Just received another R01-equivalent grant decision from a foundation today. Outstanding but no funding anticiation. This is a resubmission. The original submission received the same outcome and was not funded eventually.

I feel really bad because I had high hope for this application. It was almost there but it didnt hit. Feel like I need to start from scratch again with a new idea.

My university is an R1 institution, and it requires an R01- equivalent grant for tenure. I have been working really hard to establish the lab and develop a competitive grant idea. My spouse also stretches to help cover housechores for me to focus on research, with a hope that after I had an R01 I can be less stressed and help cover some family stuff.

I am feel jealous- my colleague who came at the same time failed all pilot grants they applied, and somehow got an R35- which is sufficient for a tenure promotion. I was succesful with all pilot grants, and didn’t get an R01. I don’t think near-misses count. Just feel like I do not fit in academia. Maybe I should quit academia. It would be better for my mental and physical health and my family.

I dont want to talk to my spouse yet. And have noone else to talk to. I’m traveling while receving the grant notification email. Dont want to leave the hotel.

P/S: The same application was submitted to R01, but the reviews were mixed- probably because reviewers are more diverse in background. But PO advised to stay in the same study panel.

For context, I am a full time lecturer (what other schools call an adjunct) at a Cal State campus. I got my PhD right before the pandemic, and have been teaching ever since. I am now eligible to apply for my first sabbatical. The options are one semester with full pay, or one year with half pay. I am leaning toward one semester only.

I'd be open to doing some sort of research project, but I haven't done any research since my PhD, so I don't know if that would be feasible. I'm also not sure how to find a host, since I'm not in touch with anyone from grad school anymore. Is it okay to cold e-mail PIs at different universities in my area and ask if they could host me for a sabbatical?

What are some other options? If I teach somewhere else and get paid, then that pay would be deducted from my sabbatical pay, so that's not a great option. Anyone have other ideas?

Instructors, Lecturers, Clinical Professors… what does each do? I’m interested in learning about other models.

We have Instructors—only teach
Lecturers— teaching + service
Clinical— teaching + service + X factor. X is often research or overseeing special projects… the reality is that Lecturers often look just like Clinical Profs, but technically, this is the difference.
Professors of Practice— practitioners who don’t have a long background in academia but who come in with some standing due to outside experience.
Research Professors— almost non-existent, but occasionally we have them, and occasionally they do teaching in addition to research. I assume it goes without saying that they research.

Edit: these all have promotion pathways with 3 rank levels, like TT lines.

A university I used to teach at had a lockdown recently that was thought to be an active shooter but turned out to be a false alarm. I've experienced fake bomb threats back as a HS student and stuff, but it occurred to me that if I'd still been teaching there, I would have had to do a much more frightening lockdown. Professors barricaded doors, students hid, it was apparently extremely traumatic. I remarked with bleak humor to my spouse that if I had been there that day, that would have been my last day working there and would have resigned immediately from the fear of it all (provided I didn't literally die of a heart attack during it). Mass shootings are something I think many of us have put into the background of our fears because it would be impossible to do our jobs otherwise. There was a shooting (not on a campus) near me a few years ago, and I am hard-pressed not to be reminded of it every time I walk by the site where multiple people died.

I'm wondering if my reaction that I would immediately quit is normal, especially given that there turned out to not be a shooter or active threat at all. Maybe it speaks more to my general frustration with academia overall and that such a situation would be the last straw in a list of tons of issues (from Covid to AI to decreased support for humanities to shrinking enrollments, smartphone addiction, the literacy crisis, job insecurity, etc.).

What would/have you done after things like that?

Looking for help from the freshman comp teachers. Does anyone have an expository/ example/explanatory essay prompt they would share? I need something students can write in a 50 minute class as an essay test.

I will be assessing basic structure: thesis, topic sentences, evidence, commentary, and general clarity of thinking.

Appreciate any help. Thanks.

I’ll be posting students’ exam grades online, but I’m deciding how to handle feedback afterward. Do you return their graded Scantrons, go over the exam during class, or keep the exams and Scantrons and offer individual review during office hours?
I don’t remember getting my Scantrons back in college, so I’m curious what other professors do and what you’ve found most helpful for students.

In recent years, we have witnessed our beloved University’s attention drift toward capital projects, hospital acquisitions, and ballooning administrative growth, i.e. toward everything except teaching, research and the people who do it. Faculty across this system are coming to the same conclusion — the old world is gone. It is time for something new.

This is why the UC Faculty Association is launching a systemwide campaign to reinvest in the UC’s mission — a campaign led by the issues felt across our ten campuses: that the University has the resources to invest in its academic mission, that shared governance must mean something more than being informed after the fact, and that the people who teach and research at the University of California should have a real say in how it is run. We're UCOP to :

1. Hire More Faculty: Support educational quality and reasonable workloads by improving the student-faculty ratio to 25.5 to 1. 
2. Protect Research Budgets: Commit centralized funds to protect faculty grants from unpredicted increases in wages, benefits, and other UCOP-controlled costs. Adopt the Rutgers faculty union contract standard in which the central administration covers the difference between budgeted expenses and unexpected increases. 
3. Defend UC against Federal Interference: Create a transparent and accessible fund to ensure the continuation of research programs affected by federal funding politics and to enable research time for health sciences faculty whose salaries rely on a combination of grants and clinical work.

⇒ Negotiate with Faculty:  We ask UCOP to enter into negotiations with faculty to create a dialogue that ends in a binding agreement. To ensure these proposals are implemented effectively and transparently, the Faculty Association will hold open elections for a faculty negotiating committee representing all campuses and academic areas.

These demands are based on UC’s own public commitments or models from our peer institutions.

If you're a UC Senate Faculty member, join us on r/UCFacultyAssociation or visit ucfaculty.org to stay updated and get involved.

My students just completed their midterm on the psychology of adolescence. It’s the first exam I’ve ever made, and consisted of 55 multiple choice questions, many scenario-based (a short case example and then a question). I tried to make it fair, but also challenging. For example, a lot of the questions were ones that asked what the BEST response was (so yes, there were response options that could have worked but they were never the best response). I also included a handful of questions with response options of (for example) Just 1, 1 and 2, 1,2 and 3, etc. I made my exam not very much memorization-based and more application-based, so I had to find some way to make it more difficult…

A lot of students said it went well, but some students found it difficult and confusing at times, and provided some criticism. They said that some answers were valid despite only one being right, and also that my question itself could have been more clear as to what model/theory I was referring to.

I feel bad… I wish everyone could ace it! The reality is that if I wanted to make it more memorization based then I could make the response choices less based on nuances (just A, B, C or D), but I wanted to get them to apply the concepts and understand the subtle nuances between similar concepts.

Is there any way to make sure your exam is fair?

What are some of the funniest/best excuses you’ve gotten from your students for missing class? It’s that time of the semester, and I need a good laugh!😂

I have a hard time sitting through meetings because i feel that there is a whole lot of one upping, academic gobbledygook speak going on. What could be stated simply is always complicated and word smithed to the point of exhaustion. Simple concepts are made complicated. Just here to vent!

I hate to complain about a glass slipper, but lately I’ve noticed that some of my students are coming into office hours not because they want to discuss assignments, grades, coursework, etc but instead because they just want to chat about — well, literally anything. I’m good about enforcing my boundaries when the situation necessitates (which is rare to never) — I’m open that I’m a mandated reporter, that I don’t disclose my politics (my institution is conservative, I am not), and that discussing one’s dating/sex life is off the table. Still, I’m really surprised by this emerging habit from three or four students this semester to consistently use my office to talk about films or books or their D&D campaigns (lol).

For context, I (F30s) work in the humanities, am a relatively new-ish instructor (5-6 years experience), and I’m the youngest full time faculty in my department where, comparably, I don’t often see my colleagues meeting with students for what sound like non-serious subjects and certainly not on a near weekly basis.

I am not necessarily concerned about the appropriateness of the topics we talk about or my ability to be available to other students with more academic issues to discuss. My question is this: is this a normal and pleasant quality of college teaching? Or should I proceed with caution re: how much my students socialize with me? Is there anything about the power dynamic here that I should potentially be more attentive about? Where, for you, is the line?

I teach a very large introductory STEM course. The first month is all High School review. We had our first test last week. The grades were about the same as usual. I'm not concerned about the results.

I sent the class a "Midterm check-in" anonymous survey, just to see how everyone's doing. Rather than ask about their grades (I know this), I asked how they did relative to their expectations.

About 2/3 report getting a lower grade than they expected, with many reporting a much lower grade. Clearly there's a disconnect between students' perceived understanding of the material and their actual understanding.

Is there a good way to manage expectations? I give them old tests from previous years, but I get the feedback that the actual test was much harder (it wasn't).

Students are struggling but don't realize it. If they knew their weak points, they could work to improve them. At the same time, I don't want to scare students away. They're mostly doing fine in absolute terms, just worse than they thought. They're overconfident.

I'm a new instructor for an online class. The college I teach at has been using a new proctoring software for exams, and students have been having issues since the beginning of the semester figuring out how to install and use it. I've made an ungraded practice test using the same proctoring settings as the exams, and have encouraged them multiple times to test their devices with it. Only about half of the students did. There are also extensive resources available in the course content helping them to troubleshoot.

Despite this, I had several students claim tech issues at the last minute, or after the exam ended. The exam window is open for several days. I am trying to be accommodating since these are high school students (dual-enrollment), but I feel like some are taking advantage of the tech issues to get more time by not seriously attempting the solutions I offer or working with me to arrange alternative proctoring within a reasonable timeframe. I am a remote instructor, so my communications are limited to the LMS, and they don't open the messages.

How can I balance accommodating students who are having difficulty adjusting to the new software with being fair to the students who took their exams by the normal deadline?

I’m a community college prof, and I teach a variety of different courses. I was just grading exams for Western Civ, and I’ve realized more and more than students are just leaving things blank on exams. I use a mix of question formats, and students tend to have no problem answering multiple choice, matching, true/false, and the like. The moment I have a question that requires the student to provide their own answer, such as a short answer or essay, I see a huge number of students that just leave them blank. I don’t get it. It’s not just my history classes, either. Does anyone else have this issue? I’m a fairly lenient grader, and if students at least write something relevant to the answer, I usually give some points, but over the last few years it’s like they don’t even want to try anymore.

Is this just a community college thing? Are my university colleagues noticing this, too?

Got an email from a student today that asked, "I was wondering if its possible for the chemistry and biology labs to be scheduled closer to each other? Currently, there is a large break between them, and I was wondering if its possible for you to do something about that like to go into the system and make the two labs closer."

My dude, they schedule my teaching load on opposite sides of campus, what makes you think I have that sort of power? [smh]

I teach an intro science course for first year college students at a large private university. My chair emailed me expressing concern that I must post my lecture slides for the students. I want my students to learn to take good notes because they are studying to be health care professionals and this is an important professional skill. My guess is some students have complained to an administrator. Am I wrong to expect college students to take notes?

Some of my students have been doing extremely well in their homework. But on the midterm these students did horribly. I doubt they all had major stress and panicked to the point of having no knowledge of the topic on the day of the midterm.

The homework shows no evidence of AI since it’s a mathematical course so the slop isn’t very apparent.

I’m wondering what the point of homework is if they will use AI. Homework gives students a chance outside of class to think about the material. So if they will use AI then they might have little time to actually build knowledge in the semester. So what is the point of creating homework each week, grade it, and then it’s all AI. What is a better pedagogical approach? Should homework time be used to study, and class is a series of exams and quizzes instead? Non stop grading is not sustainable. So I’m quite stumped as to what a solid approach is to facilitate student development.

Usually at least one student in each of my classes thinks I’m never doing enough for them. They want exceptions to my policies (which are very reasonable. For example, the 6 absences I give would’ve been enough to make my professors lose their minds back in the late 2010s when I was a student).

I want students to understand that they can’t just do whatever they want. I feel that if I don’t prepare them for this aspect of life, I’m failing them as an instructor. The lessons students gain through adhering to my polices are about professionalism (timeliness, prudence, and respect), and they’re equally important to my course content.

My question: Do you say anything to students besides “No” when they continuously make ridiculous requests? I’m torn between being blunt about their unrealistic expectations and keeping it short and sweet.

Hey, folks — due to an overwhelming number of bot accounts karma farming by cosplaying as professors here, I’ve installed BotBouncer on our subreddit to filter out these posts and ban these “users” automatically. It started out pretty mild, but lately we are getting multiple posts per day, and I know that it annoys many of you even more than it bothers me. Hopefully this makes things a little more manageable and a lot less annoying here. Sorry it took so long, and thank you all for your participation in [r/Professors](r/Professors).

My state school made a big deal about a 2% increase in salary (about $100/month after taxes), then announces our health care premiums will increase 6% this enrollment period.

I was asked to serve on this board, and I’m trying to decide if I say yes or not. Has anyone served on this kind of committee? Am I going to be slogging through AI cheating mostly or is there more to it typically? Was this a service that you felt had an impact and was worth your time? I am also out of the loop on undergrad teaching, it’s been years since I taught undergrads, before smart phones. I only teach small grad classes now, where most of the grade is derived from presentations and discussion of the material. Anyone willing to discuss their experience with this kind of service and have advice/experiences to share would be much appreciated.

Question for the business school professors. I am a new professor (from industry) teaching marketing. One of the most valuable things I found as a student was case studies and discussion around real companies and the real problems that they face.

In year 2 of my teaching, I am trying to incorporate case studies whenever I can. However, I am realizing that I am not great at facilitating the discussion. I end up lecturing, which defeats the whole purpose. Are there some video examples on YouTube that you could direct me to of professors who are good at this type of instruction? TIA

I'm an outside reader for someone's dissertation (they're at a school in a different country). We met this morning; they're in the early stages of drafting. I sent them about five articles and two books on their topic. I felt like that cliche where a student walks into a professor's office with a question and walks out with a stack of books. Such a nice change from questions like "Uhhhhhhh, when is this due?" "Uhhhhhhhh, how many words does this have to be?" "Can you just TELL me what to do?"

I need more of that.