David Fleming
It's All Academic   www.davidflemingsite.com   
Notes From the Higher Learning Commission Annual Meeting (In Lyrical Form)

April 9, 2013:  Notes From the Higher Learning Commission Annual Meeting (In Lyrical Form)

The Higher Learning Commission annual meeting is wrapped up for another year.  I can go several months without hearing about assessment, data, completion, and pathways ever again.  However, in two weeks, I go to the American Association of Community College's annual meeting and will hear much of this again.

We've learned that PEAQ has officially peaked, AQIP will have a snip or two of cosmetic surgery but that most of us are on one of two pathways, generally filled with uncertainty and lots of electronic submissions.  Welcome to the new world.  Take your pick of titles: Pathway to Hell; The Pathway Not Taken; Life is A Pathway; Pathway of Love; or my personal favorite, understood by only a few, Backs Turned Looking Down The Pathway.

Anypathway, don't expect a coherent response to four days at HLC.  The brain is spinning while at the time completely dead.  So if I can't provide coherence, perhaps I can give cadence.

 

Bow ties and jacket patches --

I have now arrived among,

I-Phones and I-Pads as well,

Seeking the conference app.

(I-Pad on ESPN.)

 

See all the sessions darkly

Through sexy strapped-glasses,

Off and on from speaker's stand,

While the audience tilts heads

Peering above upper frame.

 

We've not met a metaphor

We can not weave in and work

Beyond point of no return:

Found Waldo, followed Escher,

L'Ecole'd by Moliere.

Subterrenean Hall Blues:

Trade on tour, goodies for all,

To strengthen and integrate

Plan, navigate, and report:

All the tools we'd ever use.

Session pace makes time frames tight,

Speakers stay duly on task,

But garrulous listeners

Wrap questions into comments,

Revel in their cleverness.

Caravaggio called

Louder than Curriculum.

Two hours in the museum

Restored equilibrium,

Brought me back to Academe.