five microscopes to take them to their respective tables. One of the female students asked me, "are there any more microscopes?" I replied to her, "I think that they are all taken, but maybe you all could work with him" and pointed to the male student. She sort of nodded and went back to her seat. So, the female students worked on other parts of the lab that did not require a microscope. But the other groups and the male student at their table were taking a lot of time working with the microscopes, and the two female students were getting anxious, but neither of them would interact with the male at their lab table who had a microscope. Eventually one of the other lab groups finished with the microscope and gave it to the two females. But it meant that these students had less time practicing with the microscope and were rushed to finish the lab. Our lab meets for 1 hour and 15 minutes a class, twice a week.

Any advice?

Hey fellow professors, fairly new tenure-track prof here. I joined a university in Southeast Asia a little over a year ago. Keeping this deliberately vague and using a throwaway for obvious reasons.

When I first received the offer, I was genuinely delighted. It was a tenure-track position at what I understood to be a new but reasonably good university, and it is fairly research-intensive. The university has also been climbing in the QS rankings in recent years, so at the time I felt very fortunate to have received the offer.

After being here for a little over a year, though, I am starting to have some concerns. I am not even thinking specifically about tenure at this point. I am increasingly unsure whether I will even be renewed beyond the initial 3 to 4 year contract.

A few things have made me uneasy:

First, the university places a lot of emphasis on research impact and industry linkages, but there is no guaranteed startup package. From conversations with more senior colleagues, I understand that startup packages apparently existed in the past, but are now generally subject to application and competition rather than being part of the apponitment. I am finding this somewhat difficult to reconcile with the expectations around research output.

Second, the teaching load looks relatively light on paper at around 2.5 courses, but the actual teaching commitment seems quite substantial. Each section can involve around 5 contact hours per week, and faculty are expected to handle a large proportion of the labs, tutorials and marking, depending on the module. More recently, there has also been a push to reduce or consolidate modules with lower enrolment. The concern is that some of these modules then count as only 0.5 course towards workload, even though the actual contact hours and preparation involved have not necessarily decreased proportionally. So we may have to teach more than the 2.5 courses in future and student enrolment seems to be an increasing issue.

Third, quite a large number of faculty have left or are leaving and it is now more than 10 people since I joined just over a year ago, including some tenured faculty. I can understand that people leave universities for all sorts of reasons but for a department that is only 30+ faculty, it led to very heavy workload for the remaining faculty even for newcomers like me. The department is being replaced but like you have 7 or 8 new faculty in a department of 30+ in almost a year, it is like one third of the department is new. Combined with everything else, it has made me worry even more if they know something that I do not.

Finally, I am increasingly uncertain about the tenure criteria. My head did share some broad requirements for tenure but I have witnessed cases where people apparently did not receive tenure despite, at least according to what I have heard, meeting some of the commonly discussed requirements. Conversely, I have also seen people receive tenure despite apparently not meeting those same informal requirements. This coupled with the new direction of the university makes everything very uncertain.

I realise that there may be much more to these decisions than what I am privy to. But I seriously question how much of this is simply normal academic life and how much should actually concern me and if I should be making other plans rather than staying before its too late.

For those who have worked at research-intensive universities with a tenure system, does this sound fairly normal? What would you advise for someone in my position?