Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Meeting the New President

My campus hired a new president for next year and later this month I have a group meeting scheduled with him. I decided that the best way to approach this meeting is to come up with a list of ideas, suggestions, concerns, that I hope will come and that if they don't come up at least a few of them I will personally bring up. I will also probably come up with a list of things that are going well, just in case that comes up too. This may be the only time I ever get to sit down with the new guy and talk about what I think is right and wrong with the institution, I don't want to waste this opportunity by not thinking it through.

Some of my concerns:

- Pay for humanities/social science professors
- The lack of a master plan to fill open/frozen faculty positions on campus
- The college's inability to adjust things like stipends, tenure raises, research grants, etc. for inflation
- The fact that we are a liberal arts college that doesn't require all students to take a foreign language
- The unreasonable requirements to get a minor in education
- The fact that the school does not make counter-offers to people who are good and add much to the campus - but leave to make more money elsewhere
- Inequities in teaching loads

Things that are going right:

- My department
- Chair system
- Housing Situation

I need to build on these... but I hope they are issues that the new president will be interested in.

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