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[no_quarter]

So it happened, in the most bizarre circumstances I can think off.

After nearly six years of working 70 hour weeks at a public R1 in the midwest it all came to personalities. My chair and vice-chair have never warmed to me, so I was not thrilled when I came back to my office and saw them in there smiling.

What follows was the most humiliating situation I can think.

The school I am at has a great basketball program and the chair and vice-chair are huge fans. When I entered my office I noticed they had placed a small basketball ring and backboard on the back of my door. They asked me to sit down as they wanted to "talk to me about my tenure case". I sat and then they gave me the ball that went with the basketball ring and suggested I take a shot. I figured after nearly six years of not being confrontational one more day was not going to kill me but what follows just floored me.

As I shot the ball towards the ring, the chair jumps up and swats the ball away while saying "REJECTED". The vice-chair then asks me to take another shot and then he proceeds to swat the ball away while saying "DENIED". At first I didn't make the connection between their words and my case, but when I asked if they were telling me my tenure case was denied they confirmed it had been.

And thats folks is how I learn the fate of my tenure case. I spent the afternoon in tears.

Congrats on tenure! I wish you could forward the following to those a$$clowns...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkEVn1VUBlE

[tortugaphd]

I'm new to this thread, but congratulations!

[burnie]

I seem to have missed the part of this thread where the school was identified. Can someone help me out? I remember she wrote it was an R1 with a very low tenure rate (30%), but not MIT, but I missed the actual school.

She hasn't outed the school yet. She referred to it in the OP as a "public R1 in the [M]idwest" with a "great basketball program."

The reference to MIT and the 30% tenure rate was in a later post, and presumably made to help poor rubes like me who don't understand that there is a lot of pressure at a "top R1" (later referred to as a "top ten place").

Well, there are only two Big Ten schools with engineering departments which might conceivably have tenure rates in the 30%, UIUC and Michigan. Another Big Ten school with a strong engineering program would be Purdue, but I don't think it's quite at the same level, and just doesn't seem quite a cut throat with regards to tenure.

I was a postdoc at Michigan, and an assistant professor at Purdue, and Michigan didn't really strike me as a place obsessed with basketball, it was much more of a football obsessed school, but Purdue (and Indiana in general) was much more into basketball. Given Illinois' proximity to Indiana, perhaps there is a similar propensity for basketball there. Add the information about a department full of IEEE Fellows, and the SciDAC grant, and my money would be on UIUC. Not to mention there has been quite a push to increase the representation of female faculty in engineering departments at Michigan.

Certainly there is more than enough identifying information on this thread that it would be immediately recognizable to the OP's colleagues.

I thought OP said she was NOT in engineering?   But, I have to admit, my knee-jerk reaction to the original story was that the chair and vice-chair sound like Illini fans.  Jerks.

OP how have those two jokers responded to the news?

[snowbound]

Could y'all please stop trying to out the OP--which outing her school would certainly do.  It's common courtesy on these fora to not out participants. 

[fedscholar]

Agreed. Sounds like dicey situation. Enough talking about the place. I do understand that people want to out the tools who went about it like that.

Glad it worked out in the end Profrach. Hope things settle down and become enjoyable again soon.

[sagit]

Congrats Profrach!  I am glad it turned out well for you!
 

[larryc]

Could y'all please stop trying to out the OP--which outing her school would certainly do.  It's common courtesy on these fora to not out participants. 

Courtesy, hell, it is a bannable offense.

[mleok]

Could y'all please stop trying to out the OP--which outing her school would certainly do.  It's common courtesy on these fora to not out participants. 

The OP has already revealed enough information that anyone from her department will be able to immediately identify her. Anyhow, anyone in her department who would be offended by her posting this would already have been unhappy about the manner in which she was eventually awarded tenure.

[snowbound]

That's beside the point.  Sure, the OP did reveal more than was wise, but if she had intended us know what school it was, she would have told us.  DO we have a new fora rule saying that an OP who "reveals enough information that anyone from her [or his] department will be able to immediately identify her [or him]" is no longer protected by the rules against outing???  Good grief, half the threads I read give so much information (about courses, campus politics, eccentric colleagues, etc) that, under the criteria you are using, they would be outable!

[scampster]

Could y'all please stop trying to out the OP--which outing her school would certainly do.  It's common courtesy on these fora to not out participants. 

The OP has already revealed enough information that anyone from her department will be able to immediately identify her. Anyhow, anyone in her department who would be offended by her posting this would already have been unhappy about the manner in which she was eventually awarded tenure.

For me, the primary reason that we shouldn't mention what school they are possibly talking about (even if it really clear), is that then the thread will show up in fora searches (however bad they may be) for all eternity. So someone from said school is much more likely to stumble upon the thread in the future. I think it is a courtesy to at least go to the one-off thread if you want to name places and talk about them, so the discussion isn't connected to such a specific story as this.

[grasshopper]

Could y'all please stop trying to out the OP--which outing her school would certainly do.  It's common courtesy on these fora to not out participants. 

The OP has already revealed enough information that anyone from her department will be able to immediately identify her. Anyhow, anyone in her department who would be offended by her posting this would already have been unhappy about the manner in which she was eventually awarded tenure.

For me, the primary reason that we shouldn't mention what school they are possibly talking about (even if it really clear), is that then the thread will show up in fora searches (however bad they may be) for all eternity. So someone from said school is much more likely to stumble upon the thread in the future. I think it is a courtesy to at least go to the one-off thread if you want to name places and talk about them, so the discussion isn't connected to such a specific story as this.

Yes, this.

There's no need to voice it publicly, except to feel good about having figured out a puzzle. And you can feel good silently.

[quoog]

Time to take a basketball and a little basketball ring into the chair's office. Ask him to try to make a shot. Record the whole thing and post it to youtube.