next »

[rear_view_mirror]

My U is doing this. It goes without saying that the majority of faculty think it is a horrendous idea.

The majority of our faculty also think it is a horrendous idea, but have had had plenty of time to get used to it.

[zarathustra]

I did all my venting below the article.  I'm glad folks here seem to be irate about the suggestion. 

[promovenda]

This is happening to me - my "office" is now going to be in the middle of the library, surrounded by a half-moon-ish barrier just under my eye level. Not really any separation. Not really any private or secure space.

Although it is some slight improvement, since in my previous life as an external PhD student, I had no office aside from coffee shops, lobbies and my laptop.

[jonesey]

FWIW, two profs are having a phone conference (speaker phone!) in the cubicle right next to me as I prep for tonight's class.  No, I don't need an office.  Offices are for the bourgeoisie.

[octoprof]

FWIW, two profs are having a phone conference (speaker phone!) in the cubicle right next to me as I prep for tonight's class.  No, I don't need an office.  Offices are for the bourgeoisie.

A former colleague only had an outdoor voice. Even though we had nice individual offices, I could hear every word he said on the phone and he loved to talk on the phone, mostly to professionally successful alumni.  He also loved telling off-color jokes which I could inevitably hear through the wall and which caused some uncomfortable silences between me and students who'd stop by my office.

Cubicles and/or common spaces? Over my dead body.

That article (which I have read and commented on already) just assumes we all have huge offices and we don't use them. I use mine very day, thankyouverymuch, Mr. Biemiller. It isn't huge, either. It's poorly designed and awkward with fixed furniture and cabinets in the worst possible configuration but I don't have to share it, thank God.

[tee_bee]

My note to the IRB, regarding confidentiality of data:

"Quesionnaires will be maintained in a 'locked' (heh, heh, have you seen the locks on these things?) box on the bottom shelf of my roll-around cart in an unsecured 'common' (and, ooh boy, is it every common) area shared by seven other faculty members and their advisees. Data will be analyzed and stored on 'password' protected computers that are shared among the multiple faculty members in the common area. Interviews may be conducted in the common area; the attached waiver notes that the subject realizes that their political attitudes about racial, ethnic and sexual minorities will be kept confidential to the extent that the subject can quietly whisper his or her answers, and to the extent to which the other seven faculty members avoid coming to this hellhole to 'work.' "

The day I share an office is the day I stop working at the office forever.

[lizzy]

When I first got to my current school, faculty had to share offices. It was difficult. Now we have our own offices (due mostly to attrition and a change in provost), but there are ominous murmurings about that changing in the future. If it does, I don't know what I'll do. I was so completely, unreasonably happy about my own office--blistering hot in the summer, bone-numbing cold in the winter, and distant from many of the buildings I taught in--and I've become so accustomed to the privacy, the place to keep all my books and files, the ability to walk around without my shoes, practicing lectures...

[southerntransplant]

To tell me I don't get my own office is to tell me they don't want to see me on campus.

Fortunately this has not been put forth as a budget saving maneuver at Swelterville Tech.

Yet.

[dolljepopp]

I'm pretty sure THE has reported on such setups and the problems they've led to.

[spam links removed]

Would that spammer pests could be controlled...