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September 19, 2011, 02:53 PM ET

'I Seem To Have Made a Terrible Mistake'

One of my guilty pleasures is the television show Arrested Development, which includes a character named Gob who constantly gets himself into crisis situations. When everything crashes down, he mumbles his catchphrase: "I seem to have made a terrible mistake." We'd like to think that every hire will go smoothly and that the pink air that surrounds the bright puffy clouds in our slice of higher-ed heaven will always be unaltered with each new hire, but the reality is that some hires will go awry. One of the problems with the job market is that everyone is trying desperately to put forward the proverbial best foot. Candidates may be wonderful in the on-campus interview but turn out not to wear very well as an everyday colleague. Institutions or even departments that come across as exciting in the hiring process can turn out to have misrepresented their true nature, which is discovered as... Read More
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September 16, 2011, 12:17 PM ET

When Should a Student Withdraw?

I withdrew from one class in my undergraduate career. Two weeks into the semester, I realized that Conversational Italian 211 was going to take all my brain cells, so I took the W on my transcript instead of a whole semester of mediocre grades in my other classes. How do you suggest to students that it might be wise for them to withdraw from your class? It is a little touchy, but I truly believe it is better for them to cut their losses than muddle through and fail. The first night of class I go over deadlines for withdrawing but no one really pays attention. Who would need such information? Things will be great, we'll all be brilliant, the semester is off to a fabulous start. But around midterms I like to bring up the withdrawal option again. Things change. Maybe your work schedule has shifted and you just can't get to campus. Family stuff happens, people get sick, babysitters quit. I... Read More

September 15, 2011, 01:43 PM ET

The Challenge of Change

As I contemplate our large number of potential faculty and administrative hires this year, I have been reflecting on the issue of institutional change and how it happens--or doesn't--over the course of an academic year and in the longer term. Change is scary. Even when it's likely to be for the better, it's potentially upsetting to at least some people on campus, and may cause a redirection in individual work and alter individuals' relationships with each other and the institution. Despite all its problems, academe is often a nice place to work, and one of the qualities that makes it so is its predictability. For example, the rhythms of the academic year are accompanied by a series of rituals that have been the same, or at least quite similar, for hundreds of years, and mirror other similar cycles such as the Christian liturgical year or the agricultural procession from planting to... Read More

September 14, 2011, 11:55 AM ET

I’m Not Asocial

I’m not asocial. I promise. As a new faculty member at Richard Bland College in Petersburg, Va., I’ve been invited to a couple social gatherings and to join a book club for faculty and staff members. I’ve joined the book club on a part-time basis, and I haven’t been to any of the social gatherings. I’m just too busy right now. I’m teaching six courses my first semester and I’m still transitioning into the area. My wife and son still live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She works and is waiting to transfer closer to Richard Bland. I spend my weekends with them, getting our house ready to go on the market, and I spend my weeks living with my parents, whose house isn’t too far away from my new employer. I spend Friday and Sunday evenings driving, and I spend my weeks working and resting. Occasionally, during the week, I get to see some family members or friends I... Read More

September 12, 2011, 02:00 PM ET

When It’s Time to Say 'Goodbye'

While this section of The Chronicle tends to focus on how to get the next job, a handful of recent resignations from people at my university and around the country have prompted me to consider how best to leave the ones we’ve got. Some of the resignation letters these folks wrote were remarkably gracious, while others were bitter, including the one that was seven pages long. While I’d venture to say the bitter letters were more factually accurate than the gracious ones, honesty is overrated when it comes to saying “farewell.” Whenever we are leaving under duress or just because we’ve had quite enough, it is tempting to use our resignation letter as an opportunity to index the many injustices we have endured and to point out the problematic people who have impeded our progress. In our minds we may think, “I’m not doing this for myself, I’m doing this for those who come a... Read More

September 9, 2011, 12:06 PM ET

At What Point Does Moving On Make Sense?

There’s an old story about a big-time football coach who was chatting with a group of eager alumni. One man, hoping to impress everyone, said to the group, “Coach, the other night I saw a player who got knocked down in a game by a much larger player and he got right back up again. On the next play, he got knocked down again by the other player and again, he popped right back up. On the next play, the same thing happened. I was so impressed with his perseverance. All I kept thinking was, ‘Wow, we need a player like that on our team next year.’ Coach, isn’t that the kind of player we need?” The coach sighed and said, “No, actually I’d rather have the guy who kept knocking him down on our team. We’ve already got plenty of guys who can get knocked down.” Sometimes the job market is like that larger player and applicants are like the guy who keeps getting knocked down.... Read More

September 8, 2011, 10:00 AM ET

The Community-College Job Search

With the fall hiring season nearly upon us, I thought it might be a good time to reprise some of the advice I offered last spring, during an interview with Matthew Dembicki, online editor for The Community College Times. With Matthew’s kind permission, here is an excerpt from that interview: Question: What are some common mistakes made by applicants seeking to work at a community college? Answer: The biggest mistake academic job hunters make is failing to recognize the difference between applying at a two-year school and applying at a research university. They tend to take a “one size fits all” approach to the job search—writing one cover letter, for instance, which they send with only minor modifications (or none at all) to every school where they’re applying. The problem is that a letter to a four-year school should focus heavily on the applicant’s research agenda, while... Read More

September 7, 2011, 10:48 AM ET

Does It Pay to Be a Jerk?

Do consider yourself quarrelsome, difficult, and stubborn? If so, congratulations; you may be earning more than your more cooperative and well-mannered colleagues. That’s the conclusion revealed in “Do Nice Guys — and Gals — Really Finish Last?,” a study soon to be released in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Timothy Judge of the University of Notre Dame, Beth Livingston of Cornell University, and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario looked at who makes the most money and found that disagreeable men win out over everyone else. I fell into a funk for several days after reading their paper because while I may not consistently practice kindness (as Chronicle blog commenters seem to delight in reminding me), I admire it in others very much. That made it all the more depressing to learn that nasty men earn up to 18 percent more than other men and... Read More

September 2, 2011, 11:36 AM ET

Big Bucks, Small Change?

One of the more interesting things I’ve discovered as I have become more directly involved with institutional budgeting is how complex it is, and how the same amount of money can be both immense and small at the same time. I suspect we do our budgets in about the same way as most other private colleges and universities, at least at the macro level. We project enrollments, discount rates, and tuition revenue. We calculate fixed expenses and evaluate and prioritize new projects and existing budget lines that may turn out to be optional. We close some lines and open others. Generally speaking, each year’s budget comes from a planning process that lasts about three years. We keep a running budget projection three years out so that we can evaluate budgetary moves both in terms of their immediate impact and their longer-term implications. Care in making those three-year projections has... Read More

September 1, 2011, 11:39 AM ET

Workload Measurements and Searches

The recent spate of news about legislatures requiring universities to measure faculty workloads has created an interesting and unfortunate dynamic in academe. I remember when I first started teaching that our union (it was a public-school district) required the administration to generate job descriptions for every faculty position in the district; this was based on the belief that faculty members were being overburdened with additional duties. The current push for measurement is based on the inverse, a belief that professors are not busy enough. I've written previously in this space about an academic vice president who called in a department chair and demanded to know why a faculty member was seen mowing his yard and shopping for groceries "during school hours." The faculty member was, in fact, teaching several night courses and only one daytime section and was holding office hours in... Read More