well, that's done....

Handed in my "faculty development" plan today. This is where we account for our activities of the past year - there is a minimum standard we must meet to keep tenure. (Yes, tenure-opponents: it is NOT a sinecure). I know I do considerably more than the minimum, that's just how I am.

The last piece of the puzzle was evaluation scores. I always drag my feet on this - my first year here I got awful evals and so always cringe to look at them. Even though, lately, they have been good.

In my intro, majors class, I earned a 4.5 out of 5....I think I get high evals in there because a lot of our students are scared freshmen, and I think I come across as just-slightly-maternal, and I am also willing to give LOTS of help.

In my upper division majors class, I earned a 4.2 out of 5 - not bad given it's a class 'everyone' in our majors have to take and some of the pre-med people are unenthusiastic about it

In my class-that-people-from-another-major take - this was the section I complained about last spring, that had note-passers and gigglers in it, and I suspected some of the problems were that the problem people were men from a very old-boys'-club discipline and I am a woman who presents very traditionally feminine (long hair, dresses or skirts, jewelry, some makeup but not lots, feminine voice...). Anyway, I earned a 3.7 out of 5 which is the LOWEST eval I've had in years. I'm not happy about that yet at the same time recognize it's partly out of my control - the other-majors' people have different expectations and I know many of them think I expect too much of the class. (I don't think I do, our majors don't think I do, the non-trad (more mature) other-majors students don't think I do.....in fact, one once told me he liked my class because I actually covered material in it instead of "goofing off.")

I don't quite know what to do. I don't know if this is a "you don't really need to change, they do" situation or maybe if I need to "dress down" a tiny bit (wear slacks more often than dresses, dial back the bright colors and jewelry). Every fiber of me resists that because this is who I am and I have finally myself come to be happy with it....and it irks me that someone might not respect me because I'm in a skirt. (I don't dress provocatively, I don't wear tight things,  I don't show skin, I don't act like a ditz or a fruit-cup girl....And if you're envisioning someone dressed like Penny Garcia, no, that's not it either. I wear bright colors but not BRIGHT colors.)

My colleague-friend tells me that I should keep on keepin' on because "they will eventually have a woman as their boss and they need to get used to women with authority" but of course he is not having to deal with it.

I don't know. I am also offering this class in the summer so I am hoping the spring section will be less over-filled, I think that was part of the issue.

But yeah. I've never dealt with real gender-related ugliness (some women have gotten death threats online and such), but I've had a little frustration with it in real life. The stupid thing is, every MAN I've ever worked with has recognized I have a brain and know how to use it, and he has respected me for it. And I have worked with a lot of men in my life, both as colleagues and as students.  I'm not quite sure how to approach - even if I need to - BOYS who can't get that fact. I may try talking with the department's chair before the semester, to let him know, "Some of your students, they don't act as very great representatives of your department in other ones" but I don't know what that will do.