August 1, 2025

Dr. Rue: Good afternoon, David. How are you today?

Dave: A little bug-eyed to be truthful, doc. I have been trying to clean up the behind-the-scenes part of my website the last week. Rather draining work.

Dr. Rue: What does that entail? 

Dave: Well, mostly looking at my 1400 pages ensuring that I have maximized the description and keywords associated with each one. 

Dr. Rue: Yowzah! That does sound like a lot. Why did you embark on this project?

Dave: I got really lazy with those a long time ago. Since I worked hard enough to write the original post, I didn't want to spend too much time figuring out how to maximize potential hits. I guess that's no surprise since the website's goal has never been for profit.

Dr. Rue: So, why do it now? It sounds like too much work for too little payoff, especially if, as I am assuming, some of those postings were time sensitive.

Dave: True. But I am finding it fun, as I have forgotten a lot of these blogs and poems, so at least I get to relive some of them.

Dr. Rue: I'm getting to know you too well. While that sounds ideal, I am guessing there are some that may trigger emotional responses.

Dave: Why would you say that?

Dr. Rue: Because frequently you write to exorcise, to expel, to purge.

Dave: Perhaps that is true, Captain Thesaurus. I suppose 2 out of every 3 postings could be classified by that kind of intent. However, I am finding some fun even in going back to an outrage or an angst.

Dr. Rue: Any cases where the fun didn't happen, and something quite opposite occurred?

Dave: Well, there's HR stuff. I still find myself getting piss. . . .

Dr. Rue: Nope, nope, nope. Stop this record! I don't want to hear about that HR stuff yet.

Dave: Whoah! Did I just catch a Monty Python reference? You get cooler by the day, doc.

Dr. Rue: Whatever. I've had a quick change of heart. I think we need to try a different approach this week.

Dave: Which is what?

Dr. Rue: You say you are having fun with this project. Let's stick with the positivity. Are any of them triggering memories of something good from your career?

Dave: A lot of events are being jogged in my memory, making me smile.

Dr. Rue: There you go.  You know what I am going to ask.

Dave: Yeah, yeah, be more specific.

Dr. Rue: You're a relatively quick learner, Dave.

Dave: My favorite ones invoke good times with colleagues, even if the work of the moment was not so great.

Dr. Rue: That makes sense.

Dave: Sometimes even the work was good. For instance, the Michigan Community College Association put on an annual Student Success Summit, to which SMC would send a small contingent. While it was barely a 24-hour event, it did lead to some fun bonding and almost always generated a blog from me.

Dr. Rue: That's sounds rewarding. These blogs captured the highlights of this Summit?

Dave: Typically. One that I rediscovered through this website project captures the conference as if we had all been 17th century scouts wandering into unknown territory.

Dr. Rue: Sounds creative.

Dave: I guess so. I just always hated the mundane nature of academic trip reports. Ah, who am I kidding, of anything academic?

Dr. Rue: So, why did this specific account make you smile so many years later? When was it written?

Dave: 2012.

Dr. Rue: So still within your first year or two at SMC, right?

Dave: Yes. Anyway, I tapped into my best James Fenimore Cooper, capturing myself as Bearcrusher (upgraded, for reasons I can't remember, from Deerstalker),  one dean as Leatherstocking, a second dean as Dotconnector, another dean (Nursing) as Woundcleaner, our Institutional Research person as Nutgatherer, and our English faculty member as Gothictalker (she is big into that genre). Ultimately, from this second foray upon scaling our Summit, I had us come back with 12 legitimate strategies to improve student success.

Dr. Rue: Did you all implement any of them?

Dave: Slowly. One was to make college-level math relevant and transform the developmental classes to fit the college-level choices; another was to use the academic warning system early and often. The most important one was to invest, whether through teaching or support, in EDUC120 courses, which were "intro to college" courses. We already had faculty working on that, but this allowed me to elevate the importance to a leadership level.

Dr. Rue: This is perfect. Reaffirming, I hope.

Dave: Sure, although it makes me miss those colleagues. Three were gone from SMC even before I was, leaving just two of them.

Dr. Rue: People come and go in our lives, Dave. That can't change the feelings you had while connected to them.

Dave: I know. Seeing that blog brought out all sorts of smiles, but my greatest joy was in reading some of the asides, inside jokes that I knew the six of us would especially appreciate.

Dr. Rue: Such as?

Dave: One idea led to a mouthful of an initiative that I simplified via acronym, but then pointed out it needed to be sent to the Sub-Committee of Committee Acronyms Review--SCAR--for analysis.

Dr. Rue: You academics do love your committees, don't you?

Dave: No less than our acronyms, doc.

Dr. Rue: So, can I dare say this project, at times, has been very helpful for your retiring soul?

Dave: Yes and no. I realized that upon reading this report that my favorite one about the Summit was written in 2011. However, that blog must still be sitting somewhere on SMC's h:drive. It was an internal publication and so it never made my private website. Similarly, I found another blog talking about the importance for an administrator to find creative ways to communicate. It referenced and linked to a number of videos I made. All of those videos are gone, long since deleted by the college. 

Dr. Rue: Why would they do that? I infer that you mean they did it before you left.

Dave: Oh, yeah, long before that. Certainly, they were tied to a specific semester and academic year, and invoked a silliness that some people probably hate. Ultimately, I was told they had to go in favor of more bandwidth . . . for who knows what: probably HR training videos.

Dr. Rue: There you go again, trying to bring HR back in to this.

Dave: We're going to have to at some point, doc. You have already seen how it impacts my retirement. Any real progress we make will have to address that dragon.

Dr. Rue: I know, Dave, patience, patience. There are some levels of evil that you don't take on lightly.

Dave: Understood. Just promise me, we will stare into that abyss at some point.

Dr. Rue: When I think you're ready, my son.

--------------------------------------------------

The Ever-Evolving Full Series of Sessions

Session Eight: Not Networking