Negotiations

Last week was the first faculty meeting of the semester. This is such a small school (310 faculty) that rather than a faculty council, every single faculty member is invited to meetings and has a vote. Since I served on the UT faculty council I find that interesting - at UT there are 2500 faculty and 70 representatives elected to the council. The point of this meeting was to have the President give the state of the university address (again, at UT this is held in a three tier concert hall) and then to introduce all of the new employees. Yup, I stood up while my department chair told everyone about me. Not only were the new faculty introduced, but the other new employees as well, such as the new softball coach, the new academic advisor, etc. Such a small community!

Anyway, after the meeting there was a reception. I ended up chatting with some of the other new faculty members and talk turned to our teaching loads. Two of them said that they were told during the interview process that usually first year faculty get a one-course teaching release, but that because of budget cuts that is no longer the case. I think I vaguely remember that, but my department is nice and went easy on me anyway. (My load should be 9 credits, but I am only teaching 7 and am getting 2 credits for co-teaching a course that I have never been to.) I told the other new faculty that and said that they could always have negotiated that in their start up. They both looked surprised and said that they didn't negotiate at all! One of them said that he asked for a computer and they said no! The other one said that he was just happy to get a job at all. Is this crazy land? I thought that it was a given that you negotiate. Now I am wondering if I surprised the school a bit by negotiating and asking for more start up. Those guys are in the fields of sociology and communication, so maybe it is that way in the humanities? Maybe I am just lucky to come from a good school and had lots of workshops so that I was taught that you negotiate. Or maybe those guys are just dumb.

Speaking of my start up money, I currently have no idea how to go about using it. I have "talk to the Dean's secretary" on my list of to-dos to figure this out. And I don't think that my fellow physics faculty have any idea that I even got start up funds. They haven't hired in quite a long time, after all. My department chair keeps telling me about funding opportunities (very appreciated regardless of start up funds). And when I said that I was trying to figure out how to pay for upcoming conferences (WIA, AAS, and ASP) she said that the department money could probably help out. It's also coming up with the budget for the new observatory. I am not exactly keeping my money a secret, but I'm not jumping to point it out to them, either!