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[libartsprof]

The chair of my dept continues a pattern of abuse of faculty at all stages of their career.  She has built her new graduate program, and now seems to be set on interfering with anyone and everyone who does not fit her blinkered view of reality.  Even the dean acknowledged to me that she had spoken to him many times in an unprofessional manner.  Yet the same dean reappointed her, and now says that it is up to tenured faculty to stand up to her.  She operates as a CEO not a colleague, will take away teaching assignments at a whim, and so holds power in this abusive situation.  Not surprisingly this all happened when her husband was made an associate dean, and she started to try to impress the provost with dean-like behavior, getting a highly qualified colleague to leave (she is now tenure track at another school).  Now her husband is up for dean of a different school, and she is becoming even more untouchable and entrenched.  I tell my colleagues I am done with this, that life at Starbucks would be better.   Other chairs talk about not wanting to engage her because of her argumentative manner.  She is always right, and I am always wrong.  There is always something that she seems to want to argue about, change, or question.  If a decision or idea is not hers, it must be wrong.  Help.  I am at my wits end with this, and totally miserable at my job. 

[sibyl]

Take the dean at his word: tenured faculty must be the ones to stand up to her.  (Whether that's what a dean should be doing is beside the point; he has made it clear he won't act against her unless the faculty push him.)  What do your colleagues say when you tell them you're going to be a barista?  Do they agree with you?  Are they willing to push back?  You need collective action if you are going to topple this chair.  If you can't organize collective action, then you are going to have to be the next one to leave.

[larryc]

The dean has told you to put up or shut up, so those are your choices.

[deleteplease]

Perhaps start by rethinking how you are framing the situation. The Austrian father who locked his daughter and their offspring-from-incest in a cellar for decades was "abusive". Your chair is simply a colleague with whom you disagree. It's unlikely that this chair would have managed to start a new graduate programme and get re-appointed of s/he was not relatively competent. So far, all your only concrete complaint is that sometimes said chair switches course assignments (was there no reason other than sheer malice? was this at the last minute?)

If there is some actual, real, tangible issue -- i.e. you have been assigned to teach MWF at 8:00 and 4:30 pm and T Th at 12:00, you can compain. If you have been asked to teach entirely outside your area, or you have been given an unusual number of 1st year courses over a 2-3 year period, you might have grounds for complaint. But is there anything tangible? or is it just that you (and a few other people in your gossip circle) don't like the chair's style? Claiming s/he "wants to change things" isn't exactly evidence of major malfeasance.

Complaining to the Dean doesn't do anything to re-establish cordial relationships. Making a lists of concrete issues (not "s/he always argues with me") and making sure they are discussed in committees is generally a more productive approach.

[much_metta]

If you have been asked to teach entirely outside your area, or you have been given an unusual number of 1st year courses over a 2-3 year period, you might have grounds for complaint.

Being given lots of 1st year courses is grounds for a complaint?  I wish someone would have told me that a long time ago--I've been teaching about 2/3rds intro courses for the past 5 years straight!  What exactly makes that kind of teaching assignment grounds for complaint?  I doubt my dean would listen if I objected, but I'm curious what the argument would be...

[deleteplease]

This would be grounds for complaint if your teaching load was significantly different from that of your colleagues and there were no field-specific reason for that to be the case. It all depends on circumstances though -- 3 intro courses and a grad seminar might be equivalent to four 3rd or 4th year courses. But if you really object to all the intro courses (and not everyone does -- if I have one intro course prepped, and TA graders, I like to hang on to it!), why not talk to your chair about your schedule? Or bring up the issue of coure allocation procedures in a department meeting?

Is your teaching load significantly different from that of your colleagues?

If you have been asked to teach entirely outside your area, or you have been given an unusual number of 1st year courses over a 2-3 year period, you might have grounds for complaint.

Being given lots of 1st year courses is grounds for a complaint?  I wish someone would have told me that a long time ago--I've been teaching about 2/3rds intro courses for the past 5 years straight!  What exactly makes that kind of teaching assignment grounds for complaint?  I doubt my dean would listen if I objected, but I'm curious what the argument would be...

[much_metta]

This would be grounds for complaint if your teaching load was significantly different from that of your colleagues and there were no field-specific reason for that to be the case. It all depends on circumstances though -- 3 intro courses and a grad seminar might be equivalent to four 3rd or 4th year courses. But if you really object to all the intro courses (and not everyone does -- if I have one intro course prepped, and TA graders, I like to hang on to it!), why not talk to your chair about your schedule? Or bring up the issue of coure allocation procedures in a department meeting?

Is your teaching load significantly different from that of your colleagues?

It sounds like we are talking about separate things.  I get the impression that the "intro" courses you are talking about are all very large lecture classes that may or may not be taught with the assistance of TAs.  Not all my intros are large and we have no TAs.  A course counts as one course, regardless of size.  My intro course of 30 counts the same as my intro course of 150.  However, none of our upper division classes are EVER over 50, and several are capped below 20.  That means two faculty with identical teaching "loads" can teach wildly different numbers of students in the same year (e.g., 500 vs. 175) and this is considered "equitable."

My perspective--and I guess my question--was what is so objectionable about intro courses (controlling for course size, etc.) qua intro courses?  It sounds like you are saying nothing is objectionable per se, only that structural differences can create an inequity (which I would agree with, but about which I can do nothing).  Does that fairly reflect what you were trying to say?

[mingus]

I had a chair like this once.  I seduced her.  Things went happily after that.

[mingus]

It sounds like we are talking about separate things.  I get the impression that the "intro" courses you are talking about are all very large lecture classes that may or may not be taught with the assistance of TAs.  Not all my intros are large and we have no TAs.  A course counts as one course, regardless of size.  My intro course of 30 counts the same as my intro course of 150.  However, none of our upper division classes are EVER over 50, and several are capped below 20.  That means two faculty with identical teaching "loads" can teach wildly different numbers of students in the same year (e.g., 500 vs. 175) and this is considered "equitable."

Your boss needs to take some basic lessons in workload distribution.