thirsty for eggnog

Perhaps contributors could feel free to share, here, the most meaningful thing they experienced at their school in 2017.


Many people are celebrating Christmas today near the pasture in Orange, Texas.  Whatever your tradition and endeavors, may you endure and find peace.

one year ago

We remember College Misery.

We honor and thank Fab.

weekend thirsty

Do you get paid too much or embezzle from your school?

Do your colleagues?

"Proffies get lots of money," said newspapers and websites.

Proffies' salaries are high:
http://www.bnd.com/news/local/education/article189392769.html

or they just steal the money:
http://www.fox13memphis.com/top-stories/college-professor-admits-to-stealing-10000/656541510

At all of our schools, in one form or another. . . .

Big Hungry Monday

A few proffies, students, or administrators get angry at you and publicly criticize you regardless of what you do.

  

How do you handle them?

Because Babelfish doesn't have a Silverback-to-Midcareer option [from Wombat of the Copier]

When an octogenerian silverback says "That's an interesting idea.  Very innovative.", does it mean:

A) That's an interesting idea.  Very innovative.

or

B) You kids and your crazy crap.

Asking for a friend.

-WotC

Monday Magic in December

If you could go back and apologize to anybody in your academic life, who would it be?

Oklahoma man, 68, gets law degree [The Norman Transcript]

The flava:

Age is only a number. Just ask recently sworn-in Norman lawyer Ben Rogers.

Rogers graduated in May from the University of Oklahoma College of Law and subsequently passed the Oklahoma Bar Exam, which is required to practice law in Oklahoma. And he did it all at the ripe age of 68.

The article:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article187404043.html
or
http://www.normantranscript.com/news/university_of_oklahoma/never-too-old-to-learn-recent-ou-law-grad-starts/article_e2e4036a-ebe9-518d-84a1-d6b62ed24a58.html

Interviewing candidates for contingency, from Wombat of the Copier

I supervise the adjuncts in a STEM department in a small college in a big city.  Regionally, there are a number of suburbs that are hot spots for various niche industries, each of which are accurately categorized as applications of what we teach in my department. 

I don't officially make the hiring decisions but the chair likes me to screen people before she meets with them.  People constantly walk in off the street (literally) with thin and/or incoherent resumes (thrown together within the 24 hours since they impulsively stormed out of an industrial position) and expect us to take them and their zero-teaching-experience and make them professors. 

Not only do they expect us to hire them on the spot (regardless of whether or not we're currently hiring), but they anticipate that we'll be grateful to have someone like them.  I mean a real chemist who's worked in industry and everything - like wow - how often in a lifetime do we lowly academics get an opportunity to work with someone like that? 

Those silly adjuncts we already have, who also have PhDs, but additionally have 10-30 years of teaching experience... we've got tons of them and the ONLY reason we haven't made room for them on the tenure track is because we've been hoping against hope that someone with 4 years of industrial experience who has never taught or even written a research grant, would walk in off the street and shake things up for us. 

I want to tell them we have an orientation video just for them, make them watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LCggmsCXk4

--WotC

Should Tenure Depend on ‘Collegiality’? [National Review]

Tenure is supposed to protect college faculty from termination if their speech or writing disturbs school officials. That protection is getting weaker and weaker. For example, Marquette is trying to get rid of tenured political-science professor John McAdams because of a blog post that criticized an instructor’s handling of a controversy with a student.

early thirsty

Have you ever given an exam or assignment you wouldn’t have gotten a 100 on?

Thanksgiving week

I'm grateful for all contributors here.

Thank you.


Your real gosh-darned moderator,

Zooze

on the other hand

Boston’s Berklee College of Music reeling amid sexual misconduct allegations involving professors [The Washington Post]

Fifteen students allege three professors created 'hostile academic environment' [The Dartmouth]

on the one hand

Clayton Christensen is saying that "50 percent of the 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S. will be bankrupt in 10 to 15 years."

Fortunately, Christensen says that there is one thing that online education will not be able to replace. In his research, he found that most of the successful alumni who gave generous donations to their alma maters did so because a specific professor or coach inspired them.

Among all of these donors, "Their connection wasn't their discipline, it wasn't even the college," says Christensen. "It was an individual member of the faculty who had changed their lives."

"Maybe the most important thing that we add value to our students is the ability to change their lives," he explained. "It's not clear that that can be disrupted."

Fresno State professor to pay $17,000 after erasing students’ anti-abortion messages [The Fresno Bee]

The flava:

A Fresno State professor will pay $17,000 and undergo first amendment training after he erased students’ anti-abortion chalk messages on campus, according to Alliance Defending Freedom.

Greg Thatcher, a professor of public health, was sued in May by two students after video showed him scrubbing out messages like “women need love, not abortion” with his shoe and instructing other students to do the same. A court order filed last week forbids Thatcher from “interfering with, disrupting, defacing, or altering” any similar student activities.


The article:
http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/education/article183731526.html

Weekend Thirsty

What's the most demoralizing thing that happened to you during this past week? 

A Rant, from Wombat of the Copier

My favorite students are the no-excuses kids who are willing to come for extra help any time between 7 AM and 9 PM. 

They sit in my office or the conference room (if there's a test coming and a crowd assembles) and work work work - they get cramps in their hands from all the writing.  When I tell them a B is a good grade, they tell me it isn't good enough.  They don't want to be doctors because it looks cool on Grey's Anatomy.  They want to go to the Carribbean and bring starving babies back from the brink of death and they have a tear in their eye when they talk about it. 

They have bags under their eyes and big dreams in their hearts and they understand that the dream is at the end of a long hard road.

And every year the fucking Greek system poaches a few of them from me with a hologram of "connections" and every year it fucking pisses me the fuck off. 

Pledge "week" (it goes on for like a fucking month - oh yeah, there will be lots of f-words from here to the end - why do they call it a "week"?) leads up to the 3rd of 4 major exams.  And Exam III is on drop-deadline-eve.  I just looked at my fucking roster and my fucking favorites have been cut in half.  As usual.

Know what "connections" are good for?  Finding a fucking place to get a fucking drink when you're out of fucking town and need a fucking drink because you hate your fucking job because you were going to save babies in developing nations, but you took a W in Gen Chem so med schools put you on their "send letter about how competitive we are to soften the blow" list. 

When you were in my office with your friends spilling your guts about where you came from and how you got out and how you want to do more, did anyone take your phone, tell you what to wear, or tell you to stare straight with your mouth shut?  No?  It was nice, right?  When you were in with your "sisters" and they were telling you to keep your head straight and your shoulders square and that your hem wasn't right and you weren't getting your phone back for an extra hour because of it, did it cross your mind that if you told them what you told us, they wouldn't give a flying fuck?

Why does this institution exist?  Why do colleges allow this stupid fucking anti-academic fucking shit to go on? 

I feel like someone brainwashed and kidnapped my kids every year at this time.  Bye, kiddo, it was great knowing you.  I hope your old (actual) friends enjoy building the future you had wanted. 

--Love, WotC

Monday Magic in November

What do you wish you had known 20 years ago?

quitting academia: a metaphor

(a.k.a. "Big Thirsty: What are you afraid of?")

Google's "Education Evangelist" shares a few thoughts. . . .

The least-watched video from The New York Times 2017 Higher Ed Leaders Forum.

Wombat of the Copier says, "I need the grammar cops."

Does this need a hyphen? 

I can't tell if I'm going to get a Vassar t-shirt from Michael's Arts & Crafts that I have to color myself with markers made in China, or kid leather appliqués of an Adelphi logo on Himalayan cashmere. 

--Wombat of the Copier

What's your costume for Halloween?

3 Dartmouth profs accused of serious misconduct are on leave [bostonglobe.com]

The flava:

HANOVER, N.H. — Dartmouth College says it has placed three psychology professors on paid leave and restricted their access to campus pending the conclusion of investigations into allegations of ‘‘serious misconduct.’’

College spokeswoman Diana Lawrence said in a statement Wednesday that Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences professors Todd Heatherton, Bill Kelley and Paul Whalen are on paid leave.

The article:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/10/26/dartmouth-profs-accused-serious-misconduct-are-leave/GBh64Q5HhPaHYxTOnA3bLO/story.html

Big Hungry

What's on your mind, proffie?

Scenic spot replaces dumpster at site of Brock Turner assault [stanforddaily.com]

The flava:

Following re-landscaping outside the Kappa Alpha house, a stone-lined area with two benches and a fountain has replaced the dumpster by which former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner sexually assaulted a woman. The space was created in remembrance of the widely publicized 2015 crime.

Stanford plans to install a plaque on the landmark engraved with a passage from the viral 2016 letter that Turner’s victim — who has remained anonymous as “Emily Doe” — read to Turner at his sentencing.

“The quote, like the rest of the letter, is very powerful,” said Frederick I. Richman Professor of Law Michele Dauber, who proposed the project to the University and advocated for it with the consent of Doe, a family friend of hers.

“This is a letter that really affected, deeply, everyone who read it,” Dauber said. “I’m sure that it will be appropriate and powerful.”

The article:
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2017/10/04/scenic-spot-replaces-dumpster-at-site-of-brock-turner-assault/

College Advice I Wish I’d Taken [nytimes.com]

By Susan Shapiro

I taught my first class at Columbia University’s M.F.A. program this month, and even though I’ve been teaching college writing since 1993, I initially felt a little intimidated by the school’s regal campus. That, and regretful.

I enjoyed going to college at the University of Michigan, an hour from home, but my secret humiliation is: I was the type of mediocre student I now disdain. As a freshman, I cared about my friends, my boyfriend and my poetry. Or, I cared about what my boyfriend thought of my friends, what my friends thought of him, and what they thought of my poetry about him. Here’s what I wish I’d known and done differently. . . .

The whole gosh-darned article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/opinion/college-advice-professor.html

A Day of Jay.

I lied. I won't tell you about the whole day. I about had a stroke I got so mad at a group of freshmen who are the most maddening group I've had in the past 15 years.

But as I was FINALLY leaving campus after a nearly 10 hour day (I only teach 3 courses, but you know how you can get caught up in things), I watched a student commit 3 different jaywalking infractions in about 25 seconds total.

First of all she did the classic jaywalk, right across a busy street that borders campus, halfway between 2 perfectly marked crosswalks. Cars honked. She had to stand on the double yellow line for a few seconds while cars had to decide to simply stop and let her complete her crime or keep going and risk killing her. (I was too far away to kill her. Just sayin'.)

Then she got to a real corner with crosswalks, and she crossed against the red, holding up one hand when she saw a car hustling along at about the normal 35 mph speed. She had started against the red without looking too closely, and lucky she was young and nimble and lucky the driver actually had his/her eyes on the road.

2 down. 1 to go.

Now, on another legal corner, she paused, and then walked across the street ON A GREEN ARROW designed to let cars going in her direction take a left turn in front of her. The actual walk signal she faced was red. RED HAND! Wait. But she moved through the crosswalk and 3 cars had to stop in waiting traffic for the princess to go across - now, suddenly languidly. And as I crossed the crosswalk myself I could see her shaking her head, and I heard her say to nobody, "What the fuck?"

Three different times she put herself and others in harm's way. At the very least she inconvenienced or impeded 10 cars in traffic.

And I know if you were to ask her, that she'd say everything was someone else's fault.

This is my complaint today. She, just her, not every one of my students, thinks it's all about her. I know from the display what kind of student she'd be. How she'd act in a restaurant. What kind of grownup she's going to make.

NCAA defines "Academic Fraud"

somewhat differently than I would:

But after a three-and-half-year investigation, and despite the institution even agreeing that it had engaged in academic fraud, the NCAA said it couldn’t definitively conclude that the “paper courses” in the department of African and Afro-American studies had been designed and offered as an effort to benefit athletes alone. Thus, according to the
NCAA's Committee on Infractions, which adjudicates allegations of wrongdoing, they did not violate the group's rules.

Maybe the people making the decision all played football in their youths, and are feeling the effects?

There is, however, some slightly-better news:

Instead, the NCAA will forward its decision to the university's accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, which can address academic inconsistencies. Previously, the body had placed the university on a yearlong probation in 2015, ending in 2016, for violating seven accreditation standards, one of them being academic integrity. It was the strongest punishment the accreditor could deliver besides revoking accreditation entirely.

There are times when I think accreditors (who also frown on things like all-adjunct faculties and unqualified instructors of record) are the last hope of civilization, or at least the higher ed subset thereof. 

Full story here.  

The Search Is On!

Big Thirsty

If Adolf Hitler gave a lecture on your campus, would you

A)  shout him down and not allow him to speak?
B)  stand and turn your back to him while he spoke?
C)  shoot him?
D)  other:_______________________