It’s been a fabulous Christmas break, but ready or not, the Spring semester is nearly here. And with the semester’s approach is the inevitable barrage of email to my school account. It’s probably safe to assume that almost everyone hates junk email—a.k.a. “spam.” But, worse than spam from some unknown bookseller or “get-rich-quick” scheme coming from Africa is the spam that is generated by one’s own workplace—especially if it keeps on popping up in the inbox like Whac-a-Mole—the popular arcade game.
At some point in time over the last two years, some administrative folk at my workplace—Northwest College—decided that faculty needed to have their syllabi posted on the college web site as soon as the previous semester was over. And from the end of one semester up until the beginning of the next semester—would you believe all summer long or throughout the Christmas break—email reminders all too often informing me and others that our syllabi haven’t been posted yet. Talk about being treated like a student—a student attending a students-at-risk school.
The other morning I had three of them from the office of academic affairs. The first one came at 6:58 a.m. Can you believe that—sending reminders out at 6:58 a.m. about missing syllabi? And then my questions… Is this not an illustration of academic bean-counting? Is this typical administrative on-the-job behavior? Surely if one is awake at that hour and would prefer to hit the ground running, aren’t there other administrative concerns that are more pressing than sending out harassing and irritating reminders about syllabi? Hell, I’d respect them more if I knew they were up all night gambling.
I’m sure administrative-types would argue with me in the language that they use: “Please remember that posting syllabi in a timely manner allows students to make educated decisions when selecting courses to enroll in during any given semester.” Such language is certainly well-intended, but really in all the years I’ve taught, I’ve never—repeat never—have had a student ask me (in person or email), “How come your syllabus isn’t posted for class.” Not even a week before classes begin. Maybe this kind of scenario is common at Stanford or Yale, but not so much at a junior college in Wyoming.
And if I can drive my point home a bit more, I’m reminded of the first day of class for any given semester when a syllabus hard copy is passed out to every student. After the class meets, it isn’t uncommon to find a handful of the syllabus left behind on the empty desks.
This new priority in getting syllabi posted “timely” at Northwest College has a history, albeit short. When weekly notices were sent out with an attached Excel file (if you can believe it) of all the culprits starting last spring for the upcoming fall semester, faculty started getting prickly. In one email response to the entire faculty and the Academic Affairs Office, a faculty member shot out a lengthy response that including the following paragraph:
I realize this will come across as snarky, but I honestly don’t know how else to put it. I find it frustrating and puzzling that I am expected to have materials ready four months in advance. Quite honestly, if I was sitting around with the kind of time to put material together this early, I probably would have done it already. In addition to expecting me to have materials ready four months before something is supposed to occur, using a “wall of shame” mechanism such as these messages is just insulting to me.
