cornerofmadness

Is probably the collective grief of the faculty at my university. Hell, outside of business, psychology and nursing, there IS no university. The board got what it wanted, it's nothing but a community college now and not even much of one at that.

They cut math, biology, chemistry, english, music and art and all education majors that weren't early childhood including the masters program (which had 40 graduates this month).

Right now I still have a job. Five from my department were cut. I know of three. I don't know who the other two are.

What truly pisses me off about this is a) it should have been done before the school let out so the laid off faculty could have found jobs (One from my department has and now we're going to have to cover those classes this fall and we don't know how)

b) they let us bring in NEW students into these degrees last week. Either they should have canceled that orientation or had the choice done by then so these students could go to another college

c) they let us go to the state science fair last weekend with scholarships to a program that now no longer exists.

d) why the hell did the provost come listen to us about the labs knowing it wasn't going to matter any more? He should have just put the appt off til next week and saved us all an hour of our lives.

I'm going in at 1 to talk about the Welsh fellowship. I don't know if I'll go to Wales now in spite of them paying part of it. I need to know how much cash I'm getting because I don't know if my pay is going to be cut. If it is, I'll have to find a new job too and I need my money to move.

Here's the thing and it really matters. I'm old (because trust me ageism is a thing) but more importantly my university until the last few years actively discouraged us doing research. Our focus was to be teaching only. Most schools want research. I'm not a PhD I'm a medical doctor so I'm not research trained. I've done some here at Rio, nothing that's published (points to the no-research thing). That plus my age is going to knock me out of the running for most jobs.

I have tenure here which helps to protect my job. Most schools don't give that any more and in a way I'm okay with that but a LOT of schools are now making you reapply for jobs every year and that's not okay. They want to hire a bunch of part time faculty because it's cheaper and that's the part that frightens me. I need the health insurance.

So if my pay isn't cut badly, I might stay right where I am teaching nothing but nurses and being bored but safe to a certain degree. About the only other job I'm likely to get at this point would be at a community college teaching nothing but nurses.

I think that's one of the reasons I've been so slow to try and clean this place up. In my head I see how much of a mess it is and I know packing to move would be a nightmare. 13 years of slowly accumulating crap.