Tenure and annual contracts

[Wahoo Redux]

Mercudenton, maybe you work for the school that my wife still works for and that I was laid off from.

The standard teaching load for TT faculty is 4/4.  My wife's letter expressed this in credit hours per year.  There is some "release time" money available for short terms.

We have a tool for a provost, and I suspect that's the provenance for the email which explained that the actual teaching load for TT faculty was somehow magically a 5/5 but that they had all been given "release time" to do research (which very few do at our "R2").  The admin warned that faculty might be required to account for their research time.

Fortunately, they have a union which looked into the matter.  Apparently, the teaching load is set by the Board of Reagents.  This could be good or bad, depending, since the Reagents are largely chest-thumping alumni who are successful local business people; they are very invested in the future of the school.  The problem is that they often seem clueless if genuine.   

The union also paid an outside consultant, a professor of accounting from out of state, to do a review of finances.  Hu found that the school is currently on stable financial footing but that if enrollment decreases continue at the current rate the school will be in financial difficulty within 5 years.  Hu also found that, even after scholarships are dispersed, athletics are still a seven million dollar "expenditure" each year.  We assume that that takes into account tuition and FTE for athletes. 

The upshot is that the reigning tool-of-a-provost is scrambling to find ways to save money before it is too late.  Rumors of additional layoffs are always circulating.

[apl68]

I hope that the Board of Reagents at least has good chemistry together.

[Wahoo Redux]

I hope that the Board of Reagents at least has good chemistry together.

As far as I can tell, they are good people.  Never having been in administration, or even on the tenure track, I really don't know very much, however.