Professors ‘never wanted’ furloughs

Re “Ticked-off profs punish students” (Editorial, Sept. 5): What days would The Bee have California State University, Sacramento, professors take off for furloughs?

Sure, there are committee meetings and conducting research, but our routine week is preparing for class, teaching class, and grading papers and assignments for class. If we don’t take a teaching day off, do we not prepare for class, or not grade those papers?

Sure, students and their parents are angry – they should be angry. But how about that anger being directed at those who imposed these furloughs, not the professors who never wanted them in the first place?

Sure, we’ll do our fair share along with other state workers, but if you want to reduce what we do by 10 percent, you get 10 percent less of what we do. What we do, for the most part, is teach. You do the math.

– Larry Boles, professor, CSUS Speech Pathology Department

and another

'Spectacularly dumb opinion'

Re "Ticked-off profs punish students" (Editorial, Sept. 5): To both paraphrase and critique the recent editorial on faculty furloughs, it was a spectacularly dumb opinion by supposedly smart people (who don't seem to be running their own business very well).

The typical California State University faculty workload is 80 percent teaching, along with a blend of service, student advising, and scholarly and creative activity. If we stopped attending meetings, no teaching would be reviewed, no policies would be changed and no new courses would be approved – and the editors would criticize us for being unwilling to change with the times. If we stopped advising, students would have more trouble graduating than as the result of a missed class or two. If we stopped our scholarly and creative activity, untenured faculty would lose appointments.

A significant proportion of the work of teaching is undertaken outside the classroom, and furloughing faculty without allowing any canceled classes would mean a disproportionate cut to class planning and preparation, or grading. That would be like furloughing The Bee's writing staff without reducing the number of articles that they write, by cutting out much of that time-consuming research and fact-checking.

But why not? Apparently that streamlined approach already works for the editorial board.

– Tony Sheppard, Sacramento, CSUS professor and Faculty Senate chair


UC professors' work ethic

Re "Obama speech boycott teaches an ugly lesson" (Our Region, Sept. 6): Marcos Breton joins a long Sacramento Bee tradition of bashing the University of California and California State University faculties by writing, "Mind you, most (UC professors) teach only a couple of days a week."

I am not at all sure that is true, but I have the distinct impression that Breton is implying UC professors are not working as hard as they should be.

An Internet search of The Bee reveals that Breton has written six columns since Aug. 26, a period of two weeks. I don't want to imply that Breton is malingering, because I'm sure that he spends a great deal of time researching newspapers, magazines, reports, blogs and so on, and that he tries diligently to get his facts right.

University professors also engage in original research, lecture preparation and other activities that are essential if they are to be effective teachers and contribute to the wider community.

Breton's column shows that facts out of context, like statistics, can lie.

– Rod Sime, Sacramento

'Issues … more complicated'

Re "Ticked-off profs punish students" (Editorial, Sept. 5): The issues are far more complicated than your editorial suggests, and educators are thinking deeply about the future of California higher education as well as the immediate actions to be taken.

Your position seems to be that professors should show up and lecture without considering what larger issues are at stake. The mandate for the University of California is a combination of teaching, service (to campus, to community) and research; the manner in which each is affected by budget cuts is far from the triviality your editorial suggests.

The fact is that these larger issues are under great scrutiny in a time of enormous uncertainty about public financial support of higher education. While differences of opinion persist about how to react and to act, in all deliberations, the welfare of students and their education is at the forefront.

Faculty and administration are addressing the reality that teaching, service and research are much more complex an issue than simply standing up front, lecturing.

– Warren Pickett, Davis, chair, UC Davis Department of Physics


courtesy of the Sacramento Bee

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