George Devries Klein commented July 29, 2014 on my Fri, Dec 27, 2013 blog titled “A tale of two defenses of two MS-theses in two different universities…” as follows:
“If the department is THAT dysfunctional, including its chair, I would recommend getting a replacement department chairman, and the sooner the better! Certainly a review of the chair's performance would be in order.”
Thanks – George; your comment is very logical, alas – disarmingly naïve, applicable in a rational world. The realities, at least in my former place of employment (I would love to name the University in more endearing terms, but as it is – it is only “my former place of employment”) are almost surreal. I do not want to go into unsupported, personally biased aspersions. But, do you think an objective Chair review is possible in a Department, where majority of faculty are tenure-track Assistant Professors, but yet to gain their promotion to tenured rank of an Associate Professor, when their promotion very much depends on the Chair’s endorsement? Do you think objectivity is possible in an academic institution, where the mid-level (deans) and the higher academic administration (provost, vice-provosts, assistants to the provosts etc.) adhere to the old military principle that your immediate superior (the Chair) has in fact an uncontestable authority to manage and direct his/her Department (e.g., assigning maximum or minimum allowable teaching load? …and the so-called elected by the tenured and non-tenured faculty “Faculty Advising Committee” (charged with a duty to advise the Chair) can be nothing more than a “rubber-stamp” to Chair’s wishes? Channel to, or away from a given faculty incoming graduate students, by way of “advising” what courses they should, or shouldn’t take? etc.). Do you think objectivity is possible in an academic institution, where an office of faculty ombudsman is either non-existent or only by name?
If all that perhaps may be contested as “unsupported, personally biased aspersions”, here is the story of my 37-years on the faculty of my former employer as represented in a simple histogram:
During the 1980’s our program was listed by the National Ground Water Association among the Best 100 Hydrogeology Programs in North America. Then, the program was deliberately extinguished in the early 1990’s. The Chair disagreed with me that some students are not cut to make a degree and decided to extinguish our graduate program in Hydrogeology, by “advising” the incoming graduate studies candidates and assigning me the maximum teaching load (of 21-credit-hours per academic year) of freshman introductory classes. There was not much time left for any kind of personal research, setting me back in “production” of publishable research.
Well – I did not intend this to be a personal missive. My issues are only very small reflection of the current problems in many other academic institutions, where the academic administration demands that each student must (for budgetary reasons) successfully complete his/her studies, regardless of his/her academic diligence and emotional preparedness to succeed. Failure of a student is often equated with a failure of his/her academic mentor.
…would anyone dare to commentJ?