An inside look of a resignation letter

[Velcro]

CEO's usually aren't the ones making great impact on the world... the doctors, researchers, engineers and scientists are.

CEO's might make all the money, but i wouldn't put them in the same breath as far as where our limited funds need to go.

We aren't talking about who makes the most money, at least we shouldn't be. 

[Belle of the Bull]

CEO's usually aren't the ones making great impact on the world... the doctors, researchers, engineers and scientists are.

CEO's might make all the money, but i wouldn't put them in the same breath as far as where our limited funds need to go.

We aren't talking about who makes the most money, at least we shouldn't be. 

sorry i wasn't clear- typing in a hurry. I meant world changers - innovators. people who are creative interdisciplinary forward thinkers.  I know a lot of doctors and engineers who will never be world changers and quite a few that are (Damásio comes to mind of a doctor who is truly changing the world - or at least a part of it). 

doctors researchers and engineers aren't necessairly world changers either.People like Kenneth Burke (who never graduated college btw), christopher hitchens, maureen dowd, condi rice, paul krugman, bill moyers, etc are all creative innovative people that have a vast amount of knowledge in the more applied fields and the theoretical ones. thats all I was saying.

It depends on the PERSON not the profession. It does depend on what you are exposed to - either on your own or in school. I would like to think that USF is the type of place that can expose people to different ways of thinking and help produce world changers. there is a direct correlation between creative people and successful people. that is what the humanities (if done right) can bring to students.

true, those people don't necessarily make the most money - and its really not about money.  But it is nice to know that most CEOs out there have comm degrees. I thought that was a fun fact!

[USF_Grouper]

To be clear, Drewski put my opinion in a much more graceful context.  If USF has a women's studies program then I want it to be the best in the country.  However, the people who wrote this resignation letter seem to attack USF administration who have been forced to make difficult decisions with regards to funding. 

For one, I can't stand whining.  If you found a better job great, thank USF for its support and move on and no one will blame you.  Secondly, I tend to agree with where it seems our administration is placing our priorities. 

I definitely want schools to create well-rounded graduates.  However, I think the pendulum has swung in the direction of to well rounded and lacking competitive specialty in Florida.  An engineering or hard science student is required to take so many non-technical courses that it becomes a detriment to their chosen profession (and I am not talking about composition classes or technical writing, which are obviously necessary).  All these classes get leveled as requirements because otherwise these fringe departments couldn't survive, they wouldn't have enough students.  They lobby to get a 3 hour course here and a 3 hour course there till students spend all their time taking art, ALAMEA, world perspectives, music appreciation, etc classes.

The fear that we will somehow create worker "drones" is a lack of understanding with regards to what engineers or scientists do as a profession.  There is no way to make them "drones" because the very position of designer or researcher requires innovation and creative thinking.  Certainly a different type of creative thinking than is offered in Human Sexual Experience (a great class I might add), but these graduates are highly creative.

Sorry, I guess I kind of confused two issues.  USF should have a women's studies department, but it should take a back seat to more visible and active departments.  Scientists and engineers should have to take some number of classes to get a broad understanding of world perspectives, art, etc - but that number should be drastically reduced.

[AdoraBull]

I think we can all agree that we would like USF to be in a better place financially and that we all want USF to succeed as a university. It's understandable that each person has their priorities and thinks that money should go here or there and that's where administration is supposed to step in and make priorities that benefit everyone.

I think the letter was saying that programs that receive more media attention are sort of offered up to the public as an example of the caliber of our univeristy while departments like women's studies are left behind and shoved under the rug. I think that the letter is highly personal and is critical of USF, but maybe we need that. Maybe someone like Genshaft or Wilcox needs to read that, step back and say "Hey, let's stop and think about the personnel side of this for a second". The student side has already been ignored so maybe we need more profs like Eichner to raise their voices.

I want every department at USF to be awesome too. I would love to be able to stay here for grad school, but we're not well-respected in English, so I can't. But I don't think you can say that just because a deparment is not awesome right now we should cut the funding to a point where they can barely function. Two full-time professors in a department? That's asinine. There are always going to be bad professors in a department. I've had bad professors, i'm ot going to say I haven't. I have been fortunate enough to also have amazing professors from Political Science, International Relations and other departments. Let's face it, do departments put their best and their brightest in gen-eds? No way! They save them for better classes typically and that makes sense. Why would you have a food microbiologist teaching Intro to Chem or a Shakespeare expert teaching Comp 1? Why would you have someone who is a respected political analyst for national news networks teach American Government? Wouldn't you rather have a few great professors with great insight into their fields and have a few good professors who are still working on specialties and have an occasional miss in a gen-ed? I know I would! I wish we could have Platos teaching Intro to Formal Logic and Shakespeares teaching Comp 1, but let's face it that's not realistic at this point and not realistic until USF becomes as much of a household name as Harvard.

I understand that a huge department like science requires a bigger budget than our tired example of women's studies. I understand that proportionally, they need more money because they serve more students. I do, however, think that there is a problem when a department is so small (in comparison) that they only offer say, 30 total classes a semester, in comparison to 30 sections of organic chem 1 or a similar intro class, one class of many. It seems that we realize that science is way overcrowded and we think that throwing money at them is going to fix it. It's not. Everyone needs to scale back, not just smaller departments. We need to make more majors limited-access (like education, architecture, fine arts, communication, etc are) and consider having students move in cohorts together so that instructional dollars are used well, no matter how many dollars there are. You have to apply to the College of Ed and the School of Mass Comm to continue on and then your classes are specifically sequenced. The college of Ed has graduated 50,000 certified teachers in 50 years by using that methodology. It makes the approach somewhat more mechanical but there is room for electives and exploration in the sequencing.

Maybe instead of leasing off parcels of land to outside researchers, we could invest internally and build up our own students as researchers. (It would help if USF weren't run so much like a business.) I know that more money would probably make a lot of this better but we can't count on a few big programs to bring in all the money we want. It may seem like a safer bet, but some of the largest private donations to the University (The Kosoves, for example. They have a dorm, a small library in the Alum center and a full-ride scholarship named after their millions. George Jenkins, founder of Publix, etc.) haven't been based on programs, they were based on USF being a complete university.

[usfbullcpa]

CEO's usually aren't the ones making great impact on the world... the doctors, researchers, engineers and scientists are.

CEO's might make all the money, but i wouldn't put them in the same breath as far as where our limited funds need to go.

We aren't talking about who makes the most money, at least we shouldn't be. 

Who do you think makes research, teaching, medicine, and everything else you cite here possible?  CEO's, the capitalist pigs you hate create the capital and investment infusions to build hospitals, find the sead money to finance research, make the decisions to build, how big, and how much.  They make sure that the schools stay open to provide a future. 

I laugh at this, as I can think of nowhere other that academia where a letter of resignation is a group effort.  I am all for liberal arts, but honestly, what is the enrollment compared to business, engineering, and the sciences?  You have to provide a product that the masses will purchase. 

The sports discussion is one I have agreed with, as a student I said take pride in being the largest university without football, once football starts the donations will go there.  For years we had donations to the school because you wanted to support your alma mater and you sent money to your college.  Now, you have football to get a tangible emotional return from.

Besides, isn't Women's Studies outdated by say 20 years?  In this time of equality why learn only about women?

[Belle of the Bull]

[quote

Besides, isn't Women's Studies outdated by say 20 years?  In this time of equality why learn only about women?

[Belle of the Bull]

I want every department at USF to be awesome too. I would love to be able to stay here for grad school, but we're not well-respected in English, so I can't.

adorabull where are you applying for grad school? I've helped a few of my students with their personal statements for graduate school (in English actually) and would be happy to look at yours if you want to send it to me. Or even if you just want to talk about the application process - it can be daunting and I am happy to help in any way I can.  Just send me a PM

[Jihme]

[WoolyBully]

Maybe ... just maybe...the universities are starting to emulate the corporations more than some would like.

It seems to be a sort of evolution. Is the sun starting to set on the concept of tenure? Am I to understand

that - after ten years (since 1998) and no tenure - the expectation was that tenure would be granted and we would

receive lifetime employment? It could be that this standard in academia, but in the wonderful world of bidness,

no one is going to wait ten years on an unfulfilled expectation. If I'm wrong about how long

it takes to be granted tenure, fine, let me know.

There's a lot of things to factor in here, and it's easy to toss around anecdotal digs about the focus being more

on where funds are going and where funds should go, but the bottom line is, there is only x-amount of dollars

to be spent, and if I can get two graduate students to run my classes and we've decided that distance learning

gets the deal sealed with less overhead than desks and chairs, lets make the cuts. And while were at it, let's

take a look at our staffing levels and see if there's not some sort of realignment to be made there as well.

Don't like you situation at work? Pack your desk and drop your badge with the security guard on your way out.

Hopefully your next gig will be just peaches-n-cream, or at least more palatable than what you now have. My

resignation letters have generally been about three sentences in length, maximum. But two people and

two pages...:satan 

[Held_AccountaBull]

money should be spent in more important areas. womens studies should be completely eliminated from usf curriculum.