Sabbatical over, it’s time to return. Like most universities, UT is geared up for the new semester, the stock, cliched welcome messages from administrators are in full flow, reminders are being sent from instructional services about how to write a good syllabus (a bit late now don’t you think?) and the scheduling emails for meetings are starting to pile up. Watching this from the perspective of a faculty member for the first time in years is both illuminating and frustrating, but more of that in future posts.
For now, I’m back and will start teaching tomorrow — and am looking forward to being in a regular classroom again rather than a budget planning meeting (where one can be assured there is always a challenge and always a ‘new’ suggestion to try something we did before that never worked then either, plus ca change). For me, universities are not businesses, so let’s have some quality education this year. Onwards.