Monday, October 31, 2005

Only one of new searches will be tenure-track

I was looking at the Advance-Titan this weekend and found their report on new hires for COLS. They report that out of 11 searches that Zimmerman has authorized for next year, 10 will be instructors.

The A-T story is not exactly clear, as the terminology is not quite correct, but this is the first I have heard that we are getting exactly 1 t-t replacement, out of 50 vacancies in the college.

It is especially troubling to see UWO increasing its push towards temporary hires with larger teaching loads. Zimmerman's lip service about the importance of liberal arts rings hollow as he uses the budget as an excuse to eliminate research from the halls of our university.

UWO continues to head in the wrong directions with this decision. It is no wonder that Zimmerman didn't happen to mention it in his announcement to the faculty.



Advance Titan Online

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The assumption is that the A-T is correct and Michael Z was not forthcoming. The dean should be allowed to respond to this before we place the reliance of truth on the A-T. I don't think Michael wants to eliminate research, otherwise he would not support the 3/3 load.

Lake Winneblogo said...

I would be glad to see Michael correct this story. I had noticed at the time that Michael's announcement about the new searches made no mention of what kind of hires they might be.

Michael is nominally supporting the 3/3, though he is increasing the publishing pressure to maintain it. I still do not know exactly how many people are on the 3/3 versus higher loads. It is not uniform across the college, by a long shot. Remember all those who did not sign the petition in the spring?


If it is true that only one new tenure-track person is coming in, how can it not be an assault on the character of our institution. Hiring the best people, who will bring both research and teaching to campus, is not part of hiring temporary instructors.