School of Computer Science Wiki

You've loaded an old revision of the document! If you save it, you will create a new version with this data.

* after-hours doors for 3rd floor -  means that 3rd floor faculty can't hold office hours for large chunks of the day without Sheryl's permission.  We shouldn't have to justify our office hours or request them ahead of time. 
  * web committee -  asked for web committee meeting in October.  Its now nearly May.  You told me I couldn't make any changes to the website without a web committee meeting.  You refuse to appoint a chair who can call meetings and won't call one yourself.  Why do you need to control the web committee?
  * doors and elevator for hackathon. Both Dan and I asked you and Sheryl to ensure the doors were open.  I was spoken to rudely at the communication committee meeting.  Yet the doors were locked and the elevator wasn't running.   Dan was told he didn't ask early enough.
  * hiring students (GRAs).  It took me an entire semester to hire one GRA and nearly two semesters to hire a second.  Dan has had students go unpaid for half a semester. 
  * accounts.  We can't see our accounts, don't get account updates,  and have no way of knowing what is in our accounts.  We were given a deadline for filling out the forms in February (Feb 10).  We meet the deadline but the info  goes into the void.
  * course evaluations.  The course evaluation process ran beautifully for years.  We got our course evaluations the day we submitted our grades.  You inserted yourself and now we don't get them until the middle of the following semester.
  * TA allocations.   Too slow.  Always too slow.  We keep telling you this but it isn't a priority for you.  It is a priority for the instructors.  We should be advertising for fall TAs in June.
  * Summer student  locations.   Dan and Gary started asking for summer student office space, keys and door fobs early in april (April 15). At the end of April Sheryl reads the email and snipes at them for not asking sooner.
  * Hiring.   Why do hiring committees have to be so secretive?  Why can't we know what the job description for things is?  Why does it take 2 semesters to hire a grad secretary?
  * committees-  months ago we requested a list of who was on which committee.  I have a partial list that I cobbled together from talking to you but you asked me not to advertise it until you'd revised it.  
  * curriculum-  you say you are happy to have the curriculum committee work on curriculum but you won't let us take things to the faculty for discussion so that we have an actual mandate for the things we're working on.  You want the committee to work ahead on things that could potentially be shot down and abandoned.  That sends the message that our time is meaningless to you.
  * USRA/URA positions.  We had a half day to respond to those.  No apology, nothing.. just a rude email that said get it in by this time.
  * Prioritization of Staff responsibilities - who is supposed to do what? 
  * FRS Training for Rebecca - when is this happening? 
  * awareness of what others are doing.  There are people working on a data science program in the college,  yet you cost me a grad student by stating that you thought data science (aka big data) was a lot of hype.
  * staff favouritism.  You are protective and supportive of Sheryl and Rebecca, to the point where you can't be told any negatives about either of them without bristling.  But you treat the other staff very poorly and they feel as though you dislike them.   In particular Deb B and Lauren frequently feel put down,  belittled and bullied by you.  e.g.  Why would you make Lauren feel guilty about not wanting to use her personal credit card?  Why does Deb B have to find people to do her job before you'll approve her vacation when no one else has to.  Especially when 'her job'  isn't written down anywhere and keeps changing without consultation with her.
  * sessional appointments without asking about overload.  you assigned 1200 and 1000 for multiple semesters?
  * circumventing committee work:  you let Zoie redesign 1000 without any input or vetting from the curriculum committee.  She's added javascript programming to it and now wants to change the course description.  All of that should have gone through the curriculum commmittee.
  * elevator:  we should be able to use the elevator past 4:30 pm.  Can't we get physical resources to shut it down around 8 pm or something?
  * The database.   A database is kept with all kinds of personal information as well as performance information.   We have no ability to determine what data is being kept in the database.  Inquiries about the database are ignored or brushed off.
  * Hiring.   hiring of any position is slowed down to first principles.  We had faculty positions approved in January.  We just got the positions posted towards the end of July.   It took several semesters to hire an office assistant,  over a year to hire a graduate secretary.
  * Demoralizing techniques... Deb B's experiences with her job,  Systematic undermining of Lauren and her job,   my experience with last semester... the work overload,  the lack of support for the things we wanted to do in Curriculum,  the meeting with the Dean about my 'doe'.
  * Micromanaging-  was asked to handle a student complaint incident,  but then called into his office to take dictation because he didn't like how I'd handled it.    He went over my head (as curriculum chair) and sat in on meetings for someone else's program and then we got an email from the program chair saying that stefan had already approved it and could we take it to the faculty.
  * Time management.   whenever something gets dropped or missed he makes another 'policy' and retroactively implements it so that it is our fault that the thing didn't happen.   Door opening schedule,  elevator,  office assignments, grade submission
  * Ignoring collective agreement.  sessional postings,  course evaluation data,  DOE changes,   When mentioned to him he laughed and said that he interpreted the collective agreement differently than I did.
  * Not letting us do our jobs.  Curriculum chair and committee routinely lied to and overruled-  new majors debacle,   I am associate director and am supposed to be acting director when he is gone (its on my job description).  He asks other people (who are traditionally not active in the unit and likely won't 'do' anything).
  * Unpredictable responses.  He asked me for a list of priorities.. I gave him a list along with justification.  the result was "I know the past semester has taken its toll on you and you have been pretty overwhelmed and discouraged by things, but when I requested a list of outstanding items I was hoping to get some constructive input to form a basis for addressing issues affecting the School, as I try my best to try to resolve numerous challenges some of which are visible, while others are not, while the School has been, and continues to be understaffed.

I am disappointed that your list seems to be founded and written on the basic assumptions that you think I am incompetent and uncaring.  I too have felt overwhelmed and discouraged by the past term.

Your negative attitude to the work that I have done makes it very difficult to engage with you in a productive fashion on the issues you raised.  As a result, I don’t think there is much point in further discussion until we’ve both had time to move beyond our current frustrations.  I will, of course, continue to do my best working as director, addressing issues that are backlogged, new issues as they arise, and anticipating upcoming opportunities as well."

Edit summary

Note: By editing this page you agree to license your content under the following license: CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International