One Astronomer's Noise

A little over a year ago, I took on the role of department chair for my small physics department. Unsurprisingly, around the same time, I gave up my efforts to keep this blog updated. Yet, I always process my thoughts best by writing, so I decided to try it again.

When you tell someone you’ve become chair of your academic department, the responses are varied. Most folks, especially those not living in academia, say, “Congratulations!” It seems like a step up, a promotion, a Big Deal. Most folks in academia, however, more appropriately respond with something like, “My condolences.”

I work at a small college, so we don’t typically hire department chairs from outside, as may be done at some larger universities. It’s a process that happens at the discretion of the members of that department, overseen by the academic dean. Some departments have a vote. More departments treat it like a game of hot potato. We are more of the latter, and it was kind of “my time” to step up. I’d gotten tenure a few years previous, and there had been some high level negotiations that I wanted NO part of that had ended, so it seemed like the right time.

My colleagues in my department are wonderful. Sure, we disagree and even argue, but it’s about policies, not personal, and we are all working towards the same goal… being the best support for our students and each other. I’m sure this job is a lot different in a bigger department with more moving pieces, or, worse, a dysfunctional group.

There is some extra work, extra organizing, and extra paperwork, for sure. My email inbox is wildly busier than it has ever been. And to top it all off, I haven’t gotten a proper course release yet. So yeah, it’s a lot more work at a time when faculty workloads are already increasing.

However, I didn’t expect to be at the helm when the winds shifted as drastically as they have in the last 11 months. The unique pressures that the current Presidential administration have put on an already topsy-turvy higher education infrastructure have been unique, to say the least.

Higher education remains as one strong way for societies to promote intellectual discourse and resist authoritarian thinking, yet the conditions necessary for that are being challenged and dismissed. It lends a certain chill over our every day workings and a fear of what is to come. Meanwhile, funding for science and science education is getting hacked away, and, although that doesn’t create an existential crisis for small institution as it does for a large research university, the losses to our students is distressing. And this is all occurring when our workloads were already increasing past a point that is reasonable, often in the name of “efficiencies,” while our salaries (like just about everyone else’s) haven’t kept up with inflation.

It seems like I’m speaking in generalities, but I’m also speaking from personal experience. My students have been turned away from closed programs, my colleagues overworked and stretched thin, myself made ill by the increasing pressures.

It’s hard with the added pressure of being the one at the helm, even in a group as collaborative as mine. But… despite occasional daydreams of running off into the forest and becoming a bog witch… I’m still here. Every time I’m sick of defending the mere existence of a physics department, I look to our students who tell us we’re one of the best parts of their college experience.

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Photo: From the Physics and Astronomy Congress in October where physics students from across the US came together to talk about their strengths… and their fears.