In case you didn’t already know, it is official. Rudyard is our new president. He has already made some changes. The most visible of these are the shuffling of positions in order to temporarily fill his previous position as Provost.
Promotions
Most interesting to me is the promotion of Papa Bear to Executive Assistant to the President. This was kind of expected. I’ll say more on this later.
But it was also significant that a former Dean in the college was promoted temporarily to Acting Provost of the College of Arts and Sciences. This caused quite a stir at the Seminary. So much so that Rudyard had to send an email to faculty there to calm them down.
You might wonder why the position of temporary Acting Provost of the College of Arts and Sciences would be of concern to the Seminary since they are not part of the College of Arts and Sciences.
You might think that it is related to the rumors that Rudyard plans, a few years from now, to promote the position of Provost of the College of Arts and Sciences to be over the Seminary as well. But that could not be enough of a reason to stir up controversy. Obviously, someone had to be the temporary Acting Provost of the College of Arts and Sciences. So there must be something about this particular person that worries them.
It can’t be that this former dean is not competent or a hard worker, she is. Since the previous sentence kind of gave away the real reason, I might as well come out with it. This former dean, now Acting Provost, is a woman. Now you can understand why there is such an uproar.
It’s worse than that, though: of the nine people temporarily or permanently promoted (excluding Rudyard) four were women. And these aren’t all front-desk positions either. Three of the four were promoted to back-office, decision-making positions. Now you see the problem.
Combine this promotion of women to positions of leadership over men at the College of Arts and Sciences with the possibility that the future Provost of the College may be over the Seminary as well and you have cause for serious concern.
Back to Papa Bear
When Papa Bear’s promotion was just a rumor, I had already mentioned what a loss it would be to have him have less involvement in faculty lives. So far, however, I see no evidence of any decrease. He has continued to post on the faculty email list—something his predecessor in that position never did.
In fact, to judge from his latest message to the list, he appears to be the moderator of that list. Here is what happened. While he was off campus, a piece of spam got through the filters and showed up on the email list. Here is his post:
I have been away for the last week, and came back and realized that somehow this had gotten on to [the faculty email list] despite a number of filters and our membership list. I’m going to take a look at security to see what’s happened.
He’s gone for a week and chaos breaks out, naturally. This alone shows how much we faculty need not just any moderator for our list, but we need Papa Bear.
Other Executive Assistants to the President might not concern themselves with this. Others might not read the faculty email list at all. If they did, others might let the ITS department worry about spam. Another Executive Assistant to the President who decided to do something about it, might deal with the problem quietly behind the scenes.
None of those other Executive Assistants to the President would spread among faculty the reassuring feeling that comes from knowing that Papa Bear is reading everything that passes through that list and that he is doing something about each and every such message even if it is spam.
The day that he stops reading that email list will be the day 600 spam messages pass through the filters. The day he stops posting to that email list will be the day that faculty take a dive into chaos, depression, and doctrinal error.
Papa Bear, if you are reading this, (and I know you are) please, please don’t leave us!
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[...] Christianity, congeniality, evangelical, Papa Bear I’ve posted about my fear that Papa Bear’s promotion might prompt him to stop posting to the college faculty email list and how disastrous that would [...]