It's nice to be popular...

...but damn! It's rare on this campus that you can literally be on the ground floor of a brand spanking new department, like I did three years ago, and help get it going and be independent and functional. To be honest I've enjoyed the challenge of helping establish a new academic department in a major research university, and managing the administrative side of things here. I've never held a job before where I've had so much leeway and authority in the decision making process. For the most part I've made the right calls, especially on the more difficult issues that have come up. The times when I didn't get things right I chalked it up to a learning experience and tried not to let it bother me that much. And did I mention that I LOVE having my own office, with an actual door that I can close when I need to work on things without distraction? It's sure nice from my cubicle days not that long ago.

That our department deals with international politics and foreign policy only spelled future successes and challenges for us when we set up shop in a newly renovated, century old building back in 2003. We've added faculty, as funding and the school's "Master Plan" has allowed us to. But we're in danger of becoming victims of our own success and current world events. When we started offering classes three years ago we had 150 majors in our program, and about 12 faculty members. Yesterday I was told that we now have 713 students in our program, and we only have 16 faculty in our department. So there's quite a demand for our courses and we're struggling to keep up with the pace. In comparison, the departmental Thigh of Zeus we were torn from a few years ago, Political Science, has 809 students in their program. My initial estimate earlier this year was that we'd catch up with them about 2009-2010. With these new counts we'll not only catch up with them next year, we'll surpass their program. And still with only 16 faculty members. We sure could use five more to keep up with demand. To top off this big, steaming pile of academia, I've just taken on the task of generating class schedules. My job description, like my waistline, just keeps growing and growing. Wish my paycheck grew at the same rate, though.

All we want to do is eat your brains....

We finished up the interviews for our front desk position today. In years past it was pretty easy to pick out the clear front runner after talking to all the candidates. It's not so easy this time. We got a number of really good applications this time around. We'll all get together tomorrow and make our choice of who to make an offer to, but it won't be easy. Wish we had enough money to hire two people, but that's not an option. Right now, this song pretty much captures how I feel right now.