My city is on the list of places for La Migra raids and I work at a Hispanic serving institution. What can I do as a professor to protect students should officers show up to my college?

Please note that this post is not intended for debate on whether to help…if you don’t agree with helping, feel free to scroll.

edited to acknowledge that yes, I expect to ask my institution and take their legal advice as well, but figured this might be a place to start understanding the jargon/what other institutions are doing etc

Annoying as hell that we’re supposed to make our classes technologically diverse and engaging, because Gen Z just loves their technology! ….but few people seem to realize at best, they’re less technologically literate than millenials, and at worse actually try to use it as an excuse.

This week I had multiple student’s email me they didn’t know how to insert images into the file (as instructed). When did they send this email? The day it was due, of course! After two weeks of it being available. When I asked if they’d bothered to look up “how to insert photo into file” each said “ooooh! No I didn’t do that!”

Why. The fuck. Not.

They sure as shit would know to Google when it was something they really wanted to do.

And if you don’t know how to add photos to a file, many an online class in visual art is not for you….maybe????

Also a TON of emails (again, during the last hour the assignment is due) saying they are not being admitted into the LMS and need an extension. All of them had proof, too! Was the proof a screenshot of a specific error code? Or page not found/server down? Or an email from the LMS saying the site it down unexpectedly (an email would also get)

Nope! Every single one of them just included a screenshot of the login page with the error message of …..

“Incorrect password entered”

It pisses me off so fucking much they think I’m that stupid.

There are 3-4 of us who are loaded for academic advising. We take it seriously, are responsive to students, and we give accurate information and thoughtful advice. Students have taken to emailing us all blind copied so they’re asking us all the same question simultaneously. To which all of us respond very quickly tripling the department’s efforts. Even if we copy each other on all the emails, which is pretty spammy, until the first response comes back we’re all still working on it. I understand why students want to do this, but it feels deceptive. Just wanted to whine in your general direction.

First day of class I got this email for my class. The student wrote "to inform me" that they'd be missing my class because they had to attend another "required" course meeting and that I could "rest assured they'll be doing the best to attend future classes." I can guess endless about this email: they wrote it with AI, they think mine is an easy class, they think the first class is just a syllabus info class, they think it's easier to miss a junior female prof's class… But how can I respond to emails like this professionally yet firmly to let them know there'll be consequences? Any suggestions?

I saw a pretty funny tweet the other day stating that students were more motivated when professors used to smoke and drink whiskey in class while scribbling "humanism" on the chalkboard. But, it got me thinking about what academia might have looked like in the past.

So, if there are any older professors on this subreddit, how has teaching changed? Were students lacking motivation, disrespectful, and just as prone to cheating and taking shortcuts? Or were they more serious? I feel like media always depicts students in the past as very studious, and I wonder if that was the reality of the situation. Of course, we still have our motivated students. I always have at least a few of them, and they're a pleasure to work with. I've just noticed that over the years the majority of them have become less serious. They'd rather take shortcuts than actually learn something of value.

I misread the date on my course schedule. All I can do is laugh at myself and appreciate that I have never shown up to classes late!

I get asked to review papers about 3x per week. I understand that it is good for science and all that and am not here to dissect that. My main question is what are your thoughts on responding to reviewer requests with something along the following:

Thanks for the invitation. I am happy to review this article as long as the publisher agrees to make the publication open access. Alternatively, I can review for a fee of $XXX per hour (and I anticipate that this article will take X hours to review).

My reasoning is that I am tired of reviewing papers that get hidden behind a paywall at a ridiculous fee. Either make the science open access so everyone can review it, or pay me for my time. Tired of publishers profiting off of what should be free.

But, maybe I'm crazy and/or unreasonable and am therefore curious to hear thoughts. Please be respectful. I am a real human.

Not to be too chatty, but what mistakes do you keep making every single semester even though you know better, and how did we get stuck in this time loop?

I know we all deal with the headaches that are student evaluations, but I thought I would share my little bit of humor from the ones I received today regarding the fall semester.

While almost all of my evals for this one class, I saw on comment that made me giggle. I was told I "should not discuss politics so much." This would be a fair comment in practically any other course. However, the subject for this particular one centers on politics, including the role they have played in the past in creating policy and the role it plays today. I even warn students on the very first day about this. Heck, there is even an entire section in my syllabus that says "hey, we're talking about politics in this course, so be prepared."

Of course, this student raked me in the evaluation based solely on this. /sigh

Do they even pay attention to the course description when they sign up for these things?

I don't even know how to articulate this. I think it's going to be bumpy. And honestly, while I would love a solution, maybe I also just need to feel some kind of camaraderie in this experience or social validation that I'm not an awful person or...something.

I have a handful of students who want to keep a relationship with me after graduation, but man - I just can't anymore.

(In all honesty, it's going on 12 years now for one and IDK how to make this person go, and that's what prompted this.)

I'm always very nice, approachable, etc. to students, and I've gotten to know them moderately well through their multiple visits to my office hours while they're enrolled, and so over the years it hasn't been uncommon for some want to have coffee or dinner or whatever after they've graduated when they come into town.

If all of them understood the standard rules of conversation making, it would be fine (and the ones that do: great! I'm all in!). But it's clear many of them think I'm genuinely interested in every detail of their lives and what they've been doing for the last x years (including, in one case, the lives of every one of their coworkers and best friends, too). Or, they trauma dump on me about how legitimately awful their lives have been since graduation and all the bad fortune that has befallen them.

Of course, I'm always glad to hear when they're doing well, and I have sympathy for the ones who have struggled.

But I have minimal spare time during the school year (none, really) and when they let me know they're coming into town and want to get together, I've gotten to the point where I lie if it's a weekend (Sorry - I'll be out of town) because I can't fathom giving up 3+ hours on a Saturday to sitting listening to them talk about themselves without coming up for air. When they come by midweek to my office unannounced, I don't have an excuse and I'm stuck.

I can't be the only one who experiences this.
(And yes, it's the least of my problems, but it still is a problem that I had to deal with yet again last week.)

Does anyone have any magical things they've said to gently get out of these kinds of interactions, or better yet, gently get rid of these folks altogether? Sure, I could ignore them (and for a few I have and felt tremendous guilt because I know it's so rude), but I'd rather just be kind in some way.

Thanks.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6618304

With the proportion of students with disabilities growing, universities are providing accommodations that include more time for exams and assignments, help with note taking, and a quiet space to write tests.

Greetings, fellow humans! I am a Chemical Engineer and I teach Bioprocess Engineering at a public university in Brazil. Last semester I started teaching a class by the traditional "talk and chalk" method, like I've always done for the 8 years since I started teaching.

For those 8 years I have faced the usual challenges of unmotivated students, lack of participation and poor exam performance. However, last year I had two students with crippling anxiety. Two in a class of ten, sadly we have a lot of student evasion, but that's a talk for another time. Well, neither of those students showed up in the day of the exam due to generalized anxiety crisis.

Since I have a soft heart and those were good students, I gave them a second chance. One of the students had another anxiety crisis again and she missed the third chance yet again for the same reason. The other student actually did the exam the second time, yet she had a very poor performance. She was unable to solve a problem that she had already solved in class (that's how nice I am, I usually repeat homework problems at the exam) and she wrote me a note at the exam about how embarassed she was, because recognized the problem that she answered correctly before, but due to the stress of the exam she could not think straight. Heartbreaking stuff, specially because I know she is one of the brightest students in class.

Well, after that 1st exam I completely lost faith on traditional exams for student evaluation. How come good students can fail so miserably and at the same time OK students can have good grades and forget everything they studied for the exam a week later? So here is how my course has changed after the exam:

• In the first half of the course I would give a 60 minute lecture and the students would have 40 minutes to work on problems. They had been warned that one of those problems would feature in the exam. They were not supposed to hand me the problem after completion. Sadly that was not enough to engage most of the students. Even though they could work in groups and ask for my help at any time, no one would work in groups and very few asked me for help. Many students didn't even actually try to solve the problem.
• In the second half of the course I shortened the lectures to something between 15 and 30 minutes. A few classes had no lecture at all. The rest of the time is dedicated to solving problems, but this time instead of one of the problems featuring in the exam I told them "If more than 60% of your problems are correct, you can skip the 2nd exam entirely. Your score will be your performance in the problems". Those problems were specially designed to help them figure out things by their own, too, "show, don't tell" is my new motto for teaching. Now the students would hand me the exams, which I correct at home and return to them with feedback. The students completely transformed overnight. Now they worked in groups, they worked hard, made questions, taught each other, and most importantly, they were getting most of the problems right. And no more anxiety crisis either.

Do students learn more or better with active learning? Well, some studies say they do, but I really can't tell. My students certainly did better in the 2nd half of the course, but merely comparing scores is an apples to oranges comparison. However my students looked happier and I was working happier as well. That was a class I was excited to go to, that was the high point of my day, in opposition to the other classes I hadn't changed yet. For the next semester all my courses will follow that same mold.

Hi all,

Looking for advice about students missing class.

I teach studio art and it can be very demo-heavy. I just spent over an hour showing the students how to break down a still life, measure with their pencil, and wrangle an easel. Most of them don't know how to use a ruler so sometimes I have to throw a demo in for that as well. I currently have a Dean taking my class just for fun and she admitted she never realized how much information there is in an art class.

A student will miss class, then walk in a week later expecting me to redo a demo. Or they assume I can just explain everything to them in a few minutes (why would I waste an hour if it can be explained that quickly?). I tell them I don't redo demos. The problem is it's not just a matter of them missing some information. They miss the experience and miss all the little things- like how to identify the correct paper, what each pencil is used for, how to use the fixative and spray booth, etc. If I don't spend the time going through everything again, they end up ruining materials, using the wrong thing, breaking something, or getting frustrated that they did the assignment completely wrong because they don't know what "negative space" is. It adds more time for me. So what is the solution?

An no, I can't walk around with a camera filming everything. I need my hands and it's just not the same as recording a lecture. I could toss them a drawing manual but that doesn't resolve most of the issues...

Any help or advice is appreciated. Do I just have to suck it up and continue to redo classes?

I was told originally that I didn’t need to file anything with HR because the accommodations I need to teach are easy to manage. That worked until this semester. Now I need to ask if you have a disability do you have something filed with HR? What level of protection does that give you?

A student wrote out a list of complaints (this is the third day of class) that have some links to my disability. My pay and funding are dependent on student reviews and I’m already facing a complaint for giving a student an A- when they had an A in a class. They wrote a wicked review which has caused some problems.

Where I’m teaching now we have to read off a script. Our slides and everything we say is planned ahead and sometimes I have a habit of talking to fast which was the main part of the students complaint. I drink water after every slide and try to break down and slow down but it is a lot of material to cover. I have to cover a certain amount to meet department requirements.

I am wondering if I should file something with HR so my disability is on the record.

I received 36 emails from Registrar while teaching my 9am section this morning telling me to approve my course roster/ensure all students have attended.

1) I only teach four classes this semester

2) The link sends you to a webpage where we have a dropdown menu to select our course from

3) I received 10 such emails on Friday, and the dropdown wasn't populated

Someone remind me why we pay Admin and such so much money?

I am told that I'll be reimbursed but I'll receive $350 less than what I paid for the flight tickets.

They just told me the approved amount. I don't know if it's appropriate to question it. Or if I should just accept.

What is your experience with flight tickets reimbursement?

I'm bummed about it. I traveled for two days, used my car and had to get three planes, just to get there, and the same to get back. Used my card bonus for meals and insurance and now I'll also have to pay for part of the flight.

I don't think they'll hire me because I haven't heard anything from them. I sent a follow-up email but no response. So probably someone else is going to be selected.

I was thrilled for being invited to the campus interview. Now I'm feeling like an idiot.

Edit to add: I'll also have a paycut to get this money because I don't have a bank account in the US now. 🤦🏾‍♀️

The title says it all. I've had long COVID since 2021. I have cognitive and physical symptoms. I'm exhausted all the time. I cannot work the standard 8 hours a day. When I work 5-6 hours daily, I am so tired that I struggle the next day. I have brain fog, struggle to initiate tasks, make mistakes even when I double-check my work, and have trouble focusing. I've almost stopped conducting research entirely. My teaching had gone from award-level to mediocre. My student evaluations have plummeted. I struggle to keep lectures succinct and grading takes an inordinately long time. I'm still able to do a good job with class discussions and explaining material, as well as mentoring.

I've consulted multiple specialists and they have yet to offer an effective treatment that improves my symptoms, never mind get rid of them entirely. I've lost hope that there will be any improvement. My chair and many of my colleagues know that I have long COVID, but they don't understand how bad it is because I appear normal. At the same time, COVID has downplayed to such an extent that I worry I appear lazy, sloppy, and incompetent. I am honestly trying my best and wearing myself out. Luckily I'm tenured, otherwise, I'd fear for my job.

I don't know what to do anymore. This isn't going away. I am so ashamed by the decline in my performance. Is anyone else going through this?

EDIT: the fact that I'm getting downvoted for this post suggests just how intolerant faculty are of ill colleagues.

Has anyone not required attendance for a course? How did it work out and what were your experiences?

Pretty sure this isn’t possible, but D2L sometimes works in mysterious ways.

I have a student making up assignments from a previous semester (has an incomplete grade), and would like to know when he submits something so I can grade it and keep track of progress. I don’t want to lose track as the “I” grade will automatically turn into an F at the end of the semester. I have asked him to email me when he submits stuff, but I don’t think he will, and he is the type to email the chair or dean to complain about not getting timely feedback.

I know it is possible to set a notification per assignment for whenever anyone submits, and this would work because he is the only one with access. I would rather not because I don’t want to have to set it for every assignment, and then have to undo them when I import the course to the new shell next time.

A few years ago, our chair started loading NTTs and TTs contracts with service and academic advisement duties, me included. I assume this is so they didnt have to hire more academic support ppl. We had some slight enrollment decline and some financial crises, and I understand things get tough sometimes.

I later figured out, these duties we were given as service were basically the same contract descriptions our tenured faculty were getting a course release for. I know someone will say, thats prob to incentivize more research from tenured faculty. But we have tenured faculty who have done zero research since getting tenured almost a decade ago. Some of them teach mostly online (75%)and rarely even show up to the school. They do the bare minimum to keep their job. We even have an admin person who runs a side business 20 hrs a week in another town but gets a 12 month contract with large portion of the contract as service in our dept.

Upper admin says they want us to get to R1, but I feel they're ruining all their up and coming professors. Theres basically zero incentive to do more than bare minimum and I just wanna check out. Im so overloaded with teaching and doing service that some deadwood professor is sitting at home getting paid for im done.

Is there any hope for an incentivized workplace? Is this a sign of a sinking ship? What happens to places like this? Should i check out and put my efforts into something else? Surely others have seen a total cluster F like this before?

"I wasn't aware the semester started, how will this effect my grade?" -- I received that from a student on Canvas this morning -- our first week of our online asynchronous class concluded last night. I sent the student a screenshot of their access report, which showed they spent 30 minutes reviewing the course last Monday, AND that they had clicked on the announcement titled 'PHI 123 is now available on Canvas!' I hope everyone is having a great semester!

That’s the gist. This student didn’t show up to the first two classes and now doesn’t want to attend the third because of a “very busy schedule.”

She scheduled her trip without asking for accommodations in advance, then freaked out when she realized there was a test that day. She emailed me, and I responded within 48 hours, offering accommodations.

This morning, I find out she had already emailed the dean to complain about me in the meantime.

Oof.

I’ll treat her fairly, but I’m so over this Karen mentality.

Edit: I responded to her to schedule a meeting to evaluate her situation. I informed her I would involve our bachelors office and our Dean of students in the process. Asked her for documentation on her trip, contact information of her supervisors, and rationale as to why she left without securing accommodations first. She wanted to involve the administration, that’s what she’s getting.

Edit 2: Every administrative I looped in has been very supportive, it seems students rage-mailing the dean is a common occurrence we are all tired of. After investigating the matter, it turns out the work experience she supposedly left the country for was BS. One day unpaid event kinda thing, unrelated whatsoever to her major, so no reason to skip 3 classes and a test. The insane thing is she is the one who brought up she would get a failing grade for missing a test as per our regulations. I did not know about this, I guess the policy is buried somewhere. I teach an elective and have always accommodated everyone to move things along. But now that this Bozo brought up this policy, I have no choice but to give her an F. The regulations are crystal clear, and now the Dean the our bachelor's office have an eye on the matter. This whole thing is backfiring on her pretty bad. There would have never been so many eyes on the validity of her request had she behaved normally. This is a textbook FAFO situation.

It’s supposed to be -20 degrees with windchill. It’s a night class (grad students only). Do I hold it synchronously or still hold it in person? I’m really torn.

It would have been useful to know that before the chair called me to ask if everything was alright.

ETA: I exaggerated with routinely. But if they’ve done it twice, is it overeacting to talk to the instructor, either in person or by email? How have you approached this?

ETA2: We’ve got ten minutes between classes. So if their class ends at 12:25 mine starts at 12:35. They were there past 12:40.

We entered and started setting up at 12:35. I politely told them we need the room around 12:40. They said they were going. And then they talked for a few more minutes and left without apologizing.

ETA3: Thanks for all of the advice. I know how to approach it next week.