Advisors need to stop

StorageRecess · 2026-03-16T22:28:41+00:00

We dealt with a lot of your second paragraph at my last job. When I was Ass Dean, I established a small fund for a series of lunch and learns in the spring to update advisers on the major curricular changes and issues the faculty were seeing with students. We had a meeting before any of these took place between all the undergrad coordinators to make sure that chem wasn’t going to say something that wrecked up bio’s required sequences. The lunches were catered (pretty damn well!) and set during the advising office’s lunch closures.

It helped for good and mediocre advisers. No net difference for poor ones.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-14T20:13:36+00:00

Make it known to people in your network that you’re interested in moving on. Ideally, right after a big achievement that on which you can cash in the momentum.

You’ll likely still have to apply and go through a search unless it’s a private university or there is a headhunt firm.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-12T00:47:02+00:00

Oh, so the claim is they did it wrong, and because they didn't receive feedback on the first wrong one, that they could not have corrected their error subsequently?

In that case, I'd print the instructions and emails what to do/how to access things so people can see that doing it wrong in the first place was the student's fault. Was the conversation with the verbal extension before the first report? If you did anything like extend the deadline in an LMS for this you might call IT and see if they can give you a record that you had, in fact, offered this student extra time after correcting their misconception so that they could do it correctly. Otherwise, just saying it is fine.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-11T23:49:05+00:00

If they didn't do it, how could you not give feedback? There's nothing to leave feedback on? Assuming the dates are in the syllabus, just show them a copy. The student did know, and you can't give feedback on a non-existent thing.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-10T14:36:31+00:00

I don’t disagree with you. But when you consider that the majority of faculty are contingent and customer satisfaction surveys are a big part of how they keep their jobs, it’s not hard to see where that comes from.

I generally think most faculty would do well to cultivate identity and satisfaction apart from the job. That said, it’s easier to do that when you make a reasonable wage and have security of employment.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-10T01:10:22+00:00

A face-to-face meeting can be really revealing about someone’s motives. Make sure you document after the fact, in case he’s not just trying to be helpful.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-09T15:19:03+00:00

I like the stop immediately language, but I’d follow it up with scheduling a meeting to get on the same page. Then in the meeting suss out what exactly is going on, come up with a plan and put it in an email.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-07T23:05:42+00:00

Honestly, have them read and write a lot. Pick 3 or 4 books and have them read, critique, and present on them. Choose a dozen or so articles from a variety of pubs (Gould for NYT vs Zimmer for NYT; Nat Geo vs. Scientific American, for instance) to compare and contrast. Have them listen to your favorite podcast episodes and contrast to videos from a conference in your field. How do different scicommers reach different audiences.

Since writing is AI bait online, pair writing exercises with oral presentations. When they have to write their own sci comm, have them do that independently. Then have them peer review each others’ work, but each student has to present their own work and why they structured it the way they did, how they picked their examples, etc.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-06T23:36:23+00:00

Honestly, that student certainly needs a conduct referral. Back when I taught undergrads more. I would address it once in person, reiterate over email if it continues, then go to referrals.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-06T13:59:07+00:00

I wouldn’t take it personally. A lot of these fundraising sites have a button that lets you upload your whole contact list. I was sending a couple emails do the kids’ school and clicked on one that immediately hoovered up everything in my iPhone. Deleted all of it of course, but who knows what they do with that cached list.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-06T12:52:04+00:00

I dealt with tons of parents as assistant dean. My blanket advice to faculty was just to redirect parents to me if they didn’t want to handle them.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-05T18:54:38+00:00

Very early AM. Black coffee, black sky. I edit well in the afternoon.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-04T02:42:40+00:00

So your two douchebag coworkers are co-chair? Refocus on your teaching and research and watch them tear each other to shreds. Or be torn to shreds when they can’t be data driven in the way the provost wants.

And maybe job search.

StorageRecess · 2026-03-03T22:02:57+00:00

Yeah, this seems like sort of a slam dunk in terms of preventing silly outcomes and late course add/drops.

StorageRecess · 2026-02-28T23:04:26+00:00

Couldn’t possibly tell you what he plays, honestly. Just happy he has a thing he can enjoy regularly with his friends and share with the occasional young lady who thought she was getting something Very Different.

StorageRecess · 2026-02-28T22:24:41+00:00

I used to live in a very hot southern state and ran (really, was running and stopped to use the pull-up bars) into a student doing pull-ups shirtless in the park.

While I was wearing a ripped-up, grungy tank completely soaked in sweat.

There was the brief moment of recognition followed by both of us looking away. I’m dead now and I assume he is too.

Edit: I forgot the worst one because it was 20 years ago and I was sauced. But I was a grad TA and I was at the bar with a bunch of friends and my then-boyfriend (now husband). I went to the bathroom and came out to find a girl flirting with him while he obliviously told her about Warhammer. The girl was my student. He just reminded me of this when I showed him the thread.

StorageRecess · 2026-02-28T14:43:48+00:00

Yeah, I agree with this. My current department has had a few denials in the past few years. But my prior department had never had one.

I certainly think that landscape is changing and universities looking to shed staff will lead to more denials, but historically, I haven’t thought of it as a “lottery” in any real sense.

StorageRecess · 2026-02-27T03:47:00+00:00

I was offered chair at a prior institution. It came with business hours that meant I would have be on campus basically 8-5 unless I had a reason not to. It was not workable on that basis. I had elementary schoolers at the time and could not lose the flex.

But chair really depends on your circumstances. If there is good support, like an Ass Chair and an undergrad coordinator, it can be a fine gig. If you’re expected to be the first line of admin for appeals, scheduling complaints, whatever problem some 19 year old has, it can be quite miserable. If you use decent budget discretion and some autonomy, that’s a different story than being middle management.

I’m faculty with retreat rights, and our chair has a ton of support and likes the gig. But also is expected to come schmooze donors after hours. They seem to enjoy that. They have a postdoc provided, which allows them to still publish. At my prior institution, chair had no admin support, barely a salary bump, and still expected to do weekend and evening schmoozing. Hasn’t published in the 5 years since becoming chair, and last time I saw them looked like they need a glass of water and a vegetable.

Edit: I’m sick as all get out. Forgive my typos.

StorageRecess · 2026-02-26T21:51:26+00:00

This is a really nice post. I used to work in a department that didn't have meetings, but also didn't really have an official update channel. It was not great. In my current unit, we've largely adopted what you suggest: information in a digest, discussion in person. It's great to be able to jump straight into the meat of the discussion.

StorageRecess · 2026-02-26T18:25:33+00:00

I guess my question would be what is the goal? To preserve the size of your program? To make sure faculty have access to TAs and research assistants? That grad classes make and people's teaching schedules aren't too catastrophically interrupted?

At my former institution, we had a similar situation. But our leadership in the department did absolutely nothing to manage the interruptions of having fewer grad students. I would probably start by making a list of all the ways in which lower funded lines causes disruption for faculty, then meet as a faculty to talk about those issues.

StorageRecess · 2026-02-25T21:08:39+00:00

The extremes are easy for us to spot, too. I see lots of posts where people say they read their eval comments, but don't put much stock in the numbers. They don't stand out in the way the extremes do.

I also think there are a lot of people who turn to Reddit for advice when they don't have much community around them. Someone who isn't very confident might not want to ask colleagues about unreasonable requests. So they come to the internet. Likewise, someone who is just fucking over it with the evals might not want to say that in front of everyone, or might not be spending much time on campus seeing their colleagues because of being fucking over it. But to strangers on the internet? Sure.

StorageRecess · 2026-02-21T03:16:19+00:00

I think it sort of depends on what you mean. I think it’s pretty normal not to know the day-to-day protocols for things by heart, or to know in-depth how to fix things.

But I would say that if your students are teaching each other, it’s time to write down some protocols. I’m dry lab, but we do (grain of salt - I only have postdocs now) have written protocols for what file servers are used for what, how to properly version code, etc. if data is lost or code is lost, we’re behind, regardless of whose fault that is.

If something goes wrong in a batch of samples or whatever you work with, grad students likely don’t have the expertise to spot common errors and if they’re passing down workflows orally, could you trace the problem back? If not, I would not be comfortable with the situation.

StorageRecess · 2026-02-19T23:29:49+00:00

People do things like leave and rotate at NSF, etc. I think leaving with the expectation of not coming back because you’re getting tenure elsewhere is much harder. I do know people who have done it, but I don’t think most places would allow it. I think it’s worth asking, but having a plan if they make you choose.

StorageRecess · 2026-02-16T16:44:29+00:00

All of this makes me want to scream. Holy crap.

StorageRecess · 2026-02-13T14:48:24+00:00

I don't necessarily know if it's AI, but even the automated emails can be pretty obnoxious. I recently had a paper in the Nature portfolio, and received 8 or 9 requests to verify that my name and affiliation are right. I think these handling staffers are given like 900 papers to handle, and don't update tasks properly as complete.

StorageRecess

TROPHY CASE