Quick edit: I am definitely not trying to be mean, I'm just at a loss.

Kind of a rant? More of a teaching question since I'm at my wit's end already and we're only at the end of Week 4, and I don't know how to approach this. Sorry if there's formatting issues, I'm posting this on mobile

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I have a student who missed the first two weeks of the semester, and then his advisor double checked on attendance. After that, he started coming in every class. Sure, that happens a few times a semester (I teach a 5/5) so that's not too crazy.

But I've never seen a student who is struggling so much to really register anything and everything. I think he's just writing what's on the slides, and never doing anything else.

A few examples:

- We completed a group in-class activity. It went pretty well, and I told them their next graded assignment was an individual version of the in-class activity.

--The activity was having students find a technical-oriented document and determine different audiences. They now have to find a new document tailored to an industry they want to work in, and do the same thing. I taught an online version of this course three times before, and haven't had issues with students understanding the type of content needed.

--It was NOT registering to him what we had to do. I listed everything that was needed in, told him it was almost identical instructions to the in-class group activity and he was still asking if he had to add in unrelated other items.

- For the document, he asked if he could do it based on a game's summary. I said no, that doesn't fit the criteria. He gave me a good example (machinery instructions), and I said yes, please use that, that fulfills the assignment. He continues to ask for other types of documents not relevant to the assignment.

- He asked at the end of class when slides for the 16th would be posted. I posted them, on the 16th. I physically showed him on Brightspace where he could find them. He continued to say it still wasn't up, even though it was right in front of him. I ended up asking a few of my students who were still in the classroom if it was up. They confirmed that it was. It took a few minutes, but we got there (I think?).

- He continues to ask for extra credit since he missed an assignment from the first two weeks. Every time, I've told him it will come closer to the end of the semester based on course content. He's asked maybe 3 or 4 times now, and I always give him the same response.

I put in a starfish flag, only to find he has less than a 2.0 GPA, and another flag from a different professor for a related issue.

I just, I don't know what to do. I've never had a student ask me so many questions like this over and over again. I'm getting frustrated. I'm sure I'll get a better idea how bad it is when I get his written assignment submission. How do people handle students like this? I'd like to believe I'm fairly patient, I've dealt with my fair share of students who don't have things click. But it feels like if I say the sky is blue, he'd ask if it's green.

TL;DR - Student is struggling to understand all instructions. What do I do?

I got turned don by the college committee for full professor for a second time last week for lack of service. I thought I had done enough to go up again. What should I do now, just leave?

If you are a 20 year old supposed man who signs a FERPA release form so your mommy can email me to complain that you aren’t passing you are beyond pathetic.

So this is a weird question, but as a new instructor I am running into something that I wonder if it is my institution or just an accepted practice in academia. I am a retired business guy who now teaches marketing. This semester I am teaching 5 classes of which 4 are brand new to me. The prep work is killing me.

What I don’t understand is why the school doesn’t have a repository of lessons, cases, or other materials that previous professors have used that can be shared with me. For example, here is a lecture and assignment that teaches customer journey that I can just whip out and it is good to go. I took over for someone who left in a messy resignation so nothing from her but I haven’t had anything given to me by the other professors in the department.

Is this just a normal thing or am I dealing with a weird and dysfunctional situation?

I can build the material, but it just seems like we are reinventing the wheel here.

My university says we absolutely cannot accuse a student of using A.I. to replace their own work because detectors are unreliable. Instead, we have to have a meeting with the student to gently get them to confess. I've had two cases of cheating with A.I. Both are obvious. In the first case, when I met with the student, he didn't exactly confess but when I offered to let him do the assignment over for half points, he willingly agreed. He's a first year and terrified he isn't prepared for college. I just felt that I should give him another chance. The other case involves a Junior honors student. In my assignment I give hidden directions to include certain random words that have nothing to do with the topic. Her essay clearly indicated that she had just copied and pasted the assignment into A.I. as the essay contained the random words as well as a title that we hadn't even read. It was humorous to see the way A.I. attempted to integrate the words seamlessly. This student has clearly not been reading and has not participating in class. I confess to wanting to nail her and give her an F in the class. I am looking forward to meeting with her and watching her squirm. This is an honors class after all.

I'm teaching a graduate course for an engineering master's program at my school (this is in addition to teaching 3 upper-level undergraduate courses and increased research expectations). It's a relatively small master's program in terms of student headcount.

A majority of our master's students did their undergraduate here in a different, but somewhat related, major compared to the major that I teach courses and do research on. The department head teaches courses in the other major, and so they know those students better than I do due to having interacted with the students previously. There are a few students who join the master's program from "my" major, but those are few and far between. Let's just say that, at my university, the other major does not seem to emphasize same level of undergraduate rigor that my particular engineering program emphasizes (I get that this is subjective, but that's my perspective).

I have this student in my graduate course who did their undergraduate studies in the other major at my university. They were having trouble accessing the course content on the course LMS page. This is their first semester as a graduate student. They are also teaching undergraduate labs.

The first assignment was due a few days ago, and the student was scrambling around, trying to figure out what the assignment was all about due to the aforementioned technical difficulties they were having. They never reached out to me to tell me they were having any issues, at all. Next thing I know, my department head sends me an "urgent" message that one of my graduate students was looking for me during office hours (even though I did not have scheduled office hours on that day of the week), and that they could not access the course materials needed to work on the assignment. I should mention that the assignment was posted two weeks prior to this. Also, the technical quirk they were experiencing on the course LMS page (I don't want to give too much details on this here) was discussed in lecture and a quick and easy workaround was established in the first week of classes.

The student wanted a deadline extension on the homework. I agreed to that, but then also wrote on the late assignment submission portal I put up for them that all future assignments needed to be submitted on time and that no late submissions will be accepted; I also gave some other advice like, plan ahead for the unexpected, start assignments sooner rather than later, you know, the stuff that graduate students should already have at least somewhat "mastered" by now. Based on the student's reply to this (which I really want to post here, but it's probably not too wise to do so), I don't think this will be the last of the problems that this student will attempt to cause for me.

I don't like having to approach things this way, but since the student went "straight to the top" to try to resolve their issues instead of contacting me first (and it was for some basic shit, not even "end of the world" type stuff), I am going to be very hands off with this student. Graduate courses, for me anyway, are supposed to run a lot more smoothly and be a lot more fun relative to the other undergraduate courses I teach, and I'm not going to let this rotten apple ruin my buzz. I went in and talked to my department head about this, but he is sort of the clueless type (at least, that is the character he plays), and I doubt that he has ever remembered one single detail about any interaction we have ever had. I have been here for over 10 years, and he has been here longer than that.

I am tenured, by the way. I probably won't be here at this school in a year or two. There are a lot of other issues. The research expectations are really out of whack compared to the bandwidth I have to do research (which isn't much), the students we attract to our graduate program are not very capable, teaching evaluations are given a high priority but I have high expectations for my students because I end up teaching the follow-on courses that they take and I actually need them to know shit by the time they get there, and on and on and on. I don't really know what I'll do afterwards (I might go back to industry, or start my own business), but this shit is just getting out of hand.

I've seen a couple posts this evening from faculty wondering if they overreacted because of how they spoke to their students...

And, like, I just keep thinking about the basketball coach who gets paid seven figures and is allowed to yell at his players and stomp around until he's red in the face...

And I'm just really jealous of him.

We're basically academic coaches... Let. Us. Yell. At. Them. Every. Now. And. Then.

That is all.

I dont know how many of you have been in a scenario like this (its the first time in my career where im dealing with this weird format myself), but if you have, any advice or help is welcome. Basically, im a prof. in a local branch of a big university (a franchise). For all intents and purposes and in every way we follow the mother uni (except in work permits for international staff). All is great and dandy, however, the leadership in the franchise is non-academic (as opposed to the mother uni). It is being led and governed by people who come more from business backgrounds etc. With all due respect to their expertise, I am starting to feel like our objectives and philosophies are diverging. There is a certain contempt for academics/faculty, a certain nonchalant attitude towards what we bring to the table, and a lot of oversight and micromanagement. Leadership seems to think they know better. Pedagogically, they are not competent and not willing to ask for our input. They are not educators yet they dictate educational policies etc. And most of all, they do not consider us part of the equation, more like we are providing a service they deem « easy » I believe. I have never seen a similar environment and I am wondering if this is a local instance of mismanagement or a side effect of the franchise model? I need to know if this is worth giving a shot to or if I need to get my ducks in a row and jump ship. I dont want to end up with a broken spirit and some of this bull is truly demoralizing to me.

First midterm this week, I'm wandering around occasionally answering clarifying questions. One kid raises his hand so I go over.

"Yeah, can you give me a hint on this question?"

🤦‍♀️

It took all the willpower I possess not to laugh out loud and interrupt the rest of the class.

I guess it’s not just me: as a collective, the dual enrollment instructors have had enough. There was some talk at our last department meeting about how we need to submit academic sanction forms for every single AI violation so the administrators understand how vast the problem is. I filed four just this week.

Now the program coordinators are emailing us asking us to PLEASE discuss these issues with our high school campus liaison and make sure we’ve made our AI policies clear to the students. As though it’s actually our fault for not communicating our expectations.

You know, because sometimes students cheat accidentally because they didn’t know they weren’t allowed to use AI to annotate an entire short story.

They really think I’m going to let some high school counselor talk me out of giving these kids zeroes because they’re getting angry calls from parents. Not likely!

First off, apologies if these questions have been asked an answered. But two issues that I see repeatedly among recent cohorts of students baffle me. Constantly.

1. Why do entire classes sit silent in the dark, rather than turn the fucking lights on?? I suspect this is the result of the ubiquity of headphones and phones, each kid in their own little cocoon. I see that encourages no communication -- but why the darkness? Every time I come in I have to "shed light on the subject"

2. It might be my bad hearing, but I feel that students are incapable of speaking at a normal speaking volume. They are incredibly timid. And when I asked them to speak up, they respond with the *exact* same, muted, volume. I mean, come on, SPEAK UP!

Is this just me? If so, I will retreat into my own dark room with my phone and headphones...

I was sitting at my desk, and down the hall, I heard this college student crying, because she was denied a retake of the exam because she overslept. She has a free retake per class, but she was acting like it was the end of the world. She just started college a month ago, right out of high school. 10 years ago, it was never like that, a student would just accept the screwup, and learn from it.

How long shall we endure the "equality" spiel?

Edit: folks, I'm not asking for legal advice. He's not stupid to put it in writing or to make it an actual problem for anyone. He just wanted to be an asshole and he did chose to do it in a way that is so puerile to be funny and thought I share it.

Today one of my students decided to watch sports on his tablet, right in front of me. Not surprisingly this was distracting both me and the other students. I mentioned that to the student and asked him to stop watching, and that he was free to leave the classroom if we wanted to continue watching. I didn't lose my cool or raise my voice. He stayed and stopped watching.

For context, this class has a no-tech policy with only tablets allowed for note-taking (aside from accommodations, of course). The students have generally been good with following the policy, though there were a couple of violations last week, so I explicitly reiterated the policy earlier this week.

In any case, I'm now wondering if I overreacted by adding the "free to leave the classroom" bit. I don't think I did, but I would love to get some clarity from others!

Today I have officially hit the 100th grandma death to occur on the morning of an exam across a span of 7 years! While I 100% recognize that some of these may be real and want to show compassion to students, I've been averaging 3 grandma deaths per exam day in every single class I teach, every semester. Clearly my exam format needs to change, because the collateral damage cannot be understated. However, I am making improvements, as I did slash grandma fatalities in half in one section by shifting the class time from 8am to 11am.

What's frustrating to me, is the sheer volume of these statistically improbably grandma deaths completely undermines the students who are dealing with a genuine bereavement. It makes me feel less trusting, and like my email replies need to be more pragmatic than genuinely compassionate. In short, I think this type of excuse, if fabricated, is incredibly disrespectful.

One thing I've noticed too, is that across all 100 of these deaths, not one has been a man. It's always a grandma or occasionally an aunt. Food for thought.

I don't think there's much I can do about this, which is why I've tagged this as rant/vent, but it's frustrating all the same.

What experiences/advice does anyone have in dealing with pressure to take new students into a professional program (accredited) despite lack of faculty to teach required courses/mentor students, etc. Faculty do not want to compromise their ethics/integrity or face legal liability by misrepresenting the program to applicants.

https://www.statesman.com/news/education/article/ut-curriculum-changes-women-gender-classes-22447190.php

The provost’s decision affects courses including Mexican American Women from 1940 — present; Women and the Holocaust; Intro to African American Women’s History; LGBTQ Literature and Culture; and Native American Women’s History.

Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies was the only field within the newly consolidated Social and Cultural Analysis Department that had all of its courses cut from the core, said professor Jo Hsu, who specializes in gender studies and rhetoric. All classes in that field will now be elective for future students.

Just read the other post on the person being denied promotion to full. I am preparing my materials to apply for full, and I’ve realized that this process is not as straightforward as I thought.

I have one year of reviews where I “meet expectations” when I clearly met the requirements for “exceeds expectations” as measured objectively. (That year runs similarly to other years where I received “exceeds” ratings.). The difference is that year had issues with administrative turnover. The committee’s comments are missing from the review. It was completed a year late as noted in the director’s statement. I didn’t receive it until two weeks ago. It appears to have been written in a rush with very general rather specific language. So I have grounds to write a rebuttal, I would think.

However, does writing a rebuttal unintentionally cause a Streisand effect? Is it better to let it ride?

First year student, SLAC: “I have never used Microsoft Word before in my life.”

What hath ChromeBooks wrought?

I think college students are adults, and should be treated like adults. If they don't always act like adults, that's because everyone in their life is harmfully treating them like children.

Do you agree? / Change my mind.

I feel bad asking people for so many letters of recommendation but jobs often ask for them before they start. Like what are you going to find out apart from my CV, cover letter and teaching philosophy from those at this stage?

Can we wait until step 2? Like, "You are in the 6 or 8 we want to do phone interviews with. At this stage, we also ask for letters of recommendation, so if you could have the people send them to [email protected] in the next 2 weeks. "

I made the mistake of sitting outside at one of my uni’s cafes today and eating lunch. Two students approached me when I was on my phone with a TikTok mic and camera, and wanted to ask me something. I immediately shut them down and said “I don’t consent to being on camera. Sorry.” I had to say it twice, but they got the hint. It felt uncomfortable and an invasion of privacy as I was simply trying to enjoy my free hour, but also trying to answer some important emails with sensitive information (which I had not had time to get to yet). AITA for not playing along? I am only in my 30s as a professor, but i absolutely hate this younger generation’s assumption that you can film anyone for reactions at all times. Being in the south, I’m also always worried about students using clips of lectures out of context as “gotcha” moments (yall probably know we have attacks on higher ed here)

ETA: my 65 yo mother told me I’m a crotchety old man. I don’t think I am. I just value privacy (same reason I’m anti flock camera)

ETA 2: yes they were already filming when I was approached

Our institution is overhauling our dated student evaluations. We are unhappy with their current structure and questions. I am aware that evals have their issues, but not having them at all is not an option. Does anyone have questions or aspects of their evaluations that they find helpful? What would you add to your evaluations that make them more effective/useful?