The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Today, I've got a letter for a colleague to update/write, and marking to do.

Edit: eep, remembered I have to defend a new course for the department before the faculty senate committee. Sigh. So much for getting stuff done.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on April 18, 2024, 08:32:51 AMGrading and T1.

Some, but not enough.

I feel kind of guilty that my first thought, on seeing a reference to "university spokesman Ira Thor," was to wonder whether he had a sister named Ima.

Quote from: selecter on April 18, 2024, 03:22:05 PMNew Jersey City College pretty much toast. Outstanding debt of 244M, operating deficit of 6M (down from 20 after 33% of academics slashed), and 50M in overdue deferred maintenance.

And they want a partner. Ummm. No.

https://www.nj.com/hudson/2024/04/financially-distressed-njcu-needs-a-partner-but-which-university-can-afford-to-take-on-the-school.html

Apparently they made a huge mistake a few years ago of taking on two branch campuses--trying to expand just as their enrollment was set to shrink due to demographics.  Wonder why that seemed like a good idea at the time?

No, you're definitely not going to see another university offering a tow to a sinking ship unless the state promises to pay them for undertaking the salvage operation.  Maybe the state will see fit to keep part of the campus open as a glorified junior college or vo-tech school.  They already took the standard step of eliminating nearly all of their arts and humanities programs last year, and even quite a bit of STEM.

Quote from: apl68 on April 19, 2024, 07:20:39 AMI've seen video of an engineer who signed off on a fatally-flawed project that ultimately caused a number of fatalities issue a mea culpa in an interview.  He accepted that the buck stopped with him.  It must have been one of the hardest things he ever had to do.

We talk about things like that with our students a lot. One colleague, when covering ethics, shows videos of the man who signed off on the KC Hyatt Regency Skywalk, someone who messed up on a bridge, and a couple others I can't remember. I tell my students that often the BIG mistakes, someone will usually catch, it's the little ones, changing a fastener, incorrect rounding when calculating a load, etc., that cost a lot of money to fix and/or potentially kill people. Sometimes I think they all believe that it couldn't happen to them, that when they have a real job, they'll pay more attention than what they do in class.

Quote from: apl68 on April 19, 2024, 07:16:25 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on April 19, 2024, 06:17:22 AM

Quote from: poiuy on April 18, 2024, 06:39:32 PMI don't often post on these fora. I don't know if anyone here even registers when I post. Maybe I am speaking to the void. But the impulse is here. 
My father left us in January 2022.  My mother, in March 2024. They were both very good, cool, people who gave us everything.
It was a rough ride the last few years with each of their health issues, and being a transnational family, though we were so incredibly fortunate that one sibling lived right there.
It's odd how heavy the absence is, of the person, of the routines, of all the vast space in heart and mind.
I think of the parable of the mustard seed and soldier on. I hope their energy is zinging around the universe in ultimate bliss.

May their memories be a blessing.

It's a great blessing to be able to look back at two good, loving parents.

+1

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on April 18, 2024, 02:05:07 PMI thought I would just post this from Reddit.  It touches on several Fora themes.

QuoteAdmin announces job losses using ChatGPT-generated email
That's all. Can't give details for obvious reasons but we are sunsetting a program and there are job losses entailed. Upper admin sent out an announcement to the campus. Details were wrong. The voice was odd and not characteristic of the sender. There was nothing specific about the program being ended.

I put a prompt into ChatGPT to "write a memo to the campus community announcing the closure of X program due to low enrollment" and got a reply that was as close to identical to the memo as one can get with Chat — the same points in same order and oodles of identical phrases. Why the heck am I killing myself to hold students accountable for misusing GPT? It is stunning and insulting.

Not the least bit surprising that some would try something like this.  I am a bit surprised that it was fingered so easily as ChatGPT's work, given that so many institutional announcements already have a stereotyped, canned feel about them.

I've seen video of an engineer who signed off on a fatally-flawed project that ultimately caused a number of fatalities issue a mea culpa in an interview.  He accepted that the buck stopped with him.  It must have been one of the hardest things he ever had to do.

Quote from: fishbrains on April 18, 2024, 02:29:44 PM

Quote from: apl68 on April 18, 2024, 10:02:59 AM

Quote from: fishbrains on April 18, 2024, 08:35:25 AMStudents don't know that the words "delve," "tapestry," and/or "whilst" in an essay send professors straight to the AI-generation detector.

While that's understandable, it does seem sad for those students who read a lot and have unusually rich vocabularies.  Although you may teach somewhere that doesn't have any such students.

It's more when all three words are used in the same sentence.

Okay, that does sound a bit suspicious. Must be one doozy of a sentence.