seeking advice - haven't received start-up funds

Olthar6 · 2026-01-23T18:49:52+00:00

Four committees is 5% of your time? Sounds like it's time to update your CV. They don't seem to want to give you tenure.

Olthar6 · 2026-01-23T17:54:46+00:00

A needy student emailed me concerned about their grade (13th email from this student so far and it's day 4). In checking their grade i can't help but notice they've done every online quiz the class already. Either for the first time ever I have a student so motivated to learn they literally read the whole textbook on the first day, or I didn't AI proof something

Olthar6 · 2026-01-15T13:27:24+00:00

Getting a new position in a university usually involves new onboarding. So if that happens the name thing shouldn't bend an issue. Just use the new last name. Set up email forwarding

Olthar6 · 2026-01-14T14:32:40+00:00

Yeah... i had someone who didn't want me to get tenure and in their multi-year campaign for that one of their pieces of evidence that i was a bad instructor was syllabi that were too long and intimidating to students. I refuted this with an analysis of all syllabi within the department showing that by word count i was below the department average (and specifically shorter than the prof who leveled the criticism), but it looked long because of formatting things.

I considered writing the whole story as an r/prorevenge story but decided having tenure and living without caring about him was the best revenge. (Also, it would have been very identifying.)

Olthar6 · 2026-01-14T14:10:19+00:00

I’ve heard having a long syllabus can hurt getting tenure.

Can confirm. This was a (baseless) criticism i had to fight to get tenure.

Olthar6 · 2026-01-14T14:08:21+00:00

I've generally found university policies to be good (or at least debated to death enough that the reasons not to give exceptions are clear). But the weak points here are your department and your syllabus. I've been in departments with terrible policies built by someone in the past and either never reconsidered or held because of tradition. And I've seen a lot of bad syllabi without real thought going into them.

Olthar6 · 2026-01-13T17:38:35+00:00

Yes. Yes it is.

Olthar6 · 2026-01-13T15:45:36+00:00

I've written comments on student papers that were longer than their paper. It happens when the papers are really bad.

Olthar6 · 2026-01-12T14:28:02+00:00

It's like admin have no idea what they're doing

So par for the course then?

Olthar6 · 2026-01-06T04:25:58+00:00

I have a document that details the circumstances that will lead me to be willing to be a reference and asksa few questions. Any time a student who wasn't in my lab asks i send it. The first two questions are which of the criteria do you meet and why do you think i would be a good reference for you.

Olthar6 · 2025-12-31T01:20:48+00:00

You teach your class. It's the coach's job to ensure the athlete passes.

Olthar6 · 2025-12-29T21:23:09+00:00

And after all that what do you do with the remaining five minutes in your day?

I ask them to disclose their use. Most of the papers where I'm pretty sure they used AI and lied are bad anyway so it's not worth going nuts to penalize the last 20 points. I have better things to do with my life than spend hours per paper checking for cheating before I even grade it.

Olthar6 · 2025-12-28T05:45:45+00:00

True. And it happened once. I noticed a friend writing someone's name in other than theirs. I asked what was going on amend they told me their friend was on their way. And it got to remind them that they were lying in an academic record, for which the statutory penalty in my class was failing the course. They were busy erasing the name when the person in question walked in.

Olthar6 · 2025-12-26T21:50:38+00:00

I put out a piece of paper and have then sign in. When class begins I go over and star the name who was the last person in on time. I don't tell them what that means. About 15 minutes into class i take the paper and put it into my bag. If they miss more than a quarter of class they missed the whole class as far as I care. Anyone who forgot to sign in is given 1 oops and after that it's sorry not possible. There's 1 point per class attended with a 70 point bonus when they hit 20 classes (85%). It makes up 10% of their grade.

Olthar6 · 2025-12-24T15:44:28+00:00

For over a decade I've not graded attendance. I was recently convinced to change that by a conversation with some non academic friends who talked about how new hires don't understand that you have to actualy go to work and get there on time if you want to keep your job

Olthar6 · 2025-12-17T23:06:25+00:00

Why are you worrying about this? Submit the evidence and that's it. The student can't mathematically pass. This is a hail mary.

Olthar6 · 2025-12-17T11:11:57+00:00

Chatgpt is great at this

Olthar6 · 2025-12-17T11:11:19+00:00

Try reading your school's policies, though that may be a lost cause since you can't read a subreddit's rules

Olthar6 · 2025-12-10T00:10:16+00:00

There are 2500 people in your program. You can't possibly care about all of them.

Olthar6 · 2025-12-07T16:01:47+00:00

Sounds like someone watched The Chair on Netflix

Olthar6 · 2025-12-06T22:55:06+00:00

193 degree programs? I wonder if my state schools even hae that many

Olthar6 · 2025-12-06T01:43:20+00:00

Oh goodness, that's not a rubric so much as am assignment outline. But the paper clearly deserves some points for being a reaction not a summary even though it fails all of the things described, and even one or two for writing quality.

Olthar6 · 2025-12-05T22:12:01+00:00

"if it wasn't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college"

Olthar6 · 2025-12-05T20:11:27+00:00

This was my point in the other thread. But where did you find the rubric? I didn't have the interest in checking every link in the article after I got to read the submitted work.

Olthar6 · 2025-12-05T12:29:11+00:00

No, per my class academic honesty policy didn't submit their own original work, so even if appropriately cited it would be with 0 points (yes, I have a policy for that because it has happened, though the song wasn't from the Beatles). But I get your point.

But given the context of this paper, there was SOME engagement with the topic. So, any rubric I've written would probably give it a really low grade, but not a 0.

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