The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3037 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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Simon and Sammi had come home during the late afternoon so we had an almost normal evening, meaning I nearly went in to meltdown trying to make sure that everything fitted concerning school uniforms. Thankfully, they did or close enough to mean I didn’t have to buy anything new for them to turn up at school looking reasonably kempt.

So it was early to bed and then, an early alarm call, for school the next day. I had them packing pencils and pens and various other items they seem to need these days. Mobile phones and iPads—in my day these things weren’t available for children, but then my parents weren’t millionaires.

It was also the day I’d be returning to my ivory tower and dealing with all those things I’d prefer not to, like the research project and the petty politics of university life. It’s funny that I’m one of the most junior professors in terms of longevity of incumbency, but since some of the things that happened over the past couple of years, I seem to have a position of some respect probably not harmed by the fact that the VC is my adopted father. In reality both our positions are supposedly temporary but of a seemingly elastic variety. This possibly helped by the fact that I’ve made two films, am a peer’s wife and my courses also attract the largest numbers of students to the university.

My usual sparring with Diane started the day on the right foot and then it was off to a ten o’clock meeting of the university council chaired by Daddy. Half way through what was an otherwise normal meeting, I encountered something of a surprise and not necessarily a pleasant one.

The university has been concerned for some time with the loss of applications for some of our science courses, especially chemistry and physics. This is something which is happening countrywide and the recent rush of young women into biology and allied biosciences shows the differences between the subjects up in alarming fashion. It was only through courtesy of clearing that these departments weren’t looking at closure. It was something I’d been aware of for the past couple of years and felt concern because we need all our sciences to be developed and perhaps later cross fertilisation can occur enriching everyone’s life. Things like quantum biology are already explaining things we hadn’t understood before and making us look at much of what we do understand, or think we do, in a new light. Scientifically and academically this is good, it means we don’t get complacent and seek new ideas constantly. However, I wasn’t ready for what happened at the meeting.

The matter of the lack of popularity was on the agenda for Chemistry and Physics and apparently during the holidays they’d employed a group of consultants to see what they needed to do to improve their intake.

Apparently, they weren’t sexy enough and they needed some sort of makeover to be more enticing to new students. Okay, I could understand some of this, they could be seen as either too hard for young women to do or too nerdish. Physics was seen as a subject for weeds who wore glasses and had no social life. I thought that was preposterous, especially when looking at people like Brian Cox who’s a particle physicist and a very attractive one.

It was decided that half a dozen universities were going to make two films one on each of the subjects. That might help sell it to schools, so sounded quite reasonable and they hoped Professor Cox might help, though his department at Manchester was apparently doing all right, several smaller universities weren’t, including ours hence the film.

Daddy then addressed the meeting. “We’ve decided that we are going to restructure the departments of science into one super faculty under a Professor of Science with individual departmental heads underneath them. These departmental heads would retain chairs of their own but would report to the super prof.” I wasn’t sure I liked the idea very much as I already had absorbed all the biological sciences into my one super department—hence the fact that I had three times as many students as any other and would have been in favour of calling ours the faculty of bio sciences. I also wondered if such things would normally report to the dean of the faculty, of science in this case.

It seemed they were doing away with the role of dean in favour of this faculty professor and if it ran successfully, they’d look at doing the same for the arts subjects and the social and medical sciences and computer sciences. Okay, basically just a name change, so who’s going be my boss?

“We have one name for the initial supremo for science, who will report directly to me. The appointment will be seen as experimental for three years, with an evaluation every year and if favourable we’ll start to introduce it across other faculties. One of the reasons is that the title professor holds more academic credibility in young person’s minds than dean.

“We need to get things moving if we’re to commission two films. We need to nominate and appoint a professor of the faculty of science, whose main job will be making these films while overseeing the other departmental chairs in a supervisory capacity. I would therefore suggest we appoint from this committee.”

I glanced round the room, except Tom, no one would have my vote or nomination. I think I was the only one to have made films so that didn’t say much about the others. I didn’t know all of them, I mean computers and social sciences were new appointments and I’d never spoken to the languages head who always looked as if he was trying to translate his thoughts into something people would understand.

The discussion ranged about all sorts of things and for a moment I was wishing I was back in the woods checking nest boxes for dormice, or even making films about them—it had to be more interesting than this. Even trying to understand the hibernating dormouse would seem interesting compared to being stuck in a room with twenty or thirty boring people and a dozen interesting ones.

“So we need to look at the qualifications required for such a post...” Daddy’s voice droned on and I zoned out. During my experience of boring meetings I have learned to keep my eyes open while effectively taking myself a long way away. To my mind it was better than falling asleep, well less impolite, because I’m sure they discuss very relevant topics but I had plenty of things I needed to sort in my own department, never mind chemistry and physics. I also had to organise a meeting with the reader in genetics who was new and part of my senior team.

“So is that all the nominations in?” I heard Daddy say and thought, I didn’t nominate or second anyone, did anyone notice or think I was in a trance, which would be true, I was.

“Do we have a second for this nomination?” asked Daddy and someone down the other end of the table raised their hand. “All in favour?” Everyone’s hand went up so I raised mine in case they thought I had nodded off. “Against,” said Tom’s voice. “So that’s unanimous, Professor Watts becomes our new Professor for the Faculty of Science. Congratulations, Cathy, we’re all sure you’ll do as good a job as you have with biology...”