Medical researchers have confirmed the record-setting soulectomy claims.

Doctors have finally verified claims that the College of Madison performed the fastest soulectomy in higher education history.

“We couldn’t believe the soulectomy could be completed in less than two days,” said Dr. Rachel O’Quinn. “But all evidence points to verification.”

According to the medical records, Dr. Juliette Mecum arrived for her first day of work as a tenure-track instructor of physics at College of Madison on July 1.

“The department was far more dysfunctional than Dr. Mecum anticipated and she had to act fast,” explained the medical examiners. “The women professors in her department resented her youthful enthusiasm and the men thought she was weak because she liked students. She was advised immediately that the tenure committee frowned upon all candidates who enjoyed their jobs.”

Mecum was aggressively recruited to Madison with promises of a full vibrant life in a city known for its many social opportunities for young professionals. She soon learned that expectations of scholarly production would completely preclude any ability to have a life outside her office or lab.

“We use Madison as a selling point,” said the chair of Mecum’s search committee. “We have to trust that candidates are adults and can recognize when we’re lying.”

According to witnesses, Mecum sold her soul the second day of work in order to maintain her sanity.

In a written statement that will be released in health journals next month, Mecum explained, “Being a jaded asshole isn’t bad. I have lots of great colleagues to remind me that students are stupid and that having a life is a ridiculous and selfish goal. It’s exciting to have made the transition to the tenure track in such a short time.”

"I hope it doesn't raise any red flags that all of my students got an A this semester," said tenure hopeful Warren Mutrand.

Inspired by the new all-star selection process in the National Hockey League, faculty at Landry College have voted to adopt a draft-style promotion process.

Prior to the change, faculty were put through a rigorous selection process that included an extensive evaluation of their scholarship and teaching evaluations. Committees spent hours in emotionally and intellectually grueling meetings and were often reviled for unpopular decisions.

“Now, we’ll let fans (students) vote for the initial pool of the most popular professors,” explained Provost Tina Warner. “After the first stage is complete the department chairs will choose the individual faculty who will receive promotions one at a time, just like in a sports draft.”

Director of Student Leadership Bryan Tiffani originally posed the idea to the faculty in a an act of job preservation.

“Every year, students were upset that the most popular professors were not given tenure and I was expected to help them practice social activism,” said Tiffani. “Each spring, as students marched upon the Old Administration Building I held my breath and prayed I wouldn’t be fired. Now, the professors chosen will all be in the popular pool to start with.”

“I was skeptical at first,” said one department chair who spoke anonymously. “But then I realized I could finally stick it to that bitch in Social Anthropology who steals my salad dressing in the faculty lounge.”

“My morale and health have improved dramatically this year,” said Professor Anne Gherns. “Time I used to spend in the lab or working on article submissions I can now invest in baking brownies for my classes or buying coffee for my department chair. It’s a pleasure!”

Not all faculty are in support of the change, however.

“I was always the last one picked in gym class,” said applied math instructor Loudon Jacobs. “Once I left high school I thought everything would be better, but now I’m having flashbacks of wedgies. I swear the guys from Exercise Science are planning to stick my head in the toilet.”

Personal Protection (within campus perimeter only)

Date: 2010-03-14, 11:28AM EST
Reply to: mailto:job-cronk-8037179008@craigslist.org

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PostingID: 8037179008

by Erica Price
Freelance Writer

Geography professor Jake Gildenhauf is relieved tonight after resolution to one of the most controversial tenure review processes in Shiver State College history.

Trustees of SSC cast their votes on this professor’s tenure status with equal votes for and against. The typical tiebreaker, the chairperson of the Board, had recused herself from the voting due to the fact that the faculty member up for tenure review is her husband.

With votes at a standstill and the entire board deadlocked without tiebreaker options, the Provost recommended a drastic strategy that was unanimously approved by Board members.

“We needed something that would be objective in its focus and draw input from a wide variety of stakeholders in the process,” Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Jean Eckel stated.

The Board decided to allow the tiebreaker vote to be based on the professor’s evaluations on popular site RateMyProfessors.com. Prior to reviewing Gildenhauf’s ratings, the Board agreed to consider the tiebreaker vote in favor of granting tenure if the overall rating was above the campus average and included at least one chili pepper (“hot”) rating.

“I did not raise any objections to the use of this website. We all know that students are posting their evaluations of faculty here all the time and I was confident that my husband Jake would get enough chili pepper ‘hot’ ratings to get through it well. After all, he’s pretty easy on the eyes,” stated Board of Trustees Chairperson Jacqueline Gildenhauf in a private interview.

When RateMyProfessors.com staff was contacted for comment, they had not yet learned of the new role their site played in the SSC tenure process. CEO Cheryl Schneider shares her excitement about the new partnership.

“An outstanding institution like Shiver State College is ideal to test the use of our site in faculty tenure review. Their faculty have always rated so highly on our site and SSC faculty have achieved the highest number of “hot” ratings of any campus in the Louisiana public college system. I am thrilled to learn of this new opportunity and may need to pay this campus a visit very soon,” said Schneider.

Faculty representatives were unable to be reached for comment due to conflicts with a mandatory faculty union meeting being organized to protest this Board of Trustees decision.

A search of recent public records indicates that since the favorable tenure decision was made, a certain J. Gildenhauf has filed for divorce. Reason stated: “Husband was hotter than expected.”

by Anselmo Watkins
Freelance Writer

In his six years at the Terra Nova University, Professor of Sociology Phil Dunston has twice been voted professor of the year by his students. His 2008 book on the sociological aspects of youth football among the children of Pennsylvania coal miners, Blocking the Mine, is in its third printing.

But despite these positives, Dunston announced that he will be leaving TNU as he learned he was denied tenure Friday.

“I have enjoyed my time here at TNU, but it has been made clear that it is time for me and my family to move on,” Dunston wrote in a prepared statement. “I want to thank the amazing students and faculty that I have met and worked with in the last six years.”

TNU Sociology chair Anne Elke said that denying tenure was a difficult decision, but the right one.

“It was a combination of factors,” Elke said. “The students really seemed to like him, almost too much. You have to wonder if he was really challenging them academically. And his research, if you can call it that, wasn’t esoteric enough. In the end, his remaining here would have simply been too difficult for the rest of the faculty.”

College of Humanities chair and Creative Writing professor Johnston Armstrong III was sympathetic to the 36-year-old Dunston’s case, but said that Dunston had brought on the failure himself. “He made his choice about his area of interest. He seems to have forgotten that research in the liberal arts is supposed to be ambiguous and unreachable. This is not the hard sciences, where faculty are researching and inventing things that could benefit mankind.”

As an example, Armstrong explained that his own recent article, Bolstered Stamps: An Examination Concerning the Rumor, has yet to be read outside a classroom since it’s publication in 2008.

“If we start writing things that people actually want to read, then we risk setting a standard of useful research that the liberal arts cannot possibly maintain. So it is important to nip this in the bud now,” Armstrong said.

In contrast, TNU students were heartbroken to hear that Dunston had not received tenure.

Senior Garrett Russell, a wide receiver on the TNU football team, said that Dunston’s classes and book captured his interest and helped him decide to get a degree in sociology. “All I cared about was football, man. But Phil really reached me. I thought I was learning more about football, but I was learning about life.”

One of Dunston’s fellow faculty members, who asked that his name not be used, was happy to see him denied tenure. “Where does he get off doing research that people are actually interested in? His research was just crass! Football? Are we ingratiating ourselves to the ‘typical American’? At what cost? We have to be better than that,” she said. “What message is he sending, not only to the students, but to the academic community? This guy is a disgrace to higher education. I hope he ends up teaching at a junior college. That will teach him.”