At my university, the contracts for faculty begin on August 16. Yep, that's the official start of the academic year and nine months of teaching, research, service, online blurry vision, counseling students, writing till the tips of fingers nearly bleed, and seeing learning actually happening in real-time.
To start the semester, we had the first of our monthly faculty meetings at 9am on Monday. I was a bit surprised at how many faculty did not show up. Granted classes start next week, but our paychecks started today. It was not a particularly inspired meeting. The good news was that the State has learned its lesson that furloughs are more costly than the money saved and so no furloughs this year. The bad news is that we still have staggering State budget deficit and virtually no state money coming to the university. This has forced us faculty to be much more entrepreneurial, which is definitely an unexpressed recessive gene for most of us.
The rest of the day was taken up with meetings. One to plan grant writing. Another faculty meeting to get synchronized for the year. One to review the changes in the online technology. And, one to go over a grant budget. Seems like the semester has begun. Now, we just need students. They will be Friday for orientation.
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