7bec3b03_s_to_fear___Academic_Jobs_Wiki___Department
[School] Texas A&M University-Texarkana [Issue and Date] (Moved from above) The spirit of academia runs through the veins of every skilled and dedicated professor. At Texas A&M University-Texarkana (TAMUT), this spirit is routinely undermined by a top heavy and under qualified administration. A series of poor decisions, which seem to stream endlessly from the President (hired from a community college), and Provost (hired from a high school), continue to drown the academic spirit, integrity, and livelihood of many of TAMUT’s finest professors. And though many professors are able to find ways to live with this loss, the individuals that lose the most are students. It took just a few weeks for me to recognize how much professors are abused at this institution. During my new hire orientation, the head of HR told a group of new professors that “students who attend the university are no different than customers at McDonalds. It doesn’t matter what we feed them, as long as we get more customers to buy our product we will be successful as an institution.” Shortly after this event, both new and veteran professors were required to attend a meeting arranged by administrators on recruiting new students. The charge by the President was that professors were “to spend up to 3/4ths of their time recruiting new students to the university.” Excel spreadsheets containing hundreds of phone numbers of prospective students were sent to professors, who were required to make unsolicited “cold calls.” Groups of 5-6 professors could be seen piling into a van and traveling several hours to various towns to find new students, instead of spending time advising existing students. This bizarre transition, from teaching to telemarketing (and then “traveling salesperson”) took professors by such great surprise that they did not know how to react! Sadly, a Stockholm Syndrome could be observed in many of my colleagues, who accepted this backwards, corporate ethos as normal and even endearing. Professors at TAMUT frequently work late into the evening to catch up with their 4/4 course loads (neglected during “Sales Hours”). It’s no wonder that both new and veteran employees are leaving this institution in waves. I hope that some day TAMUT will wake up, and provide its professors with the tools and resources needed to regain academic integrity. While I’m not very confident that this will happen anytime soon, I continue to keep these professors (especially those who do not realize how much they have lost) in my prayers. I interviewed here in the past and was going to be offered the job, but the funding was pulled at the last minute--dodged a bullet there! I agree that the faculty are great, but the administration verged on the unethical during my interview. Note: much, much more about TAMUT below in "Old Issues" section. It is worth reading both the current and old issues of what is happening at Texas A&M-Texarkana and consider your move carefully. Definitely agree that many of the faculty are excellent and dedicated professionals who do not deserve to be entrapped in such a place. With the downward expansion in 2010, many older faculty retired. Others who were the greatest assets to the school either fled or were let go. Departments such as adult education, math, biology, nursing, mass communications, instructional technology among others all lost crucial faculty. This group of exiting professors included an Ivy League graduate, a Fulbright scholar, and an editor of a well-respected academic publication. It will take a long while for TAMUT to regain the caliber of teaching excellence after this exodus and it certainly won’t happen under the current regime. (I wish them all Godspeed on their careers AWAY from TAMUT). The workload is relentless. With the push by administration to attract students, professors are not only teaching students but recruiting/retaining them as well. That means that there are some stellar students who are sitting next to kids who clearly didn’t even deserve their junior high school diploma, much less a college one. Then there are the uncomfortable moments when we have to call students who earned a D or F the previous semester to cajole them to return to TAMUT to keep up the enrollment numbers. Failing students who absolutely are not doing even the bare minimum for college-level work other than paying for their classes? Greatly looked down on, by the way, and the dean may go in and amend the earned grades if the student complains. Hurts the enrollment numbers to give grades the students don’t want. In addition to teaching and recruiting, professors are also required to serve on countless committees. That is fine in other schools, but it is all a thankless, meaningless task at TAMUT as administration is dictatorial. Clinical faculty are treated with the lowest regard by tenured faculty and administration. Avoid like the plague if you are offered such a position. You may find yourself colleagues with freshly graduated undergrads who had lackluster grades in college, but are friends of someone and magically now are in teaching positions. Yes, the students noticed and are discouraged and outraged as well. “Friends of” and “family to” are operative words in the hiring scheme at TAMUT. Foreign faculty are treated abominably, with bait and switch for their visas and green card sponsorship. Foreign students also complain of their treatment, by the way. Minorities in the faculty? No American-born African Americans, Hispanics or Asians, although there are naturalized citizens and foreign professors who work there. Friends of people in administration tend to get jobs – including the most lucrative ones, whether they are qualified for them or not. School has become administration top-heavy and that tier is grossly overpaid in relation to the workload of administration versus faculty. Students complain when trucks delivering beer and wine show up on the loading docks for administration parties and other functions and wonder if their tuition dollars are paying for this type of frivolity when the university can’t hire people in financial aid to process their applications in a timely manner. As another professor mentioned, the president, provost and most deans have no university-level administration experience and that lack is greatly felt. School is inordinately connected to (Republican) politics and (Baptist) religion. Yes, graduation is held in the local Baptist church where most upwardly mobile administration and wannabes are members. The religiosity of the graduation ceremony for a state-funded school is galling. If you are non-Republican, non-Baptist, non-American, a minority of any kind or clinical faculty, you will likely to find the work environment to be suffocating. I realize this entry corroborates what has been said by others, but all the other responses were spot-on. Avoid, avoid, avoid. [posted Feb. 2012] [Department] 
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