Questions tagged [administration]
On the administration or running of an academic department or organization, or the people associated with this role. [administration] is mainly concerned with overseeing regular operations, while [governance] involves strategic tasks of setting goals and direction.
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Is it appropriate for department administrators to send political emails?
In my department, it has been fairly common to receive mass emails from our department chair about political developments. These emails followed the election last winter, recent executive orders from ...
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I feel I may have misspoken about Donald Trump in our Dept. Should I risk drawing attention to the issue by apologizing for it? [closed]
Some administrators and professors and I were talking about all the recent events going on, and I feel I may have participated a bit much in the dialogue and now feel I may have gotten on some people'...
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Going to a different University for part of my PhD
SHORT: Is it normal -or perhaps "is there likely to be any kind of existing framework"- for me to go and do part of my PhD at another institution? For, say, a summer - although I might prefer ...
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How do departments determine the optimal quantity of elective offerings?
In my department, we have a problem in trying to determine how many credits of electives we should offer. At first, it seems that it should be a simple equation to take the number of students ...
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How do schools have the same number of each week day?
My school is currently on a 14 week schedule where we're supposed to have 14 Mondays, 14 Tuesdays, etc. each semester. Because of various holidays, that's harder than it sounds, and so we have a ...
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What is an FTE and what are its variations?
What is an FTE, how is it used, and what are the varieties of FTE calculation that you might see in academia?
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Reasons for an academic to need administrator rights on work computer
Questions related to this in a not specifically academic setting have been asked elsewhere, notably Should developers have administrator permissions on their PC? and Should dev be admin on their ...
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3
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How should I publicize a university event of wide interest?
I am a mathematics professor, and recently I invited (using my own grant funding) a speaker to campus give a lecture on popular math. As I expected, he gave a wonderful talk that any undergraduate ...
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Is it common for higher education institutions to offer sabbatical periods for administrative / support staff?
Occurred to me that some office-based private for-profit companies offer the opportunity of sabbatical periods to their staff.
Do most higher education institutions offer sabbatical periods for ...
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Scholarship asks for copy of diploma, old university slow to print it
I have just completed my undergraduate studies in the United States this June. I have completed all degree requirements and have paid off all financial obligations. I received a scholarship for my ...
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Suggestions on how to organize a chair rotation
I am suggesting a chair rotation for a department in sciences. I was wondering about pitfalls and advantages, things to watch out for, best practices and general advice. If you have organized such an ...
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Semi-administrative position in academic/research setting after finishing Ph.D. and postdoc(s)
I would like to know what are the scopes for semi-administrative positions like research coordinator, scientific coordinator, program manager or something similar that are available for someone with ...
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When is the official date a degree is obtained? [duplicate]
I've read that there is a difference between the date that a higher degree committee approves a student for graduation and the actual date of graduation. The first being the date that a student ...
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Enquiring PI about post-acceptance process of admission (PhD, Germany)
Recently I have been offered a PhD position from one of the research institutes in Germany. The PI told me that he has prepared the acceptance/contract draft and sent it to the HR department who are ...
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Can dysfunctional graduate admissions processes be improved?
I am an assistant professor at a lower-tier research university. Recently I learned that my university and department have a dysfunctional system for reading and evaluating applications to our Ph.D. ...
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How is Study Abroad regarded by PhD admissions committees?
Does study abroad help enhance a PhD candidate's profile or does it not carry much weight at all? Let's say I took "regular" coursework while on study abroad for a semester, like a core course and ...
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Methodology for estimating costs of a master’s program before seeking official approval for the program [closed]
Do you happen to know any methodology for estimating the cost of a master’s program at university level before proposing and asking for approval of that program and cost by the state or the university ...
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Do German universities have "ethics boards"?
In many questions on this site, I see the suggestion to contact one's university's "ethics board" (or "ethics committee" or similar) to decide in the case of disputes related to research or general ...
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Do course buyouts happen in pure mathematics?
I am a pure mathematician teaching a 2-2 load at a state research university in the United States. I know that many of my colleagues in applied math, engineering, and the laboratory sciences are able ...
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How do universities (particularly medium sized ones) plan their master course schedule?
I'm a student at a university of around 20,000 students (using the semester system, just to be clear) and it's currently summer/fall registration planning time, a time for me which is more stressful ...
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For a professor in the US, How important is one's relationship with the dean?
Through a colleague, I have entertained the idea of switching my current workplace. The program itself is relatively new, at a US research university, while the dean has been there for 20+ years. I ...
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Is it possible to study an MBA as a Bachelor in Computer Science?
I am finishing my degree this year and I am interested in an MBA. However I have some questions.
First:
Will I need to retake courses in order to be able to study an MBA as a Computer Scientist?
...
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Alternate university course allocation mechanisms
When it comes to course enrollment/registration in a limited-enrollment course, most institutions use a sequential system where students pick their course schedules sequentially (often ordered by ...
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Destructive bureaucracy and how to oppose it
In my country researchers are overburdened with paperwork and are struggling with increasingly overwhelming bureaucracy while being underpaid. This all leaves them not much time for actual research ...
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How to organize digital documents for administrative work?
As professor I have to organize a lot of digital documents. I have working systems to do this for research and teaching and I am quite happy with these. Moreover, questions on such topics have already ...
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Is it common for universities to have multiple boards (eg, a General Planning Board, a Finance Board, etc.) and what is the typical name for these?
I am wondering if it's common for universities to have multiple boards, each with a specific mandate to manage and carry out initiatives in a specific field, such as General Planning, Education, ...
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What's the most efficient way to schedule a joint meeting with multiple faculties? [closed]
I have the find a time slot that all faculties can attend. As everyone is very busy, I want to do it in a most efficient way, i.e. minimizing back and forth emails as much as possible.
One trick I ...
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Saying no to miscellaneous administrative tasks as a Grad student
In my university, graduate students under scholarship have to perform certain tasks like tutoring and grading. I have no problem with that since it is part of the contract.
There are also some ...
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What is a "good" PhD dropout rate, and how would we know?
In a few questions/answers on here (e.g., here), passing reference has been made to the difficulty of determining a good/acceptable/healthy dropout rate for a PhD program. However, I haven't seen any ...
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How do departments evaluate and update their course requirements?
To begin with the main question: how do academic departments evaluate their course requirements? By that I mean, how do departments decide if they are requiring too many classes, not enough classes, ...
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Power of a Department Chair? [duplicate]
What powers does a Department Chair have in a University setting? For instance, is a Dept. Chair the "boss" of a tenured full professor within the department?
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Is there a powerful exam template that doesn't require an engineering degree to use?
Microsoft Word is the standard product for documents in my department as far as the administration is concerned. Final exams go through a work-flow that involves department secretaries creating a ...
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What is the usual process for forming a business partnership with a university lab?
I'm the co-founder of a small US-based startup. As an applied research company, we'd like to form a partnership with my a certain laboratory in my alma mater that would involve the following:
Joint ...
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What skills are necessary to become President(Rector, Chancellor)? [closed]
Recently on my University he dies and now I was wondering how should be the ideal candidate. Taking into account that he/she is the one above all the faculties.
Does he/she need to have a Doctor ...
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Should I try to warn administration about truly unacceptable professor behavior?
I was kicked out of my lab late in my graduate school career, which destroyed my confidence and obviously delayed my graduation by 2+ years. What's more, my advisor tried to convince me to drop out of ...
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Is there Visiting Administrator in academia?
I am event manager in our university. I see that academics are very mobile through visiting scholar plans. I wonder if you have every seen mobility of university administrators?
I am very interested ...
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Is Dean-hood largely irreversible, and if so why?
In academia, I have noticed a number of cases where a professor who becomes a Dean (or other non-department administrative post like Provost) effectively permanently stops being a researcher ...
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If you work at a university and take courses, is the degree the same?
I know someone who works at a university and is considering taking courses there (which the university allows and subsidizes for its employees). If they take enough courses to make up a masters degree,...
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How can I convince the university to apply security upgrades to the online learning system?
In my university, we've been using Moodle for many years (>5y). There was a general negative opinion on the Moodle for very different reasons, from "it's ugly" to "it's not up to date", going through "...
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What do you need to work in administration at universities?
I would like to work in administration at university and I was wondering if there is any specific course/qualification that will increase my possibilities of doing so.
In particular, I was thinking ...
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As a department head, what to do if a professor leaves without giving out grades?
I am department head. An adjunct professor teaching two courses in my department left without notice. He did not deliver the grades to me.
We have no staff in that field to give the final exam again. ...
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Department not giving me TAships after a dispute with professor, what should I do?
I got in a dispute with a professor I TA'd for, and now my department is not giving me TAships. What should I do? I am required to teach more classes in my department in order to satisfy a ...
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Does a department have any obligation to respond to a student petition against a teacher?
If all students of a class sign a petition claiming that a professor of a course is unqualified to teach, does the department/faculty change that professor?
Do students have this right? and what is ...
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Is the expression "Deputy Head of Research" correct?
In my university department there is a professor who holds the position of Head of the department, and then there are also several Deputy Heads, who are in charge of different management areas —more ...
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How to move forward following an unpleasant situation with colleagues?
I'm a recently hired assistant professor at a small teaching
university. The department head has been successful in dramatically
increasing student enrollment, such that our department is viewed
...
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Do Universities have a right to stop students from talking about questions on tests?
This case in Canada was between students who were complaining about a professor and the school who claimed doing so was misconduct. The school lost because the punishment infringed on students' ...
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What steps can faculty and staff take to promote excellence in, and importance of, teaching?
tl;dr
Faculty don't think teaching is as important as their other responsibilities; how do we change that?
Long version
I've been working in academia for a long time and whenever I see instructors ...
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What are the major differences between PhD programs in mathematics and PhD programs in other STEM fields?
I am currently two years into a math PhD program at a mid-tier state school. I read a lot of advice about getting a STEM PhD on the Internet, but a lot of it seems very inapplicable to mathematics. I ...
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Administrative recognition of frequently-cited unpublished manuscripts
This is not a question about academia per se, but about the academia-administration interface.
When I was a postdoc, I wrote a paper that started to be cited quite often (by the standards of my ...
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Why do some research centres and university department publish a multi-year future strategic plan?
I noticed that a few research centres and university departments provide a multi-year strategic plan document on their websites.
For example, IIT (Italian Institute of Technology) and Stanford ...
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