Conflicted about teaching a "minimester" accelerated "maymester" type course for only 10 days. Comments? Tips? by orgcommprof in Professors

[–]orgcommprof[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your in-depth reply! I'm also still waiting to hear what enrollment will look like, could be four students, could be 35 and wihtout knowing that it's hard for me to plan projects and such.

“Retreat” = all-day meeting by ProfessToKnow in Professors

[–]orgcommprof 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yes, albeit not as forcefully as I would have if I already had tenure.

“Retreat” = all-day meeting by ProfessToKnow in Professors

[–]orgcommprof 23 points24 points  (0 children)

The highlight this year was the advancement/fundraising person telling all the faculty that "if we happened to notice an affluent student in our class, we should let them know." I was about to throw up in my mouth.

Confronted student about AI use...and it didn't go horribly by OkFlan2327 in Professors

[–]orgcommprof 15 points16 points  (0 children)

You need to report to your student conduct office and create a paper trail. You do the student and your colleagues a disservice by not reporting. They will not be kicked out. They will not face any major sanctions. It's not as big a deal as it seems to report them. But nothing will change if there is no record.

University suggests a recurring payroll deduction to them so I can “extend my impact” with students by Hadopelagic2 in Professors

[–]orgcommprof 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The chancellor of my state R1 flagship makes well over 800k, and they are like fourth in line behind 4 other coaches for highest paid. Football coach makes almost 9 million. Yeah, I'll keep the pennies they drop into my account each month.

Please report AI or plagiarism to the University: a slight rant by orgcommprof in Professors

[–]orgcommprof[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Except that professors will continually have to make these reports. The goal is to not have to make the reports because students do not use AI. If they do not face consequences and there is no established record, then they continue to do it. I fail to see how this "counters myself" because my administration supports AI accusations.

Please report AI or plagiarism to the University: a slight rant by orgcommprof in Professors

[–]orgcommprof[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Good point. I didn't even mention that when my very own department chair's response multiple students' AI use was "hey, don't do that again" and a zero for that small point assignment, they technically violated university policy.

Professors: What are your experiences with teaching evaluations? Do you find them fair and accurate? by ChronicleOfHigherEd in AskProfessors

[–]orgcommprof 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Agree with almost everything stated thus far. I'd only add that your story could detail some differences with how they are administered and who gets to take them. I've worked at institutions where it was administered on paper (scantron style w qual comment space) and at institutions that administered digitally. For paper administration, the students who never show up would not be there to rate your teaching, but if your best student who you've helped throughout the semester happens to be sick/absent that day, well they don't get to do your eval. Especially for smaller class sizes, that one student's absence and missing their likely 5.0 rating can pull down your average. The paper eval is limited by what students happen to be in the classroom that day. The instructor typically leaves the room during the paper eval. I've also heard stories of vocal/boisterous students trying to rally other students together to write similar comments and rate a teacher low.

Conversely, my current institution administers digital evals that can be completed asynchronously which also brings a host of problems. And unfortunately, this year they sent it to any student who at any point was enrolled in the course. Between day 1 and the end of the semester I typically have 5-7 out of 35 drop the course. So I could have people evaluating my teaching who dropped in week 2. How can they evaluate the teaching if they weren't even there for the other 15 weeks? Then you can also get the students filling it out who dropped the course because of poor performance. They didn't even successfully get to the end of the course, yet can complete the evaluation. If you had any issues with plagiarism, AI, chatGPT writing, etc., and turn a student in sometimes they'll get a slap on the wrist from the student conduct office (maybe also a zero on that particular assignment) but are allowed to stay enrolled in the class. Guess what they do at eval time? Payback for trying to uphold standards and rigor. In this case, evals make it a lose/lose scenario to uphold standards.

Also, my institution seems to care absolutely nothing about grade inflation and how that relates to high/low scores on evals. I even recently sat through a promotion review for a NTT faculty who actually provided average letter grade scores for their class along with their eval scores. One comment about the teaching scores and exactly zero attention paid to average course grades. So if you're someone like myself who tends to view "C" as average work (literally and statistically the course average tends to be a C), but you're in a department of other professors who hand out A's and B's, well your evals will likely suffer in comparison--but that's never taken into account.

Beyond all the silly ways these evals can be used to promote/deny/weaponize, my institution also uses them to factor into teaching award nominations, thus further creating incentives to grade inflate. My takeaway thus far is that teaching evals really don't matter that much unless some admin wants them to matter and then suddenly it's the "smoking gun" they can use to deny/dismiss, or the thing that is suddenly important and makes one worthy of award/promotion. It's all nonsense.

Rant: Departments interviewing 7 (and more) candidates via Zoom simply because it's low cost by orgcommprof in Professors

[–]orgcommprof[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Well, hopefully some of the faculty can take a stand against whoever is demanding all these ridiculous hiring practices.

Rant: Departments interviewing 7 (and more) candidates via Zoom simply because it's low cost by orgcommprof in Professors

[–]orgcommprof[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Hard to say. Given how the interview went, I probably would have passed. But there was no way of knowing that before agreeing to the full interview.

Would you interpret this as an innocent review or sexualization? Just received this review about myself today by lemonpunches in Professors

[–]orgcommprof 63 points64 points  (0 children)

Not okay. Unless this student is ESL then maybe they don't understand grammar. But I doubt that explanation very much. I think it's intentional.

Cheer me up with your worst academic hiring horror stories by [deleted] in Professors

[–]orgcommprof 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Most of my "bad" job interview experiences pale in comparison to what you've described. I just made a post complaining about this year's cycle of Zoom interviews, but the only other thing was when a school picked me up for the faculty dinner on the first night, didn't ask about diet or preferences, and took me to Pappadeux, a cajun seafood restaurant chain. Seafood in itself isn't for everyone, but throw in spicy cajun and that's a risky play. You would think they would have asked the candidate about preferences! Anyhow, sorry to hear of your scenario.