Some thoughts on starting the school year!!!

Hi everyone…. Thank you for caring for me as I had my annual cancer follow-up. As Dennis said, the results were negative and that is positive!!!

Next week, Wednesday, we have our opening convocation of the faculty to begin the school year at East Tennessee State University. Classes start the following Monday. This semester I will have two in-class and one on-line class – all of my classes are full – This year, I will teach, or try to teach, approximately 225-250 students…….

This will be my 24th year at ETSU and my 30th year teaching overall. I taught for 6 years at the University of Louisville before coming to this university and these wonderful mountains… I am a really good teacher, I have done a really good job at university service, but my research productivity hasn’t been that good. That is the main reason why, after all these years, I have not achieved the rank of Professor, I remain an Associate Professor.

I love to teach and have made the transition from chalk boar, dry erase board, TV classes, and now to Internet classes…I have taught on the main campus mostly with some classes in Kingsport and some in Bristol…

Over the years, I have taught somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 students…. When I came to ETSU we were teaching mostly first generation college students. That is, students who parents did not go to college… Sometime their parents didn’t understand the importance of going to class… I remember one student who said to me, when the tobacco crop comes in I will have to be gone for several days when we harvest it….. Sandy has done that and she tells me it is truly not any fun………. That is not something students seem to do any more, thank God. Now, I am teaching some of my students children, that is too weird.

I tried administration at a low level, and really did not like it or do well. I was the Director of the College of Business Honors Program, the Director of Assessment for the College of Business. I found that those kind of administrative duties did not suit my personality, I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about this little duty or that report… I love teaching and it does not wake me up in the night.

I have been the Faculty Senate President and did a decent job of that. I also have been something called the NCAA Faculty Athletic Representative. That is a position that connects the academic community with the athletic… That allowed me to be very active in athletics and also to be very active in the Southern Conference. ETSU belonged to the Southern Conference before we did away with football and had to leave to join the Atlantic Sun Conference.. That is a whole other story.

While I make a very good salary, I am significantly underpaid relative to those just entering the teaching profession…. That is called salary compression… Even with the new raises we will get this year, I will be somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 below market for a person at my rank and years of service…. I am sad about that as I begin to close out my career, but I am blessed to make the salary that I do make…

I want to thank God for the opportunity to do this job all of these years. I want to thank God for allowing me to touch so many people and help to educate them. I want to thank God for keeping me healthy enough to have only missed a few days through the years to illness – remarkable considering that I have had cancer three times. Thank you God for sending the Holy Sprit to me with the gift to teach…… I have been truly blessed.

Peace to you all, john