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[stranger1967]

Am I a victim of academic bullying or what?
A few years back I got tenure and promotion with very little support form the department at a SLAC.
Now, one of my senior colleagues, ( who was not a big supporter of mine in the first place ) is accusing me in a letter sent to the chair and dean of doing a poor teaching job and of not covering all the materials in the course outline ( I omitted a section or two that I did not consider essential for the essence of the course ). Among other things he says that the students from my classes come completely unprepared to his classes that he has to cover the materials I did not cover, that he has to work hard to change their highschool attitude, that they do not use his office hours, that I do not test the students enough e.t.c. Now the chair is asking me for all my course materials ( syllabus, tests, projects ) to investigate the matter.
I should mention that my student evaluations are good.
What should I do? Any advice please!

[hegemony]

You should provide your course materials with cheerful willingness, along with an account of student grades etc., and express a willingness to your chair to work with your colleague to coordinate your courses so students have the best chance to succeed in each.  One of your goals is to make it seem as if your colleague is a doofus for not merely having come to you to coordinate courses in the first place, because of course you would have happily agreed to look over the possibilities with him.  Another of your goals is to make your courses even better, and if new information helps you do this, you're eager to consider the possibility.

I don't see this as bullying; I see it as a difficulty.  Criticism is not bullying unless there really isn't a problem.  But possibly there is a problem.  That's okay; our jobs are all about solving problems.  Your attitude in this will determine whether you're seen as an obstacle or an easy-to-get-along with team player.  If your colleague is a grouch, even more reason that you should be seen to be the easy-going one.

[voxprincipalis]

Am I a victim of academic bullying or what?
A few years back I got tenure and promotion with very little support form the department at a SLAC.
Now, one of my senior colleagues, ( who was not a big supporter of mine in the first place ) is accusing me in a letter sent to the chair and dean of doing a poor teaching job and of not covering all the materials in the course outline ( I omitted a section or two that I did not consider essential for the essence of the course ). Among other things he says that the students from my classes come completely unprepared to his classes that he has to cover the materials I did not cover

OK, didn't you just admit that you *did* in fact choose not to cover all of the original material? If I taught Basketweaving IV and counted on students coming in having learned X and Y in Basketweaving III, and they hadn't, and they weren't ready for Basketweaving IV, I'd be pretty pissed too, especially if we had all been in agreement on what was to be taught in each course.

Now the chair is asking me for all my course materials ( syllabus, tests, projects ) to investigate the matter.

Well, of course he is, because by sending the letter to the chair *and the dean* Colleague has upped the ante and now the chair has to visibly show that he is investigating the situation.

I should mention that my student evaluations are good.

Why should you mention this? It is not relevant.

Colleague certainly could have handled this in a less explosive way. However, just because Colleague was a jerk does not necessarily mean that he is in the wrong. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. How Colleague handled it is a separate matter from what the fundamental issues are. You should be prepared to address the fundamental issues separately from his poor handling of the situation, and to take responsibility for any errors you made.

VP

[deadcatbounce]

If I was your chair, I'd suspect that your senior colleague had a perfectly reasonable issue, particularly given that you admit that you left material out of your course. Listen to Hegemony, and provide your material to your chair.

[snowbound]

I'm not seeing bullying here.  The only thing that your colleague is clearly in the wrong about is taking the matter to the higher-ups without first trying to resolve it with you.  That makes him look bad--like he is out to make trouble with you.

Actually, that's assuming that he did not, in fact, try to resolve it with you first. Did he?

[offthemarket]

If what he said was untrue, it might be bullying.  If it's true - and you have said that some of it is - then he's looking out for this interests of his students and his department.

By the way, good student evaluations don't equal good teaching.

[thimble]

OP, this sounds very stressful, and I'm surprised at the unsympathetic fora responses so far. 

At my school we get to choose what we teach and how we teach it.  Does this SLAC mandate certain syllabi and course content? 

[aside]

OP, this sounds very stressful, and I'm surprised at the unsympathetic fora responses so far. 

This does indeed sound stressful, OP, and I'm sorry you find yourself in this situation.  The responses have not resembled "Wow, you are being bullied.  Haven't they heard of academic freedom where you are?  This jerk obviously has it in for you.  Just stick to your guns!" because there are not enough facts in the OP to elicit such a response, and such advice could be harmful.

OP, did Colleague give you any hint Colleague had a problem with your teaching before firing off a letter to the chair?

[aprilmay]

As other posters have mentioned, criticism is not bullying, and you did in fact admit that you cut out portions of the course material. If you do not have the authority to do that, you made a mistake. You can mention your course evaluations, but whether students like you and whether they are learning the material are not the same issue. You can face this straight on, turn over all the requested materials, and say that while you feel you are a good teacher, you are open to ideas to improve your teaching. The more adversarial you make this, the worse it will be, especially as you already have problems with others in the department.

[tinyzombie]

OP, this sounds very stressful, and I'm surprised at the unsympathetic fora responses so far. 

This does indeed sound stressful, OP, and I'm sorry you find yourself in this situation.  The responses have not resembled "Wow, you are being bullied.  Haven't they heard of academic freedom where you are?  This jerk obviously has it in for you.  Just stick to your guns!" because there are not enough facts in the OP to elicit such a response, and such advice could be harmful.

Yes, and also because the OP has given at least some indication that the colleague's complaints may be legit (i.e. that students are leaving the OP's class unprepared for the colleagues class).

[no_quarter]

Am I a victim of academic bullying or what?
A few years back I got tenure and promotion with very little support form the department at a SLAC.
Now, one of my senior colleagues, ( who was not a big supporter of mine in the first place ) is accusing me in a letter sent to the chair and dean of doing a poor teaching job and of not covering all the materials in the course outline ( I omitted a section or two that I did not consider essential for the essence of the course ). Among other things he says that the students from my classes come completely unprepared to his classes that he has to cover the materials I did not cover, that he has to work hard to change their highschool attitude, that they do not use his office hours, that I do not test the students enough e.t.c. Now the chair is asking me for all my course materials ( syllabus, tests, projects ) to investigate the matter.
I should mention that my student evaluations are good.
What should I do? Any advice please!

I think that at the least, your colleague should have discussed this with you before involving the chair and dean. I find this highly unprofessional. It appears based on your side of the story that the majority of complaints are on issues that may be hard to measure.

1) He has to work hard to change their highschool attitude (as if the responsibility is on you to do this)
2) They don't use "his" office hours (again, as if this is your problem)
3) And allegedly, you don't test students enough (how much is too much, how much is not enough)

If you never discussed these issues previously, I would think that this person is a bit of an egomaniac and selfish in his expectations. If the Dean and Department Chair are that willing to make recommendations based on unquantifiable evidence, then that tells you all you need to know about the people you work with.

Do you have access to his teaching evaluations and course content? How much material does he leave out of his courses? Could it be that some of the problem is with your colleague? Just a thought.

You're tenured from what I gather. When this meeting takes place, I would call your colleague on his BS.

This doesn't mean that you can't be open to changing if you were in the wrong, but you can at least let people know that this tact didn't sit well.

[zuzu_]

Bullying: No
A$$holery: Yes

The problem here is not that the colleague wants to discuss coursework and curriculum issues. The problem is the escalation to the higher-ups. I agree that you should just be calm and sane and be like, "Wow, I would be happy to talk about coursework and curriculum. I'm doing what I think is best for the students, but if you want to talk about these issues, I am glad to listen and consider your suggestions. I am not sure why you found it necessary to go above my head on this, but oh well."

And if this colleague is a wacko, then the chair and dean probably know he's a wacko, and you're fine.

BTW, I have also had a colleague accuse me of not teaching certain things (based on the complaints of a student who never showed up for class) and say things like, "the students from YOUR class never seem to know the material." It was total BS, of course. There is always someone who thinks they are so much more rigorous than everyone else. This is likely coming from a place of insecurity. My colleague is terribly insecure, and I've learned that if I do my best to make him feel secure, he behaves a lot better towards me. As you engage in these conversations with your colleague, you should compliment his way of doing things while also defending the validity of your approach.

[theritas]

I can second having students report that I "never taught" them how to do something we definitely covered and practiced in class. It's a fun way for them to bash previous instructors while demanding a refresher rather than having to remember the stuff themselves. Naturally, they will play to the crowd if the professor seems willing to believe in the farce.

[crowie]

As an assistant professor I taught at an institution where the graduate students taught composition and had a syllabus pretty much dictated to them by the director of composition in which certain skills were covered, including MLA citation style.  And yet every year when I taught the general education literature course that most students were meant to take the year after composition and asked "Did you all learn MLA style in Comp 101?" consistently about 75% of them would claim that they had not.  I personally knew the graduate students who were teaching the courses and I knew that they were having regular seminars in which they discussed the lock-step syllabus and strategies for teaching the next skill and that there was no way that 3/4 of the students had not learned MLA style--they just didn't remember.  Indeed, usually when this question came up some of the students who initially said they had not learned it, when nudged by their friend and told "Yeah we did, remember that lesson when..." they would remember it again.

I also remember when, as a graduate student teaching composition myself, faculty members from other (humanities) departments who learned what I taught would moan at me things like "Oh, why can't you get them to stop doing X, Y, or Z" where X, Y, and Z were their personal beefs about student writing and the premise was that I was responsible for fixing all their high school writing habits in one semester and that it was my "fault" that they were still dealing with imperfect student writing in their upper level history, literature or political science courses.

Students sometimes either lie or misremember what they have or have not learned, and on top of that some professors take out their frustrations with the students they have on the people who are teaching before them in the sequence.  That being said, if you decided using your discretion that some things were not "essential" for the course and you have turned out to be wrong then that is something that needs to be resolved.

I would worry less about what label to put on it ("academic bullying" or not) and more about what to do next.  Since the process has already been set in motion by your colleague and chair you may not actually be able to take much control of what happens next, but I would suggest going in with as mature and reasonable an attitude as possible and approach it as an opportunity for you and your colleague as peers to hash out an appropriate program for your students' progress.

[hegemony]

If you did teach those things, it should be easy enough to provide the syllabus and the teaching materials to show it.  I submit that the most helpful thing to do is to be cooperative and easy to deal with.  If the colleague is a grouch or a bully, this will put him in a bad light.  If, on the other hand, he's not a bully but just a guy with a legitimate complaint, you will look like a model of helpful cooperation.  Either way you win.

If those things are not on your syllabus, just agree to put them on -- same outcome.