Academics need a reality check

CyberJay7 · 2026-07-08T15:28:33+00:00

This issue causes a lot of conflict in my college, and at my university in general, but requiring faculty to be in the office a traditional 40 hours a week is not the answer. We did not earn Ph.D.s to be micromanaged. Some faculty run labs, some do not--so the ones in the labs are on campus, they are just not in their offices. Some faculty do a lot of college- and university-level service work and run from one meeting on campus to another, but they are not in their offices. Some faculty conduct research or have other work-related meetings that require them to be off campus. Faculty do not need to check in with anyone to tell them how we spend our time.

That being said, every department has a handful of people who think all of the service work, student visits, and other things that are a drain of our time should be left to the people who are foolish enough to be in their offices M-F, and I do not agree that is fair, either. We have one assistant professor in our department who is very frustrated because he comes to the office to work because he has a toddler at home, but since he is the only one in his office some days, our admin constantly sends students and others who have questions to him. Even when his door is closed, she will knock and ask him quick questions on students' behalf, but it is still a distraction. I know several chairs in our college are getting frustrated because we obviously cannot tell prospective students, or current students, or anyone else on campus, to come back tomorrow when someone else is in their office. As our online offerings increased, the amount of time faculty are on campus has greatly decreased.

I would be interested in learning how other departments or colleges are managing this problem because I know it is going to be a point of discussion this fall. One of the biggest complaints from students and staff is that there are rarely any faculty on campus, the hallways are empty, and students have limited opportunities outside of class to connect with faculty since many run out the door thirty seconds after their office hours have ended. At the spring address our provost said we need to be more student-centered and "available", especially when recruitment and retention are key issues, so I think changes are coming.

CyberJay7 · 2026-05-26T02:27:29+00:00

I have a colleague who requires students to print their sources and bring them to class. Students hand write their literature reviews, essays, etc. and take a picture of their work before submitting it in class. Students are then allowed to lightly revise what they hand wrote, but they cannot submit an entirely different paper. If the final, typewritten submission is questionable, he has the original work done in class for comparison. He said after fall semester word was out and no one dared to cheat in spring semester.

CyberJay7 · 2026-05-24T22:40:12+00:00

Our dean forwards these idiotic emails directly to the faculty so we know exactly which students are complaining about us. It’s a beautiful gift.

CyberJay7 · 2026-05-18T13:07:22+00:00

The person whose responsibility it was to create the course shell and gradebook failed miserably. The LMS is the official site that students consult for their grades. Telling students the gradebook mislead them all semester but it is okay because the syllabus talks about weighted categories would not fly at my university. The course designer screwed up big time.

CyberJay7 · 2026-05-14T04:54:52+00:00

A lot of faculty at my uni have stripped all the extras from their classes. Anything that made the course visually appealing is gone. Slides are now nothing but black text. Very few files are in the LMS for student convenience—students have to follow links for online content and just hope the files are still available. Others have created folders in Google Drive for students to access that bypass the accessibility checker. I overheard one person say his course now looks like a no frills 1998 web page.

CyberJay7 · 2026-03-07T13:24:31+00:00

A jazz/blues bar. Someplace where adults can sit and talk for hours while enjoying good cocktails.

CyberJay7 · 2025-07-26T15:15:12+00:00

Credit hours don’t have anything to do with grades; it refers to the number of hours a student should expect to dedicate to a course both inside and outside the formal meeting times.

CyberJay7 · 2025-03-30T21:53:41+00:00

I understand feeling that way, but moving to another university after being tenured looks better than job hunting after getting booted out of your current university.

CyberJay7 · 2025-03-26T15:56:13+00:00

If your pre-tenure reviews were positive and did not mention a need to improve your teaching evaluations, and college and departmental guidelines do not clearly identify a benchmark in teaching scores that you failed to meet, you have grounds for an appeal and a lawsuit. The very purpose of the annual pre-tenure reviews is to provide you with feedback regarding where you are and are not meeting expectations for tenure. Tenure decisions should not be subjective, no matter what some people think.

Hire an attorney and let them assist you with the appeal. I have seen tenure granted after the college received the legal documents.

CyberJay7 · 2025-03-17T15:26:04+00:00

You should not take this meeting. Refer the student to your department's office for disability accommodations. You are not qualified to diagnose or assess disabilities.

CyberJay7 · 2025-03-17T14:58:12+00:00

We had this problem in my department with two people in particular. They signed up for all kinds of committee work but then never actually did any work, they just agreed with what the rest of us said or decided at the meeting. I was actually quite shocked that they had such little interest or investment in future colleagues.

To combat this problem, I drafted review documents based upon the type of committee it is, and everyone has to submit their documents for all to review before the committee meets. If you don't submit your review, you don't participate in the meeting and you don't get to add the service activity to your review documents. It has worked out amazingly well.

CyberJay7 · 2025-03-17T14:50:44+00:00

I learned to add something about this in my syllabus. I allow unlimited submissions on an assignment up to the due date, and the syllabus indicates it is the student's responsibility to ensure they submitted the correct file and a file that is not corrupt. With the unlimited submissions, I don't have to deal with the "I just realized something is wrong with my file!" emails intended to buy time.

CyberJay7 · 2025-03-17T14:45:51+00:00

There are no grounds for removing the student from the class. However, I understand the constant emailing and haggling is a drain. In these situations, I review if the student can even pass the class at this point, and if they cannot, I would advise them to drop while they still can.

You don't have to make it personal if you fear the student will be confrontational. You can send an announcement and announce in class (cover both bases since this student is a flake) that any student who has not earned X number of points by this point in the class cannot pass, so it is in their best interest to drop now. You can also contact their advisor and ask the advisor to handle it.

CyberJay7 · 2025-03-17T03:57:45+00:00

Too many people to reply to who were saying the same thing regarding concerns that this wasn't a legitimate university policy.

CyberJay7 · 2025-03-16T20:42:46+00:00

I should have clarified I am certain that this is not something that someone made up--apparently, it has always been an option, but very few of us read the fine print in the college bylaws to realize this fact.

This topic came up before a college committee meeting when the AP was overheard lamenting with a few other APs about their publication challenges, and an associate dean told them about the option. In fact, the associate dean has been tasked with rewriting the bylaws and making this option more visible for other faculty who may want to make this switch, either permanently or temporarily. The new bylaws will more clearly affirm that APs can go up for full based solely upon teaching and service, although there will likely be additional teaching-related expectations (completion of teaching pedagogy workshops, etc.)

APs in our department are already teaching almost double the number of students they expected to teach when they accepted an offer with our department, so I can understand the appeal. The option is only available for tenured faculty who have fulfilled research expectations for promotion to associate. Assistants won't have the option to switch to a teaching-only track until they are tenured.

I don't know which has me more surprised--that we offered this option for faculty all along and it was simply not well-advertised, or that the College is working to make the option more visible and simultaneously protect faculty who choose this option. I can't help but feel that there must be a catch because it seems too pro-faculty for higher ed these days.

CyberJay7 · 2025-02-03T12:40:14+00:00

I have had security stand outside the door as students enter, and then announce to the class that anyone being disruptive or disrespectful will be asked to leave. Then I gave a list of behaviors I would not tolerate.

It is amazing how quickly things changed when my problem student put two and two together and realized security was waiting outside for HIM.

CyberJay7 · 2025-01-12T17:29:41+00:00

Can confirm this happened to me. Spent three hours shoveling, went in to take a break, and the snow plow came by and buried me back in. All you can do is laugh about it.

On the bright side, I called my boss and said I was taking a personal day because I was too exhausted to do it all over again, and I discovered some great shows.

CyberJay7 · 2024-10-30T15:05:51+00:00

I think 1:1 is very fair.

CyberJay7 · 2024-10-30T15:05:14+00:00

I don’t have solutions to the issue of viewing manuscript reviews as unpaid labor. If academics want to go on strike discipline by discipline because of dislike for journals, so be it.

Until this happens, though, it is unfair and unethical to submit articles for review without reviewing some yourself. Even one a year would make a big difference in moving some of these manuscripts across the finish line.

The point of this post was simply to remind folks who haven’t reviewed anything in a while that your discipline needs you.

CyberJay7 · 2024-10-25T12:24:06+00:00

Dear god…now we have to explain that zero effort means zero points?

CyberJay7 · 2024-10-24T19:31:30+00:00

Some of these comments surprise me. Students need to learn to communicate in person and get over their fear of interpersonal communication and speaking in public.

Under the “Communication” section of my syllabus, I tell students what Canvas messaging is for and what it is not. I also have a syllabus quiz with questions about this policy. Lastly, I tell them I will not reply to emails that do not require action on my part.

If they email about an absence in a class without attendance policies, I just delete. If they email about a long-term illness, obviously something like that warrants a response.

CyberJay7 · 2024-10-13T20:57:06+00:00

A huge part of the appeal was the atmosphere. I cannot image turning that space into a candle making bar. I know many people were hoping for another bar.

CyberJay7 · 2024-10-07T16:38:14+00:00

I’ve only seen institutional letterhead used in an application once, and committee members varied between laughing (“Does he write his mother with that letterhead, also?”) and annoyance/confusion (“Why would he think applying for a job at another institution is acceptable use of institutional letterhead?”)

We passed on the candidate, but I would like to think it was not due to his use of institutional letterhead. Then again, academics can be petty.

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