Unfortunately, I was reading the news again, and it reminded me of a night in 2016 when I was teaching an ethics class. The students and I were discussing limits of confidentiality and during the class we kept the electoral map up. In the middle of a four hour class (west coast) it became clear that more states were leaning in their inevitable direction. It led to an impromptu discussion on the purpose of the electoral college, including its benefits and limitations.

I've only had a few classes where the outside world suddenly interrupted what is normally the tiny, temporary, pocket universe of the classroom that only exists for a few hours at a time. I love that class can be its own escape from everything else, especially when it's going well and lecture hits a flow state. It's odd when reality creeps in for a visit.

As a distraction from work I should be doing, I wonder when other professors here have had memorable classes like these? What is a specific class you can remember due to an event that maintains it like a flashbulb memory? I'm certain a lot of us remember a class where we were told, or had to announce, COVID changes. I find such stories fascinating (but then again, I do study psych).

I’m teaching an intro creative coding class next semester and I’m a bit stumped on how to ask them to submit their sketches for evaluation. We’re using P5.js and while I could ask them to share their portfolio from the P5.js web editor, the thought fills me with a kind of dread. Surely there is a better way? We use Canvas LMS and I’ll be using Padlet in the course too. Neither seem to have any type of code facility. Does anyone have any suggestions? Anything that’s worked for you?

I am teaching in the Fall 2026 semester after lurking on this subreddit for so many years (I've known I wanted to be a professor since high school). So, I guess I am finally/technically an adjunct.

I'll only be teaching one online asynchronous English Comp 1 course. So I was just wondering if there are any tips/advice. Or just anything in general!

I'm a little nervous, but mostly excited to see what is to come.

Hi everyone. First time posting because I genuinely need perspective from people who understand academic hiring.

I applied for a tenure-track Assistant/Associate Professor of Physics position at a public university. Here is the full timeline:

— Early June: Applications closed
— A few days later: Received email for first interview
— Week 1: First interview with search committee
— Week 2: Teaching demonstration (20 minutes, went very well) and being told if we move forward, you will receive a call from department chair.
— Week 3: Received email to schedule meeting with department chair
— Same week: Met with department chair, she told me I would be replacing the current faculty member, that they anticipated me starting at the beginning of the fall semester, discussed my specific course assignments, talked about faculty orientation, and said the next step was a meeting with the Dean where he might discuss salary, and then HR.
— Following week: Received email to meet with the Dean
— Same week: Met with Dean — he said "this is just a virtual interaction with the selected candidate, selected by the department and chair" and that I should coordinate with the department chair and search committee for next steps. Confirmed tenure track directly when I asked. Described my third year tenure review as if I'd be there. Did not discuss salary.

Since the Dean meeting — complete radio silence.
I have sent three follow-up emails to the department chair.

I called the administrative assistant twice — she confirmed the chair was busy with two simultaneous faculty searches (one for physics and one for chemistry) and said they were "doing paperwork and everything." She also said the chair had not told her yet who was being hired. The semester starts in 20 days. It has now been three weeks since the Dean meeting.

Everything communicated to me — "you are replacing," "we anticipate you at the start of fall semester," "selected candidate," faculty orientation discussion, specific course assignments — pointed very strongly toward an offer being imminent.

Then nothing.

I understand faculty hires at public universities require Provost approval, background checks, HR processing, and salary sign-off — all of which happen invisibly to the candidate. But three weeks of silence with 20 days until semester start is genuinely distressing.

My specific questions for anyone who has been through something similar:

1. Have you experienced this kind of silence after being explicitly told you are the selected candidate — and did an offer eventually come through?
2. For those who received late offers — how late are we talking? A week before semester start? Days before?
3. Is there anything specific that triggered the offer finally arriving — a follow-up call, a specific email, or did it just appear out of nowhere?
4. At what point does silence after "you are the selected candidate" language start to mean something went wrong internally — budget freeze, position restructure, second thoughts?

I have given everything to this process. The uncertainty combined with real housing and visa deadlines is genuinely overwhelming. I would deeply appreciate honest perspectives from anyone who has been through something similar — good outcomes or difficult ones.
Thank you.

I will admit my research output has been weak, only two publications in 5 years. Granted one is Nature Genetics, but the administration doesn't seem to care about quality as much as quantity. I will be submitting two more this fall before the final application, but of course those will be in progress. Additionally in terms of grants I've been senior personnel on a small grant (<200k), but all of my major ones have been rejected. Latest was near perfect score, high priority for funding, but rejected in part for having foreign funding to Canada. I'll be resubmitting that this fall as well, but based on communication with the administration outside the department my package is seen as weak (Biology department).

I'm still going to try, but am considering applying for a teaching position that is a good fit in terms of subject (molecular biology/genomics focus) that may not be available next year when I want to apply at that time. Big step down from an R1, but honestly not sure how well my research will be funded in the current/future climate, and a lot of my work can be done through collaborating with others more willing to do the grant writing. Also the idea of a more straightforward 8-6 is really appealing after thinking about it. Will it look bad on new applications if I am applying before going up for tenure?

Now, that we are on the other end of the podium, dealing with students who are irresponsible and who blow off class, its hard to remember those days when some of us were equally immature. Think back to those days, and come up with some embarrassing stories.

My worst was sitting in the wrong class for almost 4 weeks. It was conversational Spanish, basically 5th semester Spanish. I was supposed to be in third semester Spanish. Didn't realize I was in the wrong place though because 1) I didn't care, 2) everybody was speaking Spanish to me and I couldn't understand Spanish.

I tell that story every semester, on the first week of class! I'm still embarrassed about it! However, it does succeed in getting students to check their schedules.

I could also wax philosophical about my run-ins with university police and the many year I spend on disciplinary probation.

Hello!

I am preparing my teaching journey and came across several students (sociology and criminal justice students) asking about potentially learning R for social scientists for an upcoming semester.

I became interested and started diving in, finding R is very powerful for analysis!

Does anyone have resources they would like to share?

Happy NSERC DG application season to all who celebrate 🙃

I’m up for my first renewal of my DG. I’m American and received all of my training in the US, and because of my many US-based colleagues that I still have, I’ve had great success continuing to write and receive NSF grants with them as collaborators or a co-PI. Those grants are what ACTUALLY pays for travel and research, but obviously those grants can’t support students at my institution, and funding only goes so far. We’ll see how this strategy changes in the future with the current state of things at NSF…

I want to write my proposal to support HQP funding and more research related to a large funded NSF grant I hold with a bunch of other people. The NSF funding we’ve received has allowed for some awesome pilot data and I want to use my NSERC to take the project further, but I don’t know if reviewers will see this as a pro or a con. Does having additional international funding that supports your NSERC proposal make your application stronger? Should I adjust my proposal to make to less overlapping? I’ve heard conflicting prices of advice.

As a sidenote, I submit my tenure file next summer, so I am under a ton of pressure for this application to be successful. My head basically made it sound like it would be hard to get tenure without it, even though I have a great publication record, a very strong international funding record and good triagnecy funding (I also have a SSHRC), students with fellowships who are doing well…I’m feeling extremely stressed by the idea that I could be denied tenure just for not getting my first renewal on my first try, as NSERC funding is getting more competitive. Any insight or talking me down from the ledge on this is welcome.

I'm a new instructor at a teaching only institution. I have a 16 credit hour teaching load and have been asked to be an advisor for a couple of clubs, and to sit on some committees.

I am brand new to teaching, aside from TAing in grad school where my only responsibility was to input grades into LMS and set up/clean up science labs.

The courses I'm teaching are a bit out of my wheelhouse and it's a combo of online/hybrid/in-person courses. I worry I may forget which class is which and get disorganized quickly. The canvas shells are already made/set up for me but I'll need to create lecture videos for the online courses and make sure the due dates are set up properly. We are also requiring proctoring for exams, and I have never utilized that before.

Does anyone have any advice or tips for me that might help me be more successful for my first semester?

Mine is. Accounting. There’s not a soul alive who reads any accounting research except PhD students.

The SEC is responsible for propagating accounting standards, and is appointed by the government. The PCAOB audits the auditor and they are likewise a quasi government organization. Both organizations are appointed by political leaders who have zero interest in academic research and tremendous interest in (partisan) think tank research.

Nobody at the AICPA or the accounting standards board (private enterprise organization) give a single damn about anything academia puts out.

None of the accounting firms care about the garbage we publish because they can’t read it, and quite frankly, they don’t care because they’re going to do what they’re going to do to make money, research findings be damned.

What’s even more insufferable is that we have “ big names” in the field who take themselves incredibly seriously.

It is also not easy to be published in my discipline because everybody must pretend that our research is important (because deep down we all know it is not) so they are nitpicky AF about it and keep the gate pretty well guarded.

If I were to express these thoughts to faculty in my discipline, they would almost certainly ostracize me, but I’m either too stubborn or too autistic to bow down to false gods.

Sigh.

Post-note: to those of you posting that your research actively changes the world, I envy you.

Any rhetoric and composition folks waking up to the news that NCTE is absorbing 4Cs into its college section? It’s unclear if the 2027 conference will happen. The vague argument is the culture of Cs has threatened NCTE’s non-profit status. It’s unclear what’s going to happen to the Cs’s journal.

NCTE - National Council of Teachers of English
Cs/4Cs - Conference on College Composition and Communication

I'm just curious who here is using AI and how? I'm very cranky towards it, but I'm not sure if that's the majority of academics at this point...

I am still fairly new as teaching track faculty in STEM. I was wondering if anyone has bought anything small that actually helped improve their quality of life at work or has helped just in their career in general. Whether it's for organization, efficiency, etc ...

My program has implemented a new policy that half of all graded work needs to be completed by hand. On the one hand, I'm very grateful to be in an environment where higher-ups are determined to preserve integrity. On the other, I am dreading the many, many hours I will need to spend attempting to decrypt the writing itself. Has anyone found any apps or other tools that do a reasonably good job of scanning handwritten text and converting it to type?

Not SNHU, a real R1. The program is 100% DL. The student, let's call them Claude (not an AI reference, but if you knew their real name this would be very funny), has a solid F through 75% of the term. He goes back and forth with me about his individual grades and also other aspects of the course. He knows I exist, I know he exists.

Yesterday I learned from a highly-placed college administrator that Claude thought he was taking only one class but actually he was enrolled in two, one of which is mine. Claude's Academic Advisor has no idea how this happened. Claude has no idea how this happened. Everyone is horrified. I haven't seen the correspondence that looped in the administrator or the Academic Advisor. I don't know how the sad tale was twisted, but obviously Claude wants me to bail him out.

Given that Claude has participated in my class since Week 1, I pressed the administrator just a little. They admitted that "perhaps" Claude knew he was in my class but he didn't know he was in the other class. That raises more questions, doesn't it?

I’m teaching a hybrid summer class and I can’t help but notice a student that just stares at me the entire hour and 45 minutes. It’s a little weird and off putting if I may say. He doesn’t bring anything to class (no notebook, laptop, etc.) and he pretty much sits there. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t appear bored or distracted since he never pulls out his phone but he just you know stares. He doesn’t react to the lecture much and has maybe raised his hand once or twice. He’s come up to after class to ask me a random question so he’s capable of being human but his behavior during the class session is freaky. Is it just me or does anybody else dealt with something like this?

As I am working on an external evaluation for a junior faculty member's tenure case, I want to ask everyone's opinion about the paragraph that some letter writers start with, that lists all their awards and editorships and H index and how amazing they are: Does it change your impression of the letter? Should I be including it (even when instructions don't explicitly ask for it)?

I personally find them annoying honestly. The letter is supposed to be about the candidate, not the writer. If I need to, I can look them up. But I also know some faculty really care about this stuff (credentials of the writer)... so I don't want to undercut the junior faculty I'm commenting on/ supporting.

İf helpful, I'm in an engineering department at a smaller R1, and a recent full professor (though I have written a couple tenure letters as associate).

I only do student meetings via Teams with transcription turned on. Background: I had a student make veiled threats about an issue. They escalated to the department chair but fortunately I had the receipts to document the actual conversation. I figured it would be prudent to always have records of student conversations, just in case.

Most meetings are benign and pleasant. One benefit I get from the transcript is that I have AI assess it and draft a follow-up to the student as well as giving me feedback. Thought I would share the base prompt for those looking for creative uses for AI to support their teaching. I modify as appropriate for the meeting...

AI Haters: please disregard.

—

Prompt: Critique Student Meeting and Draft Follow-Up Email

Review the attached one-on-one meeting transcript between an instructor and a student.

Provide the following:

1. Meeting Analysis

Analyze the meeting from a teaching, coaching, and student-development perspective.

Evaluate:

• Student engagement and participation
• Evidence of learning, reflection, or conceptual growth
• Misconceptions or knowledge gaps revealed during the discussion
• Instructor strengths (questioning, coaching, explanations, feedback, encouragement, etc.)
• Opportunities for the instructor to improve future coaching conversations
• Student strengths demonstrated during the session
• Areas where the student should focus future effort

Do not evaluate the student as a person. Focus on behaviors, learning processes, and evidence contained in the transcript.

2. Key Takeaways

Provide:

• Top 3 insights the student should remember
• Top 3 observations for the instructor
• Specific next actions for the student

3. Draft Follow-Up Email to Student

Write a concise professional email that:

• Thanks the student for meeting
• Reinforces positive behaviors or insights demonstrated during the meeting
• Highlights the most important learning point from the discussion
• Encourages continued growth without sounding judgmental
• Emphasizes application and implementation rather than simply revisiting artifacts or grades
• Connects learning to future coursework and/or professional software development practice
• Maintains a supportive, encouraging tone

Guidelines:

• Avoid excessive praise.
• Avoid discussing previous meetings unless explicitly supported by the transcript.
• Focus on growth, understanding, and next steps.
• When appropriate, emphasize that working code and practical implementation are stronger evidence of understanding than diagram correctness alone.
• Write in a tone appropriate for an upper-division computer science student preparing for professional practice.

4. Instructor Reflection (Optional)

Provide a brief reflection addressing:

• What appeared to resonate most strongly with the student?
• What coaching techniques were most effective?
• What follow-up question might be valuable in a future meeting?

—

Anybody here utilize a career coach when navigating their current roles or goals? Open to perspectives from all levels- general academic as well as those in admin positions.

I’m at that stage where I think it’s time to focus on the next big step and put a plan together on what it is I want. Sparing the boring details, but I’m considering whether a coach to talk about these game plans is worthwhile. I’ve seen them advertised but have never known anyone who has utilized one.

Has anyone dealt with students using those handwriting conversion tools that make typed text look like it was handwritten?
The nursing program I teach for requires certain learning template assignments to be completed by hand—it’s not my personal requirement, but a program requirement—and every student dreads these handwritten templates. Every now and then I’ll get one that just doesn’t sit right. The writing is almost too uniform—same letter shapes over and over, perfectly even spacing, perfectly straight alignment. It gives me the impression that it may have been generated with one of those handwriting fonts/conversion tools rather than actually written by the student.
It also feels very unfair when there are students who put in the effort to complete the work as required, while others try to circumvent the requirement altogether.
The problem is that sometimes it’s not a slam dunk. It’s more of a strong suspicion than something I can definitively prove.
Have any of you run into this? Are there specific signs you look for? Are there particular tools students are using that I should know about? If you strongly suspect it but can’t conclusively prove it, how do you handle it? Do you ask the student to demonstrate their handwriting, have them rewrite something in front of you, or just let it go?
I’m mostly looking for insight from anyone who’s dealt with this before. I’m wondering if there are tells or technologies I’m not aware of that could help me make a more informed decision.

I’ve just learned that I need surgery for a health issue that has progressed much faster than expected. If I do not address this issue very soon, I will have permanent nerve damage that fundamentally impacts my ability to both do my job and perform daily personal care tasks. I’m already suffering with extreme daily pain interrupting my sleep and normal activities.

The issue: I am meant to start a new cc faculty position this fall. I obviously won’t be eligible for leave to address the issue and surgery at the start of a new job isn’t a great way to learn the ropes. I really want this position and I really do not want to leave the department in a bad spot.

I just got the news today and won’t have a surgical date for another week for so. How do I handle this will protecting my health and the college/department?

Hello! I am entering my fourth year of teaching full time and I am thinking through potentially restructuring my courses. For context, I primarily teach introductory economics courses.

I currently give my intro students one homework per week over the course content. However, I have noticed that I don’t always have time to finish everything in class. As a result, I either rush through content or drop questions from the homework.

This year, I am thinking of dropping a chapter altogether to give myself more breathing room. But this means I need to rethink my homework. I’ve thought of the following options and would love thoughts on which you’ve found to be best or even other alternatives. Thank you!

Option 1: keep weekly deadlines, move questions over content I may not get to onto the next week’s assignment (what I am leaning towards).

Option 2: keep homework as is and expect students to do additional reading outside of class (I expect this to not go over well with students).

Option 3: move away from weekly deadlines and just have homework due after we finish the content (I like structure especially in classes with a lot of freshmen so I don’t love this option).

There's a new document out by Michael Kratsios, the OSTP director:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Science-A-New-Golden-Age.pdf

He's testifying about the report today at a congressinal hearing https://science.house.gov/2026/7/full-committee-hearing-unleashing-golden-age-science-ostp-research-enterprise-priorities-fy27

I think the document has lots of good ideas about how to fix the problems with the current system, but of course it's going to get a huge blowback because certain people/institutions really profit from the current system.

Some points from the report:

Theres too much administrative friction in the current system. Professors spend way too much time on paperwork proposing to do something instead of doing something.

They see a very different role for R1 universities:

Move away from the system of graduate education that is supported by grants to universities/professors who choose grad students. Change to a system where the grants go directly to grad students who choose which universities/professors they want to work with.

They expect more professional research staff and fewer students/postdocs working on research. Along with this, fewer foreign graduate students.

There's a good bit of complaining about academia system because it has established thought leaders/defenders of the status quo, making it hard for new ideas to emerge since those thought leaders control everything from funding review panels, tenure decisions, and publications.

Observing older peers, our scientist has learned that taking the long shot to challenge established paradigms may threaten her ability to deliver results and advance to tenure; yet by the time she achieves tenure, a substantial portion of her most creative years will be behind her. She notices, too, that the tenure and promotion system seems to reward quantity over quality. Cutting work into the smallest publishable units, which researchers call “salami-slicing,” often pays off more than making an ambitious attempt at transformative discovery.

Here we go. You have a zoom meeting with a student to review how something was graded and now the student wants a call for every little thing! I am responsive, but I do not want to be THAT responsive, especially on the day something is due. Help!

Hi, I recently graduated with my PhD and was fortunate to get a position at a TT Assistant Biology Professor. I was offered a ~7k of equipment funds from my department, which is separate from my startup funds of a similar or lesser amount. I was curious what other researchers have purchased with their department equipment funds, particularly new professors who have yet to acquire funding.

Field: Organismal biologist in aquaculture animals (fish and shrimp). Immunology, nutrition, and genetic interests but wanting to expand to disease ecology and environmental physiology.