The Dean floated the possibility that we’ll soon have an automated course scheduling system, and I almost cried with joy. It won’t help me because I built my last departmental schedule in March but it’s still a relief.
In theory, it was good that we were in control of our own schedule. But in reality, I spent 6 years having to schedule almost all of our courses into the same time slot at noon on MW. Our enrollments are in the toilet because students reasonably say, “I’d love to major in Spanish but it will take me ten years to graduate, so I can’t.” Because everything is MW at noon, including large required courses.
Everybody is going to bitch that this is yet another glitchy, expensive automated system and that it’s soulless and inconvenient. The administration is bad, it’s evil, it doesn’t respect faculty. But what’s the alternative? If people refuse to accept MWF at 10 and 11 am, which students love and enroll massively, then what’s the administration going to do?
There are no morning courses on the MW schedule. MW courses start at noon. This means that for instructors who teach 4 courses per semester, the last course on the MW schedule will end at 5:45. Students don’t enroll in such courses because our students work in the evenings. You think I’d be able to explain this simple fact.
“Why do you keep scheduling me so late? It’s unfair!! Nobody enrolls!!!”
“Would you accept an MWF schedule? Because MW means noon to 5:45.”
“No! But 5:45 is too late. Nobody will enroll!”
Of course, nobody enrolls. The program is dying. The Academic Scheduling hates my department for this shit. The Dean hates us.
(We can’t do TTh for almost anything because TTh is when the School of Education schedules its courses and we can’t coincide with them because, again, students won’t be able to enroll and won’t go into the program.)
I proposed many times that we take turns on the MW. One semester colleague A gets it. The next semester colleague B does. Nope. Didn’t work. Nobody agreed. I’ve tied myself in knots to help students advance to degree completion by offering endless equivalencies, letting them count all sorts of extraneous courses in lieu of Spanish and French. “How come you are letting these students graduate in Spanish when they took so little Spanish?” the Dean asks. Yes, I know, it’s nuts but what am I supposed to do?
Sorry for the long rant but when I heard about the plan to automate this process, I experienced extraordinary joy. I hate excessive automation. I hate the destruction of academic self-governance but we are bringing this on ourselves. We really do.
Clarissa's Blog 
“we’ll soon have an automated course scheduling system”
Where I work we’ve been doing that for years and years. A long time ago an employee had to make the schedule and it was non-stop drama of people trying to switch times when there were three or four majors that only had access to a 7 or 8 rooms…. Then administration bought a computer program to do the schedule.
I remember one big meeting (over 80 members of teaching staff, almost all of which had side hustles going on because that’s how things work here) when were told that if this was our primary employment (government bureaucracy thing) then we have to show up according to the schedule and anything else has to be worked around that and there was a lot of swallowing and sighing in the audience but in practice it worked out pretty well.
We’re asked our preferences ahead of time and then a randomly selected employee (different person each year) oversees the program in making the schedule and makes allowances as much as possible. Then a provisional schedule is sent out and people with valid problems with that can write in and ask for changes and then the final schedule is sent out and we’re expected to abide by it.
Since this is Poland, of course that’s not the end of it, but it’s mostly the end of it. I put in very general requests (any time between X and Y on 2 or 3 days of the week) and it’s very workable.
The people you work with sound absolutely insufferable because, I highly suspect, that they don’t have side hustles and they just want to push around staff to feel important.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I remember trying to explain this to the Associate Dean who is a great guy. He used to be Chair of Biology, a huge department under no threat of closure.
“I don’t understand what you mean by people wanting to be on campus only twice a week,” he kept saying. “We don’t have that in Biology. Can you explain this to me because it’s a new concept.”
I wasn’t trying to make him feel sorry for me but I could see he did.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“don’t understand what you mean by people wanting to be on campus only twice a week”
I remember when some universities required teaching staff to be on site 40 hours a week, even when they weren’t teaching (even when there weren’t any classes). Of course people couldn’t get much research done that way..
We had an exemption because of the side hustles.
LikeLike
It’s not like anybody does any research around here anyway so that shouldn’t be a problem.
I really need that sabbatical. I’ve gone completely sour on everybody.
LikeLike
Do not get me started on scheduling!
They could ask the Faculty of Education to take the MWF schedule, honestly. It is that important they be on a TTh schedule? Automated scheduling might seem good, but people will complain even more. We have that at my university, and the automated system gets… very creative.
Nobody is happy with scheduling, anyways. In my department, historically, the poor chair has had to be extremely creative to honor our many scheduling demands. My demand is three days in a row, max, at any time on those day, but with a strong preference for evenings. Others do not want to teach after 3 P.M. for parenting reasons. One colleague cannot imagine teaching after noon because he wakes up at 3 A.M. to exercise. I have one colleague (a Boomer), who simply could not teach this year because MW was too much of a drastic change in comparison to her normal TTh schedule. She switched her classes to Zoom without asking permission.
Our administrative assistant, and she is the best, said that scheduling has been her worst nightmare in her job. Everything that you have been writing about your chairship solidifies my decision never to be chair myself. Never. You deserve your sabbatical.
Ol.
LikeLiked by 1 person