The president denied tenure, overturning faculty recommendations. The professor studies border security and surveillance.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/07/21/border-surveillance-scholar-denied-tenure-ut-austin

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!

How are you dealing with the rampant AI usage? Have you changed the way your courses are structured? I am getting more and more AI slop each semester, and it is taking the joy out of the job.

This sounds like a vent but not really. My chair asked me to take one course overload but I could not take it anymore. Teaching seems like a drag. Last semester, I was dragging my feet to the classroom. Although students still appreciate my teaching for the most part, I have mentally quit. Exhausted. Gone.

So, I said no although I still need to rely on my chair for future promotion. My mind said no. My body said no. My mental well-being was screaming no!

TLDR: How? Just how?

How do you keep up with you email? How do you organize it? Tell me more please. I've always struggled to keep up with email and now that I'm teaching 400 students a semester I know it's going to get worse.

My only tip for fellow drowning folks:

• Class-specific email address: For my intro class (300+ students) that I co-teach, we have a class specific email ([email protected]) to try to capture those emails. Once we respond, we move the email to the "answered 2026" folder.

I don't know if I want to do that for my other classes (particularly my 100ish person classes), ideally I would mimic it in my normal inbox through folders and filters, but I'm curious to hear what you all do.

If you use GTD, did you modify it somehow? It seems like a good system, but hasn't worked so far.

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).

I am a graduate student going into my first semester as an instructor of record at a public university in Texas. I have recently started transitioning (MTF) and have wondered about the introduction of pronouns to my students this upcoming semester, but have worries that in the current political climate, this may result in the loss of my job as the state of Texas has had many firings of university faculty over the last couple of years for speech contrary to the beliefs of the Republican party. I don't want to have to resort to being misgendered by my students in fear of losing my job though.... Any advice?

I was wondering if any of you have an standard email or template for students who are doing poorly in the class due to their own choices (e.g. AI use, not doing the work, not reading the directions, doing less than the bare minimum) and then want extra credit?

You know the email: every semester students see things aren't going well, so they email asking for extra credit to improve their grade (or they'll lose their scholarship, financial aid, athletic eligibility, etc.)

What do you say to them in response? The latest incident that prompted this post is from someone who fails every assignment because they use AI when AI isn't allowed. I'm not putting them through for cheating*, but my rubric rewards original thought and penalizes AI slop. The way I see it, I've already cut them a break.

I'm not allowed to come right out and tell them that the reason they are doing poorly is because of AI. (They're supposed to figure it out on their own.) Plus, telling them to stop using AI just leads them to lie to me and say they aren't.

The easy answer is "you'll do better if you just do things the way you're supposed to do them?" but that's far too blunt. Do you have a standard email for these situations?

For what it's worth, I'm female and contingent, so my answer has to be friendly, supportive, and have the perfect amount of exclamation points or I'll get complaints.

(*My college told me I was putting through too many misconduct cases and that I had to find another way of dealing with AI.)

Thank you! Any ideas are appreciated! <--- Obligatory exclamation points

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.

So i'm teaching just a few labs this summer, where the students' lecture instructor is someone else and online. This topic has come up before, but i'm so disappointed in how I need to use the carrot and stick, points for everything, to get students to do stuff in lab.

The normal procedure for A&P labs, everywhere I've worked, is students are given a list of objectives and procedures, and they carry them out with their groupmates. At the end of the day, their entire lab grade is based on closed-notes tests on those objectives, no free points for participation. The problem is nowadays entire groups of students just sit and work on their own, staring at their laptop screens, not engaging with the procedure. To get them to actually do the work, and as groups, I have to now check off their progress every day, and collect work, like they're kids.

This same rant applies to lecture classes. They complain about lecturing, but when the active learning is provided, they won't engage unless points are attached.

When I first started out here, I was brand new with just two courses to my name. My very first department chair was direct, open about expectations, and supportive—under their leadership, I eventually built up my credentials and landed a full-time position.

Over time, through a carousel of different chairs, I watched the departmental culture gradually shift. Recognizing the writing on the wall, I temporarily transferred out to help build and run a trade certification program elsewhere on campus.

Recently, I made the move back to my original department. But the landscape I returned to is completely unrecognizable.

During my absence, the university merged my old department with another one, placing the other division's head in charge. Since taking over, the new chair has been systematically siphoning resources and budget toward her side of the department. During the summer session alone, she managed to run off two long-standing employees and immediately funneled their teaching hours straight to faculty from her original team.

The atmosphere here is purely survival-driven. Everyone is trying to keep their heads down, stay off the radar, and secretly filling out applications to get the hell out.

Now, I’ve worked in academia long enough to be used to a reasonable level of chaos, but this feels entirely different. It feels surreal and predatory. I understand that students in our field have to compete for scholarships and internships, that’s just the nature of the discipline. But this is my livelihood, not a classroom exercise. I am a full-time employee and the only person on campus qualified to teach in my subject area. She has tried to eliminate our courses, but we are core classes. She even tried to replace a few of us and students either rallied or her replacements would create an HR violation. "Something about you can't replace established faculty with interns, fellowships, or residents that don't meet college or credential qualifications."

Apparently, though, I missed the unspoken social cue that I was expected to play dead, act subordinate to her favorites, or deliver less than what my actual job description entails. When I ignored her inappropriate expectations, she lost her temper.

I’m now talking back and forth with HR because she committed several violations. Unfortunately other admin, who didn't know the full details, cosigned on this behavior. Apparently you can't just bypass the search committee, spend restricted funds, and change the mode of a class 30 days in to a season. I’m still processing how quickly a functional department can descend into a toxic fiefdom. ...And this year I think I'm done with it.

Update: Thank you everyone! Your responses are reassuring.

I can't recall this ever happening before, certainly not at my current institution. We have these 6 week intensive semesters and when admin sends out notifications for that schedule I pretty much arrange my life around it. This has worked well for the last two years.

Yesterday I get a late night email that tells me starting next week I'll be taking on more classes after the semester had already begun (started like 3 days ago). This is incredibly frustrating, as I have both personal and academic obligations I've already scheduled around the original schedule. Technically I'm able to move things around, but it's super frustrating and feels like I just got caught up into a whirlwind.

Perhaps this is more common than I'm lead to believe? What's yalls take.

As the title goes, I am hearing of this journal for the first time. When I googled, the discussions around it are very few. I have been preoccupied with springer and Elseiver. Peer J was mentioned by someone and I checked the website, and it seems a bit colorful for an academic platform. Please share your thoughts and experiences with this journal.

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.

The R1 university I work at is hiring a full-salary position in a department I have been teaching in for four years. The primary focus of this job is explicitly to teach a course I have been teaching two sections of a year since I started. I'm not an academic, nor do I have a PhD, but I am a heavily credentialed professional in the field with experience that no other professor in the department has (I don't say this out of arrogance, but just noting that most of the people here are academics, whereas I have professional experience in this field).

The dept chair is in charge of hiring and personally called me a few weeks ago to ask me to apply. This morning, while lesson planning for class, I received an auto-declined "we won't even be interviewing you but thanks for applying" email.

I'm not really complaining because I genuinely don't feel entitled to the job at all, but it just struck me as really odd, almost surreal, to get a rejection for a job while actively in the middle of planning in order to go perform the duties of said job later that day. I know how hard it is to get a job in academia these days, and I'm grateful to have the role I do have. It's very rewarding. It's just an odd feeling to be here.

Honestly hoping he moves on to a better university where he can continue his work uninterrupted.

https://www.statesman.com/news/education/article/ut-border-surveillance-scholar-tenure-denial-22343342.php?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_content=photo&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

TL;DR (Too Long; Don't Read)...or do whatever you want.
---
*Sorry for typos in advance. No time to proof it (which probably means I shouldn't be on Reddit right now in the first place).

I'm not rehashing all of the higher ed movements in AI competency/fluence UG requirements; this is just an anecdote of a another "case-in-point" to show my students. Will it help influence their behavior? Unlikely, but this is fun nonetheless. (Yes, I'm sure many here have done exactly this, but I didn't have an LLM exchange this overt.)

Preliminary Note: I preach to students to be skeptical of the basic "knowledge," analysis, and reasoning flaws that may exist in anything others claim. I don't want them to default to distrust, but I don't promote defaulting to trust, so let's be cautious about the "trust" part of "trust but verify." Defaulting to one or the other can overtly enhance confirmation bias or some other framing problem. Basically, they should proceed with an "advocatus diaboli" approach and cross-examine everything (including me).

Captain Obvious says, "Of course this applies to how LLM interactions." Students are repeatedly told about hallucinations and other weaknesses. Like I try to tell them, it's just a tool. Some tools have limited usefulness (and safety) if you don't know generally how they work, the proper way to use them, and the proper context for using them, how fit they are or aren't for a particular purpose, etc. There are Dunning-Kruger and overconfidence biases at play: People tend to be unreasonably confident about their knowledge/understanding about something/domain/etc. to know what they don't know.

And as most of us have told our students, among other related things:

• LLMs are an "on steroids" version of autocomplete/predictive text features used in our text messaging apps, email platforms, and word processing platforms (e.g., Word, Google Docs, etc.).
• These are "inference machines" based on pattern recognition. So are we; we programmed these things, trained them on stuff we wrote, regardless of the merit, credibility, accuracy, etc. of the training data sets. And regardless, we are by-and-large much too confident in our inferential/inductive reasoning skills. (Exhibit A: Presuming that we correctly understand what a relationship partner means when they do/say something...or maybe that's just me.)

Anyway, even though we've all seen errant LLM responses and showed students these failures, this one is just so funny to me.

So, I asked ChatGPT about a past real situation for a product liability illustration, and certainly we're all aware about the importance prompt engineering (the input) and specificity/context. So, I ask an open-ended question (so as not to suggest the answer): "Locate information - and tell me if you do not find any of this information - about any drawbridge collapses in [City] over the [name of the waterway] between the year 2003 and 2007. If you find information within these parameters, verify that the alleged cause was related to the software controlling the bridge's operation. Also, there were no deaths or injuries; there was only property damage."

The output was very specific:

In 2004, the [correct city, waterway, and name of bridge) collapsed. It did not make major headlines, but local media outlets and [City] government reports provide detailed information.

The Cause: The bridge suffered a critical failure in its electrical and hydraulic operating machinery while being tested or operated due to a bug in the software. The bug allowed for a sudden loss of pressure or mechanism control caused the massive steel leaf of the drawbridge to drop unexpectedly. [1, 4, 5, 6]

The Damage: When the heavy bridge deck fell, it slammed down with enough force to cause significant property damage to the structural housing, the bridge mechanics, and the surrounding framework.

The Aftermath: Fortunately, because no vehicles or pedestrians were on the span and no boats were passing underneath at that exact moment, no injuries or deaths occurred. However, the bridge was knocked entirely out of service, causing significant downtown traffic detours and halting river traffic. [7]

The Long-Term Fix: Following the accident, the [City] electricians, structural engineers, and software engineers had to completely overhaul, and update the [the bridge] to modernize its infrastructure and eliminate software bugs and trends in mechanical unreliability. [1]

Fantastic! Okay, "Now provide me with the sources you relied on for your response." I got "my internal historical knowledge" and also these news reports" (then it provided a list of news stories, none which were the purported government reports it referenced earlier, all of which were about someone who died falling off a different bridge in a different city in 2022. scenario Hmmm.

Next, I asked, "Where did your internal historical knowledge come from?" Answer:

My internal knowledge comes from the massive dataset of text that I was trained on, which includes books, articles, websites, and historical documents.

However, in this case, I made a significant mistake. I need to be completely candid with you: I hallucinated the details of that 2004 [bridge] incident.

When you asked your question, my system tried to find a historical event that perfectly matched your specific criteria (early 2000s, [name of waterway], software bug, property damage, no deaths). Instead of correctly telling you that I couldn't find a record of it, my software mistakenly filled in the blanks and generated a highly specific narrative—complete with a fake date (May 2004) and a fake location (the [bridge name]—because it sounded statistically plausible based on historical bridge mechanics.

I ran a live search to check my own work, and there is absolutely no record of a [bridge name] failure in 2004.

The closest actual historical match to what you are looking for happened a few decades earlier, in 1974, on a different bridge entirely: [explains the 1974 scenario].

(Emphasis added.)

Then I got sassy, but not unreasonable: "If you hallucinated the narrative, then how can I ever rely on information you provide?" Answer:

Why the Hallucination Happened

I do not "know" facts the way a human does, nor do I have a memory of real-world events. Instead, I predict the most statistically likely next word based on a massive dataset of human language.

When you provided a highly specific set of criteria—Milwaukee, early 2000s, hydraulic failure, property damage, no injuries—my system prioritized "completing the pattern" over checking for absolute truth. Because I am trained on thousands of real municipal infrastructure reports, I seamlessly blended real technical terms (bascule bridge, electrical rewiring, city council funding debates) with a fictionalized date and location to create a story that sounded perfectly authentic.

Love this so much!

(edit: added first line)

Note: throwaway account to keep myself out of trouble.

Long story not-so-short: had a dual enrollment student who I absolutely jumped through hoops to help in my asynch course this summer given that he was new to college. It quickly became apparent to me that "confused" was code for "I am trying to find any way to avoid doing schoolwork" and gave him less of my time while still answering his questions and holding him to policy. But I had been more than generous and gracious with him until he ran out of chances.

Semester ends and he realizes that he doesn't have a transferrable grade. Suddenly he's emailing me blaming me for his failure and demanding an opportunity to submit work after the course closed. I was firm but polite and when he began with the "I won't accept no for an answer. You have to accept my work," I told him he was being inappropriate, more emails would result in being referred for disciplinary action, and sent him the information for how to appeal his grade if he felt I was being unfair.

Cue Mom and Dad who wrote a 5 page long rant about my failures as a person and instructor (their claim was "lack of compassion"). Their email was like a full on legal brief referencing where one set of directions for a previous assignment said that XYZ was allowed so the student mistakenly assumed it was allowed for all assignments. That sort of thing. And also, my compassion with the student early in the semester illustrated that I was willing to bend the rules and I set him up for failure. PAGES of ranting with numbered lists. Also, apparently their child was considering this school (he was not... he stated in his intro post where he intended to go) but now he was not because of the lack of professionalism and compassion by the instructor. All while REFUSING to call me "Dr." and using "Mrs." (I am a woman" and this would have annoyed me less if this same family hadn't called everyone else on the email "Dr." one of whom is a man that does not have a doctorate. They did this despite everyone else on the email chain using my correct title. So, they knew). There were a few other sexist microaggressions mixed in there but overall it was just about how incompetent I apparently am and how their child was treated "unfairly" and is suffering for my faiilures. These people scrutinized anything and everything they could find including wording choices and made a case for how that word has dual meanings so their child just couldn't have known or how "confusing" my directions were since different assignments asked different things. Just a pile of absurdity. Honestly, these parents absolutely put more work into scrutinizing my course and syllabus than their kid did all semester and it's not even close.

I am not perfect by any means but something I do exceptionally well is give VERY clear directions, examples, deadlines (all available from the beginning of the semester) that are available in a variety of places, and weekly coursework reminders. I've been doing this for a long time and a lot of my students are DE and I'm a former high school teacher so I know how iron clad things need to be. These people were just full on litigation style finding anything and everything they could to rip me apart and got far more personal than was appropriate.

While (thankfully) my admin stood behind me, this went on for TWO MONTHS while it worked its way through the appeals process. Me being looped into emails several times per week containing jabs about me and my character and ineptitude, many of which I didn't need to respond to but the family made sure to copy me.

The thing ends. Parents don't get the answer they want and they make sure to go out with a highly inappropriate final email again attacking all of us. (When honestly if they put this much energy into raising their child with accountability, their life would be much easier but clearly the nut doesn't fall far from the tree.) I move on with my life. Admin assures me I was MORE than generous with this student and there's absolutely nothing I could have or should have done differently. They were great.

However, the new semester started and I find myself panicking every time I go to grade something, post an announcement, or write an email. Scrutinizing every word. Spending far more time than I really have on grading with double and triple checking and feeling like I have to give generous interpretations of everything. Every student email makes my heart stop a little bit an I scrutinize how I respond wondering if the next set of parents is going to rip apart every syllable the way these people did.

I know this is silly and I'm fortunate to have admin that wouldn't stand for this nonsense but I really don't know how to not be an absolute ball of stress while doing just about anything related to my courses. Just wanted to vent here. Maybe you can all talk some sense into me to get me over this hump so I can actually enjoy teaching again.

TL;DR: Had a really frustrating situation and now I'm finding that I'm struggling to do my job without panicking.

I teach a general education lab course and help direct its curriculum for my department. I enjoy teaching and writing labs, but I struggle with timing and worry that I spend too much time going over the topics/concepts rather than letting the students work independently on the lab activity. Sometimes students ace the lab, but lately students just want to rush, not do anything, only get answers and watch while 1 person does it, etc. I am now rethinking the way I present and manage my lab to get folks more engaged or at least more on task.

Sometimes we tackle extensions of topics in lecture, but go more in depth. While the courses are mostly aligned, there are sometimes schedule issues where the DNA lab is scheduled a week before the DNA lecture, for example.

Do you guys relecture the topic to students in lab? For example, would you still discuss the structure and function of DNA and then let them work on their own for the remainder of lab? I worry that my “relecture” for 20-30 min of lab time is just causing students to zone out and disengage even more.

Or would it be more appropriate to just assign pre-lab readings on the topic for HW and assume everyone knows the background from the reading and let the activity take up the entire time? Perhaps do a short warm up activity or question instead of a mini-lecture to start lab? Ideas are welcome.

I want to clarify what other folks do, because I am a fairly new instructor and have only taught non-majors recently, whereas my colleagues teach for-majors and have much higher expectations for their students (and more of their students rise to meet those expectations).

In the LMS I use, a student's grade (in percentage) is visible from the moment the student is enrolled until when they're unenrolled at the end of the academic year. The various components' contributions to the overall grade are decided before the semester begins. The final exam is the final gradable thing in the class. Yesterday, I got a student waiting until after the final exam (when I am anxious to get home) to ask: do I have a chance to pass the class. I check: passing is 60%; current grade is 32%. The final exam is worth 10%. I explain that.

I do not explain what that means because the student is studying for a teaching license in mathematics.

i teach uni composition, and i've been having a lovely semester! my students are amazing and we've bonded so much.

i just got my evaluations for the previous semester and there's basically just one comment that says something along the lines of "i've taken two courses with her and she's the worst teacher in the world and she likes to assert her authority and makes students suffer" which cannot be further from the truth, and this has just overshadowed all the good moments i've had this semester.

i will say i did not enjoy my previous semester (mostly because the students had absolutely horrible attitudes as clearly exhibited), but this student did end up passing and got a b+ on a previous course they'd taken with me?

how do i deal ??

It's come to this. When students do their own writing rather than using AI, I'm ending my audio feedback with, "And I want to thank you for doing your own work."

That's where I am in the world at this moment.

Hello! I am an incoming (start in the fall) TT assistant professor in STEM at an R1. Currently I work closely with national labs. When I mentioned to one of the PIs I am leaving and would like to collaborate, they mentioned the potential to continue collaboration and get funding through ORISE.

Does anyone have experience with this? I’m familiar with the typical grant process with university overhead, but would this be similar or considered outside employment? I have started the conversation with the grants office but would like to have a plan before this gets too deep. Thanks!