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An inside look of a resignation letter


USFan

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The letter illustrates some concerns regarding our university.  Sometimes it's not about the money, but more about commitment.

More and more professors are leaving (not just us, but across the state).  Our reputation, donations, and sports are referenced briefly on page two.

http://blogs.tampabay.com/schools/files/usfprofsleaving.pdf

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oooo you beat me to it! thanks for posting this. again, USF and other FL schools cant replenish faculty and whole departments  as quickly as other schools can. And when administration breeds an atmosphere of mistrust and mismanagement - people would rather work in a more supportive environment. After all, wouldn't you leave a less supportive environment for a more supportive one? We shouldn't be surprised this is happening but it still makes me sad.

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Maybe I am just not "intellectual" enough, but if USF has to make tough choices with regards to where to focus funding, I am all for medical programs, business programs, engineering programs, etc before departments of women's studies.  Universities not only serve their students, but also their communities.  USF needs to focus on graduating students with the skills needed to improve the lives of all citizens. 

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying there isn't a place for women's studies at USF.  However, in my opinion it is just like tennis or track and field compared to football, you have to remember who keeps the lights on.

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Maybe I am just not "intellectual" enough, but if USF has to make tough choices with regards to where to focus funding, I am all for medical programs, business programs, engineering programs, etc before departments of women's studies.  Universities not only serve their students, but also their communities.  USF needs to focus on graduating students with the skills needed to improve the lives of all citizens. 

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying there isn't a place for women's studies at USF.  However, in my opinion it is just like tennis or track and field compared to football, you have to remember who keeps the lights on.

I agree with you as I am an engineer (at least on paper) and I feel that engineering is important to serve our communities.  I just thought I would provide a different spin on the state of our education system.  Funding is one issue, but some faculty members feel that the commitment is lacking.

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A sad trend with a long future in these depressed economic times, especially since Florida does not put a premium on education at any and all levels.

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At the risk of getting this moved to the Mad Cow, Florida seems to be in a death spiral. The insurance companies have screwed you collectively, and you all are conditioned to react so angrily to any mention of a tax increase that there will probably never be enough money to pay for higher education.

Unfortunately I think that state is one major hurricane away from financial ruin.

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Wow. How pathetic. Does our administration not care about the Brain Drain they're creating here? The Women's Studies department is losing blood fast. Wouldn't it be great if our "powerful" (not to mention FEMALE) president cared about that? WTG Genshaft & Wilcox! Seriously USF_Grouper and USFan, I understand that science is important, but without a basic knowledge of english, how do you expect to write a proposal or even an email? Without a library, how could you research past engineering feats or read articles by professionals in your field? Just because you don't directly benefit from something does not make it worthless. The fields exist to serve more than just you.

You may not regard Women's Studies or other so-called Liberal Arts majors highly and you are entitled to that opinion, but universities do not exist as machines to spit out carbon copies of worker bees. They exist to provide education in all fields. If you want a tech school, go to one! Do your professors directly benefit the community? Chances are they aren't building hospitals right now or necessarily having a direct impact in Tampa Bay, but they are educating each of us and hopefully instilling in you that you can give to your community like they did by teaching you. Just because there isn't any specific job associated directly with Women's Studies Majors or English Literature majors doesn't make us any less valuable in the University Community. Intellectualism deserves just as much of a place as hard science does in the University.

With regards to your sports comment, Title IX has some interesting parallels to academia. Maybe if we were legally required to maintain Liberal Arts majors to balance out the "money-making majors" we would have a little bit of a different perspective. Football may make money but if you want to keep it, you have to remember that Tennis and Track keep us Title IX compliant.

I love USF and I will always suport our academics and athletics but I (unfortunately) don't think that I will be able to teach here after I receive my PhD. I would like to teach Women's Literature and I think admin has made it very clear that neither Women's Studies nor Literature is high on their priority list. I appreciate Science, Technology and Medicine but a University exists to create well-rounded students with specialties. There are reasons you have to take gen ed classes. The only reason the English department hasn't suffered as much is the 40+ Composition classes being offered this fall.

If we really are trying to be one of the best in the nation, let's stop and take a look at where other "Bests" excel.

The top 5 National Universities (as ranked by Newsweek) are: Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Penn.

What do they have in common? Well; Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford are all top 5 in English; Stanford is top 5 in Education; Penn, Harvard and Yale are all top 5 MBAs...I bet if we were to consider their records in other subjects such as science, technology, medicine, etc we would also find them highly ranked. The point is, they're the best because they consider everything important, not just money-making subjects.

Wow, English? Education? Are those words even on the radar of admin?? At least our school of Business has something going for it by having a strong (and rich) alumni base. Arguably Newsweek is not the most unbiased of sources, but their brand of bias tends to hold true in the circles of the AAU (they're all members, btw), whom we seem so intent on pleasing.

Sorry to make my first post a little bit of an angry rant but I can't foresee USF continuing to grow for much longer if our administration and alumni don't wake up and smell the "Diversity" we're so proud of burning to ashes on the stove.  :-\

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its women studies oh lord what will USF do?

I agree FL education is going in the Crapper

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Wow. How pathetic. Does our administration not care about the Brain Drain they're creating here? The Women's Studies department is losing blood fast. Wouldn't it be great if our "powerful" (not to mention FEMALE) president cared about that? WTG Genshaft & Wilcox! Seriously USF_Grouper and USFan, I understand that science is important, but without a basic knowledge of english, how do you expect to write a proposal or even an email? Without a library, how could you research past engineering feats or read articles by professionals in your field? Just because you don't directly benefit from something does not make it worthless. The fields exist to serve more than just you.

You may not regard Women's Studies or other so-called Liberal Arts majors highly and you are entitled to that opinion, but universities do not exist as machines to spit out carbon copies of worker bees. They exist to provide education in all fields. If you want a tech school, go to one! Do your professors directly benefit the community? Chances are they aren't building hospitals right now or necessarily having a direct impact in Tampa Bay, but they are educating each of us and hopefully instilling in you that you can give to your community like they did by teaching you. Just because there isn't any specific job associated directly with Women's Studies Majors or English Literature majors doesn't make us any less valuable in the University Community. Intellectualism deserves just as much of a place as hard science does in the University.

With regards to your sports comment, Title IX has some interesting parallels to academia. Maybe if we were legally required to maintain Liberal Arts majors to balance out the "money-making majors" we would have a little bit of a different perspective. Football may make money but if you want to keep it, you have to remember that Tennis and Track keep us Title IX compliant.

I love USF and I will always suport our academics and athletics but I (unfortunately) don't think that I will be able to teach here after I receive my PhD. I would like to teach Women's Literature and I think admin has made it very clear that neither Women's Studies nor Literature is high on their priority list. I appreciate Science, Technology and Medicine but a University exists to create well-rounded students with specialties. There are reasons you have to take gen ed classes. The only reason the English department hasn't suffered as much is the 40+ Composition classes being offered this fall.

If we really are trying to be one of the best in the nation, let's stop and take a look at where other "Bests" excel.

The top 5 National Universities (as ranked by Newsweek) are: Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Penn.

What do they have in common? Well; Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford are all top 5 in English; Stanford is top 5 in Education; Penn, Harvard and Yale are all top 5 MBAs...I bet if we were to consider their records in other subjects such as science, technology, medicine, etc we would also find them highly ranked. The point is, they're the best because they consider everything important, not just money-making subjects.

Wow, English? Education? Are those words even on the radar of admin?? At least our school of Business has something going for it by having a strong (and rich) alumni base. Arguably Newsweek is not the most unbiased of sources, but their brand of bias tends to hold true in the circles of the AAU (they're all members, btw), whom we seem so intent on pleasing.

Sorry to make my first post a little bit of an angry rant but I can't foresee USF continuing to grow for much longer if our administration and alumni don't wake up and smell the "Diversity" we're so proud of burning to ashes on the stove.  :-\

I don't think USFan and USF_Grouper were generally dismissing other departments that are not Medicine, Engineering, etc as unimportant...they were more talking about the given situation where resources are extremely limited and decisions have to be made on certain departments anyways. Naturally, you would place more emphasis on the departments that will continue to move the university forward in the best way, as unfortunate as it sounds. I think we can all agree with what you wrote, and we would all obviously prefer to have a diverse choice of course selection assuming that everything was peachy, but it's not...

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Grouper rightly said that "USF needs to focus on graduating students with the skills needed to improve the lives of all citizens."

He's right.  A university's mission should be (and is at a lot of other places) to educate students - that means make them think critically about the world around them and question assumptions. We do, after all, want to graduate smart people not just skilled people - and there is a difference between the 2. 

Education - esp Higher Education - is about developing creative minds that will leave the world better than they found it. Humanities classes are extremely important for helping students in all disciplines (esp the sciences and business) think critically. the most successful men and women in the world are - guess what- creative people who READ things outside their said discipline and are able to put innovative ideas into practice. 

Most CEOs in America have Communication Studies degrees. Not engineering, not math, not biology.  Bet y'all didn't know that?!

The smartest people in the world are those who are interdisciplinary and who take advantage of learning opportunities. We need to provide opportunities for kids at USF to do so. 

AdoraBull makes perfect sense. A university's mission is not to churn out little drones that will only be able to do math and science or make $$$ in the business world. I don't think anyone would disagree with her. But what people don't realize I don't think is that in order to "move forward in the best way" as Drewski puts it - we NEED the humanities. There is a very real connection between making lots of money in the business world, making world changing leaders and an education that encourages critical thinking and offers courses that allow people to do so. I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

But - and some people might get angry when I say this - that only holds true if the academic departments are GOOD. I don't think that is the case at USF with many of the programs on the chopping block.

Womens Studies might be a historic department - but I don't think that the quality of scholarship is up to par with other departments. (i.e. Communication Studies has some really well respected scholars, really smart graduate students and is a top 10 department nationally). I've been to several talks in womens' studies and to be honest, I was underwhelmed. I have also been underwhelmed with the quality of graduate students I have met at conferences. (Again, I don't mean to offend anyone - just giving my opinion from what I have experienced.)

Unfortunately - The same can be said for Africana Studies, English, Art History,etc. None of these programs are nationally recognized. English was and then they fell apart due to mismanagement.  We have some good professors though in each of these departments - but the departments as a whole are not very strong.

I guess my point is that USF is a Ressearch One University and its professors should reflect that. And they don't in a lot of the departments in the humanities. 

A lot (certainly not all) of academic departments at USF are filled with Pre-Research One professors (i.e. political science is one that comes to mind).  That means that they don't produce as much scholarship because they weren't hired to do that - they were hired to teach. But they have teaching loads that are relatively light for a teaching position. Most teaching oriented schools make their faculty teach 4 -6 classes a semester. Many teachers at USF teach 1 to 2 classes and produce very very little quality scholarship. So until they leave, retire or move on to that big classroom in the sky - we're stuck with em.

I am not saying that Womens' Studies and Africana Studies deserves to be cut but I am saying that they are among the most unproductive departments at USF (and I have seen the productivity assessment so I'm not just making this up. and i think its still online so you can look for yourselves if you like). 

I am saying that these departments need to be nurtured and given money to hire quality professors and researchers. And the unproductive faculty should be given more classes to teach OR be expected to research. For the record, I don't think that will ever happen for a variety of reasons (the faculty union being one of them).

Again, every department at USF has its share of good teachers - and that should be recognized - but this is a R-1 university and we need more than good teachers. If Womens' Studies was a top program nationally I could see uproar over its demise. But its not - and we don't have the $$$ or the vision (thanks Judy) to fix it right now. So we're pretty much screwed.

I hate to be a downer but this is really bad for USF. It doesn't send a good message and this type of thing doesn't exactly help recruit new faculty.  It could have been prevented but it wasn't.

ok. i'm done. sorry if it was confusing. im typing really fast so i can make it to the gym before my class starts. :)

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