No clue. Contrary to those who have cast me into the "it'll all work out" pumper role, I'm not making predictions, I'm just pushing back against the illogical hand wringing that says she can't get it right because she would like to see UT become academically relevant. She may well stink it up and she may well be completely out of her depth, but up to this point, I don't think there is enough established truth to make that call.
There are those is business who believe in "hire slowly, fire quickly". If you do the prior, you tend to do less of the latter. Last time I checked, we actually still had an AD, so we are trying to fill a position that isn't actually open yet.
And for the record: Pessimists are the "half empty" guys and optimists are the "half full", right? Well, I'm an engineer, and engineers are generally neither. We're more the "glass is twice the size it needs to be" group. I refer to them as pragmatists, and I happen to be a positive leaning, forward thinking, pragmatist. Is that a pumper? Compared to some of the "glass is half empty, cracked, and leaking through a hole in the bottom" crowd, then perhaps. I've just lived long enough to realize that it costs me nothing to focus on the more positive outcome, and it makes me happier to do so.
I understand your point. We don't know yet how she will turn out so no sense in worrying about it yet. It's hard to separate rumor, from fact, from conjecture on message boards.
I almost always lean to the positive side, always optimistic. I guess the last few years I have completely lost any faith I had that the higher ups in the university would make good decisions, or are even capable of making good decisions. I always get my hopes up for a "best case scenario" and more often than not we've been getting the opposite of that. Very frustrating.
