Zooze the Horse roams around the pasture near Lamar State College. Zooze thinks about problems in academia. Zhe wants proffies to submit posts (blog posts, not fence posts).
Monday, July 17, 2017
Monday Magic in July
If you could wave a magic wand and make tomorrow the ideal day at your school, what would be most noticeably different from last week?
Bippety, boppety, boo! One particular academic 'empire' disassembled...one faculty made able to differentiate between a PhD and actual competence...one chair prevented from 'interpreting' the collective agreement merely to make that job easier...one course coordinator made to use evidence instead of disciplinary biases when allocating course to sessionals...like me.
an email network that only allows messages to contacts off campus. In other words, no one here could rely on email to communicate with each other.
We would have to meet, discuss, compromise, negotiate, deal, thereby connect as colleagues. face to face, in person, hearing, listening, at times arguing--but making decisions together.
And unable to dictate from afar, the power faculty would have to be on campus and/or step out of their comfy offices--instead of sending an email to end any discussion. They would have to meet the contingent faculty, the harried folks working toward tenure, the exhausted, miserable associate professors who fear never being promoted again, and the few senior faculty who still sincerely care about things.
The noticeably difference: it would feel like a campus.
I'm gonna go small/parochial, and imagine that sometime in late winter/early spring, all the students who were contemplating taking summer classes (and their advisors, both formal and informal) suddenly became possessed of the ability to make realistic judgments about how many classes, internships, paid work hours, paid work trips, etc., etc. they could fit in the summer, and registered for summer classes accordingly. That would certainly have made my and my students' last month or so better. Of course I would have had more work to read/grade, but chances are good that most of it would have come in on time, and a good percentage of it would actually have followed the directions.
Bippety, boppety, boo!
ReplyDeleteOne particular academic 'empire' disassembled...one faculty made able to differentiate between a PhD and actual competence...one chair prevented from 'interpreting' the collective agreement merely to make that job easier...one course coordinator made to use evidence instead of disciplinary biases when allocating course to sessionals...like me.
an email network that only allows messages to contacts off campus. In other words, no one here could rely on email to communicate with each other.
ReplyDeleteWe would have to meet, discuss, compromise, negotiate, deal, thereby connect as colleagues. face to face, in person, hearing, listening, at times arguing--but making decisions together.
And unable to dictate from afar, the power faculty would have to be on campus and/or step out of their comfy offices--instead of sending an email to end any discussion. They would have to meet the contingent faculty, the harried folks working toward tenure, the exhausted, miserable associate professors who fear never being promoted again, and the few senior faculty who still sincerely care about things.
The noticeably difference: it would feel like a campus.
For Gwen the parking Nazi to retire.
ReplyDeleteComplete restructuring of the entire tutoring/learning support system so it's not so splintered and gentrified.
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna go small/parochial, and imagine that sometime in late winter/early spring, all the students who were contemplating taking summer classes (and their advisors, both formal and informal) suddenly became possessed of the ability to make realistic judgments about how many classes, internships, paid work hours, paid work trips, etc., etc. they could fit in the summer, and registered for summer classes accordingly. That would certainly have made my and my students' last month or so better. Of course I would have had more work to read/grade, but chances are good that most of it would have come in on time, and a good percentage of it would actually have followed the directions.
ReplyDeleteThings are so, so, so, so, so far from ideal right now, that it's hard to imagine what "the ideal day" would look like.
ReplyDelete