This is cross posted to the VPAA's Faculty Retreat Group and to the AAUP discussion forum.

What follows assumes that Heinz Woehlk's comments were accurately reported in the August 17 issue of the Index. Dr. Woehlk is quoted as saying that "most" of the 18 lang and lit hires were replacing temporary and part-time folks who left. My sense of the article's context was that this was to calm fears of faculty attrition, but this leaves us in an awkward conceptual dilemma relative to two things that we like to tell ourselves. We like to believe that there's little faculty attrition here, and we like to believe that part-timers and non-tenure-track faculty aren't a significant factor in our faculty patterns. However, it seems worth pondering whether, in this instance, we can enjoy both beliefs.

Two other observations. Most follks know that the communications department took a hit in faculty departures. If we have tenure track faculty choosing to leave, program stability and development is perhaps challenged even more when there is a "natural" turnover of temporary folks.

And I noticed that an article in The Monitor spent some time on the question of the writer's advising situation being tenuous, with the coming and going of faculty.

Of course I note these things from the hypocrite's privileged position: my own position in the Residential College Program generates a temporary position in Social Science to replace me.

-- Anonymous, September 12, 1999