And So It Begins

I had heard, pretty quickly upon arriving on campus, that my new school is notorious among its faculty for piling on committee work. Especially since we're not on a traditional tenure system, but rather a long-term contract system, I could see how the pressure to say yes to everything would be substantial. The VP for Academics actually told all of us new folks at our orientation that we should feel free to say no to committee work the first year. At bigger schools, I suspect that first-year people never even get asked to do this kind of work.

That said, I didn't encounter any of this pressure in my first 8 weeks here. I sat in my office, and the only thing approaching committee work was when my department chair asked if I'd like to sit in on the interview with the sabbatical replacement for a colleague. As soon as we got back from fall break, however, it became clear that my time for getting adjusted to my courses was over. In the past three days, I've been asked to represent the department at the open house for prospective students next weekend and, more dauntingly, to be the point person on designing the department's website. I said yes to both, since the folks in Computing Services will actually build the website once I tell them what I want. Although my chair did say something yesterday about wanting me to learn the basics of code so I can update the site once it's built...

I suspect these kinds of requests are only going to increase, but such is the life of being in a permanent position, so really, I can't complain.