Nobody likes me,. everybody hates me, guess Ill go eat worms

I have (and will continue) to be very vague and secret decoder ring-y in my blog. I have said so far that I live in Nowheresville, Northeast, United States and I am a pre-tenure professor. My reason for the secret decoder ring is that I am not happy here at Tiny Backwards University (TBU) and it is probably best that no one knows exactly where and who I am. I will say for now that I am definitely not an engineering professor. In my forthcoming rant, I will use engineering as code and will become obvious to all (especially those in engineering) that I am not an engineer and just using it as code.

I just received a memo with all the gumption of a mission statement ala Jerry Maguire. It said in short:

"Our school focuses on 'mechanical and electrical engineers.' Never have any of our students went on to do graduate work in 'civil engineering'. 'Civil engineering' is a small area of 'engineering' and as such we are right to focus most of our students on 'mechanical and electrical engineering'. Our students could never make it as 'civil engineers'. "

Now replace civil engineering with what I do and mechanical and electrical engineering with other areas of my field (which I admit make up a larger percentage of people in my field).

My question is: Manifesto writer (and head of the search committee when I was hired) why did you hire me? Why did you hire a 'civil engineer' if the direction this department is taking is to focus solely (with rare exception) on 'mechanical and electrical engineers.' If my area is so meaningless (to the students here and the direction this department is going), why did you hire me? Why did you tell me how diverse the faculty are here if most of them are really focused on 'mechanical and electrical engineering.' Why not hire another 'mechanical or electrical engineers' and have them teach 'civil engineering' on the side. Why did you tell me how excited you were to be hiring a civil engineer and how much you thought my research could involve the students into civil engineering?

I have never felt more under appreciated or undervalued and there is no doubt in my mind that this will not be the job I stay at.