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03-27-2012, 12:56 PM
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Clutchenheimer
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Canada
Gender: Male
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
Anyhow, TLR, my condolences on finding yourself in a truly awful situation. Anyone can find themselves in a job that is unpleasant, but it's something extra bad to go into a line of work out of some deeply-felt values and then to find one's job systematically doing violence to those values. My advice (fwiw) is also to keep your head down and your lip buttoned for now. Get tenure, then quietly get out.
A university president who refuses to meet with faculty -- wow. Not unprecedented, I suppose, but disgusting and shocking still.
What is the prevailing attitude towards research and publication at your shop? If you've been publishing a bit during your time there, that will certainly increase the number of places at which you could reasonably expect an interview when the time comes. But I know that some schools just don't allow time for it, and some (I've heard) even regard publication with a jaundiced eye, as if it indicates an excess of ambition or an intention not to stick around.
__________________
Your very presence is making me itchy.
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03-27-2012, 06:58 PM
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Jin, Gi, Rei, Ko, Chi, Shin, Tei
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
I think part of what I was brooding about was the thought that I've probably been completely wrong all this time. Our Faculty Liaison's blunt and somewhat angry response to my suggestion that perhaps we could still reason with the President really brought me up.
I mean, people have been telling me since I've gotten here that the President won't meet with faculty and won't even listen to them. And I've even had that experience myself, having (very politely and respectfully, I might add) corrected him on a factual error in one of his presentations (a pretty danged big factual error, moreover), only to have him completely ignore me. His presentation was published online, complete with the really, really embarrassingly-ignorant claim intact. And it's still there on the college website, even though I specifically told him that his claim was untrue and that he shouldn't put it on the campus website. Since it's under his name, I can only assume that anyone who stumbles across the presentation will think, "This guy's an idiot; how did he ever become a college president?".
Even so, up until Friday, I just didn't get it. That he would be completely unwilling and perhaps even incapable of listening to anyone else -- especially experts in the field -- was something that I just couldn't wrap my mind around. But our Faculty Liaison's rather angry retort that she and others have been trying to get him to listen to them for several years now -- with exactly zero success -- made me realize that it's likely I was simply wrong. I've gotta admit, the hypothesis that the man is completely unwilling and/or unable to consider alternate points of view (at least in this case) has much greater explanatory power than does the hypothesis that we simply haven't done a good job of explaining our position to him.
I think your advice is spot-on, Clutch. I'm just going to keep quiet and not rock the boat. Meanwhile, I'm going to be searching for a better position. I'm still hoping for a nice, small, selective liberal-arts school -- preferably tucked away someplace in the Appalachian Mountains -- someplace where I can happily spend my days interacting with bright and enthusiastic students who're there because they *gasp* want to learn.
There's very little emphasis on research here, because it's assumed that you won't have either the time or the resources for it. And indeed, it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that our administration regards research and publication as dangerous signs of ambition. Nonetheless, I'm currently working on a couple of papers that I'm hoping to submit for publication soon. This is work that I did with colleagues, before I came here, but it's good and publishable work.
Cheers,
Michael
__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.” -- Socrates
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03-27-2012, 07:13 PM
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Clutchenheimer
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Canada
Gender: Male
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
Good luck with the writing!
I just had a paper rejected from a journal with a current acceptance rate of 1%. And the thing I'm now asking myself is "Why did you send a paper to a journal with a current acceptance rate of 1%?" I have not heard back from myself with a plausible answer yet.
__________________
Your very presence is making me itchy.
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03-27-2012, 07:24 PM
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California Sober
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Silicon Valley
Gender: Bender
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
Maybe it makes the rejection more palatable? I just got turned down for a grant that when I was applying for it they told me, "some years we have so few people apply that everyone gets it!" Wow, did I feel like hell when I didn't.
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03-27-2012, 08:46 PM
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Spiffiest wanger
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger
I can only assume that anyone who stumbles across the presentation will think, "This guy's an idiot; how did he ever become a college president?"
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How DID he get to be president?
I'm sorry for your plight, Michael. Your president sounds like a cross between Captain Queeg and Richard Nixon.
I hate to say it but I also think it may partly be a Michigan thing. Being from Michigan, this is the way, when I grew up there, EVERYTHING seemed to operate all around me.
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03-27-2012, 08:50 PM
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Spiffiest wanger
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clutch Munny
Good luck with the writing!
I just had a paper rejected from a journal with a current acceptance rate of 1%. And the thing I'm now asking myself is "Why did you send a paper to a journal with a current acceptance rate of 1%?" I have not heard back from myself with a plausible answer yet.
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Would it be possible to post your paper here?
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03-27-2012, 09:58 PM
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
If your papers are part of the 1%
--J.D.
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03-27-2012, 11:32 PM
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Spiffiest wanger
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
BTW, Doc X, are you aware of the fact that your Boston Bruins goaltender smilie suggests that little shit who refused to meet with President Obama and is a Glenn Beck fanboy?
ETA: Oh, wait, maybe that's not a goaltender. But still!
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03-28-2012, 04:06 AM
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rude, crude, lewd, and unsophisticated
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Puddle City, Cascadia
Gender: Male
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm
BTW, Doc X, are you aware of the fact that your Boston Bruins goaltender smilie suggests that little shit who refused to meet with President Obama and is a Glenn Beck fanboy?
ETA: Oh, wait, maybe that's not a goaltender. But still!
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Nah...I think it's a left-winger.
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03-28-2012, 06:34 AM
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God Made Me A Skeptic
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Minnesota
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
Narcissism: A great trait for getting into leadership roles, a horrible trait for being any good at them.
__________________
Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open
See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware
Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together
Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
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03-28-2012, 10:28 AM
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Astroid the Foine Loine between a Poirate and a Farrrmer
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Join Date: Feb 2011
Gender: Male
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
And good god are there a lot of the pillocks
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03-28-2012, 10:49 PM
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Re: Brooding about the Most Recent Faculty Meeting
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm
BTW, Doc X, are you aware of the fact that your Boston Bruins goaltender smilie suggests that little shit who refused to meet with President Obama. . . .
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"I am here to talk about the Bruins and not my personal life. Peace out!"
Quote:
ETA: Oh, wait, maybe that's not a goaltender. But still!
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Not tall enough to be Chara. . . .
--J.D.
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