Professors

Is anyone else genuinely not interested in knowing what should be private details of another adult's health? I'm happy to point students to helpful resources that I know about, but treating them is not my job, nor am I interested in the liability of being seen as some sort of first responder. This is well and truly out of my wheelhouse, and I work to keep it that way.

Now that the end is in sight, how's it going?

A series of cuts at West Virginia University has largely affected the humanities, but any program that is not seen as marketable may get the axe.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/us/college-board-ap-exams-courses.html?smid=

What do you all think of the College Board’s AP program?

In another thread, @[email protected] made a post leading to the question "How long until we need to include a lesson on crafting appropriate AI prompts in order to help students use them as tools and not as unpaid ghost writers?" Are we already doing this?

I definitely discuss acceptable use and try to keep the guidelines brief and familiar (Treat it like a not-too-bright friend who's a patient sounding board). But how far do you all think we'll eventually have to wade into the weeds on this?

I know that we're all still feeling our way around this issue, but how are other profs handling it? What is good evidence of unauthorized AI use? How do you handle a student who refuses to engage in attempts to get their side of the story?

For my classes, we talk once a month or so about acceptable use (treat it like a not-very-bright friend who's overconfident and prone to hallucinations). It's okay to brainstorm, bounce ideas, and generally use AI to spark creative problem solving. It's not okay to have it do your assignments.

This fall, I have a student who seems unfamiliar with showering and deodorant. I haven't said anything, hoping that the issue is just a one-off and that it will resolve itself. However, we're quickly approaching the end of my patience, and I'm not sure how to proceed.

Everyone has a deodorant malfunction from time to time. Obviously, no one is going to be personally identified, even in a private email. My best idea so far is a general class announcement via the LMS that it's been brought to my attention that we may have a problem and for everyone to please double check their hygiene before coming to class.

Have any of you all ever had to deal with this? Any suggestions?

Archived Version

A document called “syllabus” persists, and is still distributed to prospective students at the start of each semester—but its function as a course plan has been minimized, if not entirely erased. First and foremost, it must satisfy a drove of bureaucratic needs, describing school policies, accreditation demands, regulatory matters, access to campus resources, health and safety guidelines, and more.

At colleges and universities everywhere, the syllabus has become a terms-of-service document.

During the same period in which courseware was completing its takeover, the faculty-student relationship changed. Tuition prices rose, and the student’s role became more like that of a conventional customer. I’ve seen conflicts over grades or late assignments inspire faculty to add greater detail and more contract riders to their syllabi. Concerns about mental health, accommodation, disability resources, gender identity/personal pronouns, classroom climate, harassment and sexual assault, and other matters gave rise to pages’ worth of boilerplate.

These days, any serious administrator of a university, public or private, will spend an enormous chunk of their time raising money from donors. How much? One informed rumor suggests that a third of their time would not be off-base—and this at a public university.

Presidents, chancellors, and provosts seek to finagle gifts because the core business of universities—providing credits to students in exchange for tuition—is both volatile and insufficient to meet the boundless ambitions of administrators and faculty alike.

It’s easy, and wrong, for faculty to be cynical about this. First, these operations reflect the gloriously incongruous medieval nature of the university. Higher education in its upper reaches resembles medieval monasteries, and such monasteries provided not just seclusion and sanctity for their initiates but the possibility of the purchase of virtue for the wealthy. So, too, do universities offer grateful alumni and those sentimental about the generation of knowledge opportunities to turn worldly wealth into tax-deductible noblesse oblige.

In a move that affects hundreds of students and faculty, West Virginia University announced Friday it is recommending dropping 32 majors, including 20 post-graduate programs, as part of its restructuring in the face of a $45 million budget deficit.

The preliminary recommendations also included 169 faculty reductions, or 7% of the total faculty in Morgantown.

WVU is facing a $45 million budget deficit and projected enrollment declines of 5,000 students over the next decade. So far, in addition to the program review, the university has proposed $7 million in staffing cuts and approved a 3% tuition increase. To date, at least 130, mostly non-classified staff members at WVU have lost their positions as a result of the reductions.

Faculty and staff at the university have taken issue with the cutbacks, stating that WVU was not as well prepared as other universities faring better in the face of predictable changes in higher education. They assert the cuts and personnel reductions will affect the quality of the academic programs at WVU, as well as harm the school’s ability to serve its students and maintain its status as a research institution.

Many faculty, even senior ones, truly do not realize the extent of their power, and how this lack of self awareness is often contributes to these crises. I know this partly because I didn’t know the extent of my power.

It took a few years into my pre-tenure years for me to realize that I had a lot of power in the classroom to shape student’s lives. And through a few tense months of doctoral student advising, I learned how I communicated could make or break my students’ days. I had a few humble moments realizing that my constant busyness and anxiety had inadvertently created great distress for for the people around me, and sometimes anger, resentment, and disrespect. I did not know my power, and because I did not, I broke things and people.

If you’re faculty, you may be reading this and feeling like it's a bit hyperbolic. No one is dying in academia, right? But I guarantee you that the students and staff in your life, and junior colleagues, do not. It might only be through a very long process of building trust that they have come to not fear your 100 foot leather tail every time you pivot.

I admit to being a little bummed out. It was relatively good work. While I strongly believe that students retain copyright to their own work and can post it wherever they want, I'm still sad.

It's worth noting that I'd never heard of this particular cheating site before today. One more to the list, I guess.

Writing those bullshit memos admin makes you write when you want to get around some stupid university policy. I've used it twice and it's great. The recipients could care less about the details or accuracy of the memo, they just want the piece of paper.

A Texas A&M University professor was suspended, investigated and ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing for allegedly criticizing Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during a lecture about the opioid crisis. The probe has free speech advocates concerned about political influence over academia in Texas.

We've received word that we're migrating from the older version of Blackboard to the new, "student approved", Blackboard Ultra.

We'll be migrating our courses by hand over the summer; how bad is this going to be?

I'm considering appealing an annual eval (we got merit raises this year so it matters a bit). I have grounds and even a title ix case to back up my request, but I'm unclear if these things ever change. Thoughts?

I'm curious -- those of you (like me) who have withdrawn from extra work outside of your defined workload (e.g. no extra service or teaching), have you just shut up about it, or have any of you loudly drawn attention to it? How did it go?

I'm in a situation where I've been volunteer teaching a course for years, but I've learned the department doesn't care (even if the university does) so I don't plan to continue doing it -- I'm curious if I should let my chair know the reasons I'm not doing it anymore, or just shut up and recover some free time, and contribute to a general "decline" of offerings to the university.

As an FYI I'm a tenured assoc. prof at an R1, so my time is largely my own without consequences -- I was enjoying helping the students and university out with this course until my department decided to be shitty about teaching.

I received an email from a textbook salesman. This isn't a rarity, but today this line lept out at me:

"Ideal for students learning concepts and reasonably priced at $144.95,"

No. Just no. $144.95 is not reasonably priced. This is the first of what is likely a lot of emails that I get to respond with the line in the sand that I've drawn:

"Reasonably priced" at $144.95?

No thank you. I won't subject my students to materials, including books, equipment, and any online tool licensing, that cost more than $60 per course. Until your offerings are in this range, please do not contact me again.

Even my $60 per course number is high as far as I'm concerned.

How do you solo parents go to conferences with school-age kids? It seems essentially impossible unless the conference is over the summer.

New cohort. New edition of the books. Students stared into space last week during orientation and I've received over two dozen emails and calls about zeros on late work.

It's too early this summer to hold hands...

I decided that since I hadn't found any other communities in the Lemmy community browser, I would just make one for us.

Feel free to introduce yourself!