Will blog for cake.
To micromanage or not to micromanage?
Published Friday, September 19, 2008 by Pilgrim/Heretic | E-mail this post
Here's an academic-y question for y'all to kick around. Our administrative assistant and I were going over the department's proposed spring schedule (why she was doing this with me, instead of the chair or the person actually in charge of scheduling, is a whole different story, sigh), and she was telling me about how one of our regular adjuncts is picking up 4 courses in the spring. We have four for him to do, and he's willing to do them, so everybody's happy on that score.
But this guy lives a ways out of town, and (like most of us) he'd rather schedule all of his courses on the same days. At least a couple of the courses we need taught are on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule, so he wants to put all four on TR. As the current schedule stands, we have him teaching four back-to-back hour-and-a-half classes, from 8 am straight through to 3:30 pm. He claims to be perfectly happy with this.
But it strikes me as not a great idea. I'm not capable of teaching more than two TR classes together without starting to lose my voice; four would utterly wipe me out mentally and physically. Our adjunct is a bit older than I am, and not in the best of health. I'm a little worried about him, and about the students in that fourth section who will end up with the dregs of a professor at the end of the day (to say nothing about the end of the semester).
Since I'm not the chair, and I'm not in charge of scheduling, this is not my call. But do you think this is something that falls under the purview of a department chair? If the adjunct thinks he's perfectly capable of taking this on, is it none of our business? I really don't know what I would do if I were chair, so I'm curious as to what y'all think.
But this guy lives a ways out of town, and (like most of us) he'd rather schedule all of his courses on the same days. At least a couple of the courses we need taught are on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule, so he wants to put all four on TR. As the current schedule stands, we have him teaching four back-to-back hour-and-a-half classes, from 8 am straight through to 3:30 pm. He claims to be perfectly happy with this.
But it strikes me as not a great idea. I'm not capable of teaching more than two TR classes together without starting to lose my voice; four would utterly wipe me out mentally and physically. Our adjunct is a bit older than I am, and not in the best of health. I'm a little worried about him, and about the students in that fourth section who will end up with the dregs of a professor at the end of the day (to say nothing about the end of the semester).
Since I'm not the chair, and I'm not in charge of scheduling, this is not my call. But do you think this is something that falls under the purview of a department chair? If the adjunct thinks he's perfectly capable of taking this on, is it none of our business? I really don't know what I would do if I were chair, so I'm curious as to what y'all think.
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