First off, our new building project is going great! We’ve found enough financing that our new building will be state-of-the-art. The 400 million in loans are fully subscribed at a very good rate. You’ll love the staff offices when you see them in the new building! They have a spectacular view of the city, especially above the 8th floor. The students will love the recreational amenities and I’m sure you will too. Yes, the classrooms are a bit small, but we’re sure you’ll adjust! And we even have an office for the adjuncts.
Next, a reminder. Just because you have a certain amount of money in your department’s budget doesn’t mean you have to spend it. Find ways to economize. Turn nickels into dollars! Consider not printing everything you’re used to printing for classwork. For example, make the student share assignment sheets. They love group work! Remember, pinching pennies helps us watch the dollars!
*twitch*
ReplyDeleteOur faculty meetings would be a video conference with the President.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I would only come for the free spaghetti and then insert ear-buds when it was time for him to talk.
Such garbage is not worth listening to.
And I could get away with it because it was held in the lecture hall with about 80 of us present.
DeleteYes, the classrooms are a bit small, but we’re sure you’ll adjust! And we even have an office for the adjuncts.
ReplyDeleteAargh. Sounds familiar. Actually, some of our teaching rooms are getting larger (or at least allowing more square feet per student, because they're the active-learning sort), but I have the sneaking suspicion that's only because the powers that be anticipate needing fewer face to face classrooms, as more teaching moves online. And office/conferencing space (which, at least in my experience, is something that many online students are happy to take advantage of at least once or twice during the semester)? Nobody wants to talk/think about that, apparently, even as we're urged to be ever more sensitive to the needs of students with invisible disabilities (who need various accommodations to make it through a class, but apparently are supposed to feel perfectly comfortable discussing any difficulties they're having with our classes in the hallway, or in front of the half-dozen other instructors, and their students, crowding into the adjunct office).
But apparently students do need very nice dorms (from which to log into their online classes, in many cases; seriously, a significant portion of our online students live on campus), and dining halls, and windowed rooms full of exer-whatchmacallits (classroms with natural light are much, much rarer).
It would be very interesting to see a campus map colored to indicate areas allotted to instructional, recreational, and administrative space, and even more interesting to see some square-feet-per-user and livability (natural light, ventiliation, etc.) info. Somehow I don't think it would appear that teaching, or even research, is the chief mission of the university.
At my last adjunct gig, we were asked to not print syllabi. I should not have been surprised, but I was. The new student center will be nice though.
ReplyDeleteI've gone almost entirely paperless in my classes, EXCEPT syllabi. It's hard enough getting students to take it seriously, but if it's just a free-floating digital wisp, it will never get any traction.
DeleteOur students like to complain on public media about how they have to pay for printing, but condoms are free.
ReplyDelete"They love group work!"? I hated group work, in school and in college. So did everybody else with any sense. As we all know, the "smartest" and/or the most conscientious kid ends up doing all the work. If you loved group work, it was because you weren't the one doing the group's work.
ReplyDeleteRe EMS: This year, for the first time, there was overflow seating in a classroom with live feed for the Opening Meeting -- an exile of sorts for those who chatted too long at the coffee cart. It was great! Unlike the Good Doobies in the auditorium, we stragglers got to keep our coffee and rolls; sort our mail; play our SmartGames (TM); and snort at our "President and CEO" 's mangled pronunciation of Names from Forn Places.
ReplyDeleteI hate-hate-hate how the cutbacks in the wake of the 2008-2009 recession have become the "new normal."
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I also suspect that such thinking has become an excuse to channel what money does become available in new directions (but maybe I'm wrong about that. Still -- partly because of the need to continue attracting increasingly-picky students, I'm sure -- most campuses don't look like we're still dealing with an extended recession (well, at least not until one starts to try to make the a/v, or the plumbing or heating, work -- though at least on our campus those are pretty reliable. Things look pretty good as long as you don't open the spreadsheet with the faculty salaries -- or the adjunct pay schedule, and the probably non-existent or at least well-buried statistics tracking percentage of classes taught by adjuncts -- and compare them to median professional salaries in a our very high cost-of-living area. At that point, you realize we've got a problem (especially if prospective new hires and/or grad students take a close look at same).
DeleteI think I'm missing at least one close-parens there, maybe two. So it goes.
Delete"And we even have an office for the adjuncts."
ReplyDeleteSorry. Even though it might be seen as a step up from adjuncts operating out of their own cars, the abandoned attendant booth at the north lot will not accommodate all the adjuncts.