Just tired

Service / Advising

Looking for advice.

This year I was “promoted” to department lead (no department chairs due to funding). The department is a total mess; from faculty scheduling classes that were not needed, stacking their courses for extreme overload pay, mistreating students, using academic freedom to instruct with only YouTube videos, and the list goes on. I went to work and discovered that enrollment is extremely low on a site due to a one professor’s behavior in class (harassment, discrimination), while others looked the other way, another professor was scheduling full course loads for her friend, an other professor would cancel courses anytime, and the new hire is the dean’s long time friend. With all of this I managed to write a whole new program, placement assessment, increase enrollment numbers on a secondary site to offset enrollment on the primary site, wrote grants for technology, and hire adjuncts for night courses. I did all this because I know the importance of the program for students and community, and not the money which is a low stipend. Well now, no surprise, I have been ambushed by the faculty in the team with “complaints,” that they are not getting overload paid, I was threatened by the dean and the student harassing professor if I was not “nice” to the student harassing professor that HR will take legal action against me- even though I have not been contacted by HR, and the student harassing professor has actively harassed me like she does students. I had brought it up to the dean on several occasions, only to be dismissed and told that I had to be “nice.” All the work I’ve done has been with the team’s knowledge- they complained for years on things that were addressed and they complained because they were addressed.

I am burning out. I have zero support from the dean that expects me to turn a failing program to a bachelor degree. I am legit burning out. How the heck do I deal with this- is it time to get out?

Posted Feb 19, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC

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