BY ANDREW KRUSZKA, STAFF WRITER
Hello everyone, welcome back to this week’s rendition of my article. This week let’s focus on something near and dear to the St. Bonaventure community. Well, it is near and dear if you support the one aspect of college that every institution is supposed to provide in however many years students attend it; education!
No, this article is not going to call for reform within the education system here at St. Bonaventure or even in New York State. As someone who is entering the field of education, it most certainly needs reform, but that’s a topic for another article, another day.
Instead, let us focus on the people bringing you this education that you pay large amounts of money in order to receive. That is right, let us discuss the professors! In no way am I going to point out any singular professor or staff member here at St. Bonaventure. I will, however, make generalizations and how poorly most of our staff and professors are treated here at St. Bonaventure.
These talented people work night and day in order for us as students to get the right education in the courses that we are paying a good amount of money for. Let’s face it, St. Bonaventure is not cheap. Although we don’t come to this University for education alone because of its beauty in many other areas, we’re still here to receive a diploma. So let us, as a University, start to focus on treating our professors better. They are the people that provide us with the education so that we don’t keep having what is happening. They are well-rounded professors leaving this University for other jobs, whether it’s in the same field or not.
There’s a specific example that I’m thinking of when it comes to this topic. This professor has worked a lot and asked to do many things that, as a new educator here, probably wasn’t hired to do at first. This professor continued to work hard and provide for their students because this professor cared! They loved educating students, but as others stated, there comes a time and a point where there’s a breaking point. Well, here we are. This professor has accepted a position at another University and is leaving Bonas ole St. Bonas.
Why you might ask? It’s how we treat these individuals. We burn them out and the wages we pay them simply do not align with the work they’re doing. Also, they often go extremely underappreciated in terms of when it comes to moving their offices or where they stay. They are not taken into consideration.
I, for one, am here to stand up for the faculty and staff here at St. Bonaventure University. Especially the professors. Most of these people have Master’s degrees, and a good chunk of them have their Doctorate in the field they are educating in. I’d say that this entails that these people are qualified enough for the position, and we chose them to fulfill the role of teaching our students, so if we trust them that much, shouldn’t we appreciate them a little more?
There are most certainly some professors that get paid much less than a teacher would teach in Middle School. I’m not saying that my job is less important. I’m saying that I don’t pay $37,640 to go to Middle School.
I’m not writing this article to get a backlash, and I’m certainly not writing it to get in trouble. I’m writing this so that we appreciate our professors more! These people care for us. Let’s care about them more. Please, it’s how we keep good people around in an already great community.
