Not Quite Abandoned

 What a summer.  I feel like I'm still waiting for it to begin, and here we are on the first day of our fall contract period.

Have folks watched The Chair?  Sandra Oh rocks, as, frankly, does the whole cast.  It gives me anxiety.  

The Bill Dobson character pisses me off.  I'm sick of white men who screw other people's lives up without a second thought, and who just expect everyone to pick up their slack.

The Joan Hambling character seems most recognizable to me, and in some ways is the character I most identify with.  (I identify with the role of the chair, but not with the extra challenges that Ji-Yoon Kim has had as an Asian American woman at that university.)  And she's right, Chaucer IS badass.

As others have said before, the dead white guys aspect of the department is a bit overdone, but maybe that's necessary to make the point.  There is a touching dead white guy moment with the Elliot Rentz character semi-realizing how much his wife gave up, but then sort of taking it out on Yaz, which just pissed me off.

Do wanna-be Ivys not have adjunct armies?  Or does the show not get that part?  There's also the one grad student TA, but there's no sense of a grad program, really.  (And that poor student, OMG.)

***

As I wrote in my last post, I felt like I spent much of the summer trying to get administrators to do their thing and waiting.  I wrote there about two hires.

We ended up making another full time (adjunct) hire, and two part time hires, and asking colleagues to take on big overloads because we're a flustercluck of resignations.  One person retired in January, a TT person resigned in early summer, as did three adjuncts, one just the week before last.  And we have a colleague on leave (one of the hires was to fill in for them).

We lost a number of potential hires because by the time I was allowed to call for an interview they'd found jobs, or after we'd offered a job and they accepted, the contract took so long to get there that they accepted a different job.

I don't at all blame them for that, nor for resigning in favor of a different job.  I'm happy for those folks to move to greener pastures.  But it all got a bit overwhelming.

***

I'm having a meeting with someone over in the administration about our review (see here for previous post).  By January 15th, I'm supposed to hand in a plan of how to stabilize funding for our first year writing program.  Hopefully, the administrator will be able to help me think of how to do that.  I suspect, though, that I was sent on a fool's errand, and my lack of an effective plan will give them someone to blame for our next review.  (By which time, I'll be long retired...)

***

I'd like to be excited for my class this coming semester, but I'm way behind in planning for it.  I really have to make a big dent today!

And that's the news from NWU.

Waiting and Searching

 We're doing two searches right now for short term positions.  One of those searches has a large enough pool or really good people that we should be able to draw on those candidates to hire to fill in, temporarily, for the faculty member who's resigning.

Good news:  The deanling office came up with a legal way to cover the health insurance of the folks who want are resigning so that they can put in their resignation now, but still be covered.  (And that will mean we can hire someone to replace them from the pool I mentioned above.)

The bad news:  the paperwork to do that legal coverage has been waiting on an administrator's desk most of a week.

Good news:  We did interviews and I did the paperwork for the hiring we have permission for last Friday, and the deanling in charge signed off his part on Monday morning, and it went to the campus lawyer for approval.

The bad news:  the lawyer sat on it.  I emailed Thursday to ask if there were a problem, and the lawyer emailed back basically saying "oops" and that they'd get to it.  They got to it later Thursday.  And it went to HR.

Good news:  We did interviews for the other position, and I did the paperwork for the hiring on Monday, and sent it off to the deanling.

The bad news:  the deanling didn't sign off on it until Thursday afternoon.  And then it went to the lawyer.  And just in case, I emailed the lawyer on Friday morning, and they're out of town until next week.

Good news:  HR did the paperwork and sent it back to the lawyer (I don't know why): this was also part of my email on Friday.

The bad news: yeah, the lawyer is out of town until next week.

I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to get administrators to do their administrative thing, or waiting for them.  Yes, I know they're busy.  But if I didn't respond to their request for whatever in a timely manner, they'd be pissed as hell and I'd hear about it from the Dean.

Also: all the tagging of electronic forms through various administrative offices is frustrating.  I'm guessing it's important to have the lawyer look at the forms and make sure they're legal and won't get us sued.  But damn...

The thing is, I can't do the second round of paperwork, the one where I get to say "we want to hire candidate X," until the first round is fully approved.  I've already got the paperwork filled out, waiting in my queue, but I can't do anything with it.

***

A few weeks ago, I borrowed a friend's bike, because I'm thinking of getting a new bike, one I could use for bike camping, and I'm thinking of a Litespeed titanium bike, and my friend has a Litespeed.  So I rode it, and it's a good fit for size.  But her bike has an aggressive geometry, and so feels twitchy compared to mine.

The real revelation was that her saddle is SO much more comfortable than mine.  So now I'm on a quest to find a similar saddle.  The difficulty is that she bought the saddle probably in the 1990s, and that one isn't made any more, and saddles seem different now.

I started by visiting the three local bike shops here in town, and ended up trying two cheap saddles (one from the box of extra saddles that every bike shop ends up with when people change their saddles, the other cheap off the rack).  They weren't an improvement, in different ways.

So then I started searching on line, and found one that might work (from measurements), and looked while I was in California for a shop that carries them to go try them out, without luck.  They just don't seem to be carried.

Then I found a shop a state over, about two hours away, and called, and they said, yes, they had them in stock, and I could come try them out.  So I drove over last weekend, and no, they weren't in stock.  We looked, and I ordered one, and went Thursday to pick it up.  I rode it for 15 miles yesterday (they said I should give it 50 miles to break in), and my sit bones are sore.  There's very little padding, but all the pressure is on my sit bones.  That's good, but...  it's still not close to as comfortable as my friend's saddle.

I think the search continues...

It's Never Good to be Asked for a Meeting

That should be rule one of being a chair, perhaps.  Or a corrolary.  Or something.

If someone has something really good to pass along, they give you the basics in an email, even if they want to discuss the next step with you in a meeting.

No colleague says, "I want to have a meeting" and then tells you "I just got this cool publication and I'm super happy."  Nope.  They share the good news and accept everyone's happy congratulations.

No one says, "I want to have a meeting" and then tells you about their wonderful new puppy.  Nope.  They share pictures of the puppy and accept everyone's admiring congratulations.

Yesterday afternoon, I got an email from a colleague asking to meet with me.  I figured, it's one of two things, given the colleague, and neither is great, but neither is beyond horrible either.  And I was right, it was one of the two things, and it means I get to juggle more extra work.  But happily it's not absolutely horrid, either.

***

I have a colleague who seems to be consistently late when asked to turn in anything mildly administrative.  For example, we ask for copies of syllabi each semester to keep on file.  In a worst case scenario, if someone is killed driving in to work, someone else at least has that as a starting point to finish teaching the course.  In a more usual scenario, in five years when a student is trying to transfer a course for some reason, or get it to mean something for a graduate application, they can contact the office and our staff can easily find it in the files and send it off even if the colleague has retired.  (I've gotten at least three requests for such things this year).

But the colleague who's consistently late with such things.  I'm not sure why.  They're late with another important thing now.  

So I sent an email asking how I could help with the problem, asking if they're okay, and such.  I hope that was a useful approach.  It seems better than getting frustrated with the person.

(The problem with the chronic lateness is that it adds extra work to the load of our office staff, who have to keep asking for the work.  Our office staff are plenty busy and do a good job, and we shouldn't burden them just because we don't care.)

***

I have another campus leader thing tomorrow for three hours, this one on preparing future leaders.  This is GREAT in theory, but in practice seems really hard.

So I ask:  what should I be doing as chair to help prepare the next and future chairs?  

I've recommended some committee roles to folks who were interested.  If you want to become chair, you should have a pretty good sense of your department's curriculum and how it fits for majors, for GE and such, and for other department majors.  You should also get to know the folks at the college and university level who work on curricular stuff.  So that's good.

Serving as a university senator is good.

(In some ways, I took on a lot of the preparatory roles without thinking of them in that way, and just happened to be reasonably well prepared for most things.  

But how do you help someone prepare for budget stuff?

One Year On

 I've been chair for a year now, and things are looking way better these days.

First, and probably most important: our new admin assistant is great.  They're learning what they need to learn, and they're eager to learn more.  They're kind to students and faculty alike, and friendly, and helpful.  

Our previous admin assistant was okay, but this one is just stellar.  If I've done nothing else as chair, I've helped hire a great person.

Second, I'm learning a lot.  I've had three professional development sessions, and one was incredibly helpful.  It was campus specific and led by our HR folks.  It was on how to bring someone on board as a new hire, and I used a ton of what I learned when we brought our new admin assistant into the department.

***

The department is relatively healthy; we have some serious conflicts, as I gather all departments do, but I think we're mostly okay.

We've asked for several searches for fall, and are waiting to hear.  I've learned that other colleges already know about their searches, so I'm guessing the decisions have been made but just haven't been communicated to us yet.  Our college has hired a new dean, so maybe the idea is that the new dean will communicate about searches.

I'm supposed to have a meeting with the new dean this summer.  I've got my fingers crossed that he's sane and reasonable and a good explainer.

***

I'm doing another professional development thing this past week, this week, and next week.  (three hours one morning a week).  It's pretty awful, and totally inappropriate for university contexts.  The only good thing is that I've connected with a colleague.

***

And now the semester's over.  Grades are all turned in.  (Only one faculty member was late, and that was because they were trying to help students.)  Let summer begin!

Almost There

 We're in the last week of the semester, then a week of finals, and then summer comes.  This semester has sped by in some ways, and crawled in others. 

In the good news, most of my students are loving M. Butterfly for it's complexity and thoughtfulness about gender and race.  They had the usual difficulty at first, but now they're rocking it.  I've really enjoyed that class in all sorts of ways.

But budgeting, well, budgeting sucks.  Trying to figure out budgeting sucks.

I'm supposed to submit a hiring budget for our adjuncts, all of whom have a full time load (ideally), and all of whom have been here at least several years.  For the budget, I have one fund (the first year writing fund) to teach first year writing, and that covers maybe five people.  And then I cobble things together: the next person might be covered partly for a semester by a sabbatical replacement, and partly by this bit of money, and partly by that.  And so on.

Because math: a full time tenured/tenure track faculty member in my department usually teaches 11 credits a semester.  A full time adjunct teaches 15.  And the tenure track person costs more.  So, let's imagine we're paying the tenured person $50,000 a year, and they get half a year sabbatical, so that's $25,000.  Right? And we should be able to pay an adjunct a full load, right?  Wrong.

Nope.  Because math, we can only pay for 11 credits of an adjunct's time, so that's .73 of an adjunct for the semester.  So, if an adjunct is paid $40,000, we can use only $14,600 (40,000 x 0.73 divided by 2).

Where does the other $10,400 go?  Not to us!  (Of course, it doesn't go anywhere, because it's part of a fund for sabbaticals which pays the faculty member 100% of salary for a semester, or 65% of salary for a year, and pays the cost to the department for only the credits that person would have taught.)

For research reassignments, we get paid $1250 per credit, but at $40,000 a year, we pay 1333.33 a credit.  Where does the extra money come from?  I wish the hell I knew.

Some adjuncts here are paid less than the $40,000 number I've given.  In my department, we have a few folks paid more, and a few folks paid less, but it's a fair estimator.  (And our adjuncts get benefits if they're at or above 50%.  So it's a not horrific survival wage in this area because living isn't as expensive as in many areas.  The average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in our community is about $1000.)  (Most of our tenured folks make between $55 and $70k.  A few make more.  Tenure track folks tend to be starting at $55k these days, more or less.  Compression is a real problem.)

 ***

I read an article in The Atlantic "We should all be more afraid of driving."   And in that way that happens, I pretty much felt like the author is a privileged white male, because seriously, I've never felt that powerful or safe in a car, and I'm sure African American people who have to worry about being shot by cops for driving while Black feel even less safe.  That's not to diminish the horrific aftereffects of a bad accident, but to say that a lot of people don't need to be in a bad accident to know that one could happen and kill them all too fast and easily.  

I thought at one time about getting a motorcycle but decided I wasn't nearly a good enough defensive driver to survive on one, and so got a bicycle.  I still feel plenty vulnerable on a bicycle, but at about 15 miles an hour, any crash I get into with a non-moving object is likely to be survivable.  But if I get in a crash with a car, all bets are off.  And I ride on roads anyway.  But I sure think about it, just as I think about it when I'm driving, especially if I see someone else driving in ways that seem iffy.  

 ***

And now, back to budgeting.

 

On the Rivet

 Old bike saddles used to be made of leather riveted on to a frame. Here's a picture:

When a biker is really working, really at the utmost of their abilities, they tend to sit really forward, right on that front rivet.  So in the biking world, being "on the rivet" means you're working really hard, and you can't do much more than you're doing.  And the rivet isn't especially comfortable.

Here's a picture of Jens Voigt on the rivet:

That's how I feel these days, though he looks much better at it than I ever will.

You might remember the mandated training sessions that I told you I was supposed to sign up for.  As I mentioned then, I dutifully signed up.  And the first session was surprisingly helpful and good.  I have another session coming up for three hours each over the next three Wednesday afternoons, and it's the seven habits one. 

On Wednesday afternoon, I got a message with "high importance" (the stupid red exclamation mark) telling me to go do something in preparation for the course.  And I thought, it's next week, I'll take a look over the weekend.

Then this morning, I got another rather panicky looking one.  And so, this afternoon, after my meeting, I opened it up to see what I was supposed to do.  And there was this message that I was supposed to do this thing because they were due this past Wednesday.

Like an obedient so and so, I opened it up, and there were instructions: sign in here, fill out this form.  So I did.  And then the next instruction: send this email out to at least ten people (and as many as 30) who are either your supervisors or who you supervise, and ask them to spend 15 minutes filling out the form.  And I'm already late.  And the person has asked that I email TODAY to confirm that I'd sent out the survey things.

I admit, I sort of lost it.  Right there in my office.  It's been that week.  The latest stuff: the headmaster decided, under pressure from students, to cancel two days of classes over the next two weeks to give students a break (which they need because he decided we wouldn't have a spring break this semester to prevent students from traveling).  Note that faculty folks had asked and begged for him to put in a few scattered days if he didn't want students to have a whole week, and let us plan for those.  But no, he'd said.  (It's worth noting that "travel over spring break" for most of our students involves going home, which they've been doing on weekends anyway a lot, picking up extra shifts at their job, and yes, getting some extra rest and catching up.  Few of our students have the finances to go party in Florida.)

Most students are really happy about the two days.  Faculty are less sanguine.  For one, it means most of us have to rethink at least one hour each for three or four courses (our typical load) and work around.  And many of us had built in some flexibility and already given students a day or two off our courses.  (Because that's what the headmaster had said we should do.)  

Grading isn't going to stop, nor are committee responsibilities, etc.  It's yet another half-assed adding to instructor workloads.  It's like the headmaster has never actually taught a college course.  (Because, it's true, I think.  This is why people with degrees in "higher ed management" shouldn't generally be in positions of power in universities and colleges.)

And about two days before that, we got the announcement that because they've opened up a vaccination clinic on campus, they're using one of the faculty parking lots for vaccination parking, so we have to park at a further lot.  Yes, it's a great thing they're doing vaccination clinics.  Yes!  And it's a small enough thing.  But it means a longer walk for most of us.  It adds up.

And no, thank dog it won't interfere with the special marked places where the administrators have reserved places:

Except that the reserved and numbered spaces (the one to the left of the loading dock is where the highest academic official parks) are pretty much empty every time I walk through the lot on the way to and from my office.  (I guess they're all working from home even though they've insisted that all of us teach face to face unless we have a specific medical issue.  That's leadership, right?)

Yep, today I'm a bit on the rivet.  It feels like most of us are these days.

 I emailed the two people who mostly supervise me, and asked them to fill out the thing, noting that I'd dutifully signed up for the training.  But I didn't ask any of my department colleagues.  If I'd asked ten of them, and it took 15 minutes each, that would be two and a half hours of peoples' time.  There's no way.

And then I wrote an email to the "training person" on campus (the one who'd sent me two urgent emails and who I was supposed to email TODAY) saying that I had sent the survey to my supervisors, who were part of the management structure that mandated this training, but that I wasn't adding to the work of anyone else so wasn't sending it out further.  And then I suggested that the description of the program had given specific dates, and I'd planned out to spend that time working on the program, and if they were going to require people to do stuff ahead, they should put that in the description of the program so we'd know.

And THAT is how you confirm the label of trouble-maker, no doubt.

"Onboarding"

 I think it's an incredibly clunky term, but it's the term HR folks seem to use.  It's the big picture practice of bringing someone new to work in your area.

For us, we're replacing our administration staff person.  As I mentioned here and here, our former administrative staff person, the person we hired over the summer, left in December.

Our new person is starting today.  I'm very hopeful.  They've worked elsewhere on campus, and has a stellar reputation, the sort of reputation where, when someone hears about our hire, they immediately say how lucky we are, and what a great person they are. 

Part of the reason I'm hopeful, and even know about "onboarding" is that one of the programs I signed up for after I got the mandate to sign up for "leadership training" was a campus-specific program on hiring.  Part of it wasn't that new to me, but part was about "onboarding," and that was super helpful.  (I was pretty cynical about this programming going in, but now I'm quite hopeful about the campus specific programs.  If they're half as helpful as this one was, I'll be pretty darned happy with them.)

Not only was the program helpful, but at the end, the HR person in charge sent us an "onboarding toolkit for managers" with lists of things to take are of on my end, things to talk about with the new person (like asking what training they need for various duties), and things to put together to ask them to do early on that will give them a sense of success.

So, I put together a couple of folders yesterday: one has several documents that might be helpful, the recently retired administrative staffer's to do list for the year, the chair's duty list and calendar, lists of department members by rank, area, and offices and such.  Another has copies of all the stuff our new person will need for scheduling (a major part of this person's duties has to do with scheduling).  And the third has a list of relatively easy tasks that they can take care of fairly soon.  There was a little bit of filing, and then signing up for a procurement card, and stuff.

Some of all this is easier because the new person has been a campus employee already.  So I didn't need to arrange for a campus ID or anything.  

***

What with the hiring, and all the reappointment letters for tenure track colleagues, and so forth, I've been incredibly busy these past few weeks.

Now, I'm a bit behind on grading, but might be able to catch up on that today.  And if so, then I'm almost caught up with all the things I should be caught up with.

With no spring break this semester (the administration effort to keep students from traveling to party destinations even though most of our students usually spend spring break pulling extra shifts at their workplace to try to make money, or visiting family, because most of them can't afford a trip to some sunny beach to party), we're all running on empty, on the rivet, or whatever other metaphor you can think of.

I'm hoping to be able to catch my breath a bit on Thursday...

Reading Evaluations of Teaching - Time Spent Doing Homework?

 I've spent much of the day reading evaluations so that I can do yearly reviews for my departmental colleagues, and I'm weirdly fascinated by one of the questions and the responses.

The question asks students to estimate how many hours per week they spend outside of class on the course.  And it gives them several options, ranging from under one hour to two hours or more.

By way of background, we teach three and five credit hour courses in my department, mostly (where each hour in class is one credit, and .  When I was in college, I was told I should plan to work outside of class about 3 hours for each hour inside of class, except for labs, where you'd work about an hour or an hour and a half outside for each hour in lab.  Or so we were told.  (I'm not sure I ever did; I wasn't the best undergrad student.  But by the time I went back to school, I did at least that.  And my grades reflected the change.)

Most students choose the fewer than two hours a week option.  (Though in my one course last semester, 8/10 students who responded said more than two hours a week.)

Does this mean our students are smarter than before?  

That we aren't demanding as much work as when I was a student? 

That we may be assigning work, but it's not getting done?

Are they responding to more honest expectations?  (ie.  maybe the people who told me to study 3 hours outside for every hour inside were wishful thinking?)

That students work more efficiently than we did?  (This HAS to be part of it.  Just being able to type things up on a computer and make changes easily is SO much faster than painstakingly typing on a typewriter and having to make corrections with wite-out or whatever.  Also looking stuff up is MUCH faster now.)

***

How should I think about those responses?  I tend to think that students spending more time working outside of class reflects the course's rigor.  But maybe that's wrong?

In the end, it's an interesting, but sort of useless question for me, I guess, in reviewing colleagues.

 

And Now What?

 We requested for three people to have fully on line schedules for fall, and were turned down on all fronts.

The good: the dean just told the registrar's office to make the change, rather than telling me to make the change.

The bad: my colleagues will be at greater risk.

My question: Part of me really wants to resign as chair and retire and let someone else deal with this crap.  But...  I'd feel really awful doing so in some ways.  And really good in others.

***

And still, our administrators are working remotely, for the most part.  Of the ten special parking spaces, two are usually filled on any given day.  Now, maybe there aren't fully 10 people with slots.  But there are more than two.

Leading firmly from the very back, miles behind whatever trenches we imagine ourselves in.

***

There was an article in Forbes recently saying that more than half of tenured university faculty have considered leaving the field or retiring early.  I posted it on my effbee page, and bunches of people have said that yes, they're doing one or the other.

Add This to Your Plate

 I got a couple of emails yesterday, one from HR, and one from the Dean, which I actually read.  The upshot is that all of the chairs and other campus "leaders" are supposed to participate in a number of leadership courses, each lasting from three to nine hours, it looks like.

I'd like to bitch and moan about the added work, which is, at minimum, four three hour classes, so 12 hours, but two nine hour classes are also strongly recommended.

It's not like we have to do them all today or anything, they're spread over the year.  But the ones for this spring (four of them, I think) are mostly scheduled for when I have class to teach.  That pushes me into summer to take most of them.  

I dutifully signed up.  I don't want to get a reputation as a whiner, but still I'm irritated.  

Some of the classes look super helpful, and I wish I'd been able to do them this past summer: there's one on campus specific budgeting, and campus specific roles for chairs, and another on hiring practices that's campus specific.  

Others seem, well, potentially irritating.  Or not.  They seem to be really into the "seven habits" thing.  I don't really know.  According to Dr. Google, the seven habits are:

• Habit 1: Be Proactive® ...
• Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind® ...
• Habit 3: Put First Things First® ...
• Habit 4: Think Win-Win® ...
• Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood® ...
• Habit 6: Synergize® ...
• Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw®

I'm not sure I need 9 hours to learn about these.  I mean, duh.  And I'm unconvinced by the trademarks.  Seriously, "be proactive" is trademarked?  Didn't Ben Franklin have something to say like that?

I may need an attitude adjustment.  I need to try to make it useful, at any rate, because I'm supposed to do it.  But it does feel a bit cultish, doesn't it?

I can't help thinking how much more useful such things would be to colleagues at the beginnings of their careers rather than nearing the end.

I didn't sign up for the week long workshop in the middle of summer.  I'm hoping to actually get to have more of a summer this year.  I'm paid to work 60% during the summer, supposedly, and I mostly worked a lot more than that last summer.  (A lot of that was learning curve.)

Finally, I sometimes get the sense that people whose main jobs have to do with having meetings tend to think that the point of work is to schedule meetings, and everyone can schedule meetings at their convenience.  And, of course, that's not the way it works for most faculty and instructors on a college campus.

In better news, the department schedules committee did great work yesterday, and things are coming together for spring of 2022!

Chaos and Nothingness

There is everything to write.  And nothing.

Things are constantly changing, constantly demanding adjustments.  And things are endlessly boring and unchanging.

A month ago, we were all working under the assumption that fall semester would be much like the current semester, with significant numbers of colleagues working from home for medical or other reasons (they've been pretty good here about allowing folks with small children to work from home to be able to care for children whose daycare or schools are or may be closed at any time).  And a further significant number of classes are in weird hybrid or cohort models that no one likes (where, for example, on third of students can fit in a MWF classroom with a Covid Cap) and the rest can't, so the class is split in thirds and students actually meet in class once a week, with the instructor figuring out something for the rest of the week.  People have been creative in making courses work that way, but they're far from ideal.

Given that expectation, we had scheduled courses on line with no meeting times, or on line with meeting times for livestreaming, in cohort models, and in regular old face to face models with small numbers socially distanced in large rooms.  That left, of course, many regular rooms unused in any formal sense, since many rooms are designed to fit 20-30 students, but almost no courses run with 10 or fewer students.

And then on Monday, everything changed, and the administration announced that we would all be in person, even those with medical reasons linked to Covid.  The Dean said that the only reason a class could be on line was to meet a pedagogical need.

So we started replanning to put courses face to face in regularly capped rooms, without social distancing.

Except some people really have health problems and worry that even in fall we won't have sufficient herd immunity.  Nor will we require students to have vaccines, and we, of course, won't know their vaccination status, and won't be allowed to ask.

Immediately, requests came in from folks who want to remain teaching on line.  And they're still coming in.  Some are from folks with medical reasons, some are from folks who've moved elsewhere, at least partly, to be with loved ones while they teach on line.  (Here's work/life balance questions for real.)

I've been tending to say that so long as they have good pedagogical reasons...and I hope the Dean and higher ups will accept those pedagogical reasons.

The thing is: I walk by the special parking lot where higher level administrators (not the Dean, but above the Dean) have specified parking places.  #9 is the Provost's place, for example.  And none of those spaces tend to have cars parked in them when I come to work, at whatever time I come to work.  Nor when I walk to class.  Nor when I go home in the afternoon.

And when I'm in meetings on line with higher ups, it's easy to tell when they turn their cameras on that they're not in an office.  (The Dean almost always is, as is one associate Dean.)

If they don't feel safe working in their little fort building with separated offices and going to meetings in empty rooms on campus (there are a LOT of empty rooms that could fit a meeting of ten, say), then it irks me that they expect my colleagues with documented medical problems to meet with students several days a week in fall with no social distancing.  (NO one can say if there will be a mask requirement.)

I'm less sanguine about the folks who want to live elsewhere while they teach on line here.  It's not just that I think face to face generally makes better educational opportunities, but also that we do a lot of service work on committees, and they shouldn't expect everyone to accommodate their desires when it really is a lot better to meet in person normally.  On the other hand, we all make noises about work/life balance.  

In any department, there's likely a small percentage of people who are "checked out" to some extent from departmental life.  Often, these folks do a great job teaching, but shirk committee work.  Or they do great research and teaching, but shirk committee work.  And yet we all know that committee work keeps the gears moving and gets things done.  You want classes to teach?  There's a committee that works to make sure the curriculum makes sense.  And so forth.

It seems like teaching on line makes checking out easier to do, and harder to discourage.

***

I'm teaching a small class, all in person, and trying to make it as much like a regular course as possible.  And mostly, it's great.  They're discussing and it's lovely.

One person had to quarantine, and so I livestreamed the class.  And now some people seem to have decided that this means they can go somewhere and just tell me they'll join the livestream.  I'm frustrated by this behavior, but don't know quite what to do.    I don't want students to feel forced to come to class if they're unwell or should be quarantining.  But I also don't want to livestream so that a student can go visit a grandparent.  On the other hand, better that they join the livestream?  It's frustrating and hard.

Into the Abyss

 As I mentioned last time, our office staff person has left.  So we're working on hiring someone new.  And that involves paperwork.  Except, of course, nothing's actually ON paper.  What do we call it now?

We have permission to go back to the old search and call the next person down the list.  And between the folks on the search, we've dug out our notes and have the next folks' names.  What I don't have is their phone numbers.  So, I thought, I'll go into the computer documents about the last search and pick them up easily, and... I was wrong.

Between the time we did that search and now, the computer interface has been changed, so nothing I'm doing works to get me in.  At least nothing I can figure out.

I emailed the HR person who's mostly in charge of hiring stuffs, and who, I assume, is super busy.  Then I called the Question Center to get help from them.  That's our centralized "one stop shopping" administrative unit that's supposed to be able to help us with all sorts of administrative stuff.  No answer.  

I tried calling the administrative staff person at the Dean's office, who I thought might know.  No answer.

Then I got an email from the Question Center asking what my question was, sorry to miss my call, etc.  So I emailed them, and the response was to send another email to the HR person I'd already emailed.

I decided to work on other stuff.  And after a while, I got a call from one of the staff people at the Dean's office, to try to help.  But they didn't know.  So they asked the Dean, who, it sounds like, basically threw up his hands and said he always has to ask for help to get into the hiring system.  So then she called the Deanling, and we talked across phone lines, and decided to do an internet call.  

We did the internet call, and the Deanling realized that the directions page he was going to point me to (which I'd used already) didn't work any better for him than for me.  So HE put in a call to the HR person.

And now the HR person sent me new instructions, so I can get into the system.  But I can't seem to find my search in there.

I've now spent two or more hours on just this problem, and I've got 6 other problems to try to take care of, or tasks to do.

So Much Has Happened...

 since I last posted.

We made it through finals.  One of my students says they're going to go through the process to grieve their grade.  I think the grade I put in is the grade they earned.  

Most of the other students did pretty darned well.  In their final reflection, a number talked about working harder on my class than on other classes, and learning really valuable skills about critical reading and research.  So that was good.

The person I talked about hiring here and here has quit for another job.  I don't know whether this has to do with me being a poor manager and not doing a good job bringing the person on board, or the person being a job-hopper, or what.  

But it means trying to hire again for that position, which is a huge additional task.

In the meantime, Covid continues apace and more.  The Northwoods' hospital is supposedly overbooked and in difficulty.  And the numbers of people who just won't wear masks is frustrating.

And the numbers of people who insisted on traveling or getting together with large groups for Thanksgiving and Christmas is even more frustrating.  I GET that it's hard.  Really.  But if we can all hold on for six months, things will get so much better, and fewer people will be sick, or die, or have long term problems.

Thanksgiving for me:  called with family, not zoom, but you get the idea.  That was nice.  A friend invited me to pick up a lovely dinner and bring it home.  So I did.  It was a lovely dinner.  And a bit lonely.

Christmas for me: called with family, not zoom, but you get the idea.  That was nice.  A friend invited me to pick up a lovely dinner and bring it home.  So I did.  I was a lovely dinner.  And a bit lonely.

I did a fair bit of Christmas prep for my Mom from afar: first, I sent a package with some things she needed and some reindeer antler hats for her and a friend.  Then I sent a package with a flannel Christmas tree thing, treats, and a note.  Then I sent another package with cute ornaments in various "people" shapes (elf, Santa, snowman, gingerbread man, etc) with pictures of family members in the face area (I got the ornaments, and family members sent me pictures, which a local place printed in the right size).  I think that was helpful for her.  I hope so.

Before Christmas, I started taking a walk about once a week with the dinner friend's six year old kid.  We walk to a local coffee shop, get hot cocoa or cider, and then walk to the park area where there are big rocks and such to play on, and play with our imaginations for a while, drink our drinks, and walk back.  It's little enough to do to give a friend a break from homeschooling and such.

About two weeks before Christmas, I got one of the ornament things, and asked the kid if they wanted to give his parents a present.  They did, of course.  They're at that age when giving a present is important, too.  So we took a picture, and I said I'd get it printed and put it in the package.  And then they drew a picture to go with it.

And then the next time we went to get cider, I gave them the wrapped package and they put it under their tree.  They were excited.

On Christmas Eve, my friend called to tell me that the first thing when they were going to open presents under the tree, the kid had wanted them to open their present, and was so proud of it.  And, of course, my friends loved it, too.

I got the kid some legos, and arranged with their Mom to do a scavenger hunt.  So I wrapped five gifts with clues and put a little sticker on each about where it should be hidden (so they'd be in the right order), and the kid got to do a scavenger hunt for their present on Christmas, which I'm told they enjoyed a lot.  (I'd left the gifts wrapped in the back of my car while we went on our walk for cider, and their Mom took them out and took care of the rest.)  The Mom really wanted to make this a good Christmas for the kid, even though they wouldn't be with family, and I think this added a little.

So now, things to do:

Hire a new person.

Year Evaluations for everyone but me (the Dean does mine)

Assessment stuffs, both our programs and the GE program

Scheduling stuffs (I need to schedule our non tenure track folks for fall)

Budget work

Prep my spring course and get it all on line and ready, as much as possible.  My spring course is too big to fit all together in a room, so I have to do what they consider a "hi-flex" thing: one third of the students in class each day, the rest on line.  What a flustercluck!

Evals for our non tenure track folks with our writing program and personnel committee chair.

Write letters for two tenure track folks' reappointment.

Work on a scholarship thing.  This is actually the BEST news lately.  A generous donor asked us what we'd do with a couple thousand dollars, and we said we'd love to give scholarships to a cohort of underrepresented students entering, thinking of English majors/minors.  And now we have to find students!  But it's all very late in the game, so...

And yet.... I feel absolutely no energy to do this stuff.  I really need to just power through.  Wish me luck.

Nudge

 I got copied on some emails today sent out by an administrative aide telling colleagues in my department that they need to do X before the year is out or else.

I get these sorts of emails fairly often.  We're supposed to do time sheets, pretty much like any other job, saying when we took sick leave and such.  But some people don't do them or skip some, or whatever, and so I got a bunch of copied emails telling people to get caught up or else.

I can sure understand missing a month.  It happens.  But not doing them for an entire year?  That's not just a mistake.  That's on purpose.

And we have a departmental email that goes out at the beginning of the month as a reminder, and then a week later as another reminder.  

This time, it was trying to get people caught up on "training" stuffs we're all supposed to do before the beginning of the academic year.  There's one on email and other security, and one on not sexually harassing students, and so forth.  Yes, they're useless.  And yes, someone is making way too much money supplying these mandated training things to large employers.  For each, it's about 90 minutes of stupid irritation.

But just do it and it's done.  (I did three for the coming year over Thanksgiving break.  Two one day, and one the next, and now I'm done for the year.  Yay me.)

I'm sure pretty much every largish employer or government agency has these for employees to do.  And mostly, I'm sympathetic to the goal: don't think you're going to get millions of dollars if you send your bank info to that Nigerian prince.  And don't sexually harass people.  And try to treat people with respect and decency.  All of those are worthy things, even if the training module thingies are dreadful. 

What I've decided to do is send one follow up email about whatever, reminding the person of the consequences (you lose some benefit that's nice, usually).

Today, I got a polite email back, thanking me for the nudge.  Okay.  Nice.  At least it was nice.  But seriously, I shouldn't have to nudge someone who's been here for nearly 10 or more years.

I think the biggest shock for me as chair is the constant reminder that my fellow faculty members haven't bothered to "read the syllabus" or "do the reading" or "do the homework" or whatever that we all complain that students don't do.  

And for exactly the same reasons: we're overwhelmed, and the things we're supposed to do don't seem as important as other things, and so on.

Advising Woes

 Like many other campuses, NWU has moved to a system of centralized advising, with students having faculty advisors assigned rather late in the game, and not having any perceived "need" to contact the faculty advisor.  All their registration codes come through the central system advisors.  And those advisors are really pushed to get students through in four years and to keep them as happy as possible in that customer service sort of way.

But they seem really easily riled.  Mostly, this seems to come from a lack of understanding about how departments work.  And, no doubt, from pressures to keep students happy.

So, for example, there's a senior special basketweaving course that some majors absolutely need, about 26 a year.  Ideally, this would be taught with a max of 20 students per section.  And that's what we do.  But that means there are often sections with 12 to 15 students, and that feels like a problem in some ways.  First, it means we have an instructor teaching a small student contact hour load, and that feels unfair to the folks whose senior courses are packed full constantly, and who also teach bigger lower division courses.  And it means that the faculty member can't teach a bigger lower division general education type course.  And the administration wants us to offer lots of those.

So, we've talked about whether we can move to teaching the special course once a year, only in, say, fall.  But for next year, the plan is to teach it both semesters.

But holy cow, the central advising folks had a massive panic and were trying to get permission for students who aren't ready for it to take it this spring, because they can't possibly graduate without it and blah blah.  I think I've written them three or four emails trying to calm them down, and they seem calmed now.  But they needn't have gotten panicked anyway.

My best solution would be to teach it three of four semesters, but I'm not sure that will happen.  If it does, then doing a good job advising students will be vital, and I'm not sure our advisors can handle the complexity.

Then there's also the patterned basketweaving major.  It's super popular, and students need to take five special courses in patterned basketweaving, starting with a second year course, two third year courses, and two fourth year courses.  But students can take two of these at the same time.  So, if they don't get into the second year course until their fourth year, they can take the other required basketweaving and general education courses, and then take two third year courses in one semester, or two fourth year courses in one semester.  

Almost all students who have to delay a bit still get through in four years.  

This situation is nothing new, of course.  We've never been able to offer so many patterned basketweaving courses that all students get to take them the first semester they want to.  

And in the old days, all the faculty advisors knew that, and advised students not to panic, and things worked out just fine.

Now, though, there's major panic over in the advising center, and they're upset because an instructor with a course for spring that already has a full waiting list suggested a student (who contacted him about the course) talk to their advisor.  What else should they have done?  (They're not a TT person, and so aren't expected to do advising, and so they don't know the advising stuff, quite naturally.)

And they're implying that the basketweaving department doesn't know what it's doing and is purposefully scheduling too few patterned basketweaving courses.

The thing is: NWU hired 30 plus advisors, and that means, say, we didn't hire 15 faculty members across the university.  Those 15 people could make a whole lot more classes happen, couldn't they?  (Even though I don't think there'd be another patterned basketweaving hire.)

Feeling the No Power Position

 Let's imagine, for a moment, I've received a letter of complaint from some students about a colleague.  The students meet with me, and say that their instructor didn't give them a syllabus for the class until after the fourth week of classes, and they spent the first four weeks of classes doing "introductions" to "get to know each other."  

They also note that the instructor's a really nice person, very kind and supportive.

The instructor's supposed to be teaching reed management, but spends most every class session on reed dying, though the big project is on reed management, which (they say), they aren't spending much time on in class, even though it's a really complex subject.

That big project is coming due, and they've asked for help, but didn't get it.

They asked me specifically not to talk to the instructor until after the semester ends, and not to use their names.

And did I mention, the instructor's a full professor?

As a chair, and especially a new chair, I really don't know what to do.  I think an email to the Dean is in order.

UGH.

Observations

 As chair, I'm responsible for doing my own classroom visits (aka observations) of tenure track and newer adjunct instructors.  Because I was worried about being shut down, I worked pretty hard early on to visit the in person classes I could.  

And now I'm trying to do the last on line observation.  It's totally different, way harder, and more time consuming.

Typically, around here, when we do class visits, we have a chat with the instructor to learn about what they're doing in the class, what their goals for the class meeting are, what difficulties they're experiencing, what concerns they have.  We get a copy of the syllabus and any assignments that are relevant.  Then we visit the class for an hour or so. (If it's an hour and fifteen minutes, we probably visit the whole session.  If longer, we visit part.)  And then we meet again with the instructor to get their take on how things went and give feedback.  Then, in most cases, we write up a report and a copy gets put in a file and given to the instructor.

On line: I visit with the person, usually virtually.  Then I'm invited into the course management site.  And I start looking at the overall organization, which is what I'd get by looking at a syllabus for a few minutes, but usually it takes longer on line because it's been split up.  And then I start in on the material I've been asked to look at.  Except usually people teaching fully on line don't teach day by day, but organize by the week.  So I end up needing to look at a whole week of material.  And sometimes it's hard to know when a week is ending or not, especially with a longer work (such as a novel).

I use the Chico State Exemplary Online Instruction website and rubric (and have told the instructors ahead of time that I would be), because it gives me a foundation to work from.  It's super helpful.  (Thank you, Chico State!)  But it also takes a fair bit of time.

++++++

A couple of my colleagues now have covid, and I'm worried.  Before, a colleague was quarantining because a family member had it, but they're back now, and never caught it. 

The Little Stuff

 As instructors, we all have little stuff that needs to get done.  

We have monthly time sheets, which basically ask, did you take sick leave.  If not, you say no.  If you did, you put in the days you were out. It takes about 3 minutes once a month, and one of our administrative assistants sends out a reminder each month with directions how to do it.

And yet: this past week, I've gotten emails from the deanling letting me know that about a quarter of our folks were missing at least one, and of those, most were missing significant numbers.  Some people were missing the whole year's worth.  It's a little thing, right?  Except when we retire, unused sick leave gets converted into payments towards our group health insurance, and for me, at this point, having been here 20 years, I have about 5 years of insurance (unless I get sick and have to take sick leave now).  That means, for a lot of people, retiring before 65 is a real possibility.  And that's incredibly valuable!

So I sent out reminders with specific months that folks had to do.  And still, even now, some people haven't bothered.  (The notes I sent out specified that people would lose x hours of sick leave, because that's what the deanling told me.)

Another piddly thing: we're all supposed to turn in a syllabus for each course to be kept in an electronic file.  This way, if a student needs a copy of the syllabus for a transfer or something, the office staff can help them with that easily.  

So, the same admin assistant sends out requests.  And then reminders.  And at this point in the semester, they're sending individual requests to the people who haven't sent them yet.  

I don't get why.  Seriously, you hit "reply" and then "attach" and go through your computer files, attach the file, and hit send.  Two minutes?  And this is for things you're currently teaching, so you probably have the files somewhere pretty handy, right?

These piddly things come to me, as chair, to send reminders and such, or to try to add my urging to the admin assistant's.  For all the good it does.

And yes, the irony: faculty are FAR worse than students at turning things in, even when reminded repeatedly.  We don't, as it were, read the syllabus.

Except, like most students, most of us do the things we're supposed to do, if not immediately, after one reminder.  It's just the ones who don't cause extra work for other people, and the work adds up.

Reviewing the Review

 This past week, our former chair, several high level administrators, and I had a meeting to review the department review that was done in 2019.  Usually, they said, the reviews of the reviews happen in summer, but as we all know, this summer was something else, and so, it was delayed.

The review was good, as was the initial review.  There are problems, but we all knew that, and we also know that we can't mint money, so we can't easily solve the problem.

Over-reliance on instructors with short term contracts.  They're great, but we're constantly juggling how we're going to pay them (we being the department during planning season), rather than them being paid through the base plan as tenure track folks and more permanent folks are.

We were advised to hire some people on more permanent contracts.  And, of course, we'd put in a request to do so last spring, and the administrators didn't give us the go ahead, because they had a massive budget shortage looming, of course.  So then they said, well, it's a good idea to hire people on more permanent contracts.  And we agreed.  And nothing is likely to come of it because the state is in more and more dire circumstances.

And even when things ease up, we'll never get back to where we once were.  Or we won't unless the voters decide that they really do want to fund public education in a more meaningful way again.  And I hope they do, and I think they should start with K-12 schools first.

And thus, we all performed our little performance for each other, yes, these things would be good, and maybe someday.  But today is not the day.  Nor is next year, in all likelihood.  Nor the year after.  And in the long run, we're all dead.

I can't imagine how disheartening it must be for the administrators at the meeting to have these meetings with chairs of recently reviewed departments, and to know they're just performing, and that they'll never have the money to throw at the problems in a meaningful way.

Our former chair asked a GREAT question during the meeting: What are [the highest administrator's] priorities for us?

Of course, our work had been focused through the last five year plan, but now there's a new one... and it's even more STEM focused than the last.  F the humanities, is the latest word.  But if we just find a way to be more STEM focused!

My favorite was from our Dean, the person most directly responsible for giving us, or denying us, permission to do searches and make hires: catch up on hiring people.  Well... yes... but...

+++++++++++++

It's been over a month since I posted.  So much keeps happening, and there's constantly something new to learn.

Next up: I have to cobble together the plan for how we're going to pay our short term contract people next year.  That should be fun.  Oh, so very much fun.  Except, yeah, not really.

Dread

 I can't get the poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" out of my head...

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

   Someone had blundered.

   Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

   Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

 

I'm not in a war zone, and not in nearly as much danger as your average roofer, I'm sure.  Still, I'm worried.

 

I did my first class observation as chair the other day.  The class was super, as I'd expected, but I couldn't help feeling a bit on edge.  As chair, I'm going to be doing a fair number of class observations this semester, most in person, sitting in an empty chair amongst the students, all of us masked, all of us socially distanced, and still.

 

The administrators tell us that the public health people assure them that the masks and social distance works really well to make the risk of transmission really low.  But sitting there for over an hour the other day, I was still worried.

 

I'd be a bit reassured, I supposed, if the administrators were making their presence on campus felt, walking between classes with folks.  But I see on effbee that some are working from home, and others are hunkered in their offices, staying far from the rest of us plebians.

 

Most of our students are being reasonably careful in classes, but what of the weekends?  The bars?  I doubt they're empty these days.

 

And the dorms are already a concern.

 

Several of my students have decided not to come to class, but to attend virtually, and since I organized my class so that they could do that, thinking that there'd be some quarantined at some point, it's fine by me.  I did a check in with the class on Friday, and most were feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and worried, pretty much like everyone I know.

 

I'm hearing from colleagues that they're hearing from students who want to attend virtually, too.  And some are able to accommodate that, and willing, and some aren't.

 

One colleague resents that students feel that they should get to stay safely at home when my colleague doesn't get to do that.  But officially, none of us is supposed to be so worried that we feel staying home is imperative.  

It feels like we instructors are caught in the middle between administrators tucked in their offices insisting that we all have to teach face to face, and students who don't want to be face to face, and the administrative pressure to help those students who are quarantined keep up, but not caring about the students who are anxious...

***

I went to a training session by our teaching center folks, the ones who act like they know so much more about teaching than anyone else, even though most of them have never stood in front of a real class to teach it.  Anyway, they said we could take attendance through our streaming system.  That sounded good.  But I couldn't find my notes, so I went to their site to try to find the ppt they'd used, which is supposed to be available.  (They're not.)  So I asked in a 9 am Q&A session.  And the person showed me.  So I went to do it, and it lists students by first name and then last name, and some with middle names.  Unlike EVERY other thing done by any large organization ever...  So I went back to the Q&A session, and the facilitator sounded like she'd never even thought of how to move from the list to the official attendance record.  So she decided to show me on her fake class of five... and started taking out the middle names, one at a time.  I stopped her and said she couldn't do that because it wasn't practical for a large class (where about 20% of my students show middle names).  And she was befuddled.  I wanted to say: put 150 students in there, and then come back to me and show me how to do this without a massive work around.

There's no way to do it without a massive work around, apparently.  So I suggested she needed to contact the provider and let them know this would be a good feature.  And she said no, she couldn't do that, that they weren't going to change things.  

But here's the thing: I bet thousands of instructors would find that useful across the country, and if the company doesn't get told, doesn't have customers INSISTING, then they're going blithely on with crap.

***

I dropped by some friends' house yesterday afternoon to drop some stuff off, and they invited me to dinner, so we had lovely hot soup in the back yard, socially distanced and all.  But it was chilly.  And soon it will be far to chilly for dinner outside to be pleasant.  I'm so going to miss that.