Watched DEI taking over like cancer in the community college where I taught as adjunct for over 15 years; tp the point where I found myself taking an inward breath ("ok, here goes nothing!") when I would say such things as "mitochondrial DNA of course comes from your mother", or discussing the distribution of variant hemoglobins across the world, and racial proportions of blood types, or even calling lipids "fats", and discussing fatty acids; and having been challenged with "are you disrespecting me?!" on several occasions, or asked to consider giving a student extra chances with extra credit when they didn't just do the work and turn in the project that everyone else managed to do - I figured it was a matter of time before someone got offended about basic chemistry and biology, and I found myself in a fight that as adjunct I couldn't really win. Anyway, it isn't fun when students and professors are all walking on eggshells, and while the money is nice too, fun is an essential component to chemistry. So after we all went online for Covid, and then that turned into an admin reason to continue to find justification for allowing laboratory courses to be taught as fully online sections, so in direct competition with in-person sections for student registrations, I decided I was out after the emergency time period was over, because I can't ethically teach online something that is meant to be hands-on - it simply isn't the same to watch a computer simulation as to be making a mess in the lab!
Watched DEI taking over like cancer in the community college where I taught as adjunct for over 15 years; tp the point where I found myself taking an inward breath ("ok, here goes nothing!") when I would say such things as "mitochondrial DNA of course comes from your mother", or discussing the distribution of variant hemoglobins across the world, and racial proportions of blood types, or even calling lipids "fats", and discussing fatty acids; and having been challenged with "are you disrespecting me?!" on several occasions, or asked to consider giving a student extra chances with extra credit when they didn't just do the work and turn in the project that everyone else managed to do - I figured it was a matter of time before someone got offended about basic chemistry and biology, and I found myself in a fight that as adjunct I couldn't really win. Anyway, it isn't fun when students and professors are all walking on eggshells, and while the money is nice too, fun is an essential component to chemistry. So after we all went online for Covid, and then that turned into an admin reason to continue to find justification for allowing laboratory courses to be taught as fully online sections, so in direct competition with in-person sections for student registrations, I decided I was out after the emergency time period was over, because I can't ethically teach online something that is meant to be hands-on - it simply isn't the same to watch a computer simulation as to be making a mess in the lab!