A former Yale School of Medicine administrator pleaded guilty Monday after stealing and reselling more than $40 million worth of computers and electronic devices while employed by the university, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Connecticut.
The article:
https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Former-Yale-administrator-stole-40M-in-17034496.php
The flava:
Over 1,000 faculty members from universities across the country, including Columbia, Yale, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, signed a letter urging President Joe Biden to deliver on full student debt cancellation for federal borrowers. The letter, which was organized by the Debt Collective — the nation's first debtor's union — and obtained by Insider, said that the growing $1.7 trillion student debt crisis is causing "instructional harm," forcing borrowers to assume studies that would best help them pay off their debt. They say it has also exacerbated the labor shortage for faculty, because many of them are student debtors themselves.
The article:
F***in' UCLA, am I right?
--Wombat of the Copier
—Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, on September 10, 1999
The speech:
Huntsville Amarillo Pampa Paris Yates Bluegrove Izoro Rockport Texline Hillsboro Decatur Abilene Yturria, Canton Alvin Lufkin!
A former casino executive was sentenced on Wednesday to a year and a day in prison for participating in a conspiracy to secure his daughter’s admission to the University of Southern California as a Division I basketball recruit even though she did not make the varsity team in high school, prosecutors said.
The article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/us/varsity-blues-sentence-gamal-abdelaziz.html
The flava:
The San Francisco Art Institute and the University of San Francisco announced this month that they’re planning to merge. Under the agreement, USF will acquire the cash-strapped 151-year old arts college and offer a program called SFAI@USF in the fall. The move is reminiscent of Northeastern University’s acquisition of Mills College in September 2021 as small colleges and arts schools deal with financial pressures compounded by Covid. We’ll talk about the implications for SFAI’s students and adjunct faculty, as well as for the broader arts community of the Bay Area, and look ahead at a new era for the irreverent contemporary arts school.
The podcast episode:
I need advice.
Before COVID we had nearly 1000 students in our service courses, so we use an online homework package. It's pricey but it comes with textbook access. I felt that for what the students pay for it, we shouldn't just thoughtlessly throw some random problems at them - but we should make the absolute best use of it. I devoted an entire winter break a few years ago to testing all of the bells and whistles and coming up with a new course design that, for the same price they were already paying for run of the mill problem sets, could be used to give them a great, interactive, experience where things done in one part of the course (lecture, lab, peer workshop...) would work synergistically with other parts. I made self-assessments that students could use with flow-charts to help them figure out if they've nailed a topic, or need more practice, and if so, what part of the program should they try next etc. I even watched upwards of 50 hours of supplementary videos and played with supplementary animations/simulations/manipulatives etc. to provide students with descriptions and time stamps of what each of these features were. If we're going to tell them we'd like them to buy a $100 access code - I wanted to make sure they got $200 worth of education out of it.
But he never calls them.
We have 2 reps from the publisher and they tell me this is all bullshit in the first place. There is no such thing as being "backordered". There isn't some ship in the middle of the Suez holding all the cards. If the bookstore manager calls and requests more codes, they hit a button, a computer generates a few dozen more codes, and they send them instantly.
They've even told me "stay by your e-mail - we're sending codes to your bookstore right now and we'll let you know when your students can get them on campus" and STILL when the students show up he claims they're "backordered".
So I've pleaded multiple times with my chair to take this to the University and every semester he says ok next semester.
I wouldn't mind that he can't provide the codes if he didn't threaten me - but now I'm afraid - I try to be covert about it but it gives me massive anxiety.
If this is how he runs the bookstore can I really be sued, as he claimed? I can't get my chair to talk to the university about what is actually in that contract - I'm SURE the bookstore voids the exclusivity by not being able to provide the course materials.
What would you do? Any advice?
I mean in what universe do students actually work this hard to get their materials? They usually blow it off - and I've managed to convince them that they should try to use the recommended course materials. I'm actually pretty proud of what I've done with this course - and this guy is just screwing the students and lashing out at the faculty. I am just very frustrated and hoped someone might have a good idea.
--Wombat of the Copier
Hey There,
So over four years ago--wow, that long?--I posted this: https://zoozethehorse.blogspot.com/2017/05/adjunct-debt-from-prof-pottah.html
I was down. I was . . . not well. I had just finished another semester at two local colleges. The jobs, like many adjunct jobs, were often humiliating (we know why; no need to rehash that). The school I taught most of my classes at let me go a semester later. It was bleak--financially and spiritually. It was bleak. I had made mistakes and was paying for them, but I was pretty much condemned to this life forever.
But what I am really earning is pride and a sense of mattering. My teaching experience directly impacts my job now, and I am able to mentor younger people and bring all of my creativity to the work. I am really good at the job. Teaching as an adjunct, of course, mattered, but any positive feelings were usually destroyed by the daily humiliations and frustrations. But that's a thing of the past.
I feel real again. I don't have to lie to my kids. Adjuncting is much better now because I don't walk on to campus full of shame, the community college at which I teach values me. I feel like an actual person, not something that exists on the backside of a university and can be wiped away at will without the outside world ever witnessing it, or wanting to.
No one else knew about this struggle, save my wife. (And I don't even think she understood the feelings of powerlessness.) Who else was I going to tell? Thank you. I was glad you all listened. Who else would have? Again, thank you.
--Prof. Pottah
[Editor's note: Thank you to the writer for sending a follow-up message a few days later--because the first one actually went to my spam folder. Who knows how long it could have languished there had I not been poked?]
