Hard numbers (very hard)

We finally got a current (as of Monday) enrollment count.  It stands at 1342.  That will likely go up a little this week - probably settling in at about 1400. 

Not as bad as rumors would have it, but 2011 fall enrollment was 2346.  2012 fall was 1837, down 22%.  If our final count this fall is about 1400, that's down 24% from last fall. 

This is heartbreaking for me.  It's a very good little school, with excellent faculty, and finally good administration.  But all I can do is save myself by retiring.

A strange start to school.

Our back-to-school faculty meetings are this week.  The big one (8 hours!) was yesterday.  Yes, 8 hours, because it included lunch, and to pay for our lunch we had to listen to speeches while we ate. 

The college president spoke early, and usually he is informative.  I was hoping for some solid enrollment numbers from him, but nope.  During the q & a session, someone asked about enrollment.  The admissions lady was called up to the podium, and she said a lot of hemming and hawing and gee, not everyone has enrolled yet, and it's hard to compare from last year, and we have no solid numbers, and gee, we really hope it's not down too much, and blah, blah.  She either did not know or did not want to say.  I'm not sure which is worse.  All of the faculty, of course, noticed that the question was never actually answered. 

However, one of the faculty in this department has a wife who works in the tutoring center.  She somehow has better access to this kind of information than we do.  Her latest information is that the enrollment is at about 1100 as of yesterday, which is a little better than we feared, but not by much.  We are expected a group of internationals to go to advisement/ enrollment tomorrow morning.  Hoping for the best.

Last week I heard a rumor that the big student cafeteria would be closed this fall and that all of the dorm students would be fed at the snack bar, due to the small number of students in the dorms.  Yesterday, we were informed that the cafeteria would indeed be closed, though the announcement did not mention the number of people in the dorms.  They said it was due to the fact that the students would prefer the snack bar because of the TV and pool table.  But, there is no way they could do it if the dorm numbers were not down significantly. 

So, here we go. 

Goodbye, Old Paint

Earlier this spring, I decided that the time for my retirement would be in the summer of 2014.  I have already talked to the dean about it, and I will announce to the department when school starts.  I am happy here, but I am starting to get burned out, and it's time to move on. 

In the last few weeks, I have discovered something else that reinforces the fact that this is a good time to retire.  This blog has been full of reports about the difficulties that this little college has had to work through.  We have eliminated the problems, and the people that were the source of the problems, and soon (probably October) the accrediting body will rule, and we are all expecting a good report.  So far, so good.  But enrollment was down last fall, and I knew we would be down again this fall.  I expected a relatively small down tick, which I thought would be reversed in a year after we get our expected clean bill of health. 

BUT, I just found out that our expected enrollment this fall is only about 1000 students.  This is down a whopping 50% from 2 years ago.  Holy macaroni and cheese!  Much of this is due to the problems we have had to work through.  Much of it, however, is due to the local paper printing exaggerating and misleading reports on this.  Just a couple of weeks ago, they printed on the front page of the Sunday paper an article about another college in another state that lost its accreditation, but the picture was of this college, and the headlines implied we were headed in the same direction.  I found out later that the situation at that other college was entirely different.  Does the paper want us to die?  It would seem so. 

We were able to hire a new math professor, who will start in January.  The good news is that this person can also teach some computer science.  Given that, the college may not feel the need to replace me next year!

The road home is looking better and better. 

Despicable them.

I am an alumni of a college in the same state where they had a lot of recent tornadoes.  I also worked there for a long time.  As an alumni, I get letters asking for money quite frequently.  They are generally routine, and I just toss them.  But recently, I got a letter from them that was out of the ordinary.  Even though the campus was not close to any tornado or tornado damage, they somehow tried to tap into sympathy for tornado victims to encourage donations to the school.  What crap.  That's low, even for them.    Enrollment there is down and faculty are being laid off.  Well deserved.  

Isn't his U-Haul a pretty orange color?

If you will refer to my February 12 post, you will see that I remarked that our Chancellor for higher education was extraordinarily unpopular.  He has done a lot in the last few months to go further down that road, including an editorial in the local paper which essentially insulted everyone in the state.  Then, he seemed to be clueless as to why no one liked him. 

Today we got great news.  He has been "released" from his contract!  How much did that cost?  Don't know.  Whatever it was, it was worth it.  If they take up a collection, I'll contribute.  Good-bye, good luck, good riddance. 

Dr. X strikes again - indirectly

I thought I was finished with Dr. X, now that he is out of his office, and rumored to be moving out of state in a few days.  Not so. 

A group of students from one of his classes came to me complaining about their grades.  In the process of inquiry, I discovered several things that Dr. X done.

We, as faculty members, are required to put on the course syllabus the way we compute grades.  In looking at this course syllabus, there was a narrative and a chart on this subject.  They did not agree.  On top of that, Dr. X had sent all of his students information on how he computed their grades.  The method he used did not agree with either the narrative or the chart on the syllabus. 

But, the astonishing thing was that he had decided that this course, which was a 4 credit hour course, needed to meet only 3 days a week.  The Thursday classes were cancelled.  He told the students that the room he was assigned for Thursdays (the class met in a computer lab the other 3 days) did not have a computer, so that was the problem.  But, the room he was assigned for Thursday DOES have a computer.  Perhaps he was just mistaken?  No.  He never asked either me or the department secretary to find a different room.  This is not a fellow who is shy about asking for what he wants or needs. 

I supported the students' request for a grade adjustment, and sent all the material to the dean.  Now, I am wondering what else about Dr. X will come to light. 

Survived another semester!

Finals are over, graduation ceremony over.  Dr. X (see 2 posts previous) sent me only one more tacky email, but now he is gone, turned in his keys, left Dodge for good.  Summer school has fallen into place.  The last big (all day long!) committee meeting has been survived. If you saw the movie "Airplane" and remember the lady that hanged herself because she was sitting by the guy that wouldn't shut up, you have some idea how I felt in that meeting.  But, no more meetings until August.  I hope.

Now to tackle all the stuff I delayed to do in the summer, including one last heroic effort on my textbook in progress.  There seems to be ZERO textbooks in computer science education.  I would like to increase that count to one. 

I even treated myself to the new Star Trek movie.  It was entertaining, but, gee whiz, why can't they find some writers who can do something original??   I don't mind that they brought back a previous bad guy, but a dramatic part of the script was plagiarized (at least in concept) from that earler movie, also.  And that part really had nothing to do with the bad guy - they just used it anyway. 

Speaking of scripts, I just re-watched last year's Star Trek and was reminded of this dramatic device called Red Matter.  It's red, and it makes black holes.  I can just see the script writers around a table trying to figure out how to imagine a technology to create black holes, and someone says "Let's just have some red stuff, and we don't have to explain how it works."  And everyone says "Great!  Except Red Matter sound better than Red Stuff".  And there we are.