All this stuff on Brainstorm about “contingent faculty,” which I guess means adjuncts. Yeah, they have it bad, and in spite of having it bad, they generally get their paperwork to me on time better than the tenured fat cats do. I guess a real working stiff is a little more sympathetic to the problems of another working stiff. Which brings me to what I’m going to do with Professor Fendrich’s latest replies to readers’ comments. I’m in no mood to hang around the ghost town that this place becomes when the faculty all go off to research whatever they research during cherry-blossom time. So I’m simply going to take this latest stack of Post-It’s and transcribe them exactly as they were handed to me, or as close as I can make out from Professor Fendrich’s sloppy handwriting. That way, I can squeeze in a little spring break time for myself.
Secretaries Have Their Own Opinions
Joe: …a good friend of mine, who is a great but not scintillating professor, was just denied tenure because some feckless 20 year olds did not find him sparkly enough.
The “Ah ha!” moment. Joe’s friend doesn’t get tenure because (so Joe says) his student evaluations weren’t good enough. Evals presumably would’ve been better if friend had given higher grades. Ergo, grade inflation OK in that case, because it would have saved Joe’s friend. “Feckless 20 year olds”: Joe’s general attitude toward students?
Assessing Critical Thinking
Alwsdad: Why so bitter? Yes, outcomes assessment has a lot of flaws…. But there is nothing sinister in the motive.
Yes there is, especially when it’s spelled with capital “O” and “A” and comes with all those charts and columns of official verbs handed down by administrators.
Alan Johnin: Who called Descartes, Aristotle, and Hume inferior thinkers? No one, that’s who. Your snotty attitude undercuts whatever point you may have had…. So why is it necessary to label as fools any faculty member who tries to respond to mandates that a university assess how well its students are learning?
Note to myself: Lay off the irony if you mention Aristotle. Also, look out for super-sensitive folk.
Joe: Seems as if the real objection isn’t to measuring, but rather to who gets to measure and by whose criteria.
Memo to Joe: Could you explain that to Alwsdad and Mr. Johnin? Many thanks.
Aerial: As a poet, my work and teaching are, like Ms. Fendrich’s, beyond assessment. My hair, too, blows in the wind. A dusky distance holds my eye. My pinky protrudes. My tower is ivory. Do not bother me with petty expectations or ask me to sink to the level of this tawdry world. Please, however, keep the paychecks coming.
Another memo to Joe: Add Aerial to your list.
Client 9
Academic: Why is this even being discussed in The Chronicle of Higher Education?!
The governor of one of the biggest states in the nation has to resign on account of an enormous scandal, raising yet again the perplexing question of whether or not human nature is forever the same? Seems a perfect topic for CHE readers.
Client 9 Has a Roman for a Wife
Reggie: Oh, for frig’s sake, just because she ‘stood by her man’ hours after the scandal broke doesn’t mean she’ll still be married to him in a year.
Where she is a year from now is not relevant. Point is, she didn’t have to endure those two press conferences with her husband, but she did. Some people say it qualifies her to run for President in a few years, just like [illegible].
